On the BBC radio news this morning was reported the outcome of negotiations between the President of the US and the Republican congress about tax cuts. The president was “forced into a climb-down” to allow Bush-era tax cuts for the rich to continue.

What an interesting use of language… I wonder if it occurred to the news editor that the events could have been equally reported as: “the President negotiated a compromise, as an adult, wanting to see an extension of unemployment benefit to continue…”

Of course, that won’t fit in the media’s obsessive need to see politics and society as a zero-sum game, where there are only “winners” and “losers”, there is no such thing as adapting to circumstances, setting priorities or making the best the enemy of the good, but only “u-turns”, “defeats”, “dramas”, “twists”, and “humiliations”.

We live in a world which is entirely “soap-operaised”, and both our political discourse, and our ability to debate, evaluate and act, has been (almost) fatally compromised. And we can’t imagine it any other way, for after all, lege dicendi, lex credendi — the law of what we can say determines what we are able to believe.