WHEN WORDS DON'T MEAN
WHAT THEY SAY
A Pig Is Still a Pig, a Sigh is Just a SighSomething smells in our affairs abroad and at home. Consider Social Security at Home and Extraordinary Rendition abroad.
This post takes its route from Pathfinder Woman Blogger Suki SOCIAL SECURITY "REFORM"Bush apparently has people convinced there is a problem, but they are not buying his solutions. If anything has been proven, they are a patient lot, at least as far as destroying a very successful program under the flag of "reform." They have waited sixty years. What is not in crisis must be "reforrmed" (read: dismantled) now.
Even if by Bush's best misestimates in eighteen years. It must be solved now. Even if Medicare has far greater financial problem. Social Security must be solved now. Ask yourself why.
FROM: The Washington Monthly.
On Social
Security, the most interesting result is that Bush has apparently done
a great job of convincing everyone that we're in dire straits: large
majorities think the system is in serious trouble; is going broke;
won't pay them a penny when the retire; and needs substantial changes
The New York Times reports today that "New Poll Finds Bush Priorities Are Out of Step With Americans."
EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION
from Bob Herbert:
NY TimesHow many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush
administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch
mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the
C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they
being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do
they have?
President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other
nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a
breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who
starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse
cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President
Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the
rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."
A FABLE FOR A PRESIDENT WHO LIKES TO WORK ON THE FARM CHOPPING BRUSH
Ask Yourself Why a Millionaire Chops Wood
You may be able to dress a pig on a farm in a silk dress, but it's still going to smell like a pig. The farmer's wife will tell you this. The farmer might think that's cute, but he's got serious work to do out there in some dreamy North Forty. The farmer's wife looks at the pig and says why is my pig dressed up in a silk dress. The crazy uncle who lives on the farm in a shed out back comes up and says, "The pig was being a pig and wanted to go out beyond the fence so I let him. He went to the neighbors and fouled their well, he ate all their feed."
The farmer's wife looks at the crazy uncle and asks, "Why are you telling me and why is that pig in a dress?"
The crazy uncle looks her in the eye with a face that doesn't look away.
"Some things had to be done. The pig did what he did, the neighbors will know it, because his muddy path leads back to here."
The farmer's wife looks at the pig in the dress, then at the crazy uncle looking her straight in the eye. Then she says, "Nobody will be fooled. No matter how you dress it, everyone knows a pig still smells like a pig."
So what does this have to do with anything? Nothing, and everything. Suki pointed me in the direction of a nice Australian site. Kudos, Suki, for the insight and vision. We can dress up our policies at home and abroad, but a pig still smells like the mud it wallows in. A pig in a nice silk dress is still a pig.
To suggest otherwise is doublespeak. And doublespeak is a dangerous weapon, most dangerous when the person harmed is most unaware of the weapon in the criminal's hands, or in this case mouth. Words have always been powerful weapons in war. Until recently in America, no war started without the necessary words first. Previously no war could start without the permission of the governed through the consent of the largest body that represents us, Congress. That process has previously existed to protect us from rash and dubious misadventures. And where are we now? The public has been numbed by a washing sea of lies, large and small.
And what have we done with those we have captured? Some of these are American citizens, held without any legal recourse, nor with any court of appeal? An entire class of persons without rights has been created and left in what some call a legal limbo: the illegal combatants.
Illegal combatant is a comforting term for people watching American Idol in the middle of the night. No need to trouble ourselves with those people. Why, we have been told there is evidence. So there must be something to it. The concept of illegal combatant doesn't exist in American law as the Bush Administration would define it, much the same way that "The People's Courts" didn't have a legal basis in Nazi Germany. In both the cases of illegal combatants and The People's Courts, these terms have power because people in power have given them power. We are at a most foreboding moment in our history.
Our pig has gone and fouled the neighbor's water and eaten all the grain. Our pig wears a silk dress, but it smells like the mud it has wallowed in. There will be hell to pay. Language can only fool people so long. You can not fool all the people all the time. I pray to heaven Lincoln was right and fear the devil if he's wrong.
From Julian Burnside: Perspective
Doublespeak is dishonest and dangerous.
In his closing address at Nuremberg, US prosecutor Robert Jackson said:
"Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. [the Defendants]
all speak with a Nazi double talk with which to deceive the unwary. In
the Nazi dictionary of sardonic euphemisms "final solution" of the
Jewish problem was a phrase which meant extermination; "special
treatment" of prisoners of war meant killing; "protective custody"
meant concentration camp; "duty labor" meant slave labor; and an order
to "take a firm attitude" or "take positive measures" meant to act with
unrestrained savagery."
If you want to know why The Heretik believes women bloggers are essential for ourdemocracy to survive, The Heretik would would say it is because they are not so busy talking that they don't hear what other people are saying. Women bloggers also smell keenly what is so evidently in the air all around us. Find out more about the pathfinder Suki
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