As someone who tries to practice the culture of peace, I’m going to misbehave a little this week and vent my frustration over the incapacity of well-intentioned progressive politicians to connect with everyday people in a visceral way. Political professionals on the Left (Bernie Sanders is an exception) tend to use a heady language that is informally known as Policy Speak, whereas the most successful operators on the Right (Newt Gingrich is an exception) tend to go for the gut. 

Many thoughtful people have analyzed this problem at length, some of them tearing their hair out to explain what’s going on. Dear old Jesse Jackson used to put his appeal for plain speaking more simply: “Just put it on the ground where the goats can eat it.” 

To take one current example of failed Policy Speak: Rep. Chris Van Hollen talking last week about the government shutdown. Or really (not to pick on Van Hollen), anyone among the Congressional Democrats trying to explain why they finally decided to put up a fight. 

Why couldn’t they just say (of the Trumpified Republicans): THEY WANT YOU TO DIE! And then, if they wish, they could offer two or three specifics on what a cutoff of Obamacare subsidies — and other atrocities in the Big Beautiful Bill — meant for everyday people. 

Nothing illustrates the fatal class divide in this country as much as the linguistic divide. Nobody who actually works for a living wants to hear high-falutin’ chatter about “tropes” and “ideation” and “algorithmic authoritarianism.” (And yes, I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to tossing around fancy language: no doubt it’s my lower-class insecurity showing.)

Allow me here to recommend the Wikipedia entry on the language used by Jesus of Nazareth. He almost always spoke the ancient and widely used language of the Eastern Mediterranean world: Aramaic. Because Jesus was raised in Galilee — a trading outpost where Greek was often spoken — he was undoubtedly conversant with Hellenistic Greek. And because he was deeply immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures, he could also speak canonical Hebrew if he chose. But he spoke Aramaic, the language of the common people and the language that even the scholarly Josephus called “our language.” Fortunately for us, New Testament translators allowed several of the Aramaic words used by Jesus to remain in the English text: words like abba (father), mammon(wealth), and raca (fool, empty-headed one). 

More to the point, however, Jesus always spoke directly, bluntly, and to the point. Here are just a few examples from Luke 9, where there’s a lot going on: 

• The disciples argue among themselves about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus takes a child to his side and says, “Whoever welcomes this child welcomes me…the least among you is the greatest.”
• A disciple brags to Jesus, “We saw someone casting out demons in your name, but we stopped him because he isn’t one of us.” Jesus responds, “Don’t stop him. Whoever is not against you is for you.”
• Jesus then asks these comrades to follow him to Jerusalem. One says, “First let me go and bury my father.” Jesus replies, “Let the dead bury their dead; you go and proclaim the Reign of God.” When another feckless disciple says, “I will follow, but first let me say goodbye to my family,” Jesus grows even sharper: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Reign of God.”

It’s hard to beat Jesus for plain speaking. We’ll never catch up. But we should try, if we really intend to build a movement for Beloved Community in the midst of this chaos.

~ Peter