I taught college freshman composition for a long time.

I can tell you that most of those kids, brought up in an electronic stew of advertising and shallow, glib news reporting, don’t think that words mean anything. They really don’t. I think that that is a major part (if the not the key itself) to Obama’s success.

Young people (and many adults) think that words are things you spray at other people to create a vague, impressionistic field of meaning or a sort of emotive tapestry. They also think that the only point of rhetoric or debate is persuasion–even if nothing said is factually or logically valid.

Trying to reverse the attitudes in a term is damn nigh impossible, because, like I said, these kids have been raised in this kind of environment. Obama could not survive in any other kind of environment.