Drinking the Kool Aid

Watching the Republican National Convention, listening to the chants of “drill baby drill” and witnessing the adulation of Governor Sarah Palin over the past week, the phrase that kept popping into my head was “they’re drinking the Kool Aid.”

No, this isn’t going to be a political post. In keeping with our topic of culture, I’m raising a question about language. Have you ever used the phrase, “drinking the Kool Aid” to describe someone blindly following a leader? Do you think about its origins? I’m curious about how words and phrases are sustained over time and across generations.

Perhaps most readers of this blog fall within an age band that vividly remembers the day thirty years ago when Jim Jones and People’s Temple were all over the news. I was a student in San Francisco that dark autumn. Less than two weeks later, Dan White gunned down Harvey Milk and George Moscone in City Hall and it only got darker. After that event, the term “Twinkie Defense” entered the legal and sociological lexicon. What other phrases do we keep using long after we’ve forgotten their origins?

While walking the dog tonight, I heard a erudite speaker on OPB talking about “Movements and Machiavellians.” It turned out to be that great social-activist (and Obama supporter) Tom Hayden. Perhaps that’s what set me off down memory lane.

I guess this is turning out to be a political post after all. I might as well conclude by posting a short clip of a heckuva great political speech that should be mandatory viewing. I'm not ashamed to admit that I well up every time I hear it. Stick with it to the one-minute mark for the payoff.




As background: Mario Savio was a leader of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California at Berkeley (my alma mater). The FSM was one of the first, serious student movements in this country. It was born out of the fight for civil rights and was a progenitor of the anti-war movement. On the downside, it also was the nursemaid of Ronald Reagan’s political rise after he campaigned on a promise to “clean up that mess in Berkeley.” The President Kerr to whom Savio refers is Clark Kerr, then the President of UC Berkeley. The University’s Board of Regents fired him after Reagan became governor in 1966 and charged Kerr with being too soft on the protestors. The FBI built huge files on both Savio and Kerr. Wonder why I worry about this election?

Okay. Enough history. Time for you young-uns to tuck into bed while Gramps finishes this drink.