Dubya-Speak
On this, the 5th anniversary of the worst day in America's recent memory -- and by that I mean the day that the Bush administration's ascendancy began in earnest -- I figured I'd take a moment to riff on politics a bit...

Today I saw a newspaper headline that read: "Bush Vows to Remember the Lessons of 9/11". Of course, the puppet masters who came up with that line want Bush supporters to believe that our leaders are ever more devoted to the safety and security of all True Americans. But what it is far more likely to mean is that the Bushites/neocons will primarily remember that when public opinion turns against them, an extremely easy and effective way to get people back on their side is to engineer a disaster resulting in the death of innocent Americans, which looks for all the world to be the work of foreign terrorists. That's the only lesson our "leaders" learned from 9/11, I assure you.

Given the enormous difference between what the Bushites say about any given situation and the reality of that situation, I can see how some people might find the times we live in to be confusing, possibly so much so that they are discouraged from trying to figure out what is really going on, or even paying attention at all.

So here is a little guide for the perplexed...

In his classic "1984" George Orwell wrote about "double-speak". This is how to translate "Dubya-Speak." There's a simple formula to it. All you have to do is take whatever comes out of George Bush's mouth (or the mouth of any spokesperson for the Bush administration) and imagine what the exact opposite would be. Sometimes this is harder than it sounds. For example...

WHEN BUSH SAYS: "Mission Accomplished"

you might apply the Dubya-Speak formula and assume that...

THE REALITY IS: "Mission NOT Accomplished"

but in fact, the EXACT opposite reads more like...

THE REALITY IS: "We Have No Intention of Ever Completing This Mission, and In Fact Have Conducted This Mission Specifically to Make Its Successful Completion Impossible."

Now, this might be hard to believe, since, on the surface of things, it would seem to go against a politician's objectives to intentionally screw-the-pooch so hard. But that just shows that you haven't applied the dubya-speak formula to the following statement...

WHEN BUSH SAYS: "The purpose of our mission in Iraq is to stabilize the region and allow a great flowering of Democracy and prosperity to take place all across the Middle East, making America and the entire world safer."

Apply the formula and you get...

THE REALITY IS: "We hope to permanently de-stabilize the region, causing ever greater hostilities, leaving Americans with a new perpetual enemy to fear, just like back in the good ol' days of the cold war, only this new perpetual enemy should be even scarier than the commies were, because religious fanatic terrorists could strike anywhere, anytime, with no provocation whatsoever! Mwahahahahah!"

But why would our leaders want to create such a horrible situation? Because...

WHEN BUSH SAYS: "The real winners will be the Iraqi people."

THE REALITY IS: "The real winners will be the heads of companies that make the weapons we will constantly drop on the Iraqi people."

What are the names of those "real winners"? They are the same names you get when you complete the following sentence: "The Bush Administration is sponsored by ______________."

Here's a simple one:

WHEN BUSH SAYS: "We do not use torture."

THE REALITY IS: "We use lots and lots of torture."

This last one goes out to Craig's brother Eric Nelson:

WHEN BUSH SAYS: "We thank the brave men and women of our armed forces, serving their country by defending freedom at home and bringing it to Iraq."

THE REALITY IS: [What do you think?]