Thursday, April 23, 2009

Language Goes To War

The Beltway use of "prohibited" is similar to “transparent” and “robust.” Just saying the word is intended to summon the reality of its meaning. A self-actualizing language event. (With apologies to Lee Cary.)

Prohibited actually means we will punish you if we can catch you and if we feel like it.

I do believe if we had a transparent and robust prohibition of illegal drugs we could finally win the drug war. Any one have a plan? Two points. It has to require a lot of man power. And it can't ever under any circumstances ever possibly work. Oh, yeah. It has to sound plausible to the rubes (I mean voters). We can use words like "prohibited", and "robust", and "transparent". An "effective" or two should definitely be thrown in. Plus "science". You can never have too much "science". And don't forget to quote "an expert in the field". That works really well especially if the expert works in law enforcement. And don't forget to mention to the expert that we are hiring - it helps to avoid wrong answers.

H/T Lee Cary of American Thinker. Whose point only needed one minor correction.

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