"Love trumps hate!"
Yeah! That's great!...
Wait, do I know what you mean? I mean, does love actually trump hate? Love of what? Country? You? Your policies?
What are people hating? The other guy? Ice cream Sundays? Bigotry?
Do we want love to win in this situation? I'm confused.
"Make America great again!"
Woohoo! Preach it!...
Oh dear... not again. Is it not great? What happened to the greatness? How are you going to do it? What exactly is greatness? Great for who?
There is nothing wrong with slogans. They are shiny and attractive and give a theme to campaigns. But they don't actually say much. It might seem like they do, but in their vagueness it allows the meaning to come from the reader's ideals. So it fits each person's perspective and world view perfectly. The audience fits what they want to hear over the framework and then think "omg they totally GET it".
The same can be said for many catchy phrases and one liners. They sound amazing, profound, and intelligent, but often they are simply shiny verbiage. In the end, we need to be aware when we have flowery bombs of vagueness dropped on us so we can dig deeper and not lose sight of the truly important things we should be paying attention to.
No comments:
Post a Comment