Taxonomists 'R Us: Phylogeny of Political Metaphor

[jjhunter]

Where might we find elements of poetry in politics? For starters, no political speech seems complete without at least one metaphor, however well (or not so well) conceived.

Like some strange survival of the wittiest, some metaphors are so apt — or at least brain-snaggingly adaptive — that they seed entire families of related metaphors. 20th century US politics proffers, for example, a New Deal, a Square Deal, and a Fair Deal, followed by a War On Poverty, twin Wars on Cancer and Drugs respectively, and a War On Terror. When people call national efforts to recriminalize abortion in the USA part of a War On Women, they're drawing on decades of war-as-shorthand-for-national-mobilization metaphors, and also drawing attention to the violence 'War' never entirely escapes, metaphorical or otherwise.

What families of political metaphors or phrasings have you noticed? Do you have any thoughts about the ones mentioned so far, or metaphors you wish would catch on instead?

Comments

[kaberett]

I think this post mostly makes me regret that it's been quite so long since I last read any Cicero.

In terms of families-of-words, there is of course the -gate suffix, which now means "scandal"; there is the odd poetry, in UK politics, of remembering Portillo; and, of course, there is never again; and then there is the war poetry, all of the war poetry, and the ways in which at the going down of the sun and in the morning/we shall remember them.