Metaphors we die by....

I sent a shorter version of my "Speaking of offensive names, drop 'The Civil War'" post to The Oregonian as a letter to the editor after the paper editorialized in favor of the recent State Board of Education decision to force high schools do drop stereotyping names for sports teams.

Much to my surprise the editorial page editors printed my 150-word letter on Thursday. And to my equal surprise only one friend and my mother-in-law (who is, I should be quick to note, is also a friend) mentioned seeing it.

I think this speaks to the demise of the print medium. Or to my demise in reaching out to friends.

I actually addressed my comments to The Oregonian editors. I noted the media's role in perpetuating the use of "Civil War" to describe a mere collegiate rivalry. Sure, I wanted the paper's readers to mull over my modest proposal, but I really, REALLY, did want The Oregonian editors to consider dropping the term, just as they took the lead 20 years ago in dropping the use of Native-American names that describe sports teams.

Perhaps the most notable example is the "Washington Red Skins." Sports fans here have managed somehow with having Washington's NFL team referred to simply as "Washington" on the Oregonian's sports page.

So, in the few years left in which The Oregonian still clings to relevance as a means of communication, it could once again lead us to stop equating athletic rivalries with war.

While its editors are at it, they might look at the use of war terminology to describe political campaigns (war rooms, attack ads, war chests etc.) and government programs (War on Drugs, War on Poverty etc.)

Sadly metaphors have a way of unrealistically defining our expectations. Wars, government programs and political campaigns are won or lost...or so we are led to believe. There is no in-between. But were the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars won or lost? What of Afghanistan two years from now? And do wars ever really end for those who fight in them or are victims of them? Consider the rate of suicides among returning Iraq veterans....just for starters. Wars kill long after they "end" or are "won" or "lost."

And because of the flood of war imagery in our discourse is it wonder that compromise becomes increasingly difficult in our impressionable, emotional society?

The Oregonian, and the media in general, need to choose metaphors far more carefully. Who knows, it might even help them survive....

P.S. in today's Oregonian (5/28) is a letter supporting my letter. It is from William C. Woodcock of McMinnville.

Obama and Lincoln: Myth and Reality

President Obama’s State of the Union address created its own context and successfully addressed it.

Unfortunately, the context had nothing to do with reality.

Obama portrayed the task before Congress and the government as being an effort to move the nation forward, primarily economically but also strategically.

What American, Democrat, Republican or independent could disagree with that?

The problem is that Congress's real context is political, and it is all about power, not progress.

Sweet reason and cooperation has little to do with keeping, or seizing, power.

Republicans have to disagree to make themselves an alternative. Democrats have to defend themselves and push forward to be distinctive.

In a polarized political world, both can’t win, but both can lose, taking the rest of us down with them.

The reality is that both parties must raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the next year so that they can successfully hold onto or grab more power in 2012.

How do you raise that kind of money. You put forward a program that is “worth it.”

Worth it to whom?

Worth it to those who have the money. That's money to throw at a media-driven political system of attack ads and irrelevancy. Buy the propaganda system and you gain the power.

The political appeal now is not to the people, but to vested interests, primarily multi-national corporation executives and the financial market and hedge fund managers.

Obama’s speech was largely nationalistic myth-making. It shared the theme found in Lincoln’s First Inaugural address in which he sought to heal the ominous and growing divisions between North and South.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The words didn’t work for Lincoln, and they aren’t going to work for Obama. We have no “better angels of our nature.” Until “our nature” is fundamentally changed, it will be devoid of angels and inhabited by very human demons — greed and the lust for power.

If there is good news, it’s that President Obama is fully capable of identifying and addressing the problems of reality. The bad news is that if he does, he will be instantly unelectable.

HERE is another commentary that takes a similar, but not identical, tack.

"Information wars" in Washington DC

Our political culture has a “combat mentality.” It doesn’t exactly fit with our naive civics-class indoctrination from the 8th grade.

How bad are things in the world of politics?

Sometimes the “war” seeps out around the edges, as it did on Tuesday in a seemingly innocuous article about young Washington, D.C. aides hired to digest the news and present it to their bosses.

While news readers in technocratic departments seem to approach their jobs relatively dispassionately, Bobby Maldonado, 26, brings a different mentality to his job working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He's up at 4 a.m. to get a jump on events so that he can strategically analyze, arrange and present them to his big-business bosses at the Chamber.

You get a flavor for his, and the Chamber’s, perspective when you read how young Maldonado describes his job.

“The information wars are won before work....Our executives walk into meetings and they’re doing battles, whether it’s on health care or cap and trade, and information is power, and my job is to make sure they’re armed with the most powerful information.”

“Wars,” “battles,” “armed.”

Reading the story, you don’t get the feeling that Maldonado is some Glock-toting kook. But he's just another soldier — and aide to battlefield generals. His words fit the political culture of victors and vanquished. These folks are out for blood.

And the media amplify it. Of all the headlines that the Times could have put on a tepid story, the one they chose came from Maldonado’s quote. “Where News is Power, A Fight to be Well-armed.”