What's in a Name? Our Changing Political Lingo

What’s in a Name? … Our Changing Political Lingo

                                                                            Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 18, 2015

            In Shakespeare’s play, “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet vents her grief over the conflict between her family, the Capulets, and the family of Romeo, the Montagues.  Because the families’ feud has kept them from seeing each other, Juliet wishes the names Montague and Capulet could just go away.

            “A name, a name.  What’s in a name?” she laments. “A rose by any name would smell as sweet.”  Juliet’s sentiment is now being played out in American politics.  In presidential politics, names or labels are taking a back seat.

            For many decades we have spoken of liberals and conservatives or the left and the right. Because of the Donald Trump phenomenon, the terms left and right are yielding to “the elites” and “the people.”  Imagine it.  Actually, we don’t have to.  It’s real.  Thousands upon thousands of middle class citizens are flocking to hear a billionaire man of privilege, and to cheer wildly at what he has to say about government and the government’s policies.  They seem not to care about labels.

            This billionaire hasn’t exactly had a hard life.  Born into wealth, he chose not to rest on his family’s laurels, creating wealth of his own.  He has also held and expressed opinions that are liberal, conservative and moderate as well, but his philosophical spread seems not to matter.  Most notably, he excites voters of all economic strata. 

            Straight talk is the engine that drives this new political train.  Authenticity is its fuel.  Trump’s insults of other candidates grate.  His occasional slips of bad words make many of us frown, particularly parents and grandparents of young children.  Even so, his clear language and beguiling sincerity seem to cover some of his sins.

            Whether we view Mr. Trump as the real thing or the slickest fellow since P.T. Barnum, he is changing our labels, re-positioning the political poles and driving the discussion.

            Labels are necessary.  To talk about anything we have to call it something.   Despite the efforts of the new organization, No Labels, we will always have them, divisive as they may be.  Actually, labels can be as clarifying as they are divisive.

            In the case of the Trump phenomenon, which understandably has reduced the establishment to dizziness, old labels are being disregarded.  The political spectrum is now the elites and the ordinary folks.  How historically interesting!  How reminiscent of the past!  Our newly labeled divide is actually a return to pre-democracy days.

            Mr. Trump is striking a chord because democracy is waning and Old World class-ism is creeping.  As things are going now, America’s future is Europe’s past.  We sense it. We know it.  But we don’t understand it because we still get to vote, so how is it happening? 

            It’s happening because we now have a political class, a donor class and an elite media class on one side and all the rest of us on the other.  Have we forgotten that the Tea Party emerged because Congress cared more about Wall Street than Main Street?  Could we not tell that Speaker Boehner ran an absolutely top-down, dictatorial operation that, in effect, rendered House members unable to represent their constituents?  All bills had to be approved by his steering committee.  Have we not noticed how candidates (not Trump) allow the media stars to twist them like pretzels so that they wind up sounding wishy-washy?  As for big donors, they expect a return and they get it.

            What better to call the Tea Party, the Trump army and the House Freedom Caucus than a reaction to institutional failure?  The same thing is happening in Europe where grassroots groups and Nationalist parties are now speaking out loudly on immigration.  As with the “nativists” in Europe, so with the Trump supporters: multiculturalism and raw government power can be taken only so far.

            The Trump-ites are a sleeping giant that is stirring and rubbing its eyes.  Forget party labels.   Trump-ites only know there are so many things (immigration, judicial tyranny, executive overreach, un-elected bureaucrats) over which they have no control and against which their elected representatives seem hesitant to speak.  They like the fact that their man, a successful manager, rails against unsuccessful managerial government.

            What else is Obamacare but a whopping instruction manual for managers?  Ask your doctor, who is now a manager, what he or she thinks of this manual.  Do so while he or she pecks away on a computer in order to satisfy the government while doing their best to doctor you at the same time.

            Labels?  How much do they matter when the state continues to grow in size and power?  If both houses of Congress are controlled by conservatives who cannot forge conservative policy, no wonder labels are becoming insignificant.

Roger Hines

10/14/15