Clever Words

Our politics is—and, I guess, has always been—susceptible to clever word combinations, puns, and rhymes that appear to tidily sum up a grievance, intended consequence, or course of action. For most of us, they are mere curiosities. But in my view they are treacherous if taken as a philosophy or a substitute for rational thought.

I’m sure there were chants and slogans that caught on during the American War of Independence, probably something to do with Indians and the tea shipments arriving in Boston Harbor. The slogan that comes readily to mind is from slightly later, the dispute with Canada in the mid-19th century about the Oregon border: “Fifty-four Forty or Fight,” relative to the latitude line that would define the hoped-for demarcation. I suppose it was just fortuitous that the map offered the preponderance of all those F’s and the opportunity for a stirring alliteration. If the border had been along the twentieth or thirtieth parallel, I guess the proponents would have had to come up with something else.

And then there is the modern-day all-purpose chant: “Hey-hey! Ho-ho! Fill in the Blank has got to go!” This one is particularly useful when a group of organizers want to stir up and direct a crowd. It’s got a rhythm that gets your arms and legs moving almost like a dance or a march step.¹

To me, one of the worst substitutes for rational thought also comes from the 19th century, although a bit later. It is attributed to the journalist Finley Peter Dunne and his fictitious alter ego Mr. Dooley. In its shortened form it says: “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” This formula, clever in its reversal—almost a palindrome—of verbs and objects, has been taken up by generations of progressives ever since. For some, it’s an exquisite summation of how they should heal social ills.

But this combination is, of course, nonsense. Clever, but still nonsense. It depends on a false equivalency: that the sufferings of the afflicted—the poor, the weak, the disabled, the denied and discriminated against—are directly attributable to the smug satisfactions of the people not so burdened. It presumes that those who have worked, saved, invested, and planned for the future of both themselves and their families—all of those middle-class virtues—have created conditions of poverty and injustice for those not so fortunate. And this is not so. Those who have taken up the virtues have simply removed themselves from the class of the destitute and the desperate, not caused their condition.

By all means, one should “comfort the afflicted.” Heal their hurts where it is possible. Work to change their current situation and their opportunities where you can.² But at best, “afflicting the comfortable” serves only to remind them that an underclass exists in their society and that one should spend some portion of one’s day, one’s mind, and one’s charity—if not just their taxes—to alleviating the situation. “Afflicting the comfortable” is intended to be fighting words, suggesting that by reducing their comforts a society can somehow magically improve the lot of the afflicted. And that magical thinking is just pure Marxism: Been tried; didn’t work.

Another set of fighting words, intended to stir up the complacent and draw them into a social battle, are the various formulas intended to fight social apathy: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,”³ and more recently “Silence is violence.” Again, the false equivalency that those who are not actively joining the fight—and on the side of, under the terms of, the sloganeers—are causing the wrong, are in fact wrong-doers themselves, that is the unspoken purpose of the chant.

These clever slogans are meant to give the great mass of people no choice. Join us or die—or worse, gain our everlasting contempt. They raise the issue in contention to the level of an existential crisis, a civilizational catastrophe, or a cause for civil war. However, for some of us, for many of us, perhaps for most of us in the middle of the political spectrum, who are spending our days doing all of that working, saving, investing, and planning for our own futures, in order not to be counted on the public rolls, the issue is not existential or catastrophic and does not merit a civil war. Yes, perhaps, the issue may demand our notice and concern. We might even add the deserving recipients to our list of charities or our list of considerations in the voting booth. But many of us, most of us, know that there’s nothing we can personally do about a lot of these social problems. We are not prepared to climb on the barricades, bare our breasts, and offer “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor”⁴ to the project.

And no amount of clever words and scornful chants is likely to change that reality.

1. And in terms of serving multiple purposes, there is also: “No justice, no peace!” Simply pick your object of “justice,” and fill in your action for withholding “peace.”

2. But you have to be realistic about this approach. You can work to improve other people’s conditions sometimes, but that should not include a free ride or a lifetime’s residency on the dole. A taut safety net, not a soft and cushy safety hammock. Human beings are designed by a hundred thousand years of heredity to have personal goals and to seek satisfaction and self-worth through attaining them. No one—not children, not the mentally or physically disabled, nor the socially or economically disadvantaged—benefits from having their personal agency removed by a benevolent parent’s or government’s lifting and carrying them through all the vicissitudes of life.

3. Speaking of clever, I have always favored the chemist’s version: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.” In other words, if you don’t join in this fight, you’ll be part of the fallout. Chuckle, smirk.

4. To quote from the last line of the Declaration of Independence, which for the signers did involve an existential crisis and, right quickly, a civil war.