| | Why George Bush Can't Communicate
Dr. David Dungan, teaching in my New Testament Studies class at UT Knoxville, years ago said something that has come back to me many times since; "Clear writing is a product of clear thinking."
We were trying to wade through a laborius book written in the Middle Ages by some very boring fellow named Eusebius of Caesaria, and somehow reduce his 500 pages of dry ramblings into an essay of a couple thousand words. (Man, I really miss college!) This particular history, I can't remember now whether it was the Ecclesastical or some other work of his (I should get credit for just staying awake in class, let alone remembering the guy's name), was the story of how the New Testament was put together, how and why some books were placed in the collection we have today, and others, though equally popular or inspired, were left out.
It's difficult enough just to follow such a story through all the plot twists and competing logical arguments. It's almost impossible to explain such a story to someone else, especially if you really didn't understand it yourself. Almost everyone in our class had to do some serious re-writing just to get a C.
When pundits criticize the president, this is one of their favourite themes - Mr. Bush doesn't understand the complexities of the situation. He can't really explain what's happening or why he's leading our country down a primrose path to tragedy, because he can't see the obvious. Irony, forshadowing, equivocation, doublespeak - so abundant in the Iraq War and the events leading up to it - these are concepts you study in a typical English Lit class at a good liberal arts university. Mr. Bush has never claimed to be a straight-A student - and he is adamantly not a liberal. He can't tell us what's happening for fear we'd find out he really doesn't know ('classified information' has become a euphemism for 'that would probably make me look bad').
This has become the common wisdom of the left ( does it bother you that most editorialists shorten this to 'CW'?). The president isn't smart enought to figure things out for himself, and Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the like, Cold War fantasies lurking in the deep recesses of their minds, manipulate him into taking us in the wrong direction. However, as more and more inside information becomes available lately - books by former members of staff, the publication of minutes and memos from meetings with British ministers, etc. - I'm beginning to wonder if the president isn't more sinister in his miguidance than we have previously given him credit for.
Perhaps there's another reason for the communication credibility gap;
"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. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.
The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."
I'm beginning to see why Mr. Bush can't come out and tell us the truth about why he led us into the Iraq War, how we are fighting it, what's really happening behind the scenes; either a) it's impossible to defend the indefensible or b) his real arguements are simply too brutal, too Machiavellian for most of us.
Like the famous Saturday Night Live skit during the Reagan administration where Mr. Reagan plays the senile old fool to his friends and his public, morphing into a Iran-Contra mastermind when they leave the room - it's beginning to look like this president has a lot to hide.
Is he really the fool - or are we?
Whom did I quote? Some radical from the New York Times? You might be surprised by who said this - and when. Have a look at the entire essay here. I for one am surprised we aren't seeing more references to this writer. |
