A Post Wherein I Try To Understand One Of Governor Noem's Favorite Cliches

In recent months, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has repeated two phrases "trust your citizens/constituents" and "one size does not fit all." Both have made her a darling of the populist right.

If I am being cynical, her use of the former phrase reminds me of Hulk Hogan's injunction to his little Hulkamanics: "say your prayers, take your vitamins, and you'll never go wrong." Hogan infamously went wrong in ways that indicate he didn't believe his talking points. Likewise, Noem's push for "riot boosting" laws indicate she doesn't trust her citizens to exercise their free speech rights responsibly. Either that or she believes they are overly susceptible to the wiles of out-of-state agitators, a belief that again belies a lack of trust.

Perhaps I am being unfair to the governor, free speech and pandemics are not the same thing. She may well be expressing the belief that Shakespeare was correct when he wrote “This above all: to thine own self be true,/And it must follow, as the night the day,/Thou canst not then be false to any man." If that sentiment is correct, citizens will naturally want to be true to themselves and, therefore, do no other person harm. 

The quotation, however, presents several problems. Polonius, the character who utters the phrase, is a windbag not a source of wisdom. Even if one accepts that Polonius, like the cliched broken clock, can be correct at times, the context of his speech is about personal finance and being true to oneself financially not emotionally, spiritually, or morally. Further, the context is about a trip from Denmark to London not about a pandemic. A string of cliches that may be sufficient for the former is hardly likely to suffice for the latter.

Noem's phrasing seemingly implies that citizens are to trust each other because she trusts them. This implication too causes some problems. South Dakotans are not a monolith. Some believe that Covid-19 is no worse than the flu. Some believe the virus was created in military labs or in Wuhan. Those people may believe that its sole purpose was to create a cashless society so that the government could track its citizens more easily. (That those same citizens believe that Donald Trump, who seems to be ignoring the pandemic, was chosen by God to save save Americans from such a fate reflects a weird cognitive dissonance.) Others may believe information posted on Facebook by someone with Jethro Bodine's intellect and education. Others take information from sources that assert wearing masks is ineffective while others may accept some scientists' assertion that virus is airborne, a term that itself seems promote confusion.

In the middle of pandemic, which citizens are Governor Noem or other South Dakotans supposed to trust? The one's who say mask mandates aren't about safety? The folks who deny Covid-19 entirely? The Governor doesn't seem to trust those who advocate wearing masks. She seems to deny the possibility that wearing a mask keeps others safe, so even she is being selective about which citizens she trusts.

If Noem's claim that she "trust the citizens" is, in reality, a claim that she trusts only those who agree with her, then her phrasing is merely a cliche designed to get her on Fox News, not a policy proposition to keep South Dakotans safe from the pandemic.

Quotation Of The Day: The Minnesota Twins May Be Losing But At Least They Have Their Health Edition

From this Jeff Passen post at Yahoo! Sports:

That's not an exaggeration. According to data compiled by the [White Sox], from 2002-2012, White Sox players spent a total of 4,026 days on the disabled list. The average across baseball was 9,496. The next-closest team in the American League over that time span was Minnesota, with 7,805 days. The Texas Rangers had 12,803, more than three times as many as the White Sox. [empahsis mine]

Wisdom, Fools, And Cliches: Quotations, Photo, And Minor Musing

Alan Jacobs quotes George Orwell,

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

In short, political cliches and hacks have existed for a long time.  It's odd that they haven't updated their catch phrases much since 1946, but changing eliminating buzz words would demand original thought.

Of course, some may wish to become walking cliches.  David Frum posts this slide of Rick Perry.

Given the nature of political cliches, I'm certain the base is now solidified.

A Brief Response To Jonathan Alter's Support Of Obama's/Duncan's Education Policies

Jonathan Alter lauds President Obama in "Obama Shows Spunk Pushing Brave Education Plan."

I'll let Ed Asner answer for me.  It's about 2:30 in if you don't want to watch the whole thing.

Let's Kick Some Bad Cliches To The Curb

Or we could throw them under the bus.

The Madville Times and Dakota Today have been doing yeoman work to illustrate the vapid nature of the family budget cliche.

Equally ubiquitous and perhaps more useless, "we've got to stop kicking the can down the road" must disappear from our public discourse.

Instead, let's ask these three questions posed by Megan McArdle.

Which of these things shall we cut?  How shall we build a coalition to pass those cuts, and stick to them in the face of what is bound to be fierce and ugly resistance from those who the programs benefit?  And when we have decided that we can cut no further, what taxes will we raise to pay for what's left?

The focus group tested "kicking the can down the road" has allowed only one side of the political spectrum to dominate the argument.  I won't dignify what's happening by calling it a debate. The cliche doesn't allow for the third question at all.  Most importantly, the cliche dangerously oversimplifies a complex situation.

McArdle even includes this helpful chart to show how money is spent.

 

It should be clear to all but the most extreme partisan on either side that the solutions to the current mess will be painful and that both sides must kill a few of their own "zombie sacred cows."  The results of the current debate that has focused on "kicking the can" will probably result in the middle class being kicked in the groin.

I'm just guessing, but I expect if Americans were allowed to have a civil discussion based on McArdle's chart and questions, the budget cuts would be far different than the ones Americans will see over the next few years