Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Dawn continues to be fascinated by Victor Klemperer's Language of the Third Reich. Klemperer, a Jew who-- astonishingly-- survived Hitler's Germany, published in 1946 a collection of ways in which the Nazis defiled language. The current cabal in Washington, DC, reminds us of the on-going need to examine and expose "language that thinks for you."

Dawn would humbly offer some contemporary words and phrases for such consideration....

Terror, terrorist... or "guerilla war", "freedom fighter"? Like newspapers and prosecutors that refer to statutory transgressions as "rape," the words are meant to obscure, otherwise simple descriptive terms could be used: "militant nationalists today detonated bombs in the Pleasantville subway system" or "a 35-year-old soccer coach was accused of consensual sex with an underage girl, a 15-year-old varsity player." By substituting loaded terms like "terror" and "terrorist" for accurate descriptions of the actions and people involved, press and politicians are using "language that thinks for you." (And one cannot help but note that "the terrorist" replaces "the Jew" as a politically convenient, stateless villain.

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B> War... Bush claims to be our leader in his "perpetual war." But wars, as Gore Vidal reminds us, are conducted against countries, not individuals; if we wanted a war (that is, an armed conflict with a country) we'd logically challenge the state from which came the 9/11 hijackers and their funding-- Saudi Arabia. But as filmmaker Michael Moore demonstrates in Fahrenheit 911, the Bush family's cozy relations with both the House of Saud and the binLaden family make that "war" unlikely. Or a real "war" could be launched against a country that breeds militant extremists, a country led by an unaccountable military dictator and which has Third World nuclear materials yard sales: Pakistan. But Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia, is our ally in the "war" on "terror"! The tragiceventsofseptembereleventh were criminal acts requiring a police (albeit massive in scale) response, not a concocted "war" aimed not at the "evil doers" but at securing Mid-East oil fields for the oil-tycoon junta in Washington.

The enemies of freedom, wherever they are found... is a favorite phrase of Prezdunt Bush; he doesn't mean folks who actually oppose freedom, but rather anyone who does not support his political agenda. "There are," the Prezdunt lectures, "people in Iraq trying to enforce their political will with guns." True enough, but using this definition, Bush's "enemies of freedom" cannot be distinguished from the 100,000-plus US troops occupying Iraq.

Klemperer noted in his book that being persecuted under the Third Reich would be seen as a badge of honor in the Fourth Reich (i.e., after the Nazis were disposed of). Similarly, those who recognize that being a friend of freedom necessarily entails being an enemy of this warmongering administration, will dedicate themselves to avoiding casual, un-thinking, Bush-like use of "terror," "terrorist," "war," and "enemy of freedom." It's the least you can do for your Father-, uh, Home-land....