Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
No offence meant. Actually. You know. Like, um, sort of yeah, well, er, um, the thing is, really, honestly, you see, it was like this, like that. Just like that.
Language. It really is magical. Thank goodness for our brains, which work like brilliant kitchen food processers, into which you can throw anything and everything, and somehow we churn it all up and turn it into strings of words that make sense, with all the gravel and pith consigned to the waste heap.
The best writers craft beautiful words that flow out of the mouths of their characters, or are spoken on the screen or the stage, and we praise them for producing language that is beautiful and appears to be natural. But if writers wrote words as used by everyone in real life it would be a tangled mass of bad grammar, unfinished sentences, and long pauses. Real conversation isn’t beautiful.
The beauty of a well-formed sentence
In real life, we get used to patterns that can seem bizarre, because we often know the other person and can fill in the gaps, so it doesn’t seem to make any sense when written down, but works perfectly in real time. Like this.
‘It’s a nice day’.
‘I don’t go out much.’
‘Where’s the lead?’
‘Back of the door.’
‘Still?’
Depending on the circumstances, this could be telling various stories. Only the participants would know exactly what they’re talking about. And I love people and language for being able to do that.
There’s another part of me that deplores language that doesn’t strive to describe with the best precision and clarity the thought that gave birth to it. I love grammar and words and the beauty of a well-formed sentence. That’s why I write. Not because I achieve that, but because I would love to be able to.
Call me a sad romantic
I love thought, and I love ideas, and language makes up the tools and materials I use to describe these ideas so that I can share them with anyone who reads them. Words are the bricks and punctuation is the mortar, and when they are well-presented they can feel like a beautiful building, strong and well-proportioned, and a delight to the senses. Call me a sad romantic, but I think words are the greatest invention man has yet come up with.
What I particularly dislike though, is what I call conversational gangsters. They stalk the media, particularly before elections, where politicians who have been on a course or two in ‘Effective Communication’ demonstrate that you bring your own attitudes and agenda to such things, and all they’ve learned is how to avoid any of their answers actually addressing the question raised. They just turn round everything they say to another repetition of the party line.
I would rather swallow my own keyboard
In the end they’re just one-trick ponies, and people are bored with it. I certainly am, and I’m not going to reproduce any of it here, because I would rather swallow my own keyboard than give it any attention. No wonder the voters have been avoiding politics. Thank goodness these tactics are finally reaping their own reward, and the two main parties are facing the loss of a large number of their traditionally loyal voters to other parties who seem more real.
Whether any of these smaller parties are going to become important or not, or will even outlast election night, isn’t the point I’m making here. They seem to the jaded ears of the people to be talking some sort of sense, even if they aren’t, because it’s so much more believable than the normal run of spin doctor blether messaging that we hear day in and day out. It’s different.
A steaming pile of their own prejudices
This is why these upstart parties don’t seem to lose any support even when some of their odder candidates say the most glorious tripe, or trip up on a steaming pile of their own prejudices. They’re seen as real people, who say real things, and so must be more believable than the snake oil salesmen we have now. And they have more women, who are always more believable, for obvious reasons.
This is where Dodd’s Law of Reward Reaping comes into its own. It goes like this.
Be very careful what your intentions are when you set out on a course of action. The less true and honourable they are, the more likely they are, regardless of apparent initial success, to turn round and bite you very painfully on the behind.
Tony Blair in the 1990s did a very good job of projecting himself as an attractive leader and man of the people, and he did get himself elected. Twice. But look at him now.
We don’t know what our policies will be until we get into office
I remember every interviewer asking him what his policies were, and nobody ever got any answers from him. It was all – ‘We don’t know what our policies will be until we get into office’. The trouble was that they never did work out what their policies were. I suspect his only real ambition was to get elected twice. I know not all of you might agree with this. Other opinions may vary, of course.
The great advantage of the current situation is that nobody knows who’s going to be in the next government, and therefore nobody knows what the policies will be. That’s the beauty of coalition politics. They have to put forward their policies and discuss them with the other parties and build compromises. As a result, everybody knows more or less what the new grouping is going to stand for, and they can tell what the focus of each government department will be by looking at who gets these jobs.
It feels much more like democracy in action
We currently have two swathes of political animal groupings. The two largest parties can’t quite believe that they’ve lost their supremacy, so they’re still talking to the voters like they own them and drilling their spokespersons to toe the party line, and all the other parties are circling them like a gang of hyenas, suspecting the old lions are losing the advantage. These parties are saying what they believe, and they’re attracting voters who feel there’s something there they would like to vote for.
In other words, it feels much more like democracy in action, and it’s scary. And rather exciting. At least that’s how I feel about the coming election.
Who am I going to vote for? I couldn’t possibly comment!
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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