Well, we have a government again. But since the debates over money and politics are due to rev up before their jets have even cooled, let’s take a moment to look at one very messy metaphor.
I’m referring, of course, to the so-called raising of the debt ceiling.
Since George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, plenty of ink has been spilled over political speech. Most of the ink, today, is devoted to ways of manipulating the public into thinking black is white and day is night. Occasionally, though, you run across a phrase so genuinely misguided that finding new language is not only a shrewd move but the only fair and sane step to take. When it comes to debt ceiling, you want to ask, as George Lakoff did last year of fiscal cliff, “Why do some metaphors have far more staying power than others, even when they give a misleading picture of a crucial national issue?”
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