Ambrose Bierce (June 24, 1842 -- ??) was an Ohio-born writer and journalist who mysteriously disappeared in 1913 while attempting to join Francisco (Pancho) Villa in Mexico. Famous for his Civil War and supernatural stories, as well as for his legendary wit, best appreciated by reading his Devil's Dictionary. Bierce suffered no fools, spared no enemies, and spat in the face of man-made gods and those who prayed to them. His definition of astrology: "The science of making the dupe see stars. Astrology is by some held in high respect as the precursor of astronomy. Similarly, the night-howling tomcat has a just claim to reverential consideration as precursor to the hurtling shoe." Ambrose Bierce was my kind of guy. I like Tom Englehardt, Adam Hochschild, Stephen Shalom, and Rebecca Solnit, too. Bierce would have liked them (I think). Ambrose Bierce, Judge Joseph Crater, Amelia Earhart, Michael Rockefeller, D.B. Cooper, and Jimmy Hoffa all disappeared without a trace. If only Dub would join them! If this is (fair & balanced) fantasy, so be it.
[x HNN]
Updating the Devil's Dictionary in the Bush Era
Excerpts from Tom Engelhardt's "Entries for a Devil’s Dictionary of the Bush Era" (3-28-05):
When asked if he would like to submit a Bush-era definition or two, Noam Chomsky replied, "I suspect that I'll have to fall back on Mark Twain's despair when trying to satirize General Funston: 'No satire of Funston could reach perfection, because Funston occupies that summit himself....[he is] satire incarnated.'" (General Frederick N. Funston was a commander of part of the American expeditionary force that crushed the Philippine independence movement as the twentieth century began.)
Herewith, then, entries (or are they entrees?) for a modern Devil's Dictionary (with a small bow to Ambrose Bierce).
TOM ENGELHARDT
Homeland n: A term successfully used by the Germans and the Soviets in World War II, less successfully (and in the plural) by Apartheid-era South Africa. It means neither home, nor land, has replaced both country and nation in American public speech, and is seldom wielded without the companion word "security." It is the place to which imperial forces return for R&R.
Homeland Security: synonymous with Homeland insecurity.
Homeland Security Department: The new Defense Department, known for declaring bridges yellow and the Statue of Liberty orange.
Homelandism n: a neologism for love of the Homeland Security State as in, "My Homeland, ‘tis of thee, sweet security state of liberty…"
Intelligence n: What Dick Cheney wants and the CIA must provide -- or else. (See, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction)
Nationalism n: How foreigners love their country (when they do). A very dangerous phenomenon that can lead to extremes of passion, blindness, and xenophobia. (See, Terrorism)
Oil n: 1. Black gold. 2. (defunct acronym) Operation Iraqi Liberation or OIL (name changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom, OIF, without explanation). 3. What the Bush administration wasn't after in Iraq and isn't after in Iran. (See, Democracy)
Patriotism n: How Americans love their country. A trait so positive you can't have too much of it, and if you do, then you are a super-patriot which couldn't be better. (Foreigners cannot be patriotic. See, Nationalism)
Pentagon n: Formerly, the Defense Department, but since we now have a new defense department (see, Homeland Security Department), soon be renamed the Global Forward Deployment Department or GFDD (Ge-Fudd). Its forward-deployed headquarters will be established in a two-sided building, the Duogon, now being constructed in Bahrain out of sand imported from the beaches of Texas by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. From there, it plans to rule the known world.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD
Senate n: Exclusive club, entry fee $10 to $30 million.
House of Representatives: Exclusive club, entry fee $1 to $5 million.
Washington Press Corps: Extension of White House and Pentagon press offices.
STEPHEN SHALOM:
Checks and Balances. The system whereby the campaign checks of the few balance the interests of the many.
Free Speech Zone The area to which those who differ from the administration are confined should they be so audacious as to wish to exercise their right of free speech.
Free Press: 1. Government propaganda materials covertly funded with a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money but given out for free to the press and then broadcast without any acknowledgment of the government's role in their preparation. 2. Newspapers that obscure the truth on behalf of corporate and government interests for free.
Town-hall Meeting: A meeting in a hall in a town where all the participants have first been vetted for loyalty to the Bush administration.
Mandate: 1. The opinion expressed by about a quarter of the eligible voters. 2. The opinion reflected in an electoral-vote margin smaller than in any 20th century election other than 1916 and 2000. 3. The opinion expressed by the smallest popular vote margin obtained by a sitting president since 1916.
REBECCA SOLNIT
China: See WalMart.
Death n: An increasingly rare phenomenon, no longer occurring among soldiers of the U.S. army or civilians in affected countries. However, the media reports that death is still caused by lone gunmen and over-consumption of saturated fats as well as natural disasters.
Democracy n: 1. A product so extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted. 2. When they vote for us. (See, tyranny: When they vote for someone else.)
Liberal adj: Widely used after the words progressive, radical, left, revolutionary, and insurrectionary were banned from the mainstream media, having the double benefit of making moderates seem vaguely dangerous and making revolutionaries seem vaguely embarrassing and ineffectual. Liberal media: Ted Koppel and anarchist zines.
Negroponte, John: Good diplomat, in the sense that Pol Pot is a good family-planner.
Ownership Society: You no longer own your national parks, your public transit, your commons, your government, your Bill of Rights, or your future, but you may purchase a Burger King franchise or some stocks with your WalMart earnings.
Peace n: What war is for.
Security n: Something to be applied to the homeland but not to the social.
Social Security: A good idea except for two problems: Social verges on socialism and guarantees of security violate a free market.
The Marketplace of Ideas: Buy low, sell high.
WalMart: The nation-state, future tense.
Tom Engelhardt is a writer and an editor. His books include The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of A Generation, and The Last Days of Publishing, a novel. He is also the producer of an online newsletter of opinion and commentary called TomDispatch. Tom is also a Fellow at the Nation Institute.
Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942. His first book, Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, was published in 1986. It was followed by The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey (1990) and The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (1994). Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels won the 1998 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay.
Stephen Shalom teaches political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey. Among his publications are Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War (South End Press, 1993), The Philippines Reader (1987), and Socialist Visions (1983). Steve writes for Z Magazine, is on the editorial board of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars and New Politics, and is active with the Montclair Civil Rights Coalition.
Rebecca Solnit is a writer and activist based in San Francisco and the author of Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities and seven other books, including the award-winning River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. Rebecca Solnit’s 1994 book Savage Dreams dealt at length with the Western Shoshone land wars and with nuclear testing in Nevada.
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