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Cool It On The Kool-Aid Metaphor

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 26, 2007

A damaging phrase has crept into our political vocabulary and pushed the level of our public discourse a little lower.

People accused of blindly following a doctrine or leader without thinking for themselves increasingly are being called Kool-Aid drinkers.

The image gives a colorful edge to an otherwise bland opinion, but it has another purpose. It's a slur that demonizes those to whom it is applied, which can be anyone, including members of Congress and even the president.

Republicans are using it to describe Democrats, and vice versa, but the parties never use it to describe their own most faithful supporters.

The image comes from the Jim Jones massacre in Guyana in 1978. Cult leader Jones ordered his followers to kill themselves by drinking a poisoned grape-flavored beverage. They did and 913 died.

The American political scene has its share of partisan loyalists, but to say they are suicidally brainwashed is absurd.

If you assume the reason folks don't agree with you is because they can't think for themselves, their opposition becomes less a democratic obstacle to be overcome than a malevolent force to be defeated.

If your opponent is a Kool-Aid drinker, you're wasting your time to be polite, empathize with his position or attempt to compromise.

But there's another reason the phrase is an abuse of poetic license. Jones didn't use Kool-Aid. He preferred another brand: Flavor-Aid.

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