STUMPTALK: Beam me up, Scotty. No one here listens

By Phillip J. Chesser / Chronicle contributor

February 16, 2009 04:30 pm

— “Communication is a two way process,” says the cliché. Communication will not occur unless the message sent is also received and it must be received accurately, as the sender intends. Unfortunately, many times receivers do not hear what senders intend, especially when the messages involve politics. Because it is full of loaded words like freedom, liberty, liberal, conservative, right winger, left winger, socialist, capitalist, statist, collectivist, racist, sexist, homophobe and so forth, political discourse often fails to meet the basic requirements of communication.
Some loaded words that are often barriers to communication:
Freedom – “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (Jesus the Christ, John 8:32). The freedom of Christ is freedom from slavery to sin. It has nothing to do with personal, political or economic freedom. “Freedom is not the permission to do what you like but the power to do what you ought” (Lord Acton). “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” (from “Me and Bobby McGee” written by Kris Kristofferson, performed most famously by Janis Joplin). In most contexts I hear the word freedom used in personal, economic, or political senses, each of which is subjective, emotional, and often irrational. Writers and speakers rarely define their terms.
Liberal – Depending upon where one is on the political spectrum a good or bad word. To themselves liberals are generous, loving, compassionate, and open-minded. To others liberals are generous with other people’s money, loving of the perverse, compassionate toward criminals but not victims, and impervious to ideas other than their own.
Conservative – To liberals conservatives are a bunch of mean-spirited, hate filled racists, sexists, and homophobes who want to kill everyone but pre born children. Conservatives disagree, of course. As one wag opined, “People are liberal or conservative until their oxen are gored.”
Right winger, Left winger – the terms left and right originated in the French National Assembly and were applied to parties in accordance with where they sat in relation to the Speaker. Jacobins or radicals sat to his left, conservatives in the center, and reactionaries to his right. Jacobins wanted rapid radical change, conservatives defended the status quo, and reactionaries hoped to return to the good old days.
And there are many others, enough to fill many pages. Some writers use the phrase right wing as a debate clincher as if nothing else need be said. Some use the words racist, sexist, and homophobic against conservatives in order to cut off debate.
Truth is, many opinion contributors write either to preach to the converted or to annoy those with whom they disagree. Some write to straighten others out with their versions of the facts, or as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.” Then there are those who write to show readers how smart they are.
Daniel J. Boorstin wrote, “The greatest barrier to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge,” or more colorfully, as said by Mark Twain, “It’s not what you don’t know that that gets you in trouble; it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Political rhetoric either spoken or written often contains lots of heat but not much light. Nevertheless, it’s fun and serves a useful public purpose, and careful readers sometimes learn things they don’t know.