Touch of Evil
A new first – at least to me – in the history of Presidential doublespeak: today, in honor of Pope Benedict XVI’s U.S. visit, Bush spewed a requisite string of hollow ping-pong balls, and out with them came this pungent phrase, uttered in righteously doctrinaire tones: "the dictatorship of relativism." Roll that baby around in your cheeks for a minute before hocking back out.
Now, we could, but won't, leap right over the initial conclusion – that "relativism" is a word and idea Bush himself, who retains an aura of dumbfounded mediocrity despite his many, presumably educational years in office, could not have possibly defined during his grade-C Yale years, and, I’ll bet, for decades after that. Chances are he still doesn’t know exactly what it means, nor "sophistry." In this particular moment at least, you’d be hard pressed to find an instance in American history where the gap is any broader between a president’s literacy and the language he is given by speechwriters to say aloud.
Of course, his staff, and the Pope, know what relativism means, insofar as they’re familiar with their own definition: for them, "the dictatorship of relativism" refers to the blight that has infected our culture in the postwar decades, a blight of liberalism, plurality, multiculturism, tolerance and political correctness. You can just hear the think-tank thought-crunch meeting that decided that "relativism" would be the new neocon bugbear, the new code word intended to invoke in the economically terrified skulls of Middle America the new way to demonize them – foreigners, Muslims, homosexuals, abortionists, New Yorkers, liberals, anti-corporatists, atheists, artists, Frenchmen, what have you. It’s a good code word, because its translations are flexible and various, however unmistakable it is coming from the smirking and uncomprehending lips of Bush II.
What Mr. and Mrs. Joe Nebraska won’t contemplate, because they’re not instructed to, is the realpolitik oppositive term, which by definition is the ambition of Bush, Ratzinger, et al. – "absolutism." If you defined it for most Americans, though, I’d imagine they’d feel a giant, cold chill run up the collective spine. But that’s what the stakes are: ideological and therefore practical dominance. Bush virtually came right out and said it, and the struggle for it and against it won’t end when he’s gone.
Well, you know, Michael, the Limbaugh's, Kristol's, Sowell's and Fukuyama's have had themselves a high old time with that word at the expense of Liberals for quite some time, so I just wonder why it took so long for The Decider to get around to using it. I suppose his speechwriters have been enjoying that feeling of accomplishment that came with discovering the word "caliphate" and stuffing it into their boss's mouth. "Caliphate" was a winner. I almost shat myself when I heard Fearless Leader use it.
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I must say, this is one of the most provocative and beautifully written blogs in existence. Never surrender.
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Conservative critic/dick Michael Medved loves throwing around the phrase "moral relativism" to attack exactly those things you've listed. And, in a guilty-pleasure moment, I tuned in to hear Michael Savage advocating absolute censorship of films with m.r. like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" because kids turn around and reenact what they see. I called in to mention some of the social issues worked in by horror directors like George Romero and Roger Corman--and to add that as a fan I hardly ever carve up people--but I never made it past the phone screener. "Relativism" is a charge like "antisemitism" and "p.c." that the right has coopted to shut down the debate.
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