Political Dialogue and Its Discontents

I detest clichés. As someone who studied English in college, it bothers me when I see the latest catchphrase creep into so many aspects of our cultural dialogue. Over the past several decades, this problem has afflicted America’s political debates. Rick Perry sneers that Social Security is “a Ponzi scheme.” Democrats wield their belief in “social justice” like a club to bash their right-leaning opponents over the head and accuse them of being uncaring. (Notice they never define this phrase or describe what it entails). Leftists like to “tax and spend” to solve the country’s problems. Right-wing folk “cling to their guns and religion.” I’ve been tired of it all for awhile now, and I’m sure many of my readers agree with me.

Any form of conversation stagnates if it is laden with the same trite mantras. When bread sits out for more than a day, it grows stale. But shibboleths seem to sit on the shelf forever, even if they have been rotten for awhile. Most Americans know that Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy motto was “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” But I’ll ask you readers to guess the author of the following quotation without looking it up: “The life of a nation is secure only when the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.” This saying is very wise, and the person who said it is well-known. (Hint: Go back about 150 years in American history).

With next year being a federal election year, we’ll be forced to sit through the same cycle again. One or more of the candidates will say something either incredibly stupid or newsworthy, but nothing particularly intelligent or noteworthy. And it’ll seep into our national vocabulary the same way Ebola spread around the world last year.

But that’s not the worst of it. Wait until the candidates disagree with each other on an important issue. That’s when the real stupidity begins. It’s like Oprah is back on TV, and she’s giving away cows to the studio audience. *Oprah points to different people* “You have a cow, you have a cow, you have a cow, you have a cow! And let’s all have a cow because we disagree over our political viewpoints!” For crying out loud, let’s not put on our big boy and big girl pants and talk to each other like mature human beings! Let’s not try to connect with each other on an intellectual level! That’s too hard. Instead, let’s throw around the words bigotry, hatred, and discrimination the same way a sailor cusses. It’s too hard for us to make reasoned arguments. So we’ll go with ad-hominem attacks instead. It’s easier to do that.

And people wonder why the US has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the world. Perhaps this could be one of the reasons. Even though I rarely watch TV, I especially have no desire to do so during election season. Because it always seems like the person with the popular catchphrase wins the White House, or the person who can make the most voters believe that their opponent is stupid and evil.

The quote I mentioned above was from Frederick Douglass. Even though the political process was messy back in his day (like it is in ours), he and his contemporaries could at least make it seem like a politician’s job had some class and dignity. To give another example, Daniel Webster once said this: “Justice is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.” I don’t think any politicians could write a sentence like that today. Our vocabulary is too small to make it happen. As a concerned citizen, I wish we demanded more from our political candidates and campaigns. And so I have a few requests to make of my readers.

Conservatives and libertarians: don’t blather on about “freedom” and “rights.” Tell people what they are, what they’re good for, if there are any legitimate reasons to restrict people’s actions, and what role your definition of freedom plays in making our country better than the one we have now. Liberals: It bugs me to hear your talk about “change” and “progress” without knowing what goal you have for it, how you intend to get there, and why we should want to go to some of these places you’re taking us to. If any of you, you matter what political persuasion you are, want to act like a parrot, do your fellow citizens a favor and go hang out at the zoo. If you’re repeating what someone else has already said, it’s not cool anymore. It’s old.

But if you don’t want to do that, then do something more productive. Research the issues our country is facing from a variety of angles, take some time to reflect upon what you’ve discovered, come up with your own opinions, and say something original about what’s going on. Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow don’t have your voice. You do. Use it, say something intelligent, and hope to God that no one else steals your idea, unless you want to be the inventor of the next big thing that grows fungus within a week.