Recycled Slogans

CHICAGO – Thank goodness I was already past security at Midway airport when my giggle erupted into a laugh early last Sunday morning.

Laughing at a televised recounting of Bush's sound-bite response to bin Laden's latest taunt, it was déjà vu all over again.

This is still a dangerous world, the president was quoted saying.

Well, saying it again, as it turns out.

Upon returning home, I Googled the phrase and it seems that Bush used the same exact words in nearly the same situation only last May, when he was also on the road to strong-arm as many Asian leaders as possible.

That American political discourse has slid from reasoned discussions to catchy sound bites is hardly news. But now we're into a kind of sloganeering that would make Goebbels grin.

In fact, the very same phrase had previously been enshrined in a satirical poem of classic Bushisms called Make the Pie Higher by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson. The poem begins: I think we all agree, the past is over. This is still a dangerous world.

Well, the world has always been a dangerous place. But the real question of whether the world is more dangerous today cannot be answered unless we compare then with now. But that's not likely to happen, given the administration's philosophy.

Theirs is a positively medieval way of thinking: What’s the point of fresh thinking if the truth is a just reiteration of the past?

It seems like the fundamentalists both Christian and Muslim are still fighting the crusades, crossing swords, waiting for the apocalypse. Instead of a War on Terror, we ought to be calling whatever we're doing a jihad, which better describes the fixed philosophy that grips both sides.

Now, one can see how oppressed and outraged Muslims are caught in a time warp. But how is it that our relatively free and open society has made itself a prisoner of history's recycling bin? How is it that something called the news is increasingly just variations of the same old story, to which slogans can be applied so comfortably?

Part of the answer comes through considering the source from which most Americans get the context of their news, if not the news itself. Television's regurgitated slogans are aggravating the public's twin disabilities.

Our inability to pay attention to the present, or to remember the past, is like having a political consciousness that suffers from both ADD and Alzheimer's.

How else can you explain how the current administration of horses’ asses is forever chasing their own tails? Or a president who is little more than a well-groomed fluffer in a great pornography of fear?

-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there