The American People are with me AND against you

Sometime in the last year, the political phrase "the American people" starting grating on me. I'm not sure what the process is that mechanically isolates a particular phrase from all the others you hear over and over ("prices may vary, Member FDIC, results not typical, etc."). However it works, that phrase started to jump out of every piece I heard on NPR. A thousand variations on a sentence that contains "I think the American people are looking for...." or "I think the candidate is too extreme for the American people" or "The American people certainly aren't going to stand by while this happens."

I have no idea how long people have been saying this phrase. I don't know if George Washington stood on inauguration day and said "The American people want to see me on the $1 bill!" I also don't know if its use is primarily attributed to one end of the political spectrum versus any other. What I do know is that my writer's sense tells me that that phrase has grown stale and lost whatever meaning it once had.

When I tried to decide what that meaning was, I drew a blank. I'm going to skip right over the strange assertion that the American people are as like to each other as sardines. If there's anything that the past few years have taught us, it's that the American people unite behind very few things.

In most matters, almost no one thinks the same thing as anyone else. There is no single checklist that says "yes, you're a Republican". There are pro-life Republicans, pro-choice, gay, anti-homosexual, big government, small government, big army, small army, and a hundred thousand other combinations.

The choice of political party isn't supposed to teach you how to think about issues. Have you ever considered that? The whole reason political parties exist is to act as a collection house of people with the same ideas. Belonging to a party doesn't control your politics: your politics should bring the party to you.

The public perception of that was lost somewhere, here in our republic. If you're pro-choice, you're a Democrat. Sorry, but please fill out the paperwork. If you're religious, you're a Republican. Time to change your bumper stickers.

We've had these perceptions drilled into us through repetition, because it's easier to fit into a news cast. We save the qualifiers for special cases. Rudy Guilianni was referred to as a "pro-choice Republican", which many people react to as some sort of "white dog that's completely brown". How can a completely white dog be brown? This frightens and angers me!

So I laugh when people use "the American people". Because the American people always support you and your ideas. The American People are against the war, but the American people crave security from terrorists. The American people are disgusted by torture, but the American people certainly don't want bombs going off in L.A. The American people are paying too much for health insurance, but the American people know that universal health care would make for rising costs.

Anyone from outside listening to just the quotes would be astonished at the American people's ability to haver and vacillate through diametric extremes. Why are the Americans all of two minds? Actually, they're of 303,631,387 minds (and counting). Politicians certainly know this, yet continue to refer to Americans as a monolithic supportive bloc. Why?

In my opinion, a false majority has been created. Let's call it the "imaginority", which surprisingly no one else seems to have thought of. In light of several divisive elections over the past few years (with the inverted electoral college election of 2000 being a good exemplar), we've lost the go-ahead mandate that a decisive victory gives us. For every one person who supports abortion, you can find another who opposes it.

Please note the difference in a statement made about the imaginority in contrast to one simply made to refer to a group of Americans. John McCain said today, "As president, I promise the American people … the first earmarked, pork-barrel bill that comes across my desk, I’ll veto it.” Yahoo News Here, he's telling us (all Americans) what he intends to do as president. If he had said, "the American people oppose discretionary congressional spending", that would have been an assertion about the imaginority.

The key to making an "American people" statement (and thus securing the temporary support of the imaginority) is to phrase it in the positive. Do you want your military sons and daughters to come home for good and be safe? Then the American people are opposed to the war in Iraq. Do you want your country to be free from the grips of domestic terrorist actions? If so, then the American people support the War on Terror.

Obviously, regular people aren't going to say, "Yes, I hope the troops stay over in that quagmire forever," or "I do believe in killing babies, born and unborn, indiscriminately. And we should use the stem cells to fuel our cars." When a statement is made about the imaginority, we can usually all nod our heads in agreement.

"The American people don't want taxes raised to pay for government overspending." Nod.
"The American people don't want social security to collapse and endanger our elderly." Nod.
"The American people want to make sure that we have enough jobs to keep our economy going." Nod.
"The American people don't want to support big companies that cause environmental pollution." Nod.

Interestingly, this "imaginority" seems to be the opposite of the "endangered majority" tactic which also gets used often. Recent cases have involved the threat of Mexican immigrants coming here and breeding and taking over the country, or the continually "outnumbered" non-denominational Christian group.

Interestingly (and astonishingly), it is apparently possible to use the "endangered majority" AND the "imaginority" in the same sentence:

"I'd like to point out that neo-Darwinist "scientists" who evolved from monkey and ape ancestors in Africa aren't properly qualified to judge the American people, especially Jewish, Christian and Islamic people who are descended from Abraham's ancestor, Noah."

--John Crawford, as quoted from Christianforums.com

I also found an interesting blog that automatically collects the uses of "American people" from the daily news stories. HERE