Obama’s belief in the power of words continues
One of Obama’s most enduring characteristics (one he shares with many on the left) has been his belief in the power of words [emphasis mine]:
When the Right, in trying to figure Obama out, says “watch what he does, not what he says,” they’re using a principle that seems self-evident. But it’s not that way for liberals and the Left, who are often far more interested in declarations of intent, in eloquence rather than achievement. If a person has the right goals in mind, if a person sounds like a good person, that’s the most important thing. And if liberals and the soft Left (the hard Left is quite different) are moved so mightily by words and speeches, they tend to conclude that everyone in the world shares that tendency.
Aha, you might ask, but what about Reagan? When conservatives credit Reagan’s bold words in a speech for the fall of the Soviets, they’re making the same mistake, aren’t they? But when Reagan said “tear down this wall” the words were not spoken in isolation. There was conviction behind them, but far more importantly, they were not “mere words.” They were embedded in a lengthy policy of many years’ duration towards the USSR (he made the speech in June of 1987), plus knowledge of Russia’s own internal weaknesses and the ascension of Gorbachev the reformer.
This is not only very typical of left, it’s true of post-modern trends in academia. Obama has long been surrounded by people for whom “text” and “narrative” reign supreme.
But PC academia is about as far as you can get from the sphere of ruthless leaders and nations jockeying for power and position in an armed and very non-abstract world. Does Obama truly believe that the administration’s efforts to verbally re-brand our enemies will matter to anyone except a few English lit professors [emphasis mine]?:
Rogue states” is being pushed aside in favor of the less confrontational “outliers.”
“Islamic radicalism” is being converted to the less religiously freighted “violent extremism.”
And in one of the most important speeches of his presidency, Barack Obama omitted a term that was the Bush administration’s obsession: terrorism ”“ part of a larger effort to de-emphasize the problem in Obama’s relations with Muslim states…
The White House often tries to downplay the changes, but observers say officials must expect that the linguistic shifts will have substantive impact – otherwise they wouldn’t bother with moves that leave Obama so vulnerable to criticism.
“They are taking a significant political risk when they do these kinds of things, when they make any kind of deviation from the status quo,” said Dan Drezner, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. “These sorts of things generate all kinds of blowback. They have to think the blowback is worth it, otherwise making the changes would be both stupid and thankless.”
The administration defends the moves, saying that by needlessly antagonizing or alienating nations and groups, it can make it harder for the U.S. to build alliances against them.
The Obama administration has shown zero understanding of how to build alliances even domestically, much less internationally. But in general, alliances are built by finding common goals and/or by quid pro quos in the real world that appeal to self-interest. Without such grounding in reality, words are flimsy meaningless things—otherwise known as BS.
As for convincing Muslim nations to ally with us against terrorists, they will do so if they find it worth their while. In this endeavor, does Obama truly think anything is served by refusing to use the word “terrorists?”When last I checked, many Muslim countries themselves suffer at the hands of terrorists and are quite Draconian in the methods they use to fight them.
Joe Lieberman seems to get it:
“This is not honest,” Lieberman said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Three thousand Americans were killed not by some amorphous group of violent extremists or environmental extremists or white supremacist extremists. They were violent Islamist extremists motivated and organized by the ideology preached by Osama bin Laden.”
“And unless we’re honest about that,” he said, “we’re not going to be able to defeat this enemy.
Of course, it will take a lot more than honest language to defeat terrorism. But honest language is a requisite step, and dishonest language fools no one. The Obama administration’s refusal to call things by their proper names communicates nothing but pandering and weakness rather than resolve and strength. And even Osama bin Laden knew that the Muslim world admires a strong horse and looks down on the weak.
[NOTE: Therapists often adopt the same verbal ploy Obama is using here. They call it “reframing;” here’s a post I wrote a few years ago about how this phenomenon works in the world of therapy vs. the world of terrorism.]
“And even Obama bin Laden knew that the Muslim world admires a strong horse and looks down on the weak.”
Freudian Slip?
Lame-R: My goodness! I’ll have to blame my keyboard. Must fix that immediately.
Strong Horse? The guy takes a teleprompter to speak to a fourth grade class. I think by now there isn’t a leader of a country of any consequence who take O seriously.
Remember Sarkozy? I’m going to ask him to walk on water and he’ll probably do it?
Now, THAT’s respect.
The believers in Po Mo and PC think reality is just a social construction, a mental projection, so if you change the words you change reality. They believe that by managing the image, they manage reality, by controlling the narrative, they control the reality and by making the news, they make reality.
I think Ray gets close to the heart of the matter.
The left thinks that the ‘masses’ perception is a social construction, so if you change the words you change people’s perception of what reality consists.
They believe that by managing the image that people perceive, they start to manage what people believe reality to be and that by controlling the narrative, they control people’s premises and conception of what reality consists and, finally by controlling the news, they affect and reinforce what people believe reality to be.
Which leads to the consequent question; what is the goal of that manipulation?
In this case, obviously to ‘convince’ the American public that the ‘danger’ of Islamic terrorism is greatly exaggerated. The allaying of fears being necessary to foster acceptance of the coming Iranian nuclear weapons capability and to reduce American support for any unilateral Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iranian facilities, that Israel may be contemplating.
In less specific terms, change that satisfies the ‘liberal useful idiot’ and the acquisition of power by the elite left. All the rest is nuance and details.
It’s the worst kind of magical thinking. How many religions hold (or once held) the belief that the world was created by a Word, and that knowing a thing’s true name gives you power over it? Finding the “Adamic language” — the names Adam gave to stuff in the Garden of Eden — was a perennial preoccupation of Renaissance magi, for instance.
