Thanks, Clint. While the "right" may be the worst abusers in this category, methinks the left is often just as guilty. And I think the "langage as symbols" you are referring to is really more a matter as "language as a weapon"...however...
The dance partner, whom I have brought along to the masquerade brawl of human understanding, for quite some time now, is the one that leads me to "linguists" for answers, insight and authenticity. I no longer rely upon politicians or their spokespersons, ideological promoters, "advocates", commentators (who twist what is already twisted to make their own point: Fox Noise?), pundits (Buchanan?), moderators (who don't really moderate: think Presidential debates) , faux observers, "columnists", or orators and rhetoriticians to help me understand what I have just been smilingly "told". They are a uniformly unreliable group.
My chosen "linguists", our generation's "straight talkers", range from Bill Moyers, to Bill Maher and Noam Chomsky, to Robert Reich, John Stewart, Jane Hamsher,George Carlin and even Paul Krugman, UT Professor Galbraith and William Grieder... even though some are thought of more as economists or comedians. But they deliver understandable language and word constructs that reveal the real meaning and import behind the endless facade' of multi-syllabic stew delivered by wordy alchemists of confusion like Frank Luntz.
NOTE: Luntz, by the way, is no "word wizard", as Nader would have us believe. He is a malevolent manipulator of simple truths, the worst of a bad breed, who clouds and obfuscates for evil purposes, and does so with glee and gusto. (I cannot think of an exact Luntzian counterpart on the left, but if you listen to Harry Reid, Keith Olberman or Gov. Dean, any of the progressive bloggers or to any of the carefully crafted Obamaspeaks, the same admixture of obscure implications and insinuations exists in all those as well).
Mr. Nader is right,of course, as usual, but a little late to the party. The founding fathers knew, over 200 years ago, how bumblingly wrong this democracy could all go through psycho-babble (and it has: look at the complete non-separation of church and state?) and worked tirelessly against the possibilities. Even Dwight Eisenhower warned that "something evil" was afoot with the military industrial complex, and today we spend SEVEN times more on defense and weaponry than any other nation in the world. I think "Blackwater"is a pretty lame euphemism for "security". And of course, we cannot wait to "give" democacy to the Iraqis and the Afghans.
What Nader should be railing against the loudest is the resultant cultural-behavorial outgrowth of this vocabularistic nightmare: nobody trusts anything anybody says. And when this mistrust erupts into non-sensical shouting matches and causes people to behave irrationally enough to bring AR-15 assault weapons to public gatherings and town hall meetings, the cumulative effect is civic chaos and nearly irreparable polarity and division. The state of our communal mental health comes into question and we live on the edge of violence. Blind understanding, caused by such far reaching deception, leads to blind rage. Everybody thinks everybody else is full of shit. Plain enough?
The three authors that Nader lauds for their recent efforts are not so much practicing "semantic discipline" (What the hell THAT, exactly,anyway , Mr. Nader? How many times have we heard someone dismiss a remark, by saying, "Well,it's all just semantics, anyway"?), as they are demonstrating appropriate applicability and some much overdue linguistic precision and clarity. (Let's see: I think the word transparency comes to mind: whatever happened to that famous campiagn buzzword, Barack?) Moreover, these writers, along with many other capable linguists, are the communicators that we can count on to come through "in the pinch", and tell us what we need to know, when we are forced, finally, to ask our "leadership" to "Tell us, please, what you really mean?"
Mr. Nader could have just easily said that we need to stop being thoroughly "euphemized" before we become completely mentally "euthanized". I wonder if these language abusers that Mr. Nader bemoans are the "Death Panels" of our public awareness?
And I used as many $10.00 words in this response as I could manage, so that everyone could blame me for being just as guilty of obfscation as everyone else I am complaining about.
