Individual words and phrases are determining public policy and life or death in America. This is both weird and terrifying and something for the press to take note of and deal with. I have in mind one word and one phrase. The word is “makaka” and the phrase is “the war on terror.”

Saying “makaka” led to George Allen’s defeat in the 2006 Virginia Senate race. Ensuing events – bad handling, that is – also contributed, but without the original slur there’s little doubt that Allen would have won, perhaps even coasted to victory and been among the first or second tier of Republican presidential candidates right about now.

Allen’s defeat gave the Democrats control of the Senate. With the House also switching, the result on public life was immediate, what with the sacking of Donald Rumsfeld a day after the election. Since then there has been no let up in the examination and critique of the Bush administration’s handling of the war and other actions and policies.

None of it – from attempts to rein in the war in Iraq to probing the firing of U.S. attorneys – would have happened except for George Allen’s use of the word makaka. The press, especially cable TV, seized on makaka, showing endlessly the tape of Allen using the word.

The phrase “war on terror” is a more dreadful example. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, wrote in the March 25th Washington Post that the expression itself is meaningless, that it has undermined our ability to deal with fanatics who may use terrorism against us, and that it has accomplished one major objective of the Bush administration: “It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear.” And, he wrote, “Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.”

Brzezinski wrote that there has been “five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror,” and he includes the mass media among groups that reinforce the fear-mongering. He concludes by asking, “Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, ‘Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia?’”

I read Brzezinski’s 1600-word column as an audition in which he’s looking for a job with a Democratic presidential candidate, and I hope one of them hires him. It won’t be easy for politicians to deal with the national fear but it’s time they started to try.