Reminds me why I already miss this guy:
First up: “sustainable.” It’s been at least a decade since this earnest word was drained of all energy, having become the prime unit of exchange in the argot of purposeful uplift. As the final indication of its degraded status, I found it in President Obama’s “signing statement” which accompanied the whisper of his pen, as on New Year’s Eve – a very quiet day when news editors were all asleep — he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2012 which handed $662 billion to the Pentagon and for good measure ratified by legal statute of the exposure of US citizens to arbitrary arrest without subsequent benefit of counsel, and to possible torture and imprisonment sine die, abolishing habeas corpus. Don’t bother ask what happens to non-US citizens.As he set his name to this repugnant legislation the president issued a “signing statement” in which I came upon the following passage: “Over the last several years, my Administration has developed an effective, sustainable framework for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected terrorists . . .”
So much for “sustainable.” Into the tumbrils with it [...]
Next up: “iconic.” I trip over this golly-gee epithet thirty times a day. No warrant for its arrest is necessary, nor benefit of counsel or trial in a US court. Off to the tumbrils, arm in arm with “narrative.” These days everyone has a narrative, an earnest word originally recruited, I believe, by anthropologists. So we read “according to the Pentagon’s narrative . . . ” Why not use some more energetic formulation, like, “According to the patent nonsense minted by the Pentagon’s press office . . . ” ? Suddenly we’re surrounded by “narratives,” all endowed with equal status. Into the tumbrils with it.
I think “parse” has almost run its course, though occasionally this shooting star of 2011 is to be spotted panting along in some peloton of waffle from the Commentariat. Off with its head, along with “meme,” an exhausted little word that deserves the long dark rest of oblivion.
If you're not exactly clear on what a "tumbril" is, click here.
---Vitelius
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