One/Introduction

We were angry and righteous in those days, and there were millions of us.... We were warriors then, and our tribe was strong like a river.

- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing: Campaign 2004"

It’s a strange and terrible thing to have to ask the United States government to please stop killing me and the rest of the world. Nothing in my public school education, and especially in the parochial school warm-up before it, could have prepared me to write those words. My country was the biggest, fastest, strongest, greatest, and most moral of any nation on God’s earth. We were the good guys, fighting to stop the Godless Commies from taking over the world via a tiny sliver of land called Vietnam, just as we’d been the good guys who saved Europe from the Nazis in World War II. Putting my hand over my heart each morning from kindergarten through eighth grade, I pledged my allegiance to that red, white, and blue symbol of everything that was right and true and good and wise. The symbol represented a nation, run by a government, made up of individual people who were giants among mere mortals, and who, more than anything, could be trusted to provide justice for all—the last three words of a pledge recited earnestly five days a week, 32 weeks a year. I provided unquestioning allegiance, and they provided justice, and I would never have to ask them to please stop killing me and six billion of my extended family members.

The journey from that level of total childhood trust to complete adult skepticism has been a long and painful process, with little shards of reality cutting away steadily at the protective bubble until I’m forced to write the most agonizing words a person can direct at his government, a group of former giants now exposed as mere mortals. But somehow they've kept their colossal status, regardless of C-average college grades and obvious allegiances to former business partners first, nation third (or sixth, or tenth) because we need them to be giants still, because if they are not giants then we have no protectors, no leaders, no wise men, no visionaries—and no hope. Our drive to go on living every day depends on continuing to keep our murderers propped up as titans.

And that makes no sense.

But really it makes perfect sense, because what keeps a group of human beings in power is the collective ideology of those over whom they’re allowed to have power. Without our agreement to think along correct, officially-sanctioned, publicly-rewarded lines, the whole facade would crumble like a skeletal Jenga tower. It’s not the military that holds a society together, nor the economy, but only the simple power of shared ideas and similar thinking. They are killing us; yes. But they are our leaders. Leaders lead; the led follow. This is how things work.

There’s a problem with the but up there in italics, of course. If only it were flipped to an and instead, the idea would be transformed. They are killing us, but they are our leaders offers semantic shelter by the word choice alone: implied is some justification—however wrong and bizarre it might be (if it were questioned, which it is not)—for the action. Surely, they know what they’re doing. Quiet now; go back to sleep.

Substituting and for but derails that train of thought and throws a brick through the distortion lens. They are killing us—and they are our leaders!

How the hell did that happen?

Words matter. Little words make enormous differences. The term “global warming” frightens people; it calls forth images of a planet getting hotter. The idea is disturbing—and it should be. If you set fire to my house, I’m going to be frightened, disturbed, alarmed, and totally freaked out. Not to mention extremely annoyed. But hey, if you want to stop by the place and just change it a little, I’d be open to giving you the benefit of the doubt and seeing how the results turn out. You might be a pretty skilled carpenter. Who knows?

And so is born a nicer term, made of words that don’t scare anyone. Times change, seasons change, people change, climate change; change is good, change is natural, change is occurring, change is progress…. Bury the words as far and deep in there as possible; make ‘em part of a gentle chant, words falling like soft rain or moving like a light breeze. Nature images are perfect since climate change is natural; hell, climate is nature. We play discs of nature’s sounds for babies to help them fall asleep. Nature is soothing.

Except for when it’s kicking our asses from here to China. Burning us. Drowning us. Blowing our houses off their foundations. Turning our coastlines to mud. And even worse, lowering our property values. Truly scary stuff. Frank Luntz, the Republican advisor and focus-group maestro who advised the Bush II government to officially change global warming to climate change, knew the huge differences that a little word choice can make, writing that “while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge.” For good measure, Luntz also advised changing "conservationist" to "environmentalist" to inject a "connotation of extremism."2

We can only hope that Mr. Luntz’s house will be burned, flooded, and blown into splinters with excruciating and deliberate slowness, so that he can enjoy the “more controllable and less emotional challenge” to its fullest potential. I suspect he might show some “extremist” behavior seeing his wordly existence destroyed, but out of charity we could call it “desolation.” Poor guy.

The thing is that even smart spinmeisters like Frank Luntz get tripped up in their own rhetorical techniques. Luntz, interviewed by PBS and asked why he recommended the word swap to the Bush II administration, tried to dismiss the issue by answering with his own question: “What is the difference? It is climate change. Some people call it global warming; some people call it climate change. What is the difference?”3 But really, if it’s such a small matter, then why did he recommend the change? That’s where he steps onto the glue trap of cold logic and gets caught with his rat tail sticking out.

• • • • •

The Buddhist conception of the Noble Eightfold Path contains four basic principles that we in the West no longer expect, and so no longer require, from our national leaders: Right View, Right Intentions, Right Speech, and Right Actions. Instead, we’ve settled for two sides of the same coin that we call left and right, both equally worthless because they’ve abandoned the idea of social responsibility and traded away ethical leadership for corporate sponsorship. We no longer matter to them, and so they are killing us. The only thing they see is money, their intentions are to preserve wealth for the wealthy, their speech is peppered with rhetoric poured like poison into their ears by scumpuppies like Frank Luntz, and their actions are either despicable or deplorable.

And we wonder why kids can’t get fired up enough to vote.

====SOURCES====

1 Jack Doyle, Taken for a Ride: Detroit’s Big Three and the Politics of Air Pollution.

2 “Person Profile: Frank Luntz.” Media Transparency. www.mediatransparency.org

3 “Interview: Frank Luntz.” Frontline, PBS, Nov. 2004.