{"id":57056,"date":"2017-12-19T23:25:08","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T23:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=57056"},"modified":"2017-12-19T23:27:29","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T23:27:29","slug":"game-and-other-metaphors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=57056","title":{"rendered":"Game and other metaphors"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — chess, billiards, dominoes and roulette — one horse, but no cats ]
\n.<\/p>\n

I’m always fascinated by chess and other game metaphors<\/strong>, but they’re generally verbal, so this one is a treat:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s from a War on the Rocks \/ US Institute of Peace<\/strong> piece, Harnessing Iraq\u2019s deadly array of armed groups after ISIL<\/a>, by Sarhang Hamasaeed<\/strong> — the first in a series.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

War is the continuation of games by other means<\/strong>. Everyone and her donkey has an “x is the continuation of y by other means” formulation, and they’re mostly a bit lame — this is mine.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Some recent game metaphors I’ve caught while my computer has been in the shop:<\/p>\n

Chris Matthew<\/strong>s had a rather neat billiards insight: “you always want to place the ball after the shot..<\/p>\n

Somewhere — it’s probably a cliche by now — “the first domino to fall”.<\/p>\n

“Nasser is playing roulette with the stability of the whole world” — in the TV series, Crown<\/strong>. second season, episode 1.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Okay, non-game metaphors, of particular interest when they’re religious:<\/p>\n

Al Franken<\/strong> was identified as a sacrificial lamb<\/strong> after his fellow Dems turned on him en masse<\/em> by Kevin Nealon<\/strong><\/a>, a metaphor disputed by Stephanie Ruhle<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scapegoats<\/strong>, sacrificial lambs<\/strong> amd martyrs <\/strong>are about as heady a set of transcendental metaphors as one might hope for — Franken is in heady conceptual company here.<\/p>\n

And here’s a newly-minted Franken-word<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a new word which has registered on the media\u2019s radar, and that is \u201cunresign\u201d \u2014 or \u201cun-resign,\u201d depending on the news organization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aah, aah.<\/p>\n

Okay, back to religion. Church Militant<\/strong> — Steve Bannon<\/strong> apparently used the phrase at a Vaticaan conference in 2014:<\/p>\n

In his presentation, Mr. Bannon, then the head of the hard-right website Breitbart News and now Mr. Trump\u2019s chief strategist, called on the \u201cchurch militant\u201d to fight a global war against a \u201cnew barbarity\u201d of \u201cIslamic fascism\u201d and international financial elites, with 2,500 years of Western civilization at risk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Samuel Freedman<\/strong> commented in the NYT<\/a>:<\/p>\n

While most listeners probably overlooked the term \u201cchurch militant,\u201d knowledgeable Catholics would have recognized it as a concept deeply embedded in the church\u2019s teaching. Moreover, they would have noticed that Mr. Bannon had taken the term out of context, invoking it in a call for cultural and military conflict rather than for spiritual warfare, particularly within one\u2019s soul, its longstanding connotation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Metaphor? The Church as an army? Salvation Army? Or a direct reference to the Church, factually, actually, Militant?<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Well-turned phrases:<\/p>\n

“The cost of doing nothing is not nothing.” John Delaney<\/strong>, (D-MD)<\/p>\n

“The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” quoted in The Jerusalem Post, November 2002.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s a bit ancient. How about:<\/p>\n

This is what hell looks like: a country where people talk about morals and wave bibles, defending someone who’s accused of pedophilia. .. and what we need is redmption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s Frank Schaeffer<\/strong>, son of Francis Schaeffer<\/strong> — founder of L’Abri<\/strong> and the conservative right movement<\/strong> — on JoyAM<\/a>. Fierce.<\/p>\n

And cruel, but decidedly witty — this amazing headline:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

Then there are the ouroboroi<\/strong> — the self-referential phrasings:<\/p>\n

Rep. Eric Swalwell<\/strong> (D-CA): <\/p>\n

You call it the Trump privilege. I call it the privilege privilege.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also: “To spy on the spies.”<\/p>\n

And somewhere: “investigating the investigators..”<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Mercifully, no cute cats nor kitties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — chess, billiards, dominoes and roulette — one horse, but no cats ] . I’m always fascinated by chess and other game metaphors, but they’re generally verbal, so this one is a treat: That’s from a War on the Rocks \/ US Institute of Peace piece,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1457,526,497,529,1129,1218,875,96,1479,817,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bannon","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-games","category-martyr","category-mercy","category-metaphor","category-new-york-times","category-ouroboros","category-rhetoric","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57056"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57079,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57056\/revisions\/57079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}