END.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 6:07 PM
Subject: Fwd: Words Matter - Nader
Great column, if you're interested in language as symbols, and how they have been manipulated by the right.............CR
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Ralph Nader <info@nader.org>Date: Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 4:56 PMSubject: Words MatterTo: alerts@lists.nader.orgEver wonder what’s happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don’t wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk.Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S., Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t the media know that the correct word is “prisoners,” regardless of what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld disseminated?The raging debate and controversy over health insurance and the $2.5 trillion spent this year on health care involves consumers and “providers.” How touching to describe sellers or vendors, often gouging, denying benefits, manipulating fine print contracts, cheating Medicare and Medicaid in the tens of billions as “providers.”I always thought “providers” were persons taking care of their families or engaging in charitable service. Somehow, the dictionary definition does not fit the frequently avaricious profiles of Aetna, United Healthcare, Pfizer and Merck.“Privatization” and the “private sector” are widespread euphemisms that the press falls for daily. Moving government owned assets or functions into corporate hands, as with Blackwater, Halliburton, and the conglomerates now controlling public highways, prisons, and drinking water systems is “corporatization,” not the soft imagery of going “private” or into the “private sector.” It is the corporate sector!“Medical malpractice reform” is another misnomer. It used to mean restricting the legal rights of wrongfully injured people by hospitals and doctors, or limiting the liability of these corporate vendors when their negligence harms innocent patients. Well, to anybody interested in straight talk, “medical malpractice reform” or the “medical malpractice crisis” should apply to bad or negligent practices by medical professionals. After all, about 100,000 people die every year from physician/hospital malpractice, according to a Harvard School of Public Health report. Hundreds of thousands are rendered sick or injured, not to mention even larger tolls from hospital-induced infections. Proposed “reforms” are sticking it to the wrong people—the patients—not the sellers.“Free trade” is a widely used euphemism. It is corporate managed trade as evidenced in hundreds of pages of rules favoring corporations in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. “Free trade” lowers barriers between countries so that cartels, unjustified patent monopolies, counterfeiting, contraband, and other harmful practices and products can move around the world unhindered.What is remarkable about the constant use of these words is that they permeate the language even if those who stand against the policies of those who first coin these euphemisms. You’ll read about “detainees” and “providers” and “privatization” and “private sector” and “free trade” in the pages of the Nation and Progressive magazines, at progressive conferences with progressive leaders, and during media interviews. After people point out these boomeranging words to them, still nothing changes. Their habit is chronic.A lot of who we are, of what we do and think is expressed through the language we choose. The word tends to become the thing in our mind as Stuart Chase pointed out seventy years ago in his classic work The Tyranny of Words. Let us stop disrespecting the dictionary! Let’s stop succumbing to the propagandists and the public relations tricksters!Frank Luntz—the word wizard for the Republicans who invented the term “death tax” to replace “estate tax” is so contemptuous of the Democratic Party’s verbal ineptitude (such as using “public option” instead of “public choice” and regularly using the above-noted misnomers) that he dares them by offering free advice to the Democrats. He suggests they could counteract his “death tax” with their own term “the billionaires’ tax.” There were no Democratic takers. Remember, words matter.Using words that are accurate and at face value is one of the characteristics of a good book. Three new books stand out for their straight talk. In Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-party Tyranny, Theresa Amato, my former campaign manager, exposes the obstructions that deny voter choice by the two major parties for third party and independent candidates. Just out is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges. Lastly, the boisterous, mischievous short autobiography of that free spirit, Jerry Lee Wilson , The Soloflex Story: An American Parable.Not withstanding their different styles, these authors exercise semantic discipline.End.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Addendum to "Send More"
This came unsolicited. You might like the video. I did.
Hi Ivan,I read your post about Afghanistan where you compare the military effortto that of Viet Nam. In your post, you point out that military operativeshave an incentive to wage war. I think the following video will fit wellin your post:http://www.newsy.com/videos/afghanistan_strategy_more_troops_or_new_tacticsThe video uses multiple news sources to examine how the media are framingthe implications of the recently released Mc Chrystal report calling forincreased troop levels in Afghanistan. It compares these sources toquestion alternatives to increased military commitment in the region. Ihope you will consider embedding the video in The Way I See Things.Newsy.com videos analyze news coverage of important issues from multiplesources. Its unique method of presenting how different media outlets arecovering a story gives context to complex policy issues.Please let me know if you have any questions,Rosa Sowrosa@newsy.com
Hi Ivan,I read your post about Afghanistan where you compare the military effortto that of Viet Nam. In your post, you point out that military operativeshave an incentive to wage war. I think the following video will fit wellin your post:http://www.newsy.com/videos/afghanistan_strategy_more_troops_or_new_tacticsThe video uses multiple news sources to examine how the media are framingthe implications of the recently released Mc Chrystal report calling forincreased troop levels in Afghanistan. It compares these sources toquestion alternatives to increased military commitment in the region. Ihope you will consider embedding the video in The Way I See Things.Newsy.com videos analyze news coverage of important issues from multiplesources. Its unique method of presenting how different media outlets arecovering a story gives context to complex policy issues.Please let me know if you have any questions,Rosa Sowrosa@newsy.com
Send more!
