Was Orwell a “low talker”?

“…politics demeans language…”

“Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”

I don’t know if this is an example of demeaning language. I guess I don’t view it that way. To be effective, language must be plastic, mutable, like clay, so that it can be moulded and shaped as desired. So I’d propose that language coming out of this administration isn’t demeaned, but rather simply is an accurate reflection of the thinking and intentions of those who issue the language. They are market-tested, focus-grouped, cut-and-polished, lies.

An admirer of Orwell seems a perfect fit for this administration, which is reaching new heights in the development of Newspeak.

This from Tom Dispatch in June of 2004:

“Congress lacks authority … to set the terms and conditions under which the president may exercise his authority as commander in chief to control the conduct of operations during a war…Congress may no more regulate the president’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield. Accordingly, we would construe [the law] to avoid this difficulty and conclude that it does not apply to the president’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.” (From a 56-page memo, “Detainee Interrogation in the Global War on Terrorism” written by a legal team for the Secretary of Defense on the eve of the Iraq War.)

“Congress shall have the power … to declare war and make rules concerning captures on land and water … to define offenses against the law of nations [and] to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.” (From the Constitution, David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt, Lawyers Ascribed Broad Power to Bush on Torture, the Los Angeles Times)

Excellent catch and critique, EW.

Mukasey’s choice of Orwell seems as descriptive of his department as the Shrubster’s decision to closely identify himself with A Charge to Keep, a painting that the ever inquiring Mr. Bush wrongly believes shows Methodist missionaries crossing the Alleghenies on horseback. In reality, it depicts a horse thief a few clouds of dust ahead of the law and cowboy justice.

Mukasey’s choice of Orwell/Blair is remarkable for its intentional ambiguity. He either rebukes his president, predecessor, department and staff. Or, he admits his department’s Orwellian mission to be the Ministry of Truth. His credulous description of the reasons behind his choice suggests the latter. But the purposeful ambiguity adds to the mystery of this passive-aggressive functionary, rather like his knowing that water boarding is torture, but choosing never to say it out loud. His actions remind me of the scores of lawyers who advised the Catholic hierarchy for decades about how to deal with their “altar boy” problem.

Boy, I take issue with this point:

To be effective, language must be plastic, mutable, like clay, so that it can be moulded and shaped as desired.

“To be effective”…. to what end? A great deal of manipulation is predicated upon slippery language.

What is this effectiveness you’re talking about? Language is a tool. Speech is a tool. Thinking is a tool. “Effectiveness” is in the eye of the beholder.

Tell me you aims, your ethics, your values. Let me see your thinking, your behavior. Use the tools available to build your case, whatever you case may be. But please use language and thinking that are clear, not muddy, and let’s keep discourse, if possible, in a realm where we can work toward understanding one another, not hoodwinking each other.

Wish I had more time to elaborate at the moment. But I leave this issue in the capable hands of many who frequent this blog.

emptywheel,

it probably is hard for the average lit major to fathom the many dimensions of George Orwell, and in particular the twisting of science and fantasy.

But a few quotes show his mind’s breath:

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”

“For a creative writer possession of the “truth” is less important than emotional sincerity.”

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

I would hope that AG Michael Mukasey shows the face of Orwell for the reason that one I love dearly hangs this next quote by him above his bunk, for Orwell can make sense of this crazy world we live in.

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. “

The progressives/liberal/democrats would have more to worry about if AG Michael Mukasey hung a portrait of Rudyard Kipling.

Mukasey’s choice of Orwell/Blair is remarkable for its intentional ambiguity. He either rebukes his president, predecessor, department and staff. Or, he admits his department’s Orwellian mission to be the Ministry of Truth.

Kinda like Hillary describing herself as a Rorchack (p?) test, people project onto to her depnding on thier own internal view.

I wonder i Mukasey’s case, if it is not a bit of both: recognition and rebuke?

Boy, I take issue with this point:

Let me try to express it another way. I was trying to say that I don’t view WH double-speak (”clear-skies”) as demeaning english as a written or spoken language. Rather, I see their language as an accurate reflection of the content, character, and intentions of the administration.

Have you lost your senses? Orwell is widely (though not universally) regarded as paragon of moral uprightness in the political sphere, as well as an unusually down-to-earth, gifted writer. While the Mukasey we know may have little or no right to associate himself with that Orwell, fondness on Mukasey’s part for that Orwell almost certainly was what he had in mind. Where the heck is ambiguity in this — that is, in Mukasey’s intent? Also, some people seem to be stuck on “1984″ as the only thing that Orwell brings to mind. Even if that were so, “1984″ is as far as could be imagined from an endorsement of the society it depicts. “Animal Farm,” anyone?

Somewhat OT, but a response to your comment in a thread yesterday about a brain chip. Took a while to find this as the author co-wrote it under a synonym for reasons unknown.

INTERFACE by Stephen Bury (Neal Stephenson)

Written in 1994, but when I first encountered it, the 2004 election cycle was in full swing. Chilling parallels throughout.

Well, yes and no. Orwell was spooked enough by what he saw of Comintern duplicity in Spain that he was willing to name names during and after the Second World War, which bothers even many of his admirers, on both the right and the left, and he has many of both. His essay on politics and the language is brilliant, and I suppose that should be what matters.

I’m a bit more bothered to read that the man who couldn’t give a straight answer to the questions about waterboarding is appropriating the legacy of one of the Nuremberg prosecutors. I don’t think that’s a good sign at all, although I sit to be corrected by anyone who knows Justice Jackson’s record. Appropriation is the problem, though, and I think that Orwell would have recognized that. Ambiguity dons the mantle of the unambiguously virtuous? Very worrisome.

