Cliché users apparently know no shame. What they lack in originality is more than compensated by positive self-regard for their punchlines. Eminently anticipatable? No problem. All your like-minded friends will call you clever anyway:
Perhaps France could find room for [name withheld]
It must be a terrible burden to be so intellectually and morally superior to the rest of us. I wonder whether there's anything about this country that In My View author [name withheld] finds good or even acceptable.
Perhaps it would be better for us and happier for [name withheld] if he'd look for another country that comes closer to reaching his levels of moral and intellectual superiority. France comes to mind.
ash replies:
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe liberals value originality while conservatives dismiss it. All I know is that when the last of us with a personal memory of the shorthand for flawed sentiment “America: love it or leave it” are gone, that gem of non-wisdom will have survived the numbskulls who promulgated it. But subsequent generations can take heart if they don’t hear it as often: they’ll still have its paraphrase: “Perhaps you might consider moving to France.”
One worthless rallying cry has replaced the odious other.
As the Vietnamese version of the commandment “Blindly adhere to Authoritarianism or get the heck out of your own country” enters the annals of historical inaptitude, its Iraqi reincarnation is destined to equal if not surpass it. I guess you could say that bad wars make bad mottos.