Duckspeak
The average American has an extremely simplistic view of dishonesty, presumably based on their own experiences of trying to fool people. Mom asks them if they stole a cookie, they deny everything, and then maybe they get caught. Let's look at the salient points here:
1. They are telling a lie: a falsehood dressed up like the truth with the intention of fooling people.
2. They are trying to fool a skeptical audience.
3. If the truth gets out, the jig is up. Even a tiny hole will deflate the balloon of their dishonesty.
Needless to say, the people who run this place are quite happy for the American sheepizens to believe that dishonesty works this way. It provides an illusion of comprehension while simultaneously diverting people from any real ability to understand political reality. To wit: copious evidence will emerge proving that Bush authorized torture, and Bush will step up to the podium and say, "Lemme tellya somethin'- America does NOT torture." Then the liberals declare, "I don't GET it! How can he say that? Doesn't he know that the jig is up, and everyone knows he authorized torture? Cheney is lobbying Congress for the ability to torture people, for Pete's sake!"
What these people fail to understand is that Bush is not lying. To be sure, he's deliberately making statements he knows to be false. But, in order to lie he would have to carefully craft those statements to give them an appearance of truth, he would have to be trying to fool a skeptical audience, and the jig would be up if he got caught. None of these conditions applies. Bush is not lying- he's providing the Kool-Aid drinkers with duckspeak.
Those of you whose memory of Nineteen Eighty-Four has not been rewritten yet will remember that "to duckspeak" is to mindlessly quack out Party propaganda so unthinkingly that it becomes a kind of effortless reflex. Duckspeak is a way for people to shut down troubling thoughts when they want to believe. A lot of people want to believe in Bush. They're troubled by all this talk about torture. So Bush hands them a prearranged script- "America does NOT torture!" Then they can repeat that to themselves any time someone reminds them of the torture issue.
Note how duckspeak differs from lies:
1. It's a falsehood that is not dressed up as truth with the intention of fooling people. Duckspeak is incapable of fooling anyone who does not already have a desperate desire to believe.
2. It can't fool a skeptical audience, and doesn't even try.
3. Therefore, if the truth gets out, it makes no difference. The truth was out from the start, and the purveyors of duckspeak never felt much need to withhold it from the public.
Bush has relied particularly heavily on duckspeak, with the end result being that Bush scandals play out very differently from, say, Watergate.
Nixon tried to prevent information about Watergate from reaching the public. As the scandal developed, new revelations emerged over time, and people wondered whether the President was involved. His involvement was obscured by his lying: he attempted to convince people that he was not involved by trying to pass off false statements as the truth.
A Bush scandal, on the other hand, is revealed completely from day one to anyone with an ounce of intelligence. The "unfolding" of the scandal consists of liberals watching prosecutors navigate Karl Rove's Labyrinth of Plausible Deniability, and waiting with baited breath for some new revelation that will be so dramatic- nay, cinematic- that perhaps it will get through the thick skulls of the Kool-Aid drinkers.
The White Phosphorus controversy is a case in point. As soon as I heard the claim made on Democracy Now! that WP had been used on children in Fallujah, I knew it was true. Don't be an idiot- this is Bush we're talking about. Do you really think Bush cares about incinerating Iraqi children? Besides, we had an enormous amount of forensic evidence to prove the case. Then, the Army spokesman rebutted the claims by declaring- I kid you not- that the Army had killed all those children using conventional weapons, and therefore there was no war crime committed. At this point, what kind of imbecile could possibly doubt that WP was used? The ones who work for the MSM, of course, as has been so extensively documented at Daily Kos.
So, given all that forensic evidence, what are we waiting for? Proof? No- darkly humorous proof. Ultimately it was revealed that the Army had gloated over the "Shake and Bake" strategy of using WP in its own magazine for field artillery officers. That didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, and didn't provide any proof that we didn't already have- but it did make the truth so embarassingly obvious even to a complete moron that the MSM had to change its story. (Do you think the makers of Shake and Bake were concerned about having their product associated with incinerated children? I guess not- Zippo is still going strong. I wonder what clever slang terms these people would come up with if they were running the Holocaust?) Now we're told that America did use WP, but we're told it wasn't a war crime. Of course, we've known from the start of this debate that the relevant treaties on chemical weapons explicitly ban the use of WP... so we already have proof. Now we have to sit around praying for evidence that is funny. You know, ironic in a hoisted-with-their-own-petard kind of way. Sure enough, we ultimately get a Pentagon document declaring that WP was a banned chemical weapon when Saddam used it. Who cares what the treaties say? The Pentagon gets to decide these things, but once they decide, they can't go back on it.
In the end, not only are liberals forced into the position of implicitly endorsing the idea that the Pentagon is above international law (because the Pentagon's statements on WP are portrayed as being of paramount importance, when in reality they have no weight whatsoever,) they also become complicit in the debasement of political discourse. Truth doesn't matter. You can have all the facts on your side, but it doesn't make any difference. The only thing that ever counts is the ability to sneer at people and shout "you suck!" Ha, ha, Pentagon- you voted against WP before you voted for it! Flip-flopper! YOU SUCK!