“Enhanced interrogation” is a direct translation from the original German, “verschaefte Vernehmung”, a term the Nazis used in official documents to describe their torture of prisoners, obfuscating who did what to whom, on whose orders. It was useful because, being good Germans, Nazi bureaucrats kept detailed records of everything they did. Those records, ultimately, led many of their leaders to prison or the hangman - which explains, in part, Mr. Cheney’s disdain for public records (as opposed to those he keeps in his Tweety-sized safe).

Enhanced interrogation is classic Orwellian newspeak. It suggests a positive, polite treatment of those from whom you would like to learn a little more. It avoids creating a mental picture of what might be involved. In reality, it refers to torture, but with the blood, sweat, puke, fear and excrement washed away before they reach the pages of the public record.

On the discussion between TheraP and CasualObserver, I think the Bushistas use of language does describe their purposes, but only indirectly. They have abused language as much as the environment, the treasury, the middle and lower classes, and world order. They have stripped words of their meaning - the definition of “newspeak” - and explanatory value. That leaves only the ability to manipulate the thoughts of others who are still trying to make their words correspond with their usual and customary meanings, and still trying to make their school civics version of government and authority match what they see in Washington.

Regarding Larry’s comment, a man who assumes a position requires him to avoid admitting that waterboarding is torture may be a fan of Orwell/Blair’s prose; he isn’t following his politics.

Mukasey’s roommate at Yale was Joe Lieberman, so who knows what he
really thinks via the Orwell portrait… all kinds of mischief has
been done in his name, but something seems out of place for this
legal scholar to have a political writer as his icon rather than
Holmes or Brandeis. His refusal to answer simple questions under oath
seem sketchy as well, something tells me his selection of Orwell is
a send up, a neocon inside joke for us to decode.

IIRC correctly, Eric Blair (aka, George Orwell) illuminated how the English language allows verbs (action words) to be… ‘disempowered’, become ‘deactivated’ as they are altered into nouns (subject words).

This has some very serious cognitive implications, and if I had a magic wand, I’d grant Mukasey more time with reading researchers, neurologists, and child development researchers. Since that’s not possible, I’ll have to content myself with commenting on a blog…

Reminder — nominalizations work like this:
Considerations of Mukasey’s views on Orwell were analyzed in a discussion on a thread at EW’s today.

(In other words, when a verb is shifted into it’s noun form, we say it has been ‘nominalized’):
consider –> consideration
analyze –> analysis
discuss –> discussion

What Orwell intuitively grasped, but lacked the research evidence to drive home was actually a point that neurology and reading research may help explain — it is ‘cognitively onerous’ for most brains to recognize, interpret, process, and synthesize text that contains a lot of nominalizations. If Orwell were writing today, when fMRI machines can take photos of a brain caught in the act of reading, he might have some good, photographic evidence to support his claims.

It’s hard for the brain to process nominalizations because they’re abstract, and they seem inert. They make the brain fall into ’snooze mode’. (And if I were a John Woo, or participating in a system of amoral behavior, I sure wouldn’t want anyone to wake up and pay attention, so as Orwell noted, heavily nominalized text is quite useful for masking power.)

To elucidate the issue of the ’snoozy brain’: draw me a picture of what ‘considerations’ look like … are they square? round? purple?
Although your brain may conjure up the spectre of someone with a furrowed brow, that image is NOT a ‘consideration’. You literally cannot draw what a ‘consideration’ looks like, so the brain continues in its snooze.
Try to sketch ‘discussion’, or ‘analyzed’.
More brain snooziness…
Although we can draw people discussing, or analzying — we cannot draw ‘a discussion’, nor can we draw ‘an analzyed’.

When the brain is in ’snooze mode’ the eyes glide over the mess of nominalizations, a bit like this: ‘yadda, yadda, Mukasey, yadda, Orwell, yadda, yadda, yadda…. today.’ Yawwwwn… (think I’ll go change the oil in the car…)…

In contrast, denominalized, the sentence might look like this:
Mukasey’s views on Orwell were discussed, considered, and analyzed on a thread at EW’s today.

Okay, stuff is happening! The parts of the brain that involve motion, activity, wake up just a tiny bit — as if it shifts into something closer to this: ‘oh? they’re discussing? they’re analyzing? what’s happening? I wanna know; I’m curious! I’m gonna wake up and pay attention!’

I’ve no idea what Mukasey’s interest in Orwell stems from, nor what it means.
But if he veered off and read some recent reading research, or some of the implications of neurology for how people process information, he’d implement writing courses at DoJ.

Law is made of words.
When those words are nominalized, or when a high portion of them are terms that are extremely ambiguous, it’s a reasonable bet that people do criminal, stupid things because they literally don’t understand the linkages between cause and effect. They’re unanchored.

I am not excusing John Woo, nor Addington, nor any of those wretches for one instant.
But I would strongly that they are part of a very dysfunctional system that has some grim, if intriguing, implications for a cluster of topics that cohere around ethics, legal writing, neurology, and reading research.

EW, and other commenters, thanks for once again indulging my too-long, too detailed comments. You all deserve to be canonized for your saintly patience.

We don’t know why Mukasey chose these portraits to hang in his office. Perhaps someone should ask him.

However, they could easily serve as reminders of how, regardless of the nuance and complexity and ambiguity of some aspects of life, at bottom, there are moral principles, some of them enshrined in the constitution, which should inform the AG in his role.

