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Tuesday, Sep 12, 2006
Plumbing the Depths of Inadequacy
Ian Faith: I really think you're just making much too big a thing out of it.
Derek Smalls: Making a big thing out of it would have been a good idea.
Any memorial is inadequate to express the full extent of the loss of loved ones. Bush, as a specialist in inadequacy, helps the WTC memorial reach new depths of inadequacy.
Monday, Sep 11, 2006
Fun with thesauraus.reference.com
From the WSJ today, Rummy had a few words to say about how we had to invade Iraq to secure victory against bin Laden, or something like that. Can anyone really tell what that man is talking about?
In the passage below, it's quite disturbing to see that Rumsfeld is calling for us to be more like our enemy. Further, the wording doesn't quite capture what Rummy really has in mind, based on observations of his actions over the past five years. The word, "confident," doesn't really strike the right Rumsfeldian tone of self-assuredness.
While, I can't do anything about his desire to be more alqeadariffic, I can wordsmith the passage to better capture the essence of Rumsfeld. The beauty of the English language is the vocabulary. There are so many words to chose from to obtain just the right shading to a particular phrase.
arrogant, authoritarian, bumptious, cavalier, cocksure, credulous, doctrinaire, dogmatic, fanatical, fervid, haughty, heedless, hubristic, imperious, irreflective, monomaniacal, narcissistic, obdurate, overweening, peremptory, pigheaded, prejudiced, presumptuous, self-deluded, self-righteous, smug, supercilious, swaggering, unrealistic, vainglorious, zealous.
I tried to select just one word from the list that best captures the relevant connotations. But there's an admixture of fanaticism, dogmatism, ignorance, and arrogance that defies distillation into a single word.
And now for something completely different ...
a man who can type and fellate at the same time.
Where your Sept. 9 editorial "Hot Topic: Five Years On" so eloquently laid out the justification for going to war in Iraq, you nevertheless had a lapse. Yes, the Bush administration overemphasized WMDs; but Charles Duelfer's report not only mitigated that apprehension, his findings validated the underlying premise of that rationale.
What many people overlook about this president is the scope of his understanding about the Middle East. And the reason they do so is that they lack his perspicuity. Indeed, the indispensable ingredient for any understanding of democracy is that it will swing from inertia to radicalism before it takes hold. This is precisely what the president's critics don't grasp, and if they do, they are purposely leading the American people to impatiently second-guess the president's judgment.
The task for Mr. Bush, therefore, is to frame the issues -- and form the perception of the people -- to see the long-range picture so that they don't fall into the trap of complacency and self-doubt that is the undoing of any civilization. What the Democrats are doing is to stunt the peoples' historical recollection of who they are in favor of their own political gains. What the American people need, if they need it at all, is a reaffirmation from the president that their libertarian ideals are the manifest destiny of all people. And that this belief is the universal salvation that radical Islam is not.
Richard Reay
Riverdale, N.Y.
WSJ
And as I explained to my 8th grade history class at a Roman Catholic grammar school, "manifest destiny" is code for "it's okay to kill brown people who get in our way, because God's on our side."
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