The Myopic Press
Lance Knobel Finds Something Interesting in the FT

Fool Me Once, Shame on You Department

Teresa Nielsen Hayden provides a guide to Bush-speak:

Making Light: Jane Smiley's "Notes for Converts": Bush is to public discourse as Three Card Monte is to card game. I've drafted a number of unfinished ML posts since autumn 2000 about Bush and his use of language. The first one was written after I watched an otherwise sensible friend get into a tizzy over some stupid things Bush said about an exceptionally stupid proposed amendment to the Constitution. She was trying to figure out what he meant by his remarks.

Nothing, I told her. He meant nothing. Bush doesn't really talk to us. When it's advantageous or required, he'll go through the motions of talking to us, but that's all. What it "means" is that he either has to do it, like the State of the Union speech; or he wants something from us, like votes; or he's tossing out a string of words calculated to endear him to some fraction of the citizenry, like "manned missions to Mars" or "Constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage." He doesn't care what he's saying, and afterward he doesn't consider himself bound by what he's said.

The implications are unpleasant. Someone who doesn't care that he's lying to you, and doesn't care that you know it, doesn't respect you, and doesn't consider you part of his social or political universe. Look at how many reasons Bush has tendered for cutting taxes for the rich, or going to war with Iraq. The only connection between those statements and his actions is that he believed that saying those things would get him what he wants.

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