So, maybe his intent was to (mis)appropriate their symbolism, maybe not.

BTW: If you read much neurology or psych research, it sure looks like Hillary is absolutely correct about being a Rorhsach.

Personally, I’d have a better hunch about Mukasey if I knew what kind of literature he reads. If he’s read Coetzee (”Waiting for the Barbarians“) or Makine (”Dreams of My Russian Summers), or Bulgakov (“The Master and Margarita”) or any of the Russian novelists, then I’d wager he’s being slyly ironic and reminding himself of what he’s really up against.

It’s no accident that Scott Horton at Harper’s covers literature, as well as legal issues. They overlap. Hugely.

(Quick! Someone tell Condi Rice!
Scott Horton recently reported that Condi doesn’t read novels; how anyone can possibly be ‘a Soviet expert’ without a good,solid background in Russian lit, plus a lot of continuous reading of ongoing literature is simply not consistent with what we know about the development of expertise. I think TheraP will support me on this point. )

Shit, I’m no Russian lit major, but even I know about the importance of Russian lit, for Chrissakes (!).
I’ll bet Hillary knows it, too.
No wonder the wingnuts hate her ;-))

My instict was for juxtaposition of the thinkers in those two frames. I thought Jackson too subtle in Youngstown 1952, and Orwell a figure of his own difficult time; though many folks cite the important writings of those two prominent individuals. In a school near Guernica I took a literature class by a professor whose brother and family in 1937 had been from that town a short distance from the university; in my youthful student days this served as an early glimpse of how families forget the effects of civil society in strife. As long after 1937 as the mid to late 1960s, the winners of that rebellion opted to leave a national university’s buildings unrepaired many years after peace had taken sway; students in that institution could see artillery pocked buildings across the road from the letters and sciences faculty, a mute and stark reminder of what thought control portends. A lot of the issues fueling that divisive time of civil war in Iberia remain beneath the surface in western societies still, though we are fortunate to have had the Orwells, Tolkiens, Hemingways, to help us see meaning in the hopes and concerns that matter in those days to thoughtful people and writers.

Maybe Mukasey simply aspires to a direct style, and favors that in RHJackson’s writing from the bench. But I think the pairing of Jackson to Orwell’s memory is a way of depicting the difficulty of extracting intent and meaning from the specious writings it is Mukasey’s responsibility to review in his new post. Nevertheless, it is probably worth memorializing once again the contorted prose Mukasey has authored, in this example a 172pp effort following his AGnomination hearing. The passage cited below responds to the majority chair’s first question. Leahy has talked in his written followup interrogatory about brutality in jails, and has selected from a list of tortures the one Leahy considers most illegal, among a set of tortures all of which are illicit under many laws in this country and internationally as well. Mukasey writes the following dissimilating parsing to disappear Leahy’s humane perspective:

< <<br /> …As I testified, any discussion of coercive interrogation techniques necessarily involves a discussion of and a choice among bad alternatives. I was and remain loath to discuss and opine on any of those alternatives at this stage for the following three principal reasons: First, I have not been made aware of the details of any interrogation program to the extent that any such program may be classified and thus do not know what techniques may be involved in any such program…Second, for the reasons that I believe our intelligence community has explained in detail, I would not want any statement of mine to provide our enemies with a window into the limits or countours of any interrogation program we may have in place…Third, I would not want any uninformed statement of mine to present our own professional interrogators in the field, who must perform their duty under the most stressful conditions, or those charged with reviewing their conduct, with either a threat or a promise that could influence their performance in a way inconsistent with the proper limits of any interrogation program they are charged with carrying out.
>> at pp2-3

I think you are mistaking George Orwell (Blair) for the horrors of which he wrote as a warning to us all. When it comes to omniscient and oppressive government, a true fan of Orwell would be fine; unfortunately, our government is being run by fans of the fictional horrors Orwell wrote about.

Wonderful comment; at 18 too.

That is really interesting. Years ago, my law partner and I decided that we would never use adjectives or adverbs in our briefs. Instead, we focus on finding the right verb, active voice, and tuned to the points we are making. Later, we stopped using “nominalized” words, not knowing that term, because they seemed weak and didn’t work with our verbs. We try to use the brief to convey the technical points of law and use oral argument to convey the emotional aspects of the case. This keeps our technical writing short, and, we think, it holds interest for the reader.

Sigh… that part where I thanked you for ’saintly patience’…?
Thx

Will have to ponder JohnLopresti’s comment further before making comments.

Wonderful comments. I draw the same distinctions you’ve drawn, but think of them as “action language” (which promotes a sense of agency, responsibility for actions) versus “jargon” which can obfuscate and make a person “appear” to be saying something while really… as you say, putting us to sleep. (alternatively they appear to know whereof they speak… but the jargon makes it clear they can mouth words… but are stringing meaningless phrases together… and really don’t have a handle on the topics they’re addressing)

I read and reread Animal Farm as a child and I think it seeped into my sense of right and wrong. Along with so much else of course.

While I read EW’s comment (prior thread) about Hillary’s campaign thus far being “brilliant,” for myself I find the attacks and counterattacks - and the language distortion involved in them - to be disturbing in a way that I can’t completely explain. Maybe the Rorschach (this is the correct spelling!) comment is due to things like this. Some find them brilliant. And others are put off in the same way they feel put off by Rovian tactics. And it’s got something to do with language and being confused by the twists and turns… at times attacking… later distorting an attack.

Yes, there is much to learn from neuroscience, from unconscious factors, from linguists and philosophers of language. This is very complicated.

