One Bear, Many Wolves
In swing states, Bush is running an ad that visually compares the threat of future terrorism to a pack of wolves roaming about (the edge of a rancher's field?). It's great. The ad is a take-off of one Reagan aired in 1984 that compared the communist threat to a big black bear. "The bear may be friendly or it may be dangerous. Isn't it wise to be stronger than the bear?" - or somesuch. The wolves, on the other hand, "are looking for signs of weakness." (I didn't know the WTC and the Pentagon were "signs of weakness" - quite the opposite.) The switch in biological metaphor reminds me of something said by an American general at the close of the Cold War - that at the fall of the Soviet Bloc we would see "a million poisonous snakes issue forth from the belly of the slain dragon." I think a rereading of Deleuze and Guattari's essay "One or Many Wolves?" in A Thousand Plateaus is in order.
Here's what the wolves themselves have to say about it: Wolf Packs for Truth!
But back to bears... Whereas the image of Russian bears tends to float for me, evoking images of the circus or the "bear market" of Soviet-style communism, the pack-of-wolves image locks in tight like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Whereas bears infiltrate your neighborhood, scare your children, maul Czechoslovakia, and rummage through the garbage like homeless beatniks looking for a handout, wolves aren't particularly threatening. That is, unless you do either one of two things to the metaphor. The wolves are threatening if they are trying to destroy your property (i.e. the terrorists are just spitefully envious of our wealth). Better yet, the wolves are out to get YOU - one of the livestock. Luckily, a rancher is there to help. He knows a little bit more about wolves than you, a lowly ruminant, do. And ruminants do not need a Bill of Rights. They just need to feel safe so that they're fat and happy come slaughter. (To this I say, "Four legs good; two legs baaaaad!) This second option has even more metaphoric-enthymematic punch. 1) Who else besides the trusty rancher keeps a flock? 2) And who believes he is a lone emissary of God? Answers* at the bottom of the page.
Oh, and I heard the strangest thing today. Bush was responding to a comment by one of Kerry's associates who said, by way of Bush's recounting, "The war on terror is a metaphor, like the war on poverty." To this Bush replies, "It's no metaphor," to a crowd of carefully screened, screaming supporters. To Bush, I respond, Uhhhh, it is a metaphor. Unless you are willing to grant the destruction of the meaningfulness of that word - and this position wouldn't surprise me given the administration's nonstop assault on the English language. One could say that every word use is a metaphor to some extent. What matters is the distance you have to travel from the word before you hit paydirt. You have to go a long way with "terror," so we conclude it is more metaphoric than most. The funny thing is that the path is circuitous, snaking through not only the 9/11 attacks, but all kinds of things - like terrifying protesters, the terror that your government may be lying to you, or the mundane terror of office cubicle life without the proper soothing pharmaceuticals. We declare war on it all! We also know that with the sweep of the hands on the clock, live metaphors die. They cease to be "hands." It seems to me that Bush is purposefully killing a metaphor. The whole crew is out there, circling it like Caesar's men. What does it mean to off this one? Well, if a "war on terror" becomes a real thing (rather than a flailing and opportunistic response to the actions of a handful of mostly Saudi hijackers), then it can be defined in any way those in the bully pulpit see fit. What a wonderfully rhetorical malleable real thing! And to seize upon the thing that even eeks out pleasure as a persuasive appeal--fear: that's time-tested. It occurs to me that if there is a giant