Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) urged her Democratic colleagues to stop attacking the "oligarchy," arguing that the word did not resonate with most Americans.
I read the article and I completely disagree with her. ‘Oligarch’ means something different than ‘king’, and many Americans don’t have the same negative reaction to the word ‘king’, which is often romanticised in media, whereas ‘oligarch’ calls up images of nefarious machinations in authoritarian regimes – exactly what’s actually going on.
Also, being whiny that the bullies are calling us ‘woke’ is reactionary and misses the whole point. This is where we should be doubling down, not diluting our language.
e: also also, having spent decades in UxD and usability (which entailed a lot of surveying and analysis), I’d be hesitant to rely on surveys that show a population’s preference for one word over another, because word feels are affected by far more than knowledge of their definitions, and the reasons aren’t easily captured in a survey. The reasons are what matter, not necessarily the word, and I’m sure she didn’t explore this enough to understand the sociology here.
Our country was also founded on saying fuck off to a king. It’s part of the foundational mythology of the country. To a lot of people the word oligarchy means precisely nothing.
Rule by powerful elites isn’t unamarican. It’s actually kinda the opposite, given the caveats on our democratic system and it’s history.
A king however is actually one of the few unambiguously unamerican things out there.
This is not to disagree with your point, but more to say that it’s not without room for debate.
As for the “weak and woke” bit, I’m gonna disagree. That one read to me as a need to address public perception, not criticism from the right. Backing down from a bully is different from trying to change public perception. I didn’t see it as a statement of needing to be less woke, but of needing to be perceived as being effective and concerned about things other than the most pejorative senses of the term woke.
That political parties need to be viewed in a positive light by the public to be effective is inescapable.
Most of your peers don’t have that reaction. They should~ but they don’t. Ask them to name a king not from a Disney movie and report back. *edit: ask them to name the king independence was fought over. I’ll bet many can’t, and I’ll bet none can give you the actual reasons (other than vague concepts like ‘freedon’ or ‘taxation’).
I’m with you. Let’s stop fighting each other and figure this out.
I can definitively tell you that anyone I know who I could ask that question of would be able to say Richard, George or Luis with a random number afterwards, at least knows king George due to musical theater, and would be able to give a more detailed breakdown of the factors behind the revolution than the vaguely conceptual, although I’m not sure what level of granularity you need for it to be the “real” reasons. (You’d get taxation without representation, quartering troops, Boston massacre, and probably some that i can’t recall and a “the rich white ruling class resented being governed and seized an opportunity for justifiable rebellion and the cause was just pretext”)
My brother in law would be the most uncertain. He almost certainly doesn’t know what an oligarch is, but he has enough 'murika to him to be resentful of royalty. From the kids most royalty he could name would be animated I think. Probably hand wave the essentials of the revolution without getting names right, and I have a sneaking suspicion he’d call the Boston tea party a cause.
There’s a lot of variety in what you find in people.
I read the article and I completely disagree with her. ‘Oligarch’ means something different than ‘king’, and many Americans don’t have the same negative reaction to the word ‘king’, which is often romanticised in media, whereas ‘oligarch’ calls up images of nefarious machinations in authoritarian regimes – exactly what’s actually going on.
Also, being whiny that the bullies are calling us ‘woke’ is reactionary and misses the whole point. This is where we should be doubling down, not diluting our language.
e: also also, having spent decades in UxD and usability (which entailed a lot of surveying and analysis), I’d be hesitant to rely on surveys that show a population’s preference for one word over another, because word feels are affected by far more than knowledge of their definitions, and the reasons aren’t easily captured in a survey. The reasons are what matter, not necessarily the word, and I’m sure she didn’t explore this enough to understand the sociology here.
Yes they mean something different. If you go ask 5 random people what an oligarch is, at least one is likely not to know what it means.
The “woke” reputation stuff is also a little weird, but there again, the people using it as an insult probably don’t have a good working definition.
It’s easy to say “words have meaning” but lots of people, even left leaning ones, don’t always know what those meanings are.
I’m not saying ‘words have meaning.’
I’m saying we create meaning and we should not just give in to the fascists’ definitions.
They do not define us.
Our country was also founded on saying fuck off to a king. It’s part of the foundational mythology of the country. To a lot of people the word oligarchy means precisely nothing.
Rule by powerful elites isn’t unamarican. It’s actually kinda the opposite, given the caveats on our democratic system and it’s history.
A king however is actually one of the few unambiguously unamerican things out there.
This is not to disagree with your point, but more to say that it’s not without room for debate.
As for the “weak and woke” bit, I’m gonna disagree. That one read to me as a need to address public perception, not criticism from the right. Backing down from a bully is different from trying to change public perception. I didn’t see it as a statement of needing to be less woke, but of needing to be perceived as being effective and concerned about things other than the most pejorative senses of the term woke.
That political parties need to be viewed in a positive light by the public to be effective is inescapable.
Most of your peers don’t have that reaction. They should~ but they don’t. Ask them to name a king not from a Disney movie and report back. *edit: ask them to name the king independence was fought over. I’ll bet many can’t, and I’ll bet none can give you the actual reasons (other than vague concepts like ‘freedon’ or ‘taxation’).
I’m with you. Let’s stop fighting each other and figure this out.
I can definitively tell you that anyone I know who I could ask that question of would be able to say Richard, George or Luis with a random number afterwards, at least knows king George due to musical theater, and would be able to give a more detailed breakdown of the factors behind the revolution than the vaguely conceptual, although I’m not sure what level of granularity you need for it to be the “real” reasons. (You’d get taxation without representation, quartering troops, Boston massacre, and probably some that i can’t recall and a “the rich white ruling class resented being governed and seized an opportunity for justifiable rebellion and the cause was just pretext”)
My brother in law would be the most uncertain. He almost certainly doesn’t know what an oligarch is, but he has enough 'murika to him to be resentful of royalty. From the kids most royalty he could name would be animated I think. Probably hand wave the essentials of the revolution without getting names right, and I have a sneaking suspicion he’d call the Boston tea party a cause.
There’s a lot of variety in what you find in people.