But we all know clarity when we read it and hear it. And we all can recognize propaganda, obfuscation, manipulation … even if we can’t always pinpoint what is disturbing in the language.

The wisest people I have ever met communicate very simply.. and in simply words can say a great deal.

At the same time there are manipulative people, bent on gaining an edge through confusion or domination. I honestly haven’t thought these things through much until this very thread. But I am convinced that what we are discussing right now, the conversation that EW started on this thread, is very, very important. Crucial, I think, to getting back to the Rule of Law versus the “rule of rove” - or whatever term we come up with that encapsulates both law-breaking and language-distortion for the purpose of gaining subtle control over voting behavior (whether of citizens or legislators) as well as legal judgments. There is something so dangerous and insidious that we are attempting to understand and counteract.

Perhaps someone should ask him.

The dilemma is that a reply delivered in newspeak generates a Nixonian event. It would not mean what its words ordinarily mean to those who don’t speak newspeak, which is the purpose of speaking newspeak, thereby deceiving without lying. Which is a favorite way to avoid perjury and stay out of jail.

On the recurring theme of what Hillary sees in Rorshach’s ink blots, I have no clue or interest. Bill’s friends around the campfire, however, probably would love to know what he sees in his ink blots.

language as an accurate reflection of the content, character, and intentions

Not sure I saw that concept at all in your first comment. Nevertheless, I have selected that phrase you used, which I think I can mostly agree with. (see my analysis and amendment below)

I have selected just that phrase, because it can be applied across settings and people. And it suggests, and I would agree, that one can assess the character and intentions of someone by taking a look at how they speak. Actions would be the “content” - IMHO - and they too reflect a person’s character and intentions. Or you could think of “speech” as another kind of action, in which case you’ve subsumed both into the same category… and then you use that to assess character and intentions.

It is upon this basis, I believe, that we judge a candidate or an office holder or anyone at all.

Words matter, as I’ve said before. They matter a great deal.

Not to rule out other things that matter, such as images, behavior, etc.

@ 11: watercarrier4diogenes, thanks for the link

…They have stripped words of their meaning - the definition of “newspeak” - and explanatory value.

Yes, exactly.

That leaves only the ability to manipulate the thoughts of others who are still trying to make their words correspond with their usual and customary meanings,…

Well, I imagine there have been mutliple reactions to their Orwellian speech. Some have been fooled no doubt. Some have been confused. But clearly many others have experienced a deep revulsion, including myself. I think the one that really sent me personally over the edge was the “Patriot Act”.

Again, in my view, the empty, condradictory language style that this Admin. has chosen to use is itself data, or information, that is encoded in their communications, and reveals a lot about them.

Maybe I was in the corporate world too long — but my first thought when I heard about the pictures was, “Jeepers, doesn’t he have pictures of his wife and kids to hang?”

He’s making a statement, it’s pointed. What is it that a Jew of Belarussian heritage would say in hanging these pictures?

Perhaps we’re parsing too finely. Actions speak louder than words — or pictures. We’re talking about the American Jew of Belarussian heritage who dismissed a case by Holocaust victims’ families in deference to this administration’s preference for “voluntary resolution” of Holocaust claims, and the same man who’s defended the Patriot Act.

EW and John Lopresti have both referred to the Spanish Civil War today.

On a hopeful note, the current Socialist Prime Minister of Spain is the grandson of someone shot by the Falange. And his willingness to seek unity and not revenge is something we could all study. It’s not the only example in history or literature. But to me, it comes back to the Rule of Law. The importance of seeking to redress wrongs through legal means, means which are out in the open, which imply some kind of personal transformation and desire to take the high road.

What a wonderful thread!

That is the question. Don’t ask Mukasey what he thinks of Justice Jackson — that will just elicit sentimentalisms.

Ask Mukasey to answer some of the questions that Justice Jackson answered. There’s the test.

Perhaps we’re parsing too finely.

This is the result of so much secrecy in the bush labyrinth. We are left to parse words and images and the breadcrumbs, representing secret behaviors, in an effort to see the real picture. So much has gone wrong and been kept secret. We are in such darkness that we are reduced to “reading the tea leaves” to use the apt name of rOTL.

And it is just this kind of task that EW seems so well suited for. And excellent sleuths have been attracted to this task, like iron filings to a magnet.

“Rule of Rove” is a good name that highlights the junction among Orwell, the abuse of language he observed being practiced by most governments, including his own, and the office of the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.

Orwell observed that governments abuse language in order to obscure their actions and avoid consequences for them. That’s not just a feature of the Cheney/Bush presidency, it’s a defining characteristic, particularly as it applies to the Department of Justice.

That puts Mukasey on the hot seat for prominently displaying Orwell’s image next to Justice Jackson’s. The juxtaposition promises reform; it may also be a smarmy in-joke among neo-cons. Mukasey may imagine himself able to resuscitate the DOJ’s law enforcement role, and he may be working hard to clean up its staffing, procedures and prosecutorial choices. But what we see from the outside continues to be newspeak about waterboarding, FOIA, FISA, Congressional inquiries generally, and the purported power of the president to ignore whatever laws irritate him most.

Massacio, I sure don’t want to hijack this thread, but believe that it is very much on topic to respond to a couple of points you make…

First, I don’t have the luxury of access to an fMRI machine, nor do I have the luxury of doing research; but I’m finally starting to get damn envious of those who do ;-))
Consequently, I don’t have the luxury of confirming the evidence of what I might conject in what follows… (You have now been warned.)

I’ve a hunch that you win most of your legal cases, and I’d guess that simply from what you write about your use of VERBS.

