zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — if i may be a bit presumptuous, language is a topic for the wise — in this case, how language can be used as a knife ]
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I was reading a Vice News piece, Leaked chats show white nationalist group’s plot to infiltrate Turning Point, and was struck by the phrase “weaponize metaphors” in the paragraph:

Part of Identity Evropa’s strategy now relies on its ability to weaponize metaphors to make their white nationalism seem more acceptable, like referring to “European heritage” — which white nationalist often use as a euphemism to mean “white” — or seizing on mainstream conservative issues like immigration.

I frankly don’t see”metaphor” and “euphemism” as equivalents, but at least we’re looking at the language used to convey a political stance, albeit an abhorrent one.

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Semioticians won’t be surprised to see that clothes can also be a mode of signalling — of conveying meaning — every bit as much as verbal language. In fact, to paraphrase my title, we can see here that thoughts can be viewed as clothes, clothes as thoughts.. Indeed, in the paragraph immediately before the one I just quoted, we read:

According to the leaked Slack chats, about 200 members were expected to attend a secret Identity Evropa conference in Kentucky last weekend. Consistent with their brand overall, the event had a fairly strict dress code: Attendees were urged to wear “dress slacks or chinos” — no jeans. Some attendees fretted about whether they had enough time to get their suits dry-cleaned.

Clothes as thoughts, thoughts as clothes..

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Speaking of semioticians — Charles Sanders Peirce, the father of semiotics, coined the phrase “the play of musement” which I’ve been toying with recently. Here’s a play, a musement of my own:

There’s the music of the spheres, around and within us.

Then there’s the boundary layer, the troposphere, the ozone layer, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, the exosphere and so forth, space, deep space, and deep deep space —

or if you’ll believe the brilliant jazz comedian Lord Buckley riffing on Albert Einstein — we should also add “the zonesphere, and the vautisphere, and the routesphere, and the hippisphere, and the flippisphere, and the zippisphere, and the gonesphere, and the way-gonesphere” — hey, the “way-gonesphere” has a distinctly Prajnaparamita feel to it, no? —

or better yet, there’s the atmosphere, which includes equally both the sphere of weather out the window and the realm of emotional tensions within a room, group or event..

and what Dylan Thomas calls “the weather of the heart”..

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But really, listen to the whole Hip Einie thing, Buckley gets into the 1905 Annalen der Physik and more:

And consider the profound beauties of the Heart Sutra with its mantra, and Dylan Thomas marvelous poem:

Prajñaparamita, Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment hail!

Dylan Thomas, A Process In The Weather Of The Heart

[ by Charles Cameron — btw, it would make sense for language to be half the world topic, since it is — or we attempt to make it — half the world ]
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Danny Cevallos, a legal analyst for MSNBC:

What happens when Congress wants to hold someone in the Executive branch in criminal contempt? Well, a rift opens in the space-time continuum, because that same Executive branch you want to hold in criminal contempt is the Executive branch that has to prosecute that contempt. There’s no other way to do it.

A rift in the space-time continuum? Really? That’s the best instance***** of exaggeration I’ve seen so far, and yes, there’s an implicit ouroboros therein.

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And now I feel obliged to find a literary equivalent to that New Yorker header, to remove the taste of politics from our mouths with a pleasant DoubleQuote..

Here we go — TS Eliot, no less:

                                            Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

[ by Charles Cameron — language, Sir, such language! ]
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The most interesting redactions in the entire Mueller affair are these, signifying as they do the tenor of President Trump and his administration.

The first redaction is not made under a claim of executive privilege:

Nor is the presidential attorney’s remark noted here redacted on grounds of attorney-client privilege:

Such language was already in Use in Nixon’s Oval Office (and no doubt before), and the words “expletive deleted” were familiar to me from that era in some ways so parallel to our own. “Redacted” however is the word bandied about in our own day, and it took me a while to realize that all those asterisks in fact represent “expletives redacted”..

Language, my enduring love.

[ by Charles Cameron — including being mind blind, a flourish or two of Shakespearean trumpets, spawn and other hardball terms, the new Democratic reality.. a spin on the roulette wheel.. more ..]
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Quick, from Rachel tonight 26 March:

Barbara McQuade: The analogy I have made is, it’s as if you are the New England Patriots, and Tom Brady has been your quarterback all season and throughout the Super Bowl, and for the very last drive of the game, coach Bill Belichick puts himself in as quarterback instead. What on earth is that — I thought we had a game plan here. And to change it up into something so significant at the last minute like that, is not only strange, I think it is contrary to the purpose of the Special Counsel rule, which is to bring in someone who is independent, outside the chain of command in the executive branch, so that the public can have confidence in the decision, that it was free from political considerations. By stepping in, I think Bar has defeated that purpose here.

