This is what “this is what it looks like” looks like

From your seventh favourite procrastinator’s desk, on a weird attack on the clarity and coherence in western political dialogues.

I’m often irked, especially in political and public speaking contexts over there across the Atlantic, by the phrase “this is what (abstract good quality) looks like”. And people would cheer. And the speech would continue.

In more systematic language, what I refer to is when the announcer / speaker / leader takes a broad moral or aspirational concept (“justice,” “courage,” “democracy”) and attaches it to a single event, person, or image — without explaining why or how it exemplifies the concept. The audience is expected to fill in the reasoning emotionally rather than intellectually.

To me, such a vague remark means the speaker does not respect nor wish to exercise the responsibility to define a coherent message and leaves it to the individual to draw their (vibes-based) conclusion that doesn’t help society get anything done.

I of course concede that it’s nowhere near easy as a change in vocabulary, nor is it always a bad thing to leave things in the abstract. On the one hand, it has been historically hard to derive coherence through people and inspire them to be nice and innovative. Throughout history, anything from fear to violence to illusory grandeur to backhanded of a silenced minority has been tried, sometimes with other intentions in the spotlight, with varying results. On the other, there are definitely issues a broad awareness is better than systematic knowledge in the audiences. Without implying exclusivity, “this is what domestic abuse looks like; this is what a gross disrespect of the Geneva convention looks like” etc. I regard as better than not covering them.

In the above cases, “this is what such and such looks like” functions as an act of naming: it bridges the gap between the abstract moral category and its lived appearance. That’s a pedagogical and moral service, not a cop-out.

The real danger arises when that awareness-level language gets reused in contexts that should demand operational clarity, such as policy debates, institutional accountability, or intellectual inquiry. When “this is what leadership looks like” substitutes for “here are the structural traits that make leadership effective,” the rhetoric collapses into branding, and further degenerates vote-based politics into a game of influencers and factory-packaged stars.