Your astuteness in focusing on VERBS (action words), drives other thought processes, and forces your brain to FOCUS on key issues, related topics., and causal linkages. In other words, using VERBS probably helps you ‘think more efficiently, think more productively’.

The research now supports pretty broadly different TYPES of cogntive processes: different parts of our brains process linguistic information (those of us who read and speak English do this roughly within an inch of our left ear), and imagery is processed in a different … ’subnetwork’. The questions then revolve around where in your brain the info gets processed, and how efficiently you process that info.

To simplify atrociously, but make things more manageable:
Think of your ’snoozy brain’ reading nominalizations. Think of a dim, slightly pulsing set of neurons somewhere near your left ear, running up into your forehead, then down to the middle of your brain (the emotional region). The brain’s just not very active, and also — at least equally important — not very much of your brain is active.
Snoozy.
Snoozy even in the ‘linguistic’ regions.
When you are done reading, you probably don’t have a very clear recollection of what you read -it’s just not all that important. It’s just not… memorable BECAUSE you didn’t really process it all that much in the first place…

This is getting really long, so I’m going to break for a new comment –
With a quick, sheepish, blushing apology.

But I truly believe that what EW is saying in her post — about the linkages between reading and writing and THINKING — are critically important, so I hope my attempts to elaborate may be tolerated… 8-0

Not sure I saw that concept at all in your first comment.

I guess I’m viewing ’speech’ or ‘language’ here very dispassionately. I’m arguing (and agreeing with you) that speech is a tool, used for transmitting information. That first post was reacting to EW’s use of the word ‘demeaning’. I don’t think language can be ‘demeaned’, any more than can, say, gravity can be. Language and speech–per se–is not good, or bad. It simply is.

Wholeheartedly concur that this is a very important topic… didn’t mean to spend my day here, but yikies… this thread hits on something that really needs much more discussion.

What’s so bad about putting up a picture of George Orwell? Old Keith seems to be mistaking the writer for the characters he creates. Yikes.

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. . . . Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

(Politics and the English Language, George Orwell)

GOOD NEWS! bmaz to become the next Tom Brady! Okay, an aging, 5′8″, balding, crabby Tom Brady, but still….

Add Victoria’s Secret models to the horde of Super Bowl week’s celebrities. Adriana Lima, Selita Ebanks, Izabel Goulart and Karolina Kurkova will host an invitation-only gifting suite from noon to 6 p.m. Feb. 1 and 2 at Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain.

Walking distance from my front door. Got to get an invite to this!

“Jeepers, doesn’t he have pictures of his wife and kids to hang?”

Exactly. I’m sure Mukasey has them, but he’s chosen not to make them a part of his office. For someone whose job in enforcing the law is to balance personal liberty and communal, family, security, that’s worrisome. That he appears content to sit on his branch, grinning like the Cheshire cat, rather than speak plainly about waterboarding and other topics, is more worrisome still.

My hope is that he imagines himself to be more effective at implementing reform because he’s working quietly and thereby avoiding neo-con flack. My surmise is that he needs a bigger boat, and that Cheney and his acolytes, like Bradbury, won’t let him near the things that most need reform, regardless of how unassuming he may be.

I realize I posted this in a thread below that may not get as many visitors. (also I just cross posted at Salon.com)

It’s slightly OT for here, but I was struck by the dates of the auction of the US 700mHz broadband.
Wondering if there is some way to connect it to telcom immunity and eavesdropping on Americans.

from Wikipedia (my bold):

“The United States 700 MHz FCC wireless spectrum auction is being conducted by the FCC and started on 24 January 2008 for the rights to operate the 700 MHz frequency band in the United States. The details of precisely how the auction will take place has been the subject for debate between several telecommunications companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and startup Frontline Wireless, as well as the internet giant Google. Much of the debate has swirled around the “open access” requirements set down by the Second Report and Order released by the FCC determining the process and rules for the auction. All bidding must be commenced by 28 January by law. The auction will be named Auction 73.”

what the heck is a ‘gifting suite’? (and how can I get me one?)

I think its’ the new economy’s version of Detroit’s famous marketing threesome: boats, booze and babes.

Some of us have been acutely aware for some time of that 700Mhz auction in the background.

If a non-telecom company acquires that bandwidth AND they can offer a communications system that’s outside the existing telecom system, the telcos are going to hurt. BADLY.

I personally do not believe it’s coincidence that there is so much pressure on immunity right now. Lawsuits coupled with a massive threat to income is a death threat to the business model of telcos — and likely to some cable providers, too.

So several comments earlier, I tried to express the idea of your dimly lit, slightly pulsing, snoozy brain reading nominalizations - and not even bothering to remember what you’ve read.

Well…does the brain always look like that when it’s reading?
Nope.
Sometimes, more areas ‘light up’ and they have a lot of energy lighting up those neurons.

So now, imagine a brain that’s lighting up brightly near the left ear, with neurons lighting up in the back of your head as well (where you recall and process visual content, images), and more neurons are lighting up in regions inside your forehead, and — because you’re having some sweet thoughts — the ’sweet thought’ neurons light up and probably thread up through your forehead and then wind back down sort of near the center of your skull to where it’s likely that your emotions are ‘processed’.

So instead of a snoozy, dimly pulsing left side low-energy snooze, you have –
A wildly lit up, lots of activity in lots of brain regions, enjoyable experience.
My term for this brain symphony is ‘good novel’.

How does a good novel trigger all this activity? How can so much neurological commotion be triggered by the sight of mere words?

