# 46 A.R. Yngve: With 30,900 hits, "learn the true meaning of" seems to edge out "will change their lives forever." The ultimate Hallmark TV trailer would presumably include both, along with "heartwarming" and "uplifting."
Another rhetorical device worth noting:
"Let’s clear up one point: We didn’t start the war on terror. Try to remember, it was started by terrorists on 9/11."
Opponents of war against Iraq typically insisted on an elementary fact: Al Qaeda attacked us, Iraq did not.
To get around this, we introduce a "clarification": "We didn't attack 'the terrorists,' rather 'the terrorists' attacked us."
Notice that "clarifying" the issue actually results in a massive loss of information, as all knowledge of all distinctions about the nature of the actual attack and the nature of Saddam Hussein's Iraq (i.e., everything you could say about the Middle East, different sects and uses of Islam, political systems, etc., etc.) get blurred out until the only figures visible are "us" and "the terrorists".
Moreover, the formulation "the terrorists" is undefined and thus contains zero information. The obvious point of this is that it allows the author to introduce an implicit claim ("Hussein's Iraq was part of the league of terrorists") which he doesn't have to argue for, or even state explicitly. This is another triumph for "clarification."
The ideal reader, then, may have begun with some suspicion of the war, based on particular set of facts, but can be coached to erase all such suspicions by the simple technique of ignoring inconvenient facts and substituting for them a omni-directional rage against an undefined enemy. Thus, "moral clarity" may be achieved.
Andrew, I'd bet all my worldly possessions that it was a hoax, just on the basis of their listing of the crew on their Dinosaur-hunting expedition, including "Nigel Stubbingwicke, a British professional hunter and expert on tracking large animals whom we hired through his advertisement in the back of African Hunter Magazine."
"Nigel Stubbingwicke"!?
Teresa, I might indeed find it easier to appreciate a novel by a monarchist than a sermon by a hellfire Calvinist; but I also might find it easier to appreciate a novel by a hellfire Calvinist than a tract by a monarchist, assuming the novel was something more than a sermon or tract for hellfire Calvinism. (Isn't that one of the veriest commonplaces when talking about novels? that we should *not* try to read them in the way we read sermons or tracts?)
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 2 |
| 2004 | 3 |
| 2003 | 3 |
Total: 8 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jeffrey Kramer:
Show all comments by Jeffrey Kramer.