Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.
Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
John Stuart Mill
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
Mark Twain
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
The Public is merely a multiplied "me."
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Winston Churchill
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
Otto Von Bismarck
When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.
I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
Be polite; write diplomatically ;even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
Voltaire
A witty saying proves nothing.
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.
Karl Marx
Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Rove's Memo Gambit
By Nick
Warfare is the art of deceit. If the enemy is incensed, provoke him. The expert baits the enemy, and the enemy is certain to take it. In doing so, he moves the enemy and lies in wait with his full force. -The Art of War, Karl Rove's favorite book.
I am firmly convinced that Karl Rove is behind the forged memos. If you think that's a crazy, wild-eyed, conspiricy theory, than you probably haven't studied Karl Rove's strategies. Conservatives will likely counter my claim with, "You have no proof, your trying to spin this!" Thats fine... I'm not talking to anyone who supports, or is undecided about Bush. I'm talking to bloggers who firmly support Kerry: Rove is in the process of executing a brilliant political gambit -- don't fall for it. If your helping propagate the memo story, than you are one of Rove's pawns.
Update@6:42 Central Time
Buzz Flash just released the same conclusion (albiet the've gotten about as far as I have in connecting the dots):
The dominant thinking seems to be that if the documents were forged, they were leaked in an effort to harm Bush. But it is worth considering another possibility: the Bush team itself may have "leaked" the forged documents. The whole affair seems to bear what is known as "The Mark of Rove," as in Karl Rove, senior advisor to President Bush; Karl Rove the grand wizard of dirty tricks.
If you think this sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory, you probably haven't been following Karl Rove's career; a career replete with dirty tricks and sophisticated, preemptive political strikes.
Update@6:52 Central
Tommorow's edition of The Guardian (UK) is Reports:
The timing of the appearance of the documents has led some Democrats to wonder if they had been put into circulation to discredit the anti-Bush effort. Fingers have begun to point - as they often do among Democrats - at Karl Rove, the president's electoral mastermind.
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"If this is Rove, it is his greatest masterpiece," a Kerry campaign adviser said yesterday.
The rumours may say more about the extraordinary powers attributed to Mr Rove by his adversaries than about the facts. CBS News, which first reported the documents last week, is not saying where they came from, but according to some press reports, they were provided by a retired officer with a grievance over hospital bills.
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Mr Corn said it was unlikely the documents were the work of Mr Rove and the Bush camp. "The cost of being caught is too high," he said.
Rove is so hard to unravel: its documented that he started planning this election on Bush's first day in office. Rove might have orchestrated a scam, yet he might also be scamming us into thinking it was his scam -- but that all together might be the scam, and rove has nothing to do with it. All I know is that I'd hate to play a game of chess with Rove.
Conclusion 7:19 pm central time.
Otto Von Bismarck once joked, "Don't believe a thing in politics until its offically denied". However, Bismarck was arguably more misleading and shrewed than Karl Rove. Bismarck would have been proud of modern politics; if you think Rove's tactics are new, than google Bismarcks name.
I've concluded that Rove is behind these attacks, however I'm also very cautious about what that means. That conclusion -- ironically enough -- was solidified by the National Review, and Townhall. I don't think the Democrats could have anything to do with it; the response among the DNC, Kerry's team, and the majority of the left has simply been too in coherent. In contrast, right wing publications have already framed the story -- and I think I know what Karl is up too. Which of course, I will now proceed to write.
"Netpolitik is a new style of diplomacy that seeks to exploit the powerful capabilities of the Internet to shape politics, culture, values, and personal identity. But unlike Realpolitik — which seeks to advance a nation’s political interests through amoral coercion — Netpolitik traffics in “softer” issues such as moral legitimacy, culturalidentity, societal values, and public perception." - The Rise of Netpolitik
PUN-DIT (n) : A learned man; a teacher; a source of opinion; a critic: a political pundit.
