The Politics of Clamology (I)

Channeling the spirit of William Safire and the much maligned clam.

The phrases that politicos invent often fascinate me. It is a rhetorical art form that is at times both amusing and disturbing.

In the era of sound bites, we no longer have the time or patience for extended quotations like those in historical “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You” or “I Have a Dream” speeches.

In the 1990′s it was the so-called “politically correct” (PC) terms that dominated the media. It began as an earnest yet vague attempt to neutralize potentially offensive language in social stereotypes.

This brand of wordplay has since been adopted by most other arenas of power, mainly to disguise harsh truths with euphemisms – for example, as in brutal war strategies. My favorite still in common use is “surgical strike,” which makes a blitzkrieg attack sound efficient and clean, even medicinal.

PC language has since evolved into something else; today it has morphed into an obsequious tool to undermine or degrade an opponent. So successful has this tactic been for the American political right for example, that they have confused the average person into thinking that there is no difference or distinction between liberalism, socialism and communism.

It takes a clever wordsmith to coin expressions like “cautious optimism” – a phrase that sounds important, yet goes both backward and forward and thus, goes nowhere. Much like the distraction tactics used in performing magic tricks, it focuses attention on one hand while the other executes the truth in secret.

The newest one from the President-elect’s camp is “deliberate haste.” By virtue of its definition, “haste” implies hurry and recklessness; hence the old expression “haste makes waste.” This is a very curious mixed-metaphor, purposely crafted to say something, yet mean nothing.

I admire its almost musical expressiveness; translated into German it could easily be a marking found in a Mahler symphony – Absichtliche Eile. In Italian, leliberata fretta sounds positively operatic.

Of course these cleverly crafted phrases (whether they be ironic wordplay, twisted logic, false connections or public pandering) are all rooted in one thing – it is all propaganda.

Our friend the clam

On a lighter note, what about the much-maligned horn clam? Does not this term for French horn mistakes deserve the same political treatment?

Part II

[Further recommended reading of interest: Propaganda Critic]