The following podcast contains explicit language.

It's Tuesday June 14th, 2016 from Slate It's the GIST I'm IKASKA.

I'm not in a studio. I'm in a park. I'm in a park. I'm observing frolicsome children.

My own. You know the admonishment, hug your family closer after a tragedy.

I decided to take the admonisher's up on it. But that doesn't mean that I've not been in tune

with what's going on. I heard President Obama today talking about the idea that if he would just say radical Islam,

then perhaps there'd be no radical Islam. Here the president is somehow I could cue the sound from the park.

Here the president is talking about that.

That's the key they tell us. We can't beat ISIL unless we call them radical Islamists.

What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?

Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans?

Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this?

The answer is none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.

This idea that we could abracadabra away our problems. It's clearly nonsense.

It's nonsense for all the reasons the president said. But it's just nonsense on the face of it.

The one thing that the president has done by not saying radical Islamist, he's forced all the inevitable process where that phrase gets changed to something and then something else.

It's right for its conservation, then its energy independence, then its alternative energy.

So if we were saying radical Islam, I would piss off our allies and the Jordanians and conflate the situation.

But we'd be three phrases past that. Although sometimes I wonder what if it were true?

What if it were true that but for the pronouncement of a phrase we could solve a problem like the pet overpopulation problem.

Perhaps it is true that just one phrase would show that we understand it and cut through all the red tape that's been gumming up our solving of the pet overpopulation problem.

That phrase lustful Chihuahua. He can't even say lustful Chihuahua. How does he understand the problem?

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