Yesterday I blogged the report (from Politico), that the famed conservative columnist and pundit George Will had said that it is time to pull troops back from a seemingly un-winnable situation in Afghani-whats-its-place. The narrative noted that this surprising recommendation was coming, not only from a most unlikely source, but also just ahead of what would probably be a request from the General in Charge (that is a GIC, which is military lingo for geek) to raise the current troop level there by 21,000...which it just did (see below) This is after, you may recall, that even the SecDef (Deaf Sec?), Mr. Gates, a warmed over never-was-a-real-GIC from G.W. Bush... whom the benificient Obama allowed to keep his "over-all-the -other GICs " desk job... gave a "lukewarm" assessment of the situation and does not sound like he is very hot to up the ante in the anti-Taliban sand dune and poppy conflict: all this while Karzai practices US style-politics and steals the national election: perhaps Karzai thinks Afghanistan is Florida? If you hang enough chads you can be President? That whole process gores me.
At any rate, during the Bill Moyers interview by Bill Maher (which I so gleefully and enthusiastically forwarded to everyone on my blog list, as well), Moyers told the symbolic tale of a President standing before a large group of advisors, some of whom were military, asking what should be done to address a current conflict. After the suggestion was made to "send more troops, the President asks, "Are 20,000 enough?", and a military man says, "Send more". So the POTUS asks, "Are 40,000 enough?", and a miliary man says, "Send more". And when the President asks if 60,000 will do the trick, the military again responds, "Send more".
The job of the military is to make war, not achieve peace, and they will never be happy unless conflicts can be non-resolved and escalated and we spend more on troop deployments, bigger and more powerful weapons and maintain a devil-may-care attitude about how much collateral damage to the civilian population will be incurred. Hence, the answer will always be, "Send more". Lyndon Johnson kept following that advice concerning Viet Nam until Walter Cronkite exercised his influence on the American evening news audience and the citizenry of the U.S. said, "Enough!" and we took to the streets.
Inasmuch as there is no collateral damage occuring in this country, and the returning body bags and flag draped coffins are kept largely out of view (only George Stephanopolous tells us every week who and how many died), the majority of the American people are not either well enough informed or sufficiently outraged to tell Obama, "Enough!". This insulation from the reality of war in the middle East, and the passivity, prolonged ignorance about the horrors of the war and collective public indifference will continue to produce a deafening silence, about not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also about the current (and much obscured) debate about Cheney, the CIA, Blackwater and torture. Sadly, it seems as if the Geneva Convetion is thought by most Americans to be a rock band you can view on YouTube.
But the issue of the morning, the moment and of the week is Afghanistan. And in the face of an almost certainly untenable situation, where it is highly doubtful that US forces can "win" anything, in a country that does not want us, democracy or any other form of interference, the decision to "send more" looks suspiciously like the urging of idiots. Fools rush in, and later many are dead. Several other "empires" figured that one out, about Afghanistan, long ago. For a nation of smart people,we are pretty dumb.
A military escalation at this juncture will not even be as dubiously productive and worthwhile as the "Cash for Clunkers" ("Spend more!") elixir that was poured down the economic throats of the US public and Detroit ...and the benefits of that adventure are yet to be determned, to be sure. But many people are very happy with their new 18 MPG Cadillac hybrid Escalade that gets 4 MPG better than their "old" gas-guzzler version. Go figure. We sure know how to take THOSE to the streets!
