retaking language

Why am I not hearing more about the irony of a group calling itself the "Liberty Counsel" opposing gay marriage? Conservatives have been way too successful in maintaining ownership of that word.

greenwald on brooks and bush

Glenn Greenwald just posted a great piece on Salon.com making a very elegant argument about two of my favorite points: the Bush version of "conservatism" cloaks itself in the "Reagan-Goldwater" model (limited government intrusion in private citizens' lives) while explicitly working against that model in every way (as did, well, Reagan himself); and David Brooks and his insistence that he speaks for (in his own words) "normal, nonideological people" while at the same time he carries water for the most ideological administration any of us have seen in our lifetimes.

decisions, decisions

Ever since he first said it, back when he was saying that Don Rumsfeld would keep his job until the Second Coming, I've been fascinated by Bush's statement

"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best."

And just last week:

"I'm the decision-maker."

There's so much there that's so telling about Bush's character. The petulant child, always overlooked in favor of his smarter and more responsible brothers, insisting on the validity of the position he earned (but not fully through his own merit or efforts); the wishfully thinking child; the man reduced to reminding everyone of the powers of his position because nobody takes him seriously anymore; the President stripped of whatever rhetorical powers as "everyday guy" he once had and reminding us that the flip side of "everyday guy" is "guy not equipped for positions of huge power and responsibility." I suspect there's a little message in there for Bar and Daddy, too.

But what keeps running through my subconscious, because it's just so obvious that it doesn't even need to reach my conscious mind, is this: the idea of Bill Clinton saying that, in response to criticism or questioning of his policies, is so absurd as to be laughable.

politics and the English language

From an exchange between Condoleezza Rice and Sen. Chuck Hagel on Thursday:

HAGEL: I think this speech, given last night by this President, represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out.

RICE: I think that I don't see it and the President doesn't see it as an escalation. What he sees...

HAGEL: Putting 22,000 new troops, more troops in, is not an escalation? Would you call it a decrease? And billions of dollars more?

RICE: I would call it, Senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad.

So is it a "surge"? An "escalation"? Or an "augmentation"? Why not an "embiggenment"?

Does Orwell just get MORE RIGHT the farther away we are from his time?

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." ("Politics and the English Language," 1946)