1. They are telling a lie: a falsehood dressed up like the truth with the intention of fooling people.
2. They are trying to fool a skeptical audience.
3. If the truth gets out, the jig is up. Even a tiny hole will deflate the balloon of their dishonesty.
Needless to say, the people who run this place are quite happy for the American sheepizens to believe that dishonesty works this way. It provides an illusion of comprehension while simultaneously diverting people from any real ability to understand political reality. To wit: copious evidence will emerge proving that Bush authorized torture, and Bush will step up to the podium and say, "Lemme tellya somethin'- America does NOT torture." Then the liberals declare, "I don't GET it! How can he say that? Doesn't he know that the jig is up, and everyone knows he authorized torture? Cheney is lobbying Congress for the ability to torture people, for Pete's sake!"
What these people fail to understand is that Bush is not lying. To be sure, he's deliberately making statements he knows to be false. But, in order to lie he would have to carefully craft those statements to give them an appearance of truth, he would have to be trying to fool a skeptical audience, and the jig would be up if he got caught. None of these conditions applies. Bush is not lying- he's providing the Kool-Aid drinkers with duckspeak.
Those of you whose memory of Nineteen Eighty-Four has not been rewritten yet will remember that "to duckspeak" is to mindlessly quack out Party propaganda so unthinkingly that it becomes a kind of effortless reflex. Duckspeak is a way for people to shut down troubling thoughts when they want to believe. A lot of people want to believe in Bush. They're troubled by all this talk about torture. So Bush hands them a prearranged script- "America does NOT torture!" Then they can repeat that to themselves any time someone reminds them of the torture issue.
Note how duckspeak differs from lies:
1. It's a falsehood that is not dressed up as truth with the intention of fooling people. Duckspeak is incapable of fooling anyone who does not already have a desperate desire to believe.
2. It can't fool a skeptical audience, and doesn't even try.
3. Therefore, if the truth gets out, it makes no difference. The truth was out from the start, and the purveyors of duckspeak never felt much need to withhold it from the public.
Bush has relied particularly heavily on duckspeak, with the end result being that Bush scandals play out very differently from, say, Watergate.
Nixon tried to prevent information about Watergate from reaching the public. As the scandal developed, new revelations emerged over time, and people wondered whether the President was involved. His involvement was obscured by his lying: he attempted to convince people that he was not involved by trying to pass off false statements as the truth.
A Bush scandal, on the other hand, is revealed completely from day one to anyone with an ounce of intelligence. The "unfolding" of the scandal consists of liberals watching prosecutors navigate Karl Rove's Labyrinth of Plausible Deniability, and waiting with baited breath for some new revelation that will be so dramatic- nay, cinematic- that perhaps it will get through the thick skulls of the Kool-Aid drinkers.
The White Phosphorus controversy is a case in point. As soon as I heard the claim made on Democracy Now! that WP had been used on children in Fallujah, I knew it was true. Don't be an idiot- this is Bush we're talking about. Do you really think Bush cares about incinerating Iraqi children? Besides, we had an enormous amount of forensic evidence to prove the case. Then, the Army spokesman rebutted the claims by declaring- I kid you not- that the Army had killed all those children using conventional weapons, and therefore there was no war crime committed. At this point, what kind of imbecile could possibly doubt that WP was used? The ones who work for the MSM, of course, as has been so extensively documented at Daily Kos.
So, given all that forensic evidence, what are we waiting for? Proof? No- darkly humorous proof. Ultimately it was revealed that the Army had gloated over the "Shake and Bake" strategy of using WP in its own magazine for field artillery officers. That didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, and didn't provide any proof that we didn't already have- but it did make the truth so embarassingly obvious even to a complete moron that the MSM had to change its story. (Do you think the makers of Shake and Bake were concerned about having their product associated with incinerated children? I guess not- Zippo is still going strong. I wonder what clever slang terms these people would come up with if they were running the Holocaust?) Now we're told that America did use WP, but we're told it wasn't a war crime. Of course, we've known from the start of this debate that the relevant treaties on chemical weapons explicitly ban the use of WP... so we already have proof. Now we have to sit around praying for evidence that is funny. You know, ironic in a hoisted-with-their-own-petard kind of way. Sure enough, we ultimately get a Pentagon document declaring that WP was a banned chemical weapon when Saddam used it. Who cares what the treaties say? The Pentagon gets to decide these things, but once they decide, they can't go back on it.
In the end, not only are liberals forced into the position of implicitly endorsing the idea that the Pentagon is above international law (because the Pentagon's statements on WP are portrayed as being of paramount importance, when in reality they have no weight whatsoever,) they also become complicit in the debasement of political discourse. Truth doesn't matter. You can have all the facts on your side, but it doesn't make any difference. The only thing that ever counts is the ability to sneer at people and shout "you suck!" Ha, ha, Pentagon- you voted against WP before you voted for it! Flip-flopper! YOU SUCK!
posted by Wintermute at 7:28 AM
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