Obama needs to say no and deny this both looney and lame-brained request to achieve a "conflict resolution" by "sending more troops" and broadening the nature of the conflict through troop escalation...because it doe not resolve anything. Although many are sick of hearing it , because everyone quotes it but does nothing to heed it, the fabled definition of insanity (from Albert Einstein) is "continuing to do the same old things you've always done and expecting to get different results" is still quite true. And the reality of this "send more" mentality is far more than merely disheartening. "Inane" comes to mind. Does anyone know the difference betwen an escalation and an Escalade?
We keep kicking this big fence post, over and over again, and getting a very sore toe. Are we just stupid and numb, or numb and stupid? Or are we just dumb and dumber? But let's"send more!". "Kick it again!" "Keep beating that dead horse until it comes back to life!" I think I am hearing Stephen Colbert in the distance.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
To: Ivan H
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 5:04 AM
Subject: ?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083101100.html
It may be time to replace General McChrystal with General George Will...........CR
At any rate, during the Bill Moyers interview by Bill Maher (which I so gleefully and enthusiastically forwarded to everyone on my blog list, as well), Moyers told the symbolic tale of a President standing before a large group of advisors, some of whom were military, asking what should be done to address a current conflict. After the suggestion was made to "send more troops, the President asks, "Are 20,000 enough?", and a military man says, "Send more". So the POTUS asks, "Are 40,000 enough?", and a miliary man says, "Send more". And when the President asks if 60,000 will do the trick, the military again responds, "Send more".
The job of the military is to make war, not achieve peace, and they will never be happy unless conflicts can be non-resolved and escalated and we spend more on troop deployments, bigger and more powerful weapons and maintain a devil-may-care attitude about how much collateral damage to the civilian population will be incurred. Hence, the answer will always be, "Send more". Lyndon Johnson kept following that advice concerning Viet Nam until Walter Cronkite exercised his influence on the American evening news audience and the citizenry of the U.S. said, "Enough!" and we took to the streets.
Inasmuch as there is no collateral damage occuring in this country, and the returning body bags and flag draped coffins are kept largely out of view (only George Stephanopolous tells us every week who and how many died), the majority of the American people are not either well enough informed or sufficiently outraged to tell Obama, "Enough!". This insulation from the reality of war in the middle East, and the passivity, prolonged ignorance about the horrors of the war and collective public indifference will continue to produce a deafening silence, about not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also about the current (and much obscured) debate about Cheney, the CIA, Blackwater and torture. Sadly, it seems as if the Geneva Convetion is thought by most Americans to be a rock band you can view on YouTube.
But the issue of the morning, the moment and of the week is Afghanistan. And in the face of an almost certainly untenable situation, where it is highly doubtful that US forces can "win" anything, in a country that does not want us, democracy or any other form of interference, the decision to "send more" looks suspiciously like the urging of idiots. Fools rush in, and later many are dead. Several other "empires" figured that one out, about Afghanistan, long ago. For a nation of smart people,we are pretty dumb.
A military escalation at this juncture will not even be as dubiously productive and worthwhile as the "Cash for Clunkers" ("Spend more!") elixir that was poured down the economic throats of the US public and Detroit ...and the benefits of that adventure are yet to be determned, to be sure. But many people are very happy with their new 18 MPG Cadillac hybrid Escalade that gets 4 MPG better than their "old" gas-guzzler version. Go figure. We sure know how to take THOSE to the streets!
Obama needs to say no and deny this both looney and lame-brained request to achieve a "conflict resolution" by "sending more troops" and broadening the nature of the conflict through troop escalation...because it doe not resolve anything. Although many are sick of hearing it , because everyone quotes it but does nothing to heed it, the fabled definition of insanity (from Albert Einstein) is "continuing to do the same old things you've always done and expecting to get different results" is still quite true. And the reality of this "send more" mentality is far more than merely disheartening. "Inane" comes to mind. Does anyone know the difference betwen an escalation and an Escalade?
We keep kicking this big fence post, over and over again, and getting a very sore toe. Are we just stupid and numb, or numb and stupid? Or are we just dumb and dumber? But let's"send more!". "Kick it again!" "Keep beating that dead horse until it comes back to life!" I think I am hearing Stephen Colbert in the distance.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
To: Ivan H
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 5:04 AM
Subject: ?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083101100.html
It may be time to replace General McChrystal with General George Will...........CR
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