A war of words.

Meanings, gestures, interpretations, subtext.  It’s all out there at the moment, and it is pretty grim.

What has happened to words?

In that now infamous Oval Office meeting with President Zelensky, Donald Trump uttered something that has been less reported on:

"I've stopped many wars. I've stopped wars that nobody's ever heard about”.

Patently absurd, patently untrue but the leader of the free world said it and not too many people blinked.

Recently under the header ‘Rhetoric and reality’ The Economist wrote about the transformation of parliamentary speeches into soundbites. It’s an evolution that sees those speeches become less about explaining and more about X. Not so much realpolitik as reality tv. 

While there’s huge value in pithy stories and effective storytellers (in my job, it’s what we do), we still need substance and meaning. And truth.

The Times talks about press conferences previously peppered with words like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘shared values’ now supplanted with ‘beautiful’, ‘wonderful’, ‘special’ and ‘when I was a kid’.

And while in the UK the Tories now attack the government for spin (how much more are we actually spending? Is it £13 billion? Or is it six?) they too are all part of the politicians’ spin cycle which simply flummoxes, then frustrates and then angers the woman on the Clapham omnibus who voted for them.

More than any time in our recent history we need words to deliver for us honestly and to help us make sense of what is going on: whether that’s in politics, business or our personal lives.

Over Christmas in a Dundonian gallery I came across a great illustration by the British artist David Shrigley OBE. It can be purchased online where it is described as a ‘funny postcard’.  But I think it’s deadly serious.

And I would add to its legend: ‘Stop Saying It’.  You know who you are.

Credit: David Shrigley.