To elucidate: think of a place that you’ve visited and really love.
I’ll offer an example:
Suppose your novel is set in St Petersberg, Russia. Suppose that you’ve actually been there, you’ve walked along the river and through the streets. You remember a good meal at a small, dimly lit restaurant; perhaps you have a painting on your wall purchased on the streets and you recall with pleasure working with a translator to try and understand why the artist painted the picture, who it’s of, etc, etc.
Further suppose that a main character in that novel reminds you of a good friend… someone you really have many associations with — it’s the number of associations, and the sort of associations, that are key factors.

So as you read this wonderful novel, your mind conjures up memories of your walks along the river in St Petersberg…

Now stop.
The river and the scene you have lighting up your visual cortex in the back of your brain is NOT ON THE PAGE! It’s only in your memory… but no sooner do you pick up that novel, than you are ’swept away’… in large part b/c your brain is making so many associations with info that you already have stored inside your brain.

Well, there’s part of the explanation for why your brain is lighting up all over the place.
But it does NOT explain what THAT LANGUAGE is triggering so much activity.

To elaborate on the point that I think EW is making — what is it about THAT LANGUAGE, the language of that novel, that is so evocative, that so clearly helps you think about cause, effect, consequences, nuance…?

The answers almost certainly lie in grammar and syntax. (We’ll leave vocabulary aside for the moment.)

A novel is written to convey action, to convey events, to convey changes… so there are lots of verbs/sentence in most novels. (And if there aren’t, then I suggest you put that novel down and move on, but I digress…)

But if your writing doesn’t use many verbs, there’s not much action.

—-
So back to your mention of how you approach legal writing…

Using verbs with care is probably helping you FOCUS your thoughts on the key, relevant factors. Because you are not using nominalizations to go all wishy-washy and ‘brain snoozy’, you are better able to keep that focus as you think through the complications, issues, and details of the legal case and the arguments that you must build.

Using VERBS already requires your brain to link to neurons that do MORE than simply process sounds — using verbs almost certainly moves the neuron activity out of the left region or your brain, and off into your cerebellum, and to other regions. (The cerebellum is a big mystery, but it is hugely important for music, rhythm, movement, and we don’t yet know how complex it is.)

Using VERBS probably helps you to synthesize, and crystalize cause/effect because now you are building a more cohesive, ‘active’ cognitive structure (which you call a ‘case’ or an ‘argument’).

So if I’m a client in need of a lawyer, do I want you representing me?
Or someone with a snoozy brain?

I’ll take you in a heartbeat (and hope that I can afford your services ;-))

I’ll finish in a final comment below…

The great thing about this site is that we don’t have to apologize for having long, complicated thoughts. Those not interested don’t have to read them, and the rest of us can learn.

The odd part for me (see my 22), is that I still use adverbs and adjectives and weak verbs and nouns in ordinary speech, and in first drafts, 20 years into the project. I try to prune them out of comments and they show up anyway. There must be something comforting about that easy flow of drivel.

Wow. This from encyclopedia.com:

On the matter of foreign policy, Bush’s use of the term “democracy” is truly Orwellian. On the one hand, he fashions a unilateral foreign policy that rejects dialogue and collaboration with other major powers while “promoting” democracy in Iraq with bombs, a brutal military occupation, and what Herbert calls in the Times, “an exercise in extreme madness, an absurd venture that would have been rich in comic possibilities except for the fact that many thousands of men, women and children have died, and tens of thousands have been crippled, burned or otherwise maimed.” (21) In a display of extreme arrogance and hypocrisy, Bush seems undaunted in lecturing President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the virtues of democracy, all the while currying favor with some of the most virulent authoritarian regimes in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Afghanistan. It is difficult to understand why the media, intellectuals, educators, and other citizens do not robustly challenge and take to the streets in protest when Bush uses the rhetoric of democracy to defend his foreign and domestic policies. What is one to make of his statement in a speech at National Defense University in which he said, “It should be clear that authoritarian rule is not the wave of the future; it is the last gasp of a discredited past”? (22) Surely he cannot be referring to his own record of policies that undermine civil liberties: promoting torture and other human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, plundering the environment in the interest of corporations, aligning his government with right-wing religious extremists who are working to eliminate the separation between church and state, and endorsing a foreign policy that is utterly militaristic and empire-driven.

It will be fun to listen for this kind of language during the SOTU.

Yes, I was thinking since the existing telecom companies are likely making billions in secret contracts with the NSA/government to hand over customer data, what better incentive is there to a company looking at a new investment vehicle (the 700 MHz spectrum) than to have the government guarantee immunity going forward.

Of course, this assumes the current administration believes in the invisible hand of the free market and not is some back room secret deal…

Maybe Bush/Cheney want to preemptively make sure that the law protects executive branch spying on all Americans even if another Qwest comes along (Google are you game?)

There’s a massive quid pro quo going here; the telcos could reveal all, but in exchange for their silence, they get protection from the administration and their bought-and-paid-for members of Congress. The administration and Congress could do the right thing and let the truth emerge about the domestic spying, but the public might be so angry that they’d kill off the telcos through lawsuits and a change to any other emergent form of communications that would make the telcos obsolete.

This is the reason why we have not seen pervasive, cheap WiFi across the U.S., why we are so backwards compared to other countries. The telcos have not needed more money; they have all they need, but they have become like the oil companies (oligopolistic, yes?). Just how much profit do they need? At what point will they actually turn around and spend the money on new product research?

Only when there is a paradigm shift in competing products, a complete leapfrog in technologies.

