As the presidential election campaign starts to occupy more and more of the airwaves someone should carry a counter and click every time the word ‘folks’ is uttered by a candidate. Even better would be how that final count would compare to the number of times a candidate would use a word like ‘citizens’ (at least citizens in a positive, civic light, not only in comparison to illegal ‘aliens’). In the opening chapter of her very relevant book The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby laments the ever widening usage of the words like ‘folks’ and ‘troops’ in American social...