Quote of the Day

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. - George Orwell

Arianna Huffington has a nice piece up about political rhetoric, here:

Everything is connected by language. Wars, death, destruction, politics - it's all about language. Fear is the great tool right now, and it's facilitated by language. And, when I say that people are stupid as fuck - it usually centers around language, and most people's inability to parse the language correctly.

When I say moderates are just indecisive, it's the same thing. There is right, and there is wrong, fact and fiction, truth and lies, and language is what is used to describe the conditions that we must "make up our minds" on, right? That's the big fallacy in politics. There is no "make up our minds", because that implies that truth has a bias or interpretation. Stephen Colbert describes it as "truthiness".

What most people know about the world today is constructed of language that would make Orwell spin. It's constant from the Republicans (to a vastly lesser extent Democrats) and overwhelming from the media. The difference with some of us is that we disregard language and yank out the "truthful" parts of any situation.

There is a vast left wing conspiracy going on in the internets, made up of people who have that same trait for pulling out truth and disregarding bullshit. I've linked some of their blogs over on the right side-bar. There are many, many more out there. They've blown up Joe Lieberman, and they are blowing up the media.

That is the only reason why this happened yesterday.

You know, I owe you an apology. Last week, I led into an interview with a guest analyst and really botched the set-up. The guest had wanted to discuss the Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman statements suggesting that terror groups — Al Qaeda type, to use Cheney’s words — would be buoyed by your win, but I posed it badly, stupidly ad-libbing about "some saying Lamont is the Al-Qaeda candidate." No one, in fact, used that construction. Anyway, I wanted to correct the record, and I’m glad we had this chance to do it. Now, let’s get to the insinuations that were lobbed…

If not for this new tool, and these reasonable people - that never would have happened. We're making progress.

** update **

Huff also has a nice piece up about Clinton. Her point is that he only leads when it's meaningless, and that he needs to step up right now and end this Lieberman debacle.

And I agree. I dig Bill Clinton, and he needs to cast his lot.