You saw that Time Warner is looking at charging by use for internet access.

Finishing up, to Massachio’s question…

Verbs help your brain ‘wake up’ and they probably help you focus on the key factors that drive your argument. They also prompt you to be far more connected to ’cause/effect’.

It’s as if your thought process can produce more coherence; you’re not distracted by meaningless details, and you’re focusing on first, next, last.

Unlike Woo’s woozy, snoozy text, you’re using language as a tool to focus on action, weigh the consequences of action, evaluate which actions matter, and prioritize actions.

It’s like the difference between a glob of gnarled up string (John Woo’s writing), as distinct from a tightly spun ball of yarn (your thoughts, ordered by actions).

One coheres; the other doesn’t.
(I mention this b/c from what I’ve read, Woo’s ‘arguments’ are internally inconsistent; therefore, they are not coherent.)

One confuses; the other clarifies.

Nominalizations can be very useful in a delicate situation when someone’s been stupid, or an ass. Because then you can say things like, “The discussion we should have next is how you’d like to reprioritize…’

So nominalizations can be useful tools for smoothing difficult, and/or painful situations.
But they’re too often abused, and they’ve become the beer, potatoe chips, and onion dip of too much American thought.

If you look at memos, emails, and communications written by good managers, they tend to have more verbs, and fewer nominalizations. Good physicians are extremely good communicators, and they’re generally explaining very complex things to their patients in pretty simple, pared-down language.

———
But EW’s post read in part:
I take some comfort in the notion that this Attorney General…might recognize that politics corrupts language and ideological purity always cedes to corruption.

I don’t think that ‘politics’ always, or inevitably, corrupts language.
But you don’t get corrupt politics without corrupting language.

And you can’t clean up corruption, and corrupt politics, unless you speak the truth, presumably meaning ’stuff that is verified by real life experience’.

Truth, IMHO, generally favors verbs. And avoids nominalizations unless the situation calls for delicate diplomacy and non-confrontational phrasing.

Otherwise, verbs are a lens to seeing actions, and the consequences of our actions, far more clearly. So using them in legal language is a very moral thing to do.

yes, some products that approach telepathy and telekinesis.
No wires or switching stations. No oil.

Actually, from what I’ve seen of the reading (and writing) processes, that’s the smartest thing that you could possibly do.

Think of it like this: when Picasso started a painting, he didn’t just start with the ballerina, or the bull. He had to daub a bit, mix up the colors, play with shape and form.

You’re smart to just start off, and then prune later.
Too many people think they have to get it right straight from the start, but that is self defeating. It’s the PROCESS and the persistence that are critical, from all that I’ve been able to glean.

Yes, EW is enormously tolerant…
I’ve sometimes wondered whether we’re her little research project…?
But complex ideas take a bit of writing to ferret out, don’t they.

My thoughts would be better for some editing, but… what the heck….

Here’s a thought re verbs. Verbs are easy to “image.” And since language is in the left hemisphere and our right hemisphere tends to process via images, verbs give us an “active image.” “Table” a noun isn’t active. It’s not much of an image. But use it as a verb, “to table a motion,” for example, and you get a whole image and underlying meanings associated with it. So perhaps then verbs are much richer in terms of what they convey and also in the way that “lights up” more areas of the brain. Then, we could bring intentionality into it… and that brings in frontal lobe functioning as well, with planning and carrying out a plan, assessing how far one is from the intended result, for example. Like “tabling” a motion is really part of a whole sequence of events… thus you can image this and you get a sense of a plan of which this one action is only a part.

I too apologize for too many posts on this thread. And maybe going to far afield. But again, we’re in the dark. We’re searching. We’re making judgments. And we’re trying to find a way out of this labyrinth we’ve been taken into by the “rule of rove.”

Yes, rOTL, your image of Picasso is exactly what I’ve described. It lights up the whole brain!

Me? I’m just speechless.

Thanks, rOTL!

Orwell:“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”
This is not a happy thought!

Yeah, T/W’s still living in the past. That business model will only work for a very small group of people — the folks who are the lightest consumers of the internet, and the ones who are shrinking in number every day. That’s the oldest segment of users.

As time passes, the youngest segment of the population use more, not less internet, and they won’t pay by use. Witness their use of text messaging; they hate plans that are restrictive on numbers of messages. This is a user base that is completely wired, all the time, keeping tabs on their peeps by Twitter and organizing activities by social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. They consume their media by cellphone; it’s why the iPhone was an instant hit, made their media of choice even more condensed and portable.

They also know the value of their attention; that’s where businesses should be looking for value. T/W’s model actually encourages a limit to attention, rather than increasing it. Quite stupid, really, but then they didn’t understand the AOL proposition, either. This is the kind of dinosaur that should die and make way for better models, right up their with telcos.

I have a word I would like to misappropriate.

afflatus (noun), pronounced uh-FLAY-tus
current proper definition is a divine imparting of knowledge or power : inspiration

as in:
“Bush insists that his decisions are the result of afflatus, not hard work.”

In Latin, afflatus refers to the act of blowing on or breathing on.
Cicero used the word afflatus to compare the appearance of a new idea to a breath of fresh air.

Well, here’s my take on the word afflatus. It reminds me of the medical term “flatus,” which is ‘gas exiting the ass,’ in so many words.

Progressive phone company that won’t report unlawfully to the government.

I don’t have any data either, but this feels right. I see it as the result of years of effort, going way back, all the way to high school, and Brother Donald Burkhart:

The most beautiful sentence in the English language: “The snow was piled on the fencepost.”

