Despicable Phrases

As I write this, I'm listening to CBC radio's program Question Period, a weekly program about what's happened in the past week with regard to politics, both federal and provincial. This past week there occurred two or perhaps three significant events: the election in Quebec, which saw the ouster of the Liberal party and its replacement by the Parti Quebecois, and the announcement of Liberal premier Mr. Charest of his departure; the second and third were two by-elections in Ontario, which promised or threatened to give the Ontario Liberals a majority, but only if that party won both seats, which didn't happen.

These specifics are not the point of this missive. I listened to several politicians and "experts" being interviewed, and in response to a question, three of them began their reply with "That's a good question." My question would be, "As opposed to what?" Perhaps "There are no stupid questions, just stupid people," which statement I got from The Simpsons.

To help get your creative juices or memory flowing, here are a couple more despicable phrases:

Rate of Speed, as in "The car was travelling at a high rate of speed." Idiots! Speed is a rate! It's the same as saying "a high rate of rate" or "a high speed of speed". Why not just say "travelling at high speed?" How hard is that?

 I want to declare war on despised phrases, and offer "That's a good question" as my first candidate. Given the Republican and Democratic conventions that have just happened, and the upcoming fight for the presidency of the USA, I invite readers to submit despised phrases for inclusion on this list.

"May I ask you a question?" You just did, you moron!

Sadly, I've noticed increasing use of "Also, too," in both general and media discourse. Shades of the Department of Redundancy Department.

Who Knew? Turns out I am a (gasp) Racist

While riding on the streetcar this morning, and reading the morning edition of Metro (a free rag distributed in Toronto each morning), I stumbled upon a story describing the murder of a bride on her wedding night. There was a phone call to the sister, containing a tearful confession, saying that there had been a terrible fight, and that now the groom had fled.

Immediately I jumped to the conclusion that this was an Honour Killing. In Canada, we have recently suffered several recent events: most notably and recently, the horrid murders of two daughters and their mother, in Kingston, Ontario, about which I have previously written.

But that is not the point of this particular blog. This is: immediately upon reading the headline, I assumed that this was another Muslim-extremist Honour Killing. Only upon reading the details did I learn that the suspect was named Jimenez, a native of Chicago, and is still on the lam.

Based upon nothing more than a headline, I leapt to an erroneous conclusion, and I am not proud of it. I fancied myself a 21st-Century Canadian, lugging no cultural baggage, prepared to treat everyone equally, and priding myself on the fact that I have good friends from the spectrum of colours and religions around me. That much is demonstrably true. But I also thought that I was above ethnic/racial stereotyping, that I was the very model of a modern Major General. Sadly, I have discovered that I am not.

There's not much solace to be gained here. The best I can do is reflect upon something Noam Chomsky wrote:
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” 

― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Arthur

Santorum shoots self in head

Judging by its candidates, the Republican party seems determined to commit seppuku. Witness the lowly-esteemed candidate Rick Santorum. From a CBS story:

"In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on 'phony studies,' and that climate change science is little more than 'political science.' His views are not 'anti-science' as Democrats claim, Santorum said. 'When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment,' he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining."

Even such a highly-esteemed conservative writer as Garry Wills has this to say:

”Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate. Yet he is praised by television pundits, night and day, for being “sincere” and “standing by what he believes.” He is the principled alternative to the evil Moderation of Mitt Romney and the evil Evil of Newt Gingrich. He is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic. Messrs. Boehner and McConnell call him a martyr to religious freedom. A young priest I saw on television, modeling himself on his hero Santorum, said, “I would rather die than give up my church’s principles.” What we are seeing is not a defense of undying principle but a stampede toward a temporarily exploitable lunacy. Acton to the rescue!”

(The reference to Acton concerns this lovely quote: When Pius IX condemned democracy and modern science in his Syllabus of Errors (1864), the Catholic historian Lord Acton said that Catholics were too sensible to go crazy every time a pope does.) 

For more of Mr. Wills's insight into the almost-certain self-destruction of the Grand Old Party, see his piece in the New York Review of Books: 

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/contraception-con-men/?printpage=true

From this Northerly side of the 49th parallel, what seems most to be lacking in the  American political landscape is a genuinely Left party. Obama and the Democrats don't even come close. They have been so cowed that even they are afraid to be accused of liberalism. Both sides of the American landscape would seem to require what Leftist politics is all about. 

The short answer is, No Single Thing; no coherent set of proposals across nations and continents; it's shaped by context. In Canada, for example, the vast majority of voters, by province, by region, by party, by almost any measure you could name, believe in the principle that health care should be free. 

That's merely one measure of a society which I would most emphatically not describe, not even remotely, as Socialist. I'm still a stalwart NDP voter and volunteer, but only because that party is closest to what I would like to see. Not only did I vote and campaign for the late Jack Layton and his wife Olivia Chow, but I also wrote the original campaign-management software for both, way back when they were City Councillors in Toronto. My political slant is clear. I go a lot further than the party I vote for, but that's understandable: I'm a grey-radical and they are strategists. I get that. Politics is the art of compromise, in which one chooses the least of evils.

I'll write another blog soon on why I view the NDP as far to the right of what I deem Left; this one has gone long enough. For now, let it be said that I am very distant from the Marxist schools of thought, but primarily because they have strayed from the sources, Marx and Engels, whose thoughts on capitalism remain mostly cogent 150 years later. To this I might add that the current readings of Adam Smith are seriously selective, not to mention prejudicial.

I would hope that this missive finds at least a few readers on the GOP side of the equation. It would be most enlightening for me at least to read your responses.

Homo mendax

Across the dining room table, seven-year-old Fiona has spread out a half-dozen dolls with whom she's acting out a long, elaborate story. Occasionally, others at the table are called upon to witness a fact, but really our presence is incidental--the story carries on whether we're at the table or not.

Aristotle and the scholastic philosophers called man the rational animal, homo rationale. John Stuart Mill spoke of homo economicus. Others called us homo reciprocans, reciprocal man.

Well, those are stories, too. How about man the storyteller? What would that Latin name be?

Homo mendax.

It makes politicians look a little less deviant?

Today I get this email from Nancy Pelosi ...

Dear Peter,

We’re close -- in fact, we’re less than $4,000 short of a record-breaking January.

Can we count on your support to help put us over the top? Contribute $3 before tonight’s midnight FEC deadline and we'll triple-match your gift >>

With your help we can put an end to the Republicans’ unrelenting war on women, seniors and the middle class.

Let’s prove we have what it takes.

http://dccc.org/Stand-with-Obama

If Obama and the Democrats would prosecute the Wall Street criminals who caused the "Lesser Depression", enact an adequate economic stimulus stimulus to recover from it, and get rid of the corruption under which most congressional decisions are bought and paid for, I would.




"Yes we can", said Obama.


No they didn't.

I didn't either.