Learning The Language . . .
Deborah Venable
08/14/11
.
. . Of Politics. These days there is an
absolute requirement that American people who wish to stay fully informed in
the business of our self-governing Republic be fluently bi-lingual. Of course the melting pot theory requires
that serious Americans be fluent in our national language of English, but now
we must also learn the language of politics.
If you simply count on a media or political translator, you will never
know the real truth.
It
has often been said that English is one of the hardest languages in the world
to master, probably because of as many reasons as there are opinions on the
subject. Oddly enough, politics fits
that same explanation. There are
certainly those that will tell you English is no harder to learn than other
languages, (they will most likely be native speakers trying to learn other
languages) but politics is a language that should be foreign to everybody
because there are no rules and absolutely no consistency.
One
only needed to listen to the proclamations following the recent passing of the
debt crisis vote, (here, I have skillfully intermingled both plain English and
the language of politics) to see that in the language of politics no one can
define a winner in the outcome.
Actually, that is because there is NO winner except for the politicians
themselves – ALL of them! Media
translators and the party leaders rushed for microphones to put forth their
equally nauseating and WRONG translations of the outcome though.
In
plain English, no one should ever consider himself fortunate for being allowed
to take on more and more debt. We are
not lucky because of this. We are
certainly not better off because of this.
There is absolutely NOTHING positive in this. It reflects a refusal to act responsibly. It reflects a disconnect from real world
economics. The mindset that allows
anyone to celebrate the continuing extension of borrowing to run our government
shows an unfathomable ignorance of reality.
The
language of politics is so convoluted, however, that reality is obscured even
to those who use it all the time. In
this language, words mean whatever the speaker or writer of them want them to
mean – it’s that simple.
So,
just like all the politicians and translators said, the debt ceiling was raised
– but the things they warned would happen if it wasn’t raised happened anyway,
and the best they could do was blame the folks who were against raising the
debt ceiling in the first place!
The
plunge of the stock market wiped out over a trillion dollars of wealth almost
at a faster rate than Obama and his goons can spend that much money! (I said, “almost.”) The credit rating debacle had everyone
riding that rollercoaster all week after the downgrade from triple A for the
first time in our history. Don’t you
love it when everybody “watches” the stock market to determine whether we are
okay or not?
Here’s
a clue – no, we aren’t okay.
The
actions of our esteemed legislators right before they took off for vacation
succeeded in not only kicking the can down the road, giving Obama a free pass
to spend even more money, but also whittling down the people’s already dubious
representation of 535 to just 12 very partisan participants to decide what
happens when we approach “the can” again in the very near future. My favorite word of the political language
these days is “trigger.” Not unlike the
meaning of the more famous proper name, “Trigger” (Roy Rogers’ dead, stuffed
horse) the political language word, trigger, describes a sort of preservation
of a dead, stuffed policy – coercion of the worst kind to achieve the
inevitable.
(At
least Trigger was a good horse!)
Nothing
in politics is at it seems on the surface these days. No one speaking the language tries to understand anyone
else. Polls constructed in the
political language produce useless results because there can be no truth where
there is no understanding, but politicians are willing to live and die by the
polls anyway. Looking at just two
issues – unemployment and national debt – the figures for both are constantly
being “readjusted” after the fact to sometimes paint a very different
picture. So, when a poll asks a stupid
question like, “Do you think the nation is going down the right path?” then
counters it with another stupid question like, “Whom do you blame most for our
national problems?” we end up with political commentary that rivals that coming
out of the Tower of Babel.
In
closing, let me just say that it is high time we strip the second language from
our political discourse. Let’s all just
learn to speak in plain English and forget trying to reinvent political
communication to fit our whims. I only
want to hear truth come out of a politician’s mouth, and follow policy that
emanates from reality and not some failed ideology that seeks to make a silk
purse out of a sow’s ear. There is no
utopia that evolves from ignorance.