Rethuglicanese

By: Will Wyche

Exactly one year ago, October 26, 2000, I wrote a one liner to the LA Times: By dusk November 7, America will be at the dawn of a Green Age, middle age, or a Dark Age. It was never published.

They say that tragedies come in threes. December 12, 2000, we lost our democracy. September 11, 2001, we lost our peace and prosperity. And finally, October 26, 2001, we lost our freedom and liberty. Too many days that will live in infamy for one year, let alone one lifetime, as I recall where I was during each one.

So, in order to understand the disaster, we progressives should hone fluency in the language of Rethuglicanese. And I'm not speaking of Bushism. No, this apparently simplistic tongue consistently conjugates every verb with inverted logic and infuses all diction with intellectual dishonesty and deceit.

But, first, one must remember that Rethuglican moral hypocrisy is not the contrast between bashing their opponents' political expediencies with copycat coinages like W's "controlling authority of conscience" used in the campaign and their promises of civility while spinning the obvious disconnect as unreasonable. Wasn't it "controlling authority of conscience" (or should I say "politics") above the law that advanced Iran-Contra and still taints Daddy Bush. Politics above the law is never civil. It's immoral.

So here's a translation aid that one should always use when apparently stumped by the immoral syntax:

(WTC + PENTAGON) x (W^$43<Taliban + GOP) = Reichstag = (Office of Homeland Security - Bill of Rights)^{PATRIOT Act} x Extreme Court / (Corporate American Mediawhore Propaganda)^$ = Gestapo^(1984+17) = Terrorism.

(where: W = Cheney + oil + $)

You all remember Howard Baker during the post election Florida court challenges: favorable court rulings were "pursuant to the law"; unfavorable ones were "unacceptable, overreaching liberal activism". So, to start off, let's take a couple of simple examples. Remember his Fraudulency's May 18 warning of "a darker future... if we fail to act on this (energy) plan?". Translation: "My tax cut that you turn over to me and my energy buddies as higher energy costs will finance Republican Party efforts to oust Democrats nationwide." And his prediction of "more-and more widespread-blackouts?". Translation: "We will complete our nationwide media acquisition to assure that the truth of my stolen election will never come out."

Of course Republicanese is not limited to the Putsch Administration. After all, "President Bush" is a Scalegal fiction. The Felonious Five, for example, translated "equal protection" to "your right to vote is protected by our not counting it", and "irretrievable harm" to "Bush's 'win' was a right!".

Now that the so-called anti-terrorism "USA Patriot Act" styled in perfect Rethuglicanese is now law as of October 26 and effectively eliminates the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, the full flower of this evil language can be fully understood and appreciated. So let's go back to the Putsch Administration's September 20 state of the union message. The following is exhaustive for the more advanced language student in light of October 26. See how you do:

"[The country] awakened to danger and called to defend freedom."
Translation: "Freedom is abrogated by the sophistry of the USA Patriot Act which designates whoever I determine to be a 'terrorist'."

"Our grief turned to anger, and anger to resolution."
Translation: "Forget about repeating history or looking at the underlying reasons: there's nothing that increases a leader's polls than self-righteous violence and revenge."

"We will either bring our enemies to justice, bring justice to our enemies, or justice will be done."
Translation: "Since one cannot bring justice to 'enemies' who (1) one cannot really identify and (2) want to die anyway, this statement is a pretext to make the December 12 coup permanent." Recall that, until then and notwithstanding full corporate mainstream mediawhore support, the Putsch Administration was floundering and so that's the real reason why he "thanks Congress".

"God Bless America."
Translation: "Virtually no one, who is not dependent on the US, does."

"Nor will we forget the citizens of 80 other nations who died with our own: dozens of Pakistanis; more than 130 Israelis; more than 250 citizens of India; men and women from El Salvador, Iran, Mexico and Japan; and hundreds of British citizens."
Translation: "We never mention fringe [see special language particle use below] people: for example, ½-million starved Iraqi children."

"America has no truer friend than Great Britain. (applause) Once again, we are joined together in a great cause - so honored the British Prime Minister has crossed an ocean to show his unity of purpose with America. Thank you for coming, friend."
Translation: "Yeah, unlike me, they speak English, my name is George II, and I'm really a genuine Tory."

