June 15, 2002
In America, we give things American names. We don’t talk about “homelands”, and we don’t make up wicked radically awesome acronyms for our anti-terrorism bills. We are American. We give things normal-sounding names and then get down to business. The USA PATRIOT Act should be called “The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001” because that’s what it is. It’s not the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”, because that’s about 6000 more words than is needed just so it can be a stupid acronym. “The Department of Homeland Security” is much better, but still all wrong. “Federal Bureau of Investigation”—that’s a deeply, profoundly cool name. Professional, of modest length, and without any florid language—I feel comfortable knowing that the FBI (note: not a weird acronym designed to give everyone the willies) is out there, walking around in sensible suits and being all serious and dedicated and professional and not at all like the SS, and then probably going home and putting on some smooth Gil Evans 45’s and sipping Manhattans with the missus. Cool. Central Intellegence Agency—very, very cool. National Security Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms - cool, cool, cool. Homeland Security—weird. […][02:50 AM]What is the first thing to be done in order to promote a renewal in disastrous circumstances? Words must be set aright. What inheres in words should be brought out. But language is constantly misused, words are employed for meanings that do not befit them. A separation arises between being and language…If words are not right, judgments are not clear; works do not prosper; punishments do not strike the right man, and the people do not know where to set hand and foot.
—Confucius
My favorite line was "The Bush people need to look into creating a Department of Thinking Up Names For Things That Don't Sound Like They Come From Fahrenheit 451."
I'd been assuming I was just a difficult Brit seeing ill in a naming which Americans would take in their stride. And perhaps you all might be inclined to do so if these were not disastrous and ambiguous circumstances. The Confucius quote is marvellously (distressingly?) apposite.
Northrup also refers to a similar article by Mickey Kaus which more closely echoes my unease with the resonances of 'Homeland Security'.
Whatever, all best wishes for the birthing of what I hope acts as a department for the defence of freedom, however it may be named.
As, er, somebody pointed out, the scariest thing about "Homeland" is that it sounds like a direct translation of the German word Heimatland.
Not an exclusively Nazi word, no; but the swastika wasn't an exclusively Nazi symbol, either, yet somehow the taste lingers.
The first thing I thought of while watching Bush's speech was a 1980s made-for-tv movie called "Amerika."
In "Amerika," after the Soviet Union wins the Cold War and occupies Washington, D.C., their appointed regent/ambassador decides that there are too many security problems coming up to keep the nation's capital on the East Coast.
So the U.S. is broken up into three semiautonomous regions. The capital city is to be moved to the new "Republic of Heartland" in the central plains. After the Ministry of the Interior makes this announcement, the camera pans to citizens singing a rousing chorus of "Heartland, My Heartland," the new national anthem.
"No one but me remembers this lousy movie," I thought to myself, watching the nervous, dark-suited Tom Ridge follow Bush, last week on my TV screen.
Oh, vaguely. It was a miniseries, wasn't it? I don't think I watched the whole thing.
I think I have stronger memories of "Kanada", Jay Leno's pardoy of it on the Tonight Show.
http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2002_06_09_amygdalagf_archive.html#77775411
Just yesterday I listened at* an argument on TV in which one of the speakers said, It doesn't matter what they say, it's what they do--the result-- that counts. Words are just words." If I could remember what idiots I was listening at*, I'd send them a link to the Confucius quote.
(*a phrasal verb: listening without concentration to television's sound without looking at the screen.)
So if I said that person should be sodomized with a live chainsaw, it wouldn't matter as long as I didn't actually do it?
I'm at the apartment in Seattle without most of my books (which are in the house in California) so I don't have my German dictionary handy, but if my increasingly faulty memory is working for a change, Homeland *is* pretty much a direct translation of Heimatland. Either this administration has *no* clue about how this strikes an even faintly educated ear, or they just don't give a shit. I'd offer even money either way.
Where *did* that Confucius quote come from and how can I get it emblazoned on, oh, say Mt. Rushmore?
MKK
Hard-Hitting Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
Comments on The vulgate: