A Call to "Unity"--Let's Drop the Cliches!

Much--okay, "most"--rhetoric of this (and every) election cycle involves a series of catchphrases that, while allegedly communicating ideas of great import and resonance, are devoid of substance. Perhaps, at first, such phrases offer promise--new thoughts, new analogies--but they quickly reach overkill and lose their impact. If you've ever read George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," you know that ain't a good thing. Why? Well, I'll let Mr. Orwell tell you: “By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.” If you rely on cliches, it signifies that you're not employing your mind. You're spitting out not just ready-made phrases, but ready-made ideas. Clever, huh? Orwell again:

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

Okay, his examples aren't exactly contemporary for 2008, but keep in mind: he wrote this in 1946, and his point remains true. Repeat what you are used to hearing others say, and you're permitting others to think on your behalf. You are, then, a conformist.

So, then, some more recent examples of political cliches:

1) "Drink the Kool Aid" Oh, enough already. Regardless of who you refer to, this is one of the most cold hearted phrases someone could come up with. Hundreds died at Jonestown, for cripes' sake, and that is not the same as believing in the message of Bush, Clinton, or Obama. The Kool-Aid's been boiled dry.

2) "Carry water for" now a cliche, and it connotes toting a bucket of pee around (okay, maybe it's just me who thinks this whenever I hear this stupid saying).

3) "Throw under the bus." This one is d-e-a-d folks. Can you find a more interesting way of saying "betrayed"?

4) "Cultist" '/ "Cultee" See number one above.

5) "McSame" We get the point. He's a lot like Bush. He's also not Bush, and he has disagreed with the Current Occupant on numerous occasions. He won't be McSame, (but he will be McOld. Like the man said on SNL the other week, he does "have the oldness" to be president).

6) "Taking the Blue Pill" Oh, you've seen The Matrix (and maybe you even understand it). But enough of borrowing elements of the movie to analogize the elections (for you blessedly Matrix-ignorant souls, taking the blue pill = enjoying ignorance). Yes, it's step up from "drinking the Kool-Aid," but it's not much of a step.

I'm sure there are loads more that just aren't coming to mind, so I'll probably add to this throughout this glorious political season.

Addendum: Christopher Hitchens, quite the Orwell expert, has written an article on our "pallid political discourse." Enjoy.