'Peace activists seek new idiom'

According to this:

"Hell No, We Won't Go!" has morphed into "Peace is Patriotic" in the modern anti-war lexicon, as peace strategists urge their followers to embrace the flag rather than burn it.
Aware that screaming denunciations of the United States might alienate mainstream Americans, some leaders of the peace movement are borrowing a tool from the right and using patriotism to sell peace.

"It's an epiphany the left has experienced," said Susan C. Strong, an activist and researcher who studies language...

Strong, a former teacher of rhetoric and argumentation in Berkeley, has a Web site she calls the Metaphor Project. On it, she's collected a raft of catch phrases and clichCs for peace advocates to weave into their conversations with Middle America...

She cited a sample slogan. "Win without War. It fits another American core value: We like to win!"...

"Speak American," she said. "Strip down to the simple, metaphoric Anglo Saxon. Leave out long words, complex explanations, historical analysis or arguments supported by lots of reasons, facts, statistics."

Wellll, golllyy. I reckon that that thar fancy Berkeley perfesser lady has figgered out how to talk to Middle Ammuuhhrrrruuuhhhkuhhhhh.

Look, at least A.N.S.W.E.R. is semi-upfront about being a Saddam and North Korea-supporting front organization. Now, she's suggesting that "peace" protesters should change their shtick, even if they don't believe it. Just as long as they put on a good show for Middle America and wrap themselves in the flag, it doesn't matter that they're wearing a Bush-with-the-s-as-a-swastika T-Shirt underneath it.

When Strong refers to "historical analysis or arguments supported by lots of reasons, facts, statistics," I believe she might have confused the pro-war side with the strident whiners from her side. While there are a few exceptions, most of the arguments from the anti-war side fall into the Sheryl Crow/Yoko Ono/"Imagine Peace"/"...bad for your karma..." camp or the RESIDENT SHRUB IS A NAZI WHO WANTS TO NAPALM OSAMA DAY CAR CENTERS IN BAGHDAD AND PAVE ALASKA FOR THE CARLYLE GROUP camp. There is no nuanced, fact-based argument for 99% of the "peace" protesters to soft-soap. And "fuck" is a pretty basic Anglo-Saxon word, so they've already got the etymology front covered.

And, if you want to know what Susan Strong agrees with, search for "Susan C. Strong" here. The letter she endorses starts below her name, and continues in the next column at the start of the same (physical, not HTML) page.

One suggestion for Susan: skip the fake metaphors, and move straight into NLP. That's one way to penetrate deep into your target market.

(I note also that being a professor from Berkeley doesn't mean one was a UCB professor, and if she had been one, she would no doubt have identified herself as such.)

Comments

The fact that they treat pro-American rhetoric as some sort of "tactic" says a lot.