After listening to the Republicans speak, at the Convention and after, I felt a need to deconstruct their language, since it made no sense to me.
The New York Times has been great in its passionate fact-checking and daily refutations of the wild speeches, and I recently heard an interview with Lawrence O'Donnell from MSNBC in which he referred to "low information voters" - people who don't have and don't want much information.
O'Donnell's point was that the Convention was designed with these people in mind.
Apparently 97% of voters have already made up their minds, and Romney is fighting for the last few votes, presumably from people who have been sleepwalking all their lives, and can watch the Convention with a blank-slate mind. These people apparently have no reference points, no memory of history, no personal experiences to reflect on that might lead them to question what they are hearing - in fact, no critical faculties at all. To me, it seems people like these "low information voters" are a separate species, or perhaps severely disabled. Are they low frontal lobe volume people? The evolutionary missing link? How do they function without memories, without independent thoughts?
But looking at the conventioneers (I'd only caught glimpses in cuts from the Daily Show), there appear to be plenty of functioning adults who probably hold day jobs doing something or other, who listen to a level of doublespeak that would make Orwell blush. And they applaud. These speeches go beyond (way beyond) being simply falsehoods. They are also not just fatuous propaganda. No, this language - if one took the time to deconstruct it - simply has left the world of reason and thought and entered into a magical, mystical realm, a realm of codes and talking in tongues. No one expects the Believer who speaks in tongues at her church in Louisiana on Sunday morning to be making "sense". Sense - logical meaning - is not the point. But we do expect this same woman to speak about the real world when she goes to work on Monday morning as a nurse or airline pilot.
Wikipedia defines speaking in tongues as:
"[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody"
Doesn't this sound a little like the Convention? "Sentence-like units, put together more or less haphazardly”?
_______________
And the purpose of speaking in tongues?:
"Sign for unbelievers (1 Cor 14:22). Some assume that tongues are "a sign for unbelievers that they might believe", and so advocate it as a means of evangelism. Others point out that Paul quotes Isaiah to show that "when God speaks to people in language they cannot understand, it is quite evidently a sign of God's judgment"; so if unbelievers are baffled by a church service they cannot understand because tongues are spoken without being interpreted, that is a "sign of God's attitude", "a sign of judgment"
________________
So if you do not understand the Speech you are heard at the Republican Convention, it is a sign of G-d's judgment, His judgment of you. Don't you see thousands of people clapping and smiling? Aren't you aware that 10's of millions of people will vote for Mitt Romney in a few short months? Do you ever question why these people - people whom you either revile or pity - can understand the Speech, and you cannot? Has it dawned on you that these people, human just as you are, may be hearing something you do not? Can it be, finally, that these people are hearing G-d's own voice, in a language you cannot understand?
______________
We learned during the Bush ll reign that the administration looked derisively at the "reality-based community", those in the chattering classes - journalists, professors, teachers, professionals, hell, anyone with a mind and a memory. The Administration admitted openly that they were not operating in this same reality. This is not my kooky theory, it has been observed by people who served in the Administration, people like Henry Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary, who reports feeling an other-worldly, reality-free zone in the White House.
Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, Paul Ryan - it's not just that I disagree with what they are saying, it's that they are using totally different rules of meaning, syntax, logic. Yes, it's almost as if I am hearing a foreign language. The words initially sound familiar, but then, when they are "haphazardly put together" I realize I am in Church. Yes, the speakers are signaling to the Select, and I am not one.
And this language is impervious to attacks using logic, facts, memory, or New York Times columns. It is ingenious because it has its own internal rules and cannot be undone by any real-world sentence, chart, or video-clip. It's has a magic, kryptonite-like power and this frustrates people like us and the NYT editorial board because we can't understand why our words and logic, our facts, our references to actual things that occurred - why none of this can pierce the magic.
And this is because reason can never pierce magic. Magic doesn't try to be "real" to "make sense". Magic's purpose is to entrance, to transport, to enchant, to entertain, amuse, and to carry the spirit away from the world of the New York Times.
The world of Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry can only be understood as a retreat from the painful "realities" of modern life into a magical world far, far away.
I am not saying these things to be cute - I am horrified at the delusions of my fellow-citizens.
Their fraudulent characterizations of Barack Obama are cartoonishly inaccurate, as is almost everything else they say. Which is why I have come to believe that they are not offering a political program, a set of public policy options - no, they are offering to take you away on a magic carpet ride, into the world of your choice. The real world of 2012 is apparently too harsh for these delicate souls, and they passionately hate Obama for reminding them on a daily basis of how difficult the problems we face really are. They hate his complex, nuanced approach, and his acknowledgment that most problems do not have easy solutions. They hate Obama not for what he has done (which is modest and isn't much different from a moderate Republican circa 1960), but for what he is - a cosmopolitan leader who does not offer saccharine solutions to every problem. Their hatred is irrational, but emotions often are. Their rage is an immature, angry, almost adolescent rebellion against reality.
But this rage and flight from reality is shared by millions. And their confusion and fear is expertly fanned and channeled by the purveyors of fear and magic in the media such as Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh.
This rage, this fear, this anger, this flight from reason can only lead to very bad places. When a society chooses magic over reality, violence and oppression usually follow. Because as the illusion is challenged it must be preserved, and in its preservation, people who threaten the illusion must be eliminated. If the emperor is wearing no clothes, it is the person who points that out - and not the emperor - who must be removed.
So I no longer expect this Republican Party to make sense, because it now represents people who have lost their senses, or become sense-less, who talk in tongues and want to be transported away - away from the dark people, away from change, away from fear, away from decline. For these frightened and confused people, the Party offers magic, spiritual transportation, and nostalgia. It offers no solutions precisely because it is not interested in the world as it is.
Like a person evading life with a bottle, or a needle, this Party will continue to medicate itself until it either overdoses and dies, or hits bottom and reforms. My fervent hope is that they are not driving the vehicle of State while under the influence of this non-sensical magic.