Thoughts:

1. Looks like i have more background in biological/anatomical psych than you do? (But psych isn’t my field; I just steal from it shamelessly ;-0
– 1.a. not all writing is processed in the left (verbal) regions; only alphabetical languages that rely solely on sound/image correspondence.
– 1.b. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, (and older languages like Akkadian and Egyptian) incorporate pictographs, and those are processed in the visual cortext (back of the head) + also combining with the left verbal processing areas. Not sure about Arabic; would have to check, but I think it’s closer to 1.b.

2. I may have made too strong an argument that verbs are always ‘better’; it’s ‘nominalization stacks’ that need to be eradicated (e.g., ‘considerations under discussion by the committee that made recommendations…. blehblehblehwhoblehknowsblehwhatblehIblehmeanblehevenIdon’t… garbblish, gunky text) is like tangles in a thread, or snarls in a filament..

3. Some nouns are imagable, and their images are very powerful. (If I type ‘codpiece, you’ll think ‘ of Bush May 2003 strutting on that aircraft carrier - it’s certainly imagable. Perhaps more imagable than the verb ‘nudge’, which implies only a very soft, delicate, tiny motion)

4. Your use of table (noun) is quite imagable; table (verb) as part of a process, as a means of structuring a sequence of actions, is intriguing. I can’t draw table as a verb, but I agree that it is associated with ‘motion’ or ‘time/space’. Interesting.
If I had the fMRI machine of my dreams, I’d have someone go in and read both meanings ;-))
– 4. a. My off the cuff hunch is that table (noun) would light up both auditory (left ear regions) and visual cortext (back of the brain). But if it were not a particularly notable table; if only a table in passing, then not much neural notice of that word. If, on the other hand, two people were having mad, hot sex on said table, then more attention would be paid… more neural activity focused on ‘table’.
– 4. b. As a verb… probably activate the left (auditory) regions, plus other regions involved in planning (frontal lobes, I’m with you there!) and also more in the cerebellum someplace. But again, the amount of focus probably depends on how badly you want that legislation tabled. If you’re not all that interested, not so much neural energy.

4. So nouns can be depicted (person, place, thing).
But nominalized nouns cannot be drawn; and a text full of them is just hard to read, and even harder to recall. IMHO, they’re a symptom –
– ** either people don’t know what they’re talking about,
– ** OR they’re trying to inflate their own authority,
– ** OR ELSE they’re not willing to be truthful (b/c they’re trying to pretend that nothing really happened, which is how they ignore problems, or claim that no harm occurred. So anyone who does this intentionally should be held accountable, because it’s verbal fraud.

But I should stop before EW bans me, and before pdaly accuses me of flagrant afflatulus @< | 8^0</p>

Huh?!
that’s a first, IIRC ;-))

Well, truth be told the brain works as a unit. So I agree with your analysis. I defer to it.

One added thought. The “rule of rove” tries to appeal to the emotions that are unconscious… in the middle of the brain. We’ve been talking about conscious thought… and how various areas carry our ideas, visualize them, and yet integrate them.

It’s been fun. I doubt we’ll be banned. We’re Dems. We’re encouraged to think! And thinking leads us off onto interesting pathways.

I salute you, rOTL. And now…. we return to our regular programming.

Take it away… MadDog, bmaz, and others!

“Race Trumps Gender!!!”

This is an actual quote from CNN news coverage of SC primary this evening. Within seconds of the polls closing, to boot.

I take it all back. It IS possible to demean language…

At least he didn’t hang the picture of Dorian Gray in his office?

Huh?!
that’s a first, IIRC ;-))

LOL!

Yeah, well the pizza arrived so my hands and mouth were full. *g*

Politicd cleary demeans language. You would think a shitheely, douchebaggy asswipe like Mukasey would know that.

-GSD

If it’s Canadian bacon w/ pineapple, please share. I’ll look for it to come through my LCD panel shortly … upper right corner’s about the only place there’ll be enough empty screen space to toss it through, so please aim wisely ;-))

Hey GSD, did you change your posting name to GregB?

The “rule of rove” tries to appeal to the emotions that are unconscious

Yeah. Rove does like to appeal to emotions, particularly by using images. But pictures can lie at least as effectively as words, huh? (Perhaps even more so.)

Interesting thread.

Interesting thread indeed. I am just proud to associate with such a diverse and talented group of folks; it really is a pleasure.

rOTL - You mentioned “background in biological/anatomical psych”. Is that your background at some point? I ask kind of out of whimsical curiosity. My actual major as an undergraduate was in exactly that. I always called it neurobiology so people would understand what it was, because it was a fairly new program as a recognized major at the time (I was one of a handful of the first degreed graduates in it at my college). The handbook/syllabus called it “physiological psychology” which I always thought was lame and nobody understood.

defense of the indefensible

Late to this thread, in part because I spent an invigorating afternoon at a membership meeting of the ACLU. So now I pop over to read what’s up here at EW’s place and the first thing I see is a post on the use of political speech as defending the indefensible. What is so astonishing about this, was having just heard a fine speech given by Rachel Maddow at the ACLU event that centered around the idea that indefensible policies can be changed. It was a wonderfully optimistic speech that catalogued the ways in which BushCo has tried to defend the indefensible and drew on Rachel’s own past successes in confronting the indefensible and helping to change such policies. She also talked about the lack of debate that has occurred during the Bush years as such indefensible policies were put into place. The discussion was always an after-the-fact defense rather than a full and open debate of the policies prior to implementation.

I don’t know if Rachel reads your work EW, but great minds are clearly thinking along the same