Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Zane Hits the Jackpot
Thank you, Zane. You said it very well. Couldn't have done better myself. But I can at least make some bad metaphors and pad the zinger with some fluffy commentary.
Logically speaking, Bush's speechwriters messed up bigtime on this one. It would have more defensible to blame other nations' broken promises for our invasion of Iraq rather than lay claim to a morally superior, ironclad devotion to our own. But this poses the rhetorically unpopular spectre of arguing in failure space rather than success space, so it probably wasn't even considered.
I think what makes Zane's hypocricy spotlight so damn appealing is that this kind of doublespeak is not just emblematic, but fundamental to our current adminstration's workings: lack of credibility is more a postulate than a theorem or corollary, an underlying force rather than a peculiar deux-ex-machina curiousity arising from the Bush II factory.
Bush saying "no one can now doubt the word of America" was like the lying logic-problem character saying "I never lie," an "aha!" moment for anyone who was paying attention. Never has this principle been more eleganty stated than in last night's State of the Union speech.
And thank you, again, Zane, for triggering this realization of mine. You totally Rockenbaugh.
posted 6:25 PM
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