Slogans for You; Slogans for Us

Cliché, not plagiarism, is the problem with today's pallid political discourse. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Hitchens writes amusingly about the vapidity of the modern American political slogan. His comments apply equally well to Australia:

Pretty soon, we should be able to get electoral politics down to a basic newspeak that contains perhaps 10 keywords: Dream, Fear, Hope, New, People, We, Change, America, Future, Together. Fishing exclusively from this tiny and stagnant pool of stock expressions, it ought to be possible to drive all thinking people away from the arena and leave matters in the gnarled but capable hands of the professional wordsmiths and manipulators.

Of course, in Australia presently, there are not just slogans, but whole pages of cliché-ridden "vision speak" issuing forth from those who see the very concept of the 2020 summit as some sort of balm for the abraded soul of the nation:

Having survived the Sinister Prime Minister, we need to put down some of our shields, unclench our fists and let down our guard enough to dream again together. The Rudd Government's gesture is grand. Let's rise to the occasion of the Australia 2020 Summit.

There's more:

I see it as the start of a restoration of confidence in Australian culture, identity and ingenuity, and a faith that we can think about future challenges, and find what we need to face them.

And this:

Regardless of anything else the summit achieves, it has people thinking about where we might go from here, and what we might do instead of what we won't do.

Well, it's certainly making me think hard about a non-clichéd way of saying "what twaddle."