The language of politics is a remarkable exercise in disingenuity, distortion, and deceit. In other words, there’s a lot of lying in the political world. After all, there are some politicians who will do anything to secure and retain power. Sometimes they lie accidently. More frequently it’s by design. I hated all of it when I was in politics and the surest way to be ignored by me was to lie to me. My response was a quiet note to self: I’m done with you.
But the political lie that I find most aggravating is when politicians and their phrasemeisters take a word and refashion it to mean something that is essentially a lie. One that comes to mind is the use of the word “investment” when substituted for “spending.” Big-spenders figured out some time ago that if they called the expenditure of your tax dollars an “investment” you would feel better about funding some research project to study why bugs are attracted to lights and what they do when buzzing around them.
It’s a pressing question, I suppose. Or maybe you will be flush with excitement with spending $592,527 by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to explain why chimpanzees throw their feces, or $856,000 to study if it is possible to train lions to walk on a treadmill. (It took the lions eight months.) These are “investments.” Right? Nope that’s a distortion, if not a lie. They are profligate spending, not investments, because they return nothing needed by a taxpayer to secure freedom, prosperity, and your future. But I digress.
I think I am most bothered by the ways some politicians speak about “our” this or that. For years politicians have spoken of “our values” when trying to persuade voters to support a particular agenda. “We have to defend our values” goes the call to action.
Oh really, well what values? Whose values? Where did those values originate? I can assure you that when some far-leftwing politician asserts “our” values, he or she is very likely not asserting anything I consider a value. Nowhere in my list of values does illegally entering the U.S. in contravention to law match anything I would consider “our values.” Maybe “our neglect” but not “our values.” Nor do I hold as a value the destruction of innocent life, the explosion of our national debt, or paying someone our tax dollars to stay at home and not work. Nope. Those would be vices, not values.
Another misuse of the possessive pronoun is “our Democracy.” Hardly a day goes by that these words are not appropriated by politicians to bolster their legislative agenda. Well, of what democracy do they speak? Is it the one that is threatened if we protest having our freedoms taken from us to enact some formless and incorrect novel notion of “our Democracy?” Is it the one they have constructed in their minds to justify the federal government’s takeover of the election process even though the Constitution prudently makes clear that elections are the province of the states? Is it the democracy that says we don’t need an identification card to prove who we are when we vote? Never mind that you can’t buy alcohol or cigarettes, donate blood, get a driver’s license, board an aircraft, purchase some allergy drugs, apply to college, or establish a utilities account without proper identification. But “our democracy” is existentially imperiled if you have to show identification when voting. (You do to attend union meetings, by the way.)
And of course, no day is complete until some politician intones an appeal to embrace a particular policy for “our children.”
I find this quite remarkable. I know who my children are. They are the ones born into my family. And while I care about my neighbors’ children, they are neither my joy nor my responsibility to raise. In a socialist society, maybe children can be possessed communally, but a village did not primarily care for my children. I can hardly recall the village telling my kids to pick up after themselves or close the refrigerator door. My wife and I did that, a lot. Nor did we have it in our minds that anyone except the two of us would be responsible to nurture them into self-sufficient adults. But that does not deter some politicians from suggesting that our children are theirs when it comes to their agenda. Well, that would be wrong too. Newsflash: Politicians, my children are not your children, nor are my grandchildren your children any more than I am your serf.
It is a presumptive insult when politicians speak of “our” values, democracy, or children to advance an aggressive agenda that is not “ours” at all. And when they do, they shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t get “our” votes.
SCOTT LINGAMFELTER is a former member of the House of Delegates and a retired colonel in the U.S. Army.