re: #240 Blind Frog Belly White

On KQED this morning, David Frum was on Forum. One caller said the problem was that people talking about policy are using too many big words, and that when you use words like ‘Kleptocracy’, you leave half the audience not knowing what you’re saying.

I thought, “Great. We’ve so dumbed down the populace that we can’t even talk about the fucking fascist they elected using any words they didn’t learn by 4th grade.”

“Kleptocracy” is a word that is technical in nature (in relation to politics). Not everyone knows technical words. I would not expect the majority of voters to understand words describing forms of government with which they are unfamiliar.

How many people here, who play inside baseball with politics, were thrown by “kakistocracy” when it was first thrown about here (and kakistocracy and kleptocracy are even hit by my spell checker as “not words”).

Politicians or pundits speaking to “plain folk” need to use “plain language.” Government by thieves will work much better than kleptocracy.

I agree with the caller.