The implications of new political language
When dealing with politics, we should always be aware of our intentions. Though this is true in policy, we often underestimate the language we use. We introduce terms, and discuss issues, without noticing what our language commits us to philosophically. A critical examination of some of this new language can point out what we may have committed to unintentionally.
Let us first focus on the Republican Presidential nominee for 2024. Trump has continually denied that he lost the 2020 election, a notion that his Vice Presidential pick J.D. Vance recently echoed. This denial has ushered in two terms that we should be wary of. These are “stop the steal,” and the more recent “too big to rig.”
While the first one of these is obviously attacking the legitimacy of the democratic system, and accusing that system of actively working against the Trump campaign, have we noticed that the recent addition to the Trump lexicon is an unfalsifiable statement? In the framework of “too big to rig,” there is no situation where a Trump campaign loss is a legitimate result of a fair election process. If he loses, it was rigged against him. If he wins, the system was rigged, but it was overcome. Unfalsifiable statements have no place in politics.
Sometimes, ideological commitments that emerge from language are less obvious. Take, for example, the phrase “student loan forgiveness.” It’s been used by both sides of the political aisle, both in defense of, and to attack, legislation on student loans. But what do we commit to philosophically when we use the phrase “student loan forgiveness”?
Forgiveness requires us to see the borrowing of money, and the status of being a debtor, as a moral failing, or a sin, to borrow from religious language. If student loans were morally neutral, we would only engage in this debate with the morally neutral language of cancelling student loan debt.
There are serious arguments in favour of the cancellation of debt. Some debtors have paid off their original loan amount many times over, for example, but the payments have been primarily applied to interest instead of the principle amount. Now, despite having paid back many times the loan amount, the loan stops people from making large financial commitments, like buying houses or raising children. In order to advance human happiness, we should cancel the loan debt. But staying in a moral framework of forgiveness does not allow us to make these arguments, because not paying back a debt is a failure akin to other, more serious, moral transgressions.
The last of these linguistic changes I feel I should touch on is the rise of rhyming politics in my own country. Now, in addition to “axe the tax,” a statement introduced by Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in opposition to the carbon tax, he has doubled down by saying he wishes to “spike the hike,” in reference to not wanting to increase the tax at regular intervals. How is this not seen as condescending? Political leaders should not be able to condense their views on ecological issues into slogans like these because the world is more complex than nursery rhymes. We have to demand better than this from our leaders.
Some new political language can, of course, be helpful in advancing the conversation, and opening up new ways of looking at issues. But our criteria should not be whether the language is catchy, used by many, or in our best interest. Our analysis should first examine the underlying implications of the new language, and whether we are making concessions to one side or the other unintentionally.
