Dumb Contemporary Commonplaces, Part 2

In last month's Rant, I identified five contemporary commonplaces that strike me as DUMB in the sense that they do little to improve the sorry state of public discourse in the United States, AND are easily exploited by political hacks and opportunists. The five identified were: 

1. "Literally" 
2. "It is what it is" 
3. "Both sides do it" 
4. "Russian Asset" 
5. "Concerns mount" 

Snopes has verified that President Ulysses S. Grant actually did utter this quote in an 1875 speech. Ignorance is often created or reinforced by the mindless use of dumb commonplaces.  

This rant identifies five more dumb commonplaces. Much more than last month's list, these five are particularly nefarious in how they tend to be employed by bad faith political actors for the purpose of bamboozling the public. These same bad faith political actors willfully exploit commonplaces in an effort to appear like some kind of conscientious or noble public servant. In other words, when you hear these commonplaces come out of the mouth of your local, state, or national officials, be sure to consider the very real possibility that she or he is COMPLETELY FULL OF  SHIT. 

Commonplace #6: "It's Not Sustainable."  In the days when sustainability had a direct and recognizable connection to humans and their interaction with the natural environment, cogently arguing that something was "not sustainable" had the rhetorical force of a wake-up call. Environmental activists, scientists, and even some politicians helped the world to see, for example, how "it's not sustainable" meant that our current methods of creating, consuming, and disposing of "stuff" would make life more difficult for future generations. 

Today, "it's not sustainable" is used just as frequently by bad faith actors to argue against anything they don't like. For example, elected officials who were always against public school budgets anyway--often in hostile terms--now adopt somber tones to tell us that more resources for schools is "not sustainable." Much of the developed world can have health care for all, paid family and medical leave, high speed rail systems, and many other things that are the hallmarks of decent and civilized societies, but for us they are "not sustainable." Ask the same people about bloated military budgets, or about the billions spent annually on the war on drugs and incarceration, or about corporate welfare policies (if you're a Wisconsinite, think Foxconn) that drain public treasuries, and you won't hear a peep about how each program is not sustainable. 

 

Video: The Story of Stuff

The point is that "it's not sustainable" went from being an ethical descriptor of bad planning to a deceptive propaganda device designed to make bad planning sound good and good planning sound bad. Put another way, "it's not sustainable" became a "heads I win, tails you lose" trick. If Mr. Smith From Hell wants something, it's sustainable. It he doesn't, it's not. Fuck him. 

Commonplace #7: "It's not politics, it's math." One of the major responsibilities of government is to pass a budget. Because budgets are less about numbers and more about values, budget discussions are hard. This is true at the local, state, national, and even international levels. Most people don't like hard discussions, and hard discussions about values tend to send them into apoplectic tizzies. 

Over the years I've listened to and even participated in a number of budget discussions. The most educational are at the local level; because local government is non-partisan, government officials don't just fall back on partisan talking points or (as in the Wisconsin state legislature) just parrot the views of party leaders. Instead, officials will often trot out shibboleths seemingly designed to silence opponents: "we have to listen to what the people are telling us" (translation: we don't have to listen to what the people are telling us), or "the people want this" (translation: the people DON'T want this) or "the people don't want this" (translation: the people DO want this). 

All of the above are transparently weasel-like, but this one is my favorite: "it's not politics, it's math." That gem is usually said by someone attempting to position him or herself as somehow being above the fray that we mere mortals mess around in. I'm not sure when I first heard "it's not politics, it's math," but it is the kind of phrase that started to gain currency during Bill Clinton's remaking of Democratic Party rhetoric in the 1990s. Clinton endorsed the "triangulation" strategy, a tactic of framing oneself as the "reasonable" middle ground between polar extremes. So you would end up getting pure bullshit like this (I'm paraphrasing typical triangulated rhetoric): "Partisan politics won't let us get anything done. The Democrats think we can spend our way out of our problems. The Republicans want to starve government while cutting taxes for their rich donors. So both sides just keep playing politics to appease their tribes. But when I look at our budget deficit I want both sides to understand, it's not politics, it's math."  Brilliant, eh? 

Commonplace #8: "It's Just Common Sense." Public advocates framing their policy ideas as "just common sense" is something that has irked me for a long time. In fact in 2013 I wrote an entire Media Rant on it. As noted in that piece, in the public sphere when advocates say their plans are "common sense" they generally mean one of three things: 

• In my experience this is true. 
• I really, really want this to be true. 
• People I admire believe this is true. 

Privileging our experience, privileging our desires, and privileging the views of authorities are three of the major enemies of critical thinking. So what do we do when officials insist their appeals are grounded in "common sense?" Once again I'll refer to what I wrote in 2013: "The good news is we don’t have to be passive victims of common sense appeals. All we need to do is keep asking critical questions, be mature enough to change our minds when the evidence suggests we should, and resist all the pressures urging us to be intellectually lazy."

Common Place #9: "Violence against women." How could anyone possibly be opposed to the "violence against women" commonplace? Everyone's against "violence against women," right? Wrong. As noted most eloquently by University of Massachusetts professor of media studies Sut Jhally, the phrase "violence against women," because it does not identify the agent of the violence, makes it easy to ignore the fact that violence against women is an issue that MEN have the responsibility to do something about. Women of course have a role in ending violence against women, but the failure to clearly and unambiguously identify the agent of the violence has let most men "off the hook" on being part of the solution. 

As noted by Dr. Jhally, we (men) need to "break the silence" and call out our complicity in enabling the small amount of men responsible for most of the violence against women. A huge part of that effort requires changing the language of domestic/relationship violence. So whenever someone in your presence says something about "violence against women," politely interrupt them and ask, "you mean MEN's violence against women, right?" 

Video: Sut Jhally "Breaking the Silence" 

Commonplace #10: "We are better than this."  I was a fan of the late Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Congressman who represented his district for 23 years in the House of Representatives. Rep. Cummings' booming voice and moral tone always brought forth memories of the giants of the 1960s Civil Rights movement like Martin Luther King, Jr. Part of the Cummings brand was to express in vivid and moving terms some atrocity being committed by the government, and then end with "we are so much better than this!" 

Video: Remembering Elijah Cummings Most Memorable Moments 

When Elijah Cummings said "we are better than this," his emotive force made me suspend any attempt to ask if the statement was/is true. Are we in fact "better than this?" When anyone else besides Cummings uses the phrase, it seems as if ALL I think about is its accuracy or lack thereof. And unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that we are NOT "better than this." In fact, in most areas we are probably a lot worse than we think. Imagine a Roman senator thousands of years ago, surveying the cruelty and greed of the actions of powerful people across the empire and concluding "we are better than this." With sober hindsight, we can reasonably conclude that Rome could never "be better" as long as it insisted on running a cruel and greedy empire. 

Thank you for engaging part II of "Dumb Contemporary Commonplaces." Let us all pledge to be less dumb  by being more mindful of our linguistic choices. To cite another commonplace I hate, "we got this!"