In my day job, I teach political communications. I sometimes get asked to comment on political speeches, having written a few hundred of them myself. In that work, I often tell students that — to whatever extent they’re able — they need to use language that sounds like the way people talk, that’s accessible and familiar, and that puts a human face on whatever measure is being proposed or whatever situation is being responded to.
(And yeah, as part of that work I do tell them it’s okay to end sentences with prepositions.)
Rhetorically, one of the easiest ways to make a new concept seem or feel familiar is to use an analogy or a metaphor: “With this investment, we’re making sure families have a solid foundation on which to build their futures …” (here, you’re evoking the idea of a well-built home, one with a reliable and sturdy underpinning … who doesn’t want that?).
There are, of course, limits to how far you can take these kind of analogies. Can you compare national debt to credit card borrowing? Not really. Is robust defence spending comparable to an insurance policy that fully protects against incursion and aggression? Probably not, with a side of I Guess We’ll See.
This is the kind of stuff I had in mind as I watched the Canadian prime minister’s response to (do I even need to say this part?) absolutely unwarranted 25% tariffs on Canadian products. I listened for the analogies, the anecdotes, the things that will comfort the afflicted and afear the comfortable, to borrow butcher a phrase. I grumbled about the fact that $155 billion is too abstract to be awe inspiring, and about how something like Nova Scotia’s plan to double road tolls for American commercial vehicles — or even the booing of the American national anthem at an Ottawa Senators hockey game — felt more “real.”
What left me feeling a bit uneasy about the PM’s comments — and those of premiers and many many others — was bigger than individual words, though. What had me shifting uncomfortably in my seat was the idea that we are still referring to Americans as “our closest friends and neighbours” (sidebar: Global, if ever there was a time to insist on an extra vowel, surely now is that time).
Simply put, closest friends don’t act like this. Or they do, and they are no longer closest friends. Some neighbours act like this, and we quietly browse real estate listings in response.
And listen, I get it. I am comms, not policy. Even in comms, I know that sometimes you have to make nice … you have to think, “Okay, that’s Crazy Uncle Dave, we’re still gonna have a nice meal, let’s just change the subject” … you have to look beyond the temporary affront and remember the years of genuine, heartfelt amity.
Sometimes you have to do that. I don’t know if this is one of those times.
I do know this much: if my kid was being menaced on the playground, shaken down for lunch money (or worse), the very last piece of advice I’d offer is to try to appeal to the aggressor by invoking past pleasantries. “Remember that time we went camping” and “But I let you ride my bike last summer” and “We got a better grade because we studied together on that test” can all be true, and even heartfelt, but I don’t think bullies care all that much for heartfelt, not really.
Because here’s the thing: They want what they want, and you can give it over … or they’ll just take it.
Earlier, I mentioned the ways in which analogies sometimes fail, because I’m not sure making the comparison to a schoolyard dispute holds up, either.
But I mean it when I say that the first thing I’d tell my own child would be this: “They are not your friend. They are not your friend. If they treat you like this, they are not your friend.”
I understand why the prime minister and the premiers and the mayors and the business leaders and the journalists and the pundits might still want to use this language.
But I also know, as a citizen, that it no longer feels true.
“But we’re best friends!”
“Are, we, though?”
Jeni Armstrong 