This is really the only way leftist policies make sense. Basic history and elementary economics are no secret, but they continue to believe that if they just come up with the right combination of *words*, suddenly each will give according to his ability and receive according to his need.
Frankly, it gives me a kind of black, bitter satisfaction to realize that the world view of our self-proclaimed Enlightened Betters is basically the same as that of some Stone Age tribe….
Talk is cheap …
By controlling the “words” the MSM got Obama elected and keeps him viable.
To continue after Ray and Geoffrey…
The excuse is often given that milder words are chosen to reduce the offense given to our enemies, so that they might actually negotiate with us. Liberals make this claim, and it does have some truth to it: no sense making others angry unnecessarily. This is much of why they disliked Reagan, because his “mere words” moved in the other direction, toward challenging and confronting our enemies. Even many on the Right consider this to indeed be the liberal motive in euphemism and PC-language. Rush used to say (I haven’t heard him in years) that liberals would always complain “Don’t make ’em mad!”
Yet even this falls short of their full motive, I think. They change the words not only to placate enemies, and not only convince the masses, but also to convince themselves that things aren’t really so bad. Our enemies aren’t terrible and evil, just a little ignorant and having a different POV. Hence the switch from “terrorist” to “freedom fighter,” along with all the other softenings. If they aren’t really evil, then we aren’t obligated to do anything about it, except have meetings and build them some hospitals.
They like to imagine themselves as brave knights, fighting dragons. But real dragons are a bit much for them, so they have to convince themselves that the real dragons aren’t so dangerous – it’s all those small lizards here in America that are the problem. They’ll save us from those, of course, and tell us later how they stood bravely against the fearsome Cheneylizard, and the dastardly snakes on the flags of the Tea Partiers.
I become increasingly convinced that liberalism is sustained by individual psychological and social factors rather than by any external argument or data.
Darn. Screwed up the bolding. It was supposed to be only the word “themselves.”
What normal person doesn’t feel manipulated by such language adjustments? I expect it in a cheesy infomercial. Not from my country’s leaders.
AVI,
“If they aren’t really evil, then we aren’t obligated to
do anything aboutconfront it.Moral cowardice is close to the heart of the ‘onion’ that is pacifistic/liberalism. The very heart of the matter I believe is secularism and the nihilism of post modernism.
Which posits that people can’t be ‘evil’ because not only would its opposite ‘good’ have to exist but each would have to have a source.
Neither of which can exist, independent of humanity, without acceptance of the concept of objective reality.
Which post modernism specifically rejects.
Thus, Nietzsche’s “God is dead”.
“I’ve become increasingly convinced that liberalism is sustained by individual psychological and social factors rather than by any external argument or data.”
Absolutely. All ism’s of the left spring from spiritual rejection of God’s direction and the consequent arrested emotional development characterized by the child’s cry of protest, “But it’s not fair!”
Those on the far left invariably suffer from the delusion that they can do better than the rabble (those clinging to their guns & bibles) if only the recalcitrant, less ‘enlightened’ would get out of the way and let their betters rule over them.
Such as they are best characterized by Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ in which Lucifer states, “Better to rule in hell, than serve in Heaven”.
Darn. I screwed up the italics! 🙂
AVI,
Your description fits perfectly with the discussions here in Germany since several of their soldiers have been killed in Kundus. “We are supposed to be building schools and hospitals. Why don’t we negotiate with the Taliban. War never solved anything.” Given the general ignorance here about what is actually hapening, it makes me want to scream. This horrible need to be better, not just than their parents, but than the Amis is certainly a problem that cries for a competent therapist.
This is interesting:
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/05/wortham-on-obama-disaster-stunning.html
…War never solved anything.
Funny that Germans should say that. War certainly solved one major problem that the rest of the world had with Germany. I doubt that the older generation that still remembers WW2 would say this.
waltj, I had the same immediate thought.
We might add slavery to the list as well.
Yet I am not sure we could count on the WWII generation in Germany to be the ones to get it. Rationalizations have burrowed in very deep over there (as they do for all of us in this fallen world), and the older generation there has slipped into the thinking of War itself being the cause of their misery, which they know but those stupid Americans don’t, because they saw it and we didn’t. War has taken on the attributes of a plague, which descends on a people like an impersonal force, rather than the result of injustice and aggression. Something like that idea is common on the left here as well: “War is not the answer,” as if war were nothing but a random senselessness which descends on both parties of a conflict.
I find it ironic the word elite is often associated with the mental masturbation that passes for critical thought in the echo chamber between the ivory towers and the corridors of power.
Amused Observer…I agree and would add “Self-Caricature” and..Bunny Hole..! Aliiicccceeeee…!
The Washington ‘Elite’ hold world records for Massive Self-Regard based upon next to nothing.
Yes, AVI, I’d also add slavery to the list of problems that war helped to solve.
I’ve got a different take than you on the Germans, though. All of the older ones I’ve talked to, beginning in the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, were very well aware of why they suffered the way they did. These were men who actually fought, or women married to men who did. Most were repentant, a couple weren’t, but all knew damned well why the USAAF and RAF turned their cities into rubble. Now, that generation’s younger siblings–the ones who had some memories of the war but were too young to fight–seemed to me to be the ones that rationalized war into a kind of plague, as you said. They’re the ones who resented my presence as an American soldier in their country in a way that their older siblings didn’t, and who tried to make me believe that an outbreak of war in Europe would be my and my fellow soldiers’ fault. Expat, you live there now and seem to have a good grasp of local opinion. Care to weigh in?