"On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country."
Translation: "The enemy of freedom is my and my father's American foreign, corporate and military policy (as symbolized by the WTC and Pentagon) that created this incognito Frankenstein - and not necessarily the American people. I don't know the difference between war and crime."

"Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who attacked our country? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaida. They are the same murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS Cole."
Translation: "My mediawhores have assured me that the American People know that, in addition to my and my father's foreign policy, my withdrawal from the Arab-Israeli peace process that embarrassed moderate Arab leaders, my failure to enact Gore-sponsored tighter airline security regulations, and, last May, my $43 million grant to the Taliban knowing full well they were harboring bin Laden who admitted to the African embassy bombings all had nothing to do with September 11."

"Al Qaida is to terror what the Mafia is to crime."
Translation: "The CIA is to terror what my family is to Iran-Contra."

"But its goal is not making money; its goal is remaking the world - and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere."
Translation: "My goal is both making money and remaking the world through the World Bank, IMF, big oil, and government contracts while imposing the Rethuglican Reich's radical beliefs through a fascist plutocracy on people everywhere. That's why we are destroying the Bill of Rights."

"The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics - a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam."
Translation: "I love the word "fringe" because it's simpler than "marginalize", and diverts attention away from my own religious and ideological extremists supporters. I use it all the time to describe those that can see through my illegitimacy. No association of Muslim scholars has yet rejected the jihad against the US any more than similar Christian scholastics have failed to condemn the rampant political extremism of Christian Fundamentalism."

"The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children."
Translation: "Our sanctions have killed a half million Iraqis since 1991, and my dad's CIA's policy of abandonment of the mujahadim after the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan resulted in the brutal misery of the Taliban."

"This group and its leader - a person named Osama bin Laden - are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction."
Translation: "My dad, members of my cabinet and party, and I reformed the CIA into what it is today. It employs thousands of terrorists all over the world and recruits from all nations and neighborhoods to the US for training (in places like the Academy of the Americas) where they are trained in tactics of governmental terror. They are sent back to their lands to plot evil and destruction of governments we don't like."

"The leadership of al Qaida has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see al Qaida's vision for the world."
Translation: "Between 1979 and 1989, it was the USA and its vision of the world."

"Afghanistan's people have been brutalized - many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough."
Translation: "My dad's CIA created the climate and directly participated in the brutalization and starvation in all of South Asia. My rich, extremist supporters have bought out the American media and turned it into my own personal propaganda machine. My faith-based initiative has destroyed the wall between church and state in America."

"The United States respects the people of Afghanistan - after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid - but we condemn the Taliban regime."
Translation: "As long as Rethuglicans control the government, the United States has not now nor ever will respect the people of Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Iran, or Pakistan. My dad's CIA destroyed all hope in both creating or leaving in power the governments that now rule these destitute countries. And I'm going to do the same! Indeed, last May, I entrusted $43 million in aid directly to the Taliban, and not through aid organization to assure its timely delivery to the Afghani people."

"It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists."
Translation: "My family's done the same in this region for years: Iran/Iraq War, indiscriminant bombing of Iraq and imposition of sanctions. It's now America's turn!"

"By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder."
Translation: "By aiding and abetting murder, the CIA created the Taliban regime."

"These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion."
Translation: "It takes a thug to know a thug. It's no time for rational Win-Win diplomacy."

"The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate. I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah."
Translation: "Now, let's see, which Shakespeare play had the line 'oh, me thinkst thou doest protest too much!'?"

"The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself."
Translation: "After this Gong Show, y'all contact Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson."

"Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists..."
Translation: "Not ten years ago we styled them as peace-loving freedom fighters. We then rubbed their noses in the ground. I'm shocked - shocked - that they radicalized! Round up the usual suspects."

"...and every government that supports them."
Translation: "Not ten years ago we were supporting them against the evil empire of the Soviet Union."

"Our war on terror begins with al Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."
Translation: "The terrorist attacks are god-sent and will allow me to declare a permanent national emergency keeping me and my Rethuglican Party in power indefinitely."

"Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government."
Translation: "They hate us because of the foreign corporate and military policies enacted and implemented by my family abroad over the past twenty years, and its results are little different that what they're doing - only not quite as spectacular."