Rachel: You now have me imagining William Barr in an oversize sweatshirt with the sleeves cut like cap sleeves and a big frown on his face – he does actually kind of look like Bill Belichick, which might be why you came up with that analogy, which would attest further to your brilliance.

We do love our sports analogies, don’t we?

Barbara McQuade: I don’t know whether he anticipated that William Barr would take the ball and run with it this way, or that Barr snatched it from him, so that he could, to continue our football analogy, even if Congress does want to look at this later for possible impeachment, he has now prejudged the evidence and put it out there in the public domain, that this is the decision, and so as football, for instant replay, to change the call on the field requires clear and convincing evidence, a much higher standard — because now the presumption is, that he’s been cleared, and so for Congress to come up with a contrary opinion, would appear to be a very politically motivated, unfair overturning of the original call.,

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Well, there’s a start.

Let’s go back, and pick up where we left off, with Chris Matthews and Hardball, 3/25/2019:

vs:

Okay. That’s the basic ping-pong, if I may use a sports metaphor myself..

Onwards:

Spawns is a great word..

Chris Matthews:

Why did Robert Mueller not decide? Why did he play Pontius Pilate here? Why did he pass the buck?

Mimi Rocah:

To quote my former boss, Preet Bharara, I think Mueller was punting the ball to Congress, and Barr swooped in and intercepted it and took it out to the bleachers.

I don’t really have much in the way of mental imaging, I’m what’s technically (and recently) termed aphantasic — but those words brought a flash of football to me, utterly momentary, then gone..

Mind blind.

Chris Matthews:

Spy vs Spy — let me picture it for me!

Ah, yes, treasonous — a wonder word that exaggerates furiously, but doesn’t actually assert treason, the noun, the death-penalty offence.

These six lied about their Russian contacts.

Shannon Pettypiece:

It [his spasm of fifty-odd tweets] has kept him in the spotlight, it has kept him out there, able to counter-punch, being able to stir up his base. If he doesn’t have that microphone..

Co-equal. That sounds so Trinitarian, I wonder how the Constitution would have handled the executive, legislative and judicial “branches” of government if the conceot of tghe Trinity hadn’t been hard-wired into the mainstream mind by centuries of credal recitation..

Rep Hakeem Jeffries:

That’s not the House Democratic Caucus playbook, that’s the James Madison playbook, and so we’re well within our rights ..

and

Okay:

Hardball’s the name Chris Matthews chose, meaning (implying) that he intends to play hardball with his guests, so this is a nice one where the implication is made explicit, and the ball is on the other foot — can I say that? — and it’s his guest who’s playing hardball with him.

And Woodward’s a neat choice of guest, with an implied Nixon / Trump parallelism, as so often around the Mueller probe.

Woodward, describing what DJT’s attorneys told him:

You make things up. You lie. You’ll end up in a jump-suit if you testify

>>>>>

All of which leads to, sennet or tucket, ta-rah!!

Chris Hayes, All In:

Ah, yes, McConnell bars, Barrs, the release of the Mueller report:

and Mueller punts:

Neil Katyal, The Many Problems With the Barr Letter

Ahem, Katyal authored the Special Counsel formulation.

A too obvious pun, or excellent?

A nice Russian Roulette instance:

David Corn:

We havbe this tossed ball on obstruction ..

It’s very unusual for Robert Mueller, or a Special Counsel, to end upm in a tie..

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Vaarious oddments:

There’s a chyron somewhere:

Trump allies celebrate end of Mueller probe, slam opponent5s

Have I used that? Can I find it? It’s a good one..

Okay..

This one’s a useful quote on the prosecutorial process, the source maybe Hardball, with Barb perhaps speaking and Chris responding —

We direct them at bigger targets. It takes a minnow to catch a barracuda, a barracuda to catch a shark. It’s a metaphor.

I don’t fish..

Not sure where this one came from, either — AMJoy 3/26/2019?

While the President should be relieved, he’s still not ..

I think it’s a bit early for a victory lap ..

And now…

Rachel, 3/26/2019, which is where we started:

Rachel:

If Trump now gets his way.. 21 million AMericans will lose all health insurance just like that..

another 133 million, that’s half the country under the age of 65 wiloll get to take a spin on the roulette wheel ..

Rachel

:We got rid of that roulette wheel nine yers ago in this country with the Affordable Care Act..

If Trump gets his way..

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One final quote from Chuck Rosenberg, again, source unknown, but a treasure:

These statutes, sometimes in their interpretation, are more art than science ..

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[ by Charles Cameron — inter alia, a micro-essay on the Passions of Christ and Hussain, and AOC feeling “physically ripped apart” by the effects of her recent fame ]
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How can I resist a title like Passsion Plays?

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Okay, that sent me on my way..

