Today's copy of TMQ tangent-rants about politicians using phrases like "frankly", "quite frankly" and "the American people" to superfluously emphasize their points. I'd like to pile on.
Easterbrook points out the obvious issue: no politician could possibly know that every American person agrees with their point. I'd like to go one more:
There is nothing that 300+ million people can agree on. Nothing. Consider that in our country there are pacifists and gun nuts, religious and atheist, pro-life, suicidal, racist, insane, ... literally anything you offer would be rejected by someone. Even food or air or shelter. This reveals a critical truth: any legislation we approach will NOT work for some people and we just need to accept this as fact. Thus, the question needs to shift to the much more appropriate question: what legislation does the most good for the most people?
Learning to phrase it this way would help us cut through the inevitable noise of those who are negatively affected and allow us to keep the perspective that the goal is to do net good. Granted there are many ways to define "good" and assess the benefit of a particular change, but at least we can start talking like adults instead of 9-year-olds.
No comments:
Post a Comment