First "conjure": to call up a spirit or devil. "Class warfare" calls up communism. That devil, Congressional Republicans want us to remember, would have had the citizens of every nation, divided into classes, at each other's throats. That's what you, President Obama, would have Americans do when you agitate for higher taxes on the rich.
What you need, Mr. President, is a counter-expression, conjuring up a good spirit, one you'll be acting in the name of. But not acting gently. We've had enough of that. Acting forcefully, like a Crusader. Get the word "war" into your expression.
I know. A lot of people hate war, or at least blood. So you've got to avoid conjuring that. Nothing that can be pictured as a target, nothing that will bleed. But people don't mind wars against abstractions (poverty, terror), and may in fact love them. So, let's find an abstraction that fits what you're doing and sock the Republicans with it.
Not so easy, is it. The best I can come up with is "War on Inequity." I know that "inequity" is a little on the egghead side, which I know you want to get off of, but it is abstract and it does identify your target. It certainly won't bleed. The only hazard I can see is in the typing. If you come out with "War on Iniquity" you're on the religious right's ground and the gotcha humorists will make you bleed.
Here's Alan Booth speaking to the President:
ReplyDeleteYou might also remind the "Grand Old Party," Mr. President, that the last time they put their collective backs into flogging the "Class Warfare" as their nostrum was in 1993, when Bill Clinton passed his tax increase. In that case the result was that -- you may be too young to remember -- the number of jobs thus created went WAY UP.