I was at Oberammergau, age seven, in 1950:

And besides, in 1971 I witnessed a troupe of flagellant youths, very disciplined, inside the circular road that surrounds the shrine of the Imam Reza in Mashhad, Iran. They may well have been celebrating Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar, commemorating the martyrdom of Hussein and his offspring at Karbala — a celebration often accompanied, though I did not see one myself, by one or more Ta’zieh or Passion Plays.

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Memorializing the massacre of Hussein, grandson of the Prophet and a highly venerated figure in Shi’ite tradition along with his three hundred or so companions, is indeed a grievous matter, comparable — for comparative religious, cultural anthropological and depth psychological purposes, my purposes — to the Passion of Christ as memorialized in the Catholic Stations of the Cross — it is said that one tear shed for Hussein washes away a hundred sins.

The devotional mind-and-heart — may we call it soul, to give that word a less diffuse meaning? — the devotional soul finds in grief plumbed to its depths an antechamber to the heights of joy. This we find in Oberammergau‘s celebration of Christ‘s final week in Jerusalem, his Last Supper, his agony in the garden, his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension… and likewise in the spirituality of the passion of Hussain. Let me quote from an earlier post of mine, Ashura: the Passion of Husayn:

Annemarie Schimmel, the great Harvard scholar of Islamic mysticism, has a fine essay on the poetry of Ashura, encompassing both Sunni and (strongly Shia-influenced) Sufi traditions, Karbala and the Imam Husayn in Persian and Indo-Muslim literature. The mindset is very different from contemporary secular westernism, seeing death itself — and the grief that accompanies it — as a prelude to resurrection, and thus part of the timeless love-play of God with those who love him:

In having his beloved suffer, the divine Beloved seems to show his coquetry, trying and examining their faith and love, and thus even the most cruel manifestations of the battle in which the ‘youthful heroes’, as Shah Latif calls them, are enmeshed, are signs of divine love.

The earth trembles, shakes; the skies are in uproar;
This is not a war, this is the manifestation of Love.

The poet knows that affliction is a special gift for the friends of God, Those who are afflicted most are the prophets, then the saints, then the others in degrees’, and so he continues:

The Friend kills the darlings, the lovers are slain,
For the elect friends He prepares difficulties.
God, the Eternal, without need what He wants, He

That is not by any means the spirit of Larissa MacFarquhar‘s New Yorker piece, Passion Plays: The making of Edward Albee — but it’s the spirit of passion plays as best I can understand it, drawing on my first and fourth decades of life, and on both Catholic Christianity and Shi’ite Islam.

If we are to understand grief — both passionate and compassionate — we might care to ponder such matters.

How’s that for a mini-essay, as promised?

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Nicolle Wallace 3/12/2019:

Guy needs a new stump speech. Democrats effectively check-mating Republicans in Congress by saying, We will only move toward impeachment if there’s evidence of criminal conduct, and practically daring the GOP to say they’s let crimes committed by the President slide…

Glenn Kirschner:

We’re spending so much time trying to decide whether what we have seen publicly reported that may be 5% of what Bob Mueller has, is enough to impeach, is enough to charge somebody with obstruction, with a cover-up, I mean, that’s like sitting here and talking about whether after the first inning of the baseball game, we can predict with 100% confidence which team will win [..]

So for us to debate whether we have enough to begin impeachment proceedings, whether we might have enough to bring a criminal charge against the President or his family members is really folly, it’s folly that we enjoy, and it’s important … but you know, this is still the first inning, with respect to this game, and it may go into extra innings before we know who wins and who loses ..

Peter Baker:

I think he’s done a remarkable job of holding his cards tight to the vest, his office doesn’t leak, much to our frustration, we do not know things until he’s ready for us to know them, and it’s very possible that just when he finally shows those cards, he has a lot of things there that we don’t know anything about.

Rachel Maddow:

And on top of all of that, the, heh, out of control, spinning carousel of scandal around this President is about to enter one of its most kinetic and dramatic periods yet ..

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And on top of all of that, authorities in New York State, interestingly, in both the legislature and in law enforcement, in the Attorney General’s office, they have started, today, to turn their own state-level law enforcement resources on this President and his business, and they’re starting to do it like they’ve got him in a tractor beam.

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Language, language:

Alec MacGillis, The Tragedy of Baltimore
Since Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, violent crime has spiked to levels unseen for a quarter century. How order collapsed in an American city.

In Baltimore, you can tell a lot about the politics of the person you’re talking with by the word he or she uses to describe the events of April 27, 2015. Some people, and most media outlets, call them the “riots”; some the “unrest.” Guy was among those who always referred to them as the “uprising,” a word that connoted something justifiable and positive: the first step, however tumultuous, toward a freer and fairer city.

This is why choice of metaphors matters.

So:

“I FELT LIKE I WAS BEING PHYSICALLY RIPPED APART”

Ocasio-Cortez admits that the sudden fame has been disorienting. “At first, it was really, really, really hard. I felt like I was being physically ripped apart in those first two to three months,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

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And that’s a wrap.