Bush
a pro in double speak
Elisa
Herrera
In
the early days of the Bush administration,
critics targeted the president for his apparent
ignorance of basic rules of grammar, exemplified
when he addressed audiences with questions
such as "Is our children learning?"
(Jan. 11, 2002)
Authors
and journalists referred to these verbal
flubs as "Bushisms" and compiled
extensive collections of such gaffes for
light-hearted comic relief in the wake of
the 2000 election.
These
days, the words flowing from Bush's mouth
are no laughing matter. Instead, they spread
anxiety not only among nit-picking grammaticians,
but also among average citizens across the
country. The White House has launched a
new brand of Bushisms that go beyond unintentional
assaults upon the English language. These
Bushisms deliberately mangle facts and mutilate
evidence in order to promote an offensive
agenda to deliver even more power and wealth
to the elite's already overflowing coffers.
Take
for instance the Bushism issued on May 1
when Americans were told that the war in
Iraq was a great success and had quickly
reached a conclusion. Contrast this to the
fact that the American death toll in Iraq
has more than doubled since the war "ended"
and Iraqi people continue to witness bullet-ridden
corpses of their loved ones delivered to
their homes in droves.
Ever
since the Sept. 11 tragedy two years ago,
the Bush administration has delivered repeated
Bushisms that allege that Iraq played a
role in the attacks. Yet on Sept. 17 Bush,
Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice went
on record stating that there is no evidence
showing Iraq had any ties to Sept. 11. Furthermore,
they insisted that they never even made
claims of any such link.
Bush's
pre-war rhetoric was saturated with alarming
tales that U.S. intelligence found proof
that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons
of mass destruction. But having plowed through
Iraq, U.S. troops have yet to find any stockpile
of arms or evidence that these arms ever
existed. Following the pattern of increasingly
unsubstantiated and unfeasible claims, it
would not be surprising if the next Bushism
assured Americans that among Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction was a futuristic vaporizing
gun that he apparently used on his enormous
arsenal just before aiming the devastating
ray at himself.
What
is even more shocking than Bush's blatant
disregard for facts and willingness to contradict
himself at the drop of a hat is the mainstream
media's acceptance and promulgation of such
misinformation. The alliance between the
Bush administration and corporate news sources
brings to life an ominous Orwellian nightmare
in which the policy of the state propaganda
machine is to lie to citizens so often and
so unrepentantly that the people begin to
believe.
Sadly,
individuals who question the dictates of
the Bush regime are castigated as traitors
by those who refuse to think for themselves.
When citizens consult alternative media
instead of swallowing the lies continually
fed to the American public, they run the
risk of being labeled irrational and un-patriotic.
Since when did it become un-American to
utilize rights to free speech, support democratic
sources, and think independently?
Elisa
Herrera is a graduate student of history
at Cal State Long Beach.
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