Political Buzz Words: How to Frame a Debate With Meaningless Words

It is no secret that marketing is a large part of politics. Pundits, politicians, and even grassroots activists are in many respects as skilled as Coke, Pepsi, Wal-Mart, and Apple at selling their products to their consumers.

It just so happens that in politics, the products are ideas and votes, and the consumers are the voting public. The principles, however, are not much different than those that large corporations use to hawk soft drinks and electronic gadgets.

A whole book could be written about political marketing, from the use of pollsters, statistics, television ads, meet-and-greets, and all the other techniques that are used to sell the political product.

In fact, I'm sure whole books have been written on that topic. I don't plan on writing a book; rather, I am going to focus on a peculiar yet often used marketing technique, the political 'buzz word'.

Like advertising battles between competing companies, there is a constant buzz word battle in politics to see who can get their own buzz words to catch on. And like commercials, buzz words themselves are usually catchy, but trite; they are the skydivers in the soft drink commercial, or the random sight-gag in the car commercial―none of them have anything whatsoever to do with the product they are selling. But they work.

Ditto for being 'socially conscious'. Granted, there are people who could be fairly labeled as 'unconscious' on political issues. But having a well-reasoned argument in support of, say, the death penalty isn't any less socially 'conscious' than being against the death penalty.

Consciousness simply means being aware-it doesn't require a specific view. Yet, as a political buzz word, 'socially conscious' is almost never used in this manner. It has one main implication if you agree with certain views, you are socially conscious.

If you hold opposing views, your level of cognition is, well, somewhere between a person in a coma, and a corpse.

I'm not attempting to ridicule any of the specific views I talked about here: the war in Iraq, Democrats versus Republicans, or anything else. The debates themselves are perfectly valid. I merely want to highlight a few examples of how buzz words are used to frame the debate around these issues.

The fact is, most people believe in justice, or freedom, or liberty, or whatever other broad-minded phrase we couch our beliefs in. All governments tax and spend, and few people are against either choice or life.But people do support or oppose the death penalty. There are debates about the the Iraq War. There are movements for and against legalized abortion.

So what's my point? My point to those who use buzz words is, as Missourians might say, 'show me'. Don't hide behind meaningless phrases that cloud the real issues. Tell me why the death penalty is so bad, or what we should spend our money on and why. For everyone else, look and listen next time you hear a political debate―are the politicians, pundits, or activists really talking about the issue at hand, or are they just showing you the equivalent of a bikini-babe in a beer commercial?

Don't get me wrong: personally, I love women in bikinis. But they don't have much to do with what beer I drink.