"Their leaders are self-appointed."
Translation: "And so am I."

"They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."
Translation: "That's why I'll be abrogating all meaningful guarantees of individual freedom under the Bill of Rights. Anyone who disagrees with we Rethuglicans is a traitor."

"They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan."
Translation: "They want to overthrow dictatorships and monarchies."

"They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East."
Translation: "They really want an end to Israeli gratuitous taking of Palestinian land, which, like American corporate and military foreign policy believe they have a rationally unsupportable superior right of possession."

"These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life."
This translates into English directly except that the ending of life also includes the terrorists themselves as well.

"They stand against us, because we stand in their way."
Translation: "They hate us because my and my father's foreign policy has meant humiliation, decimation, poverty and despair."

"We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety."
Translation: "Look at my appointment of criminals like Abrams and Negroponte to the highest government posts."

"We have seen their kind before."
Translation: "They're in the White House, Congress and on the Extreme Court right now. We're called Rethuglicans."

They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century."
Translation: "Just like my dad's CIA whose murdered tens of thousands in the past half century and my vice president who ordered the burying alive of thousands or Iraqi troops ten years ago."

"By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions - by abandoning every value except the will to power - they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism."
Translation: "Kamakazi? will to power, but thank goodness that the Felonious Five abandoned every value except the will to power. Takes one to know one. So let's see: when Congress passes the USA-PATRIOT Act, we will effectively follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism."

"And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."
Translation unintelligible but it got applause.

"Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command - every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war - to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network."
Translation: "And you can bet they'll do the same. Nukes anyone?"

"This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat. [not thanks to Bill Clinton] Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success."
Translation: "Our jingoism, lies, deceit, will be so good that not only will you will keep us in power for the foreseeable future, but you're going to genuinely like it no matter how bad off you're really going to be."

"We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism."
Translation: "After we make America a police state, watch what we do to liberals, gays, Jews, the poor, and Democrats - the same we did to the mujahadim."

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
No translation necessary except for the word "terrorist".

"From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. Our nation has been put on notice: We are not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans."
Translation: "We Rethuglican terrorists won, the Bill of Rights lost."

"Today, dozens of federal departments and agencies, as well as state and local governments, have responsibilities affecting homeland security. These efforts must be coordinated at the highest level. So tonight I announce the creation of a Cabinet-level position reporting directly to me - the Office of Homeland Security."
Translation: see formula above.

"And tonight I also announce a distinguished American to lead this effort, to strengthen American security: a military veteran, an effective governor, a true patriot, a trusted friend - Pennsylvania's Tom Ridge."
Translation: "With the brutal efficiency during the Viet Nam War under his belt, the governor is a qualified terrorist in his own right."

"And tonight, a few miles from the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military: Be ready."
Translation: "Zero tolerance for any 18-month AWOL in the national guard."

"I've called the Armed Forces to alert, and there is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud."
Translation: "From the grave of every innocent I kill will spring a new terrorist someday to destroy your own progeny and legacy while, at the same time, keep me in power."

"This is not, however, just America's fight."
Translation: "It's also the fight of the World Bank, IMF, Big Oil and government contractors.

"And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight."
Translation: "Actually it's a fight between the Bush/bin Laden spoiled brats."

"This is civilization's fight."
Translation: "Patricians against plebs; Spartans against the helots; haves against the have nots."

"This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom."
Translation: "So guess who already won October 26?"

"Terror, unanswered, can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments. And you know what - we're not going to allow it."
Translation: "It is my answer of violence that will propagate terrorists exponentially in order to keep me and my party in power."

"Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat. I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them."
Translation: "In the specious name of strict constitutional construction, my political and court appointed ideologues will effectively reverse 200 years of constitutional principles such as interstate commerce, separation of church and state, and separation of powers. Expect government and it's corporate proxies in your pants, in your bedrooms, to compel prayer and creationism in what's left of your voucher-drained public schools; to permit political expression only at a price; to bar meaningful campaign finance reform; to discriminate based on most existing suspect classifications; and, to eliminate equal access to judicial redress against abuses by the state. Yes, expect government Texas-style."