Sneakers, Sandals, Slippers, Shoes?

It appears to me that the Department of Defense will soon be engaged in a redefinition exercise, this time relating to footwear. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984 (ah, those were the days), one perfectly respectable occupation for scribblers was rewriting history so that it was always in line with political orthodoxy. Similarly, these days, it would seem equally respectable to redefine things in order to adjust reality to the pronouncements of our highest leadership.

The other day President Obama pronounced that he will not put American boots on the ground in Iraq. Okay. Got that. Today, however, we are told that some 300 American “advisers” will be arriving in Iraq. They will be divided into teams of 12 each and stationed with Iraqi army units at various levels, suggesting that some at least will be very close to sites of actual armed combat.

And this calls for definitional changes. The simplest would be to rename “boots on the ground” “shoes on the ground.” No boots—the President said so. But combat shoes might be permissible. The other way might be to make a distinction between “advisers” and “soldiers”; under this definition, “adviser boots” are okay, but “soldier boots” are not. Another way to match fact to policy might be to issue sneakers, sandals, or (fortified) slippers to the 300 advisers so that “no boots on the ground” would become irrelevant.

Flowers Are Bought

On this day flowers are bought. My phrasing, obviously, is up-to-the-minute modern. It was in one of Theodore Dalrymple’s fascinating if also depressing books that we first encountered this sort of “objective” phrasing—when, writing about some man who had stabbed some relative,  Dalrymple quoted the man as saying that “The knife went in.” Well, on this day flowers were bought, and the very distant phrasing arises from my overhearing a conversation between wife Brigitte and daughter Michelle. They were discussing the role of birthdays in the life of women, and Michelle suggested that “We ought to return to the old days—when people didn’t know how old they really were. I think it should start after you turn thirty.” Flowers were bought because a recurrence in time took place. Whose it was will remain a secret, and the number of the recurrence is safe with me.

Flowers were bought because, on this occurrence, the retail system user has inexplicable urges to hasten the arrival of Spring. But the flowers were bought in the middle of a Winter Weather Advisory, which means that the snow was coming down and, once down, was piling up—so much snow the driver barely saw that the lights were blinking yellow, which they do on Saturdays on the thoroughfare that got labeled Moross.

There are no agents in this modern world. Cyclamens do not know their own name. No one waters them, but the water sprinkles down.

Still Struggling to Learn Newspeak

I learned today that Nigeria is another state that I must begin to dread. The New York Times headlines “Islamist Threat in Nigeria Grows With Qaeda Help” (no less). I also learn that “Bashing E.P.A. Is New Theme in G.O.P. Race.” Ah. A former Shining Knight turns Darth Vader? That one starts getting personal—in that I labored some years at that agency. To be sure, that then (and still) tiny lop-off from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (those days) wasn’t exactly the darling of the Nixon administration either.

Reminds me of lessons I learned quite early in life in books titled Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), the first George Orwell’s generic and the other his specific description of his times. I’d read these books in the 1950s, a time when individual authors could still be heard. The noise was still quite low. In 1984 I learned that that there must always be an enemy, that the enemy can change overnight, and we must immediately shift attention, when Big Brother nods, and hate the one we loved the day before. Having made peace with Communism, the shift came to hate Islamism—which new hate is still unfolding nicely. But hating the EPA, the new internal enemy, why that one will be a bit of a wrench for me, a lesson in learning self-loathing. The effort is daunting. I think I’ll start after the brief vacation on which we start today ends again next week.

No More Newspeak at the Reservation's Gates

For a free country where we permit all sorts of vile things in the name of Free Speech, we’re peculiarly welded to an Orwellian tradition. The shortest description of it is “staying on message,” meaning to mouth (indeed to think) the Administration’s current policy—if the Administration pays our salary. Another is the phrase I first heard during the Nixon era from the lips of John Ehrlichman—who had been told to tell John Dean, Nixon’s lawyer, to “stay on the reservation.” If you don’t talk the talk, the Thought Police will come and make you issue corrective statements to the effect that you misspoke, and when you said that War opposes Peace, you really meant that War was Peace.

When prominent, disciplined, loyal servants of the people—or is it of Administrations?—at last retire, Newspeak drops away and startling phrases in plain English issue from their mouths. Thus we hear Robert Gates, approaching the gates of the reservation now, making the statement:

If we were about to be attacked or had been attacked or something happened that threatened a vital U.S. national interest, I would be the first in line to say, ‘Let’s go.’ I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice. [Quoted in the New York Times today, emphasis added.]

That distinction—wars of necessity, wars of choice—should have been made loudly and clearly by audible, credible, visible leaders of a certain gravitas years and years ago. But we hear it, always, only ever in the twilight of retrospect.

It’s a dilemma. Cabinet secretaries are chosen by the President but are confirmed by the Senate. That confirmation gives them a certain independent stature. But no. They are required to adopt the message and to stay on the reservation lest strange tensions arise in the public’s mind. Who’s really in charge around here? The same dilemma arises, to be sure, when Mom and Dad disagree but keep their mouths shut in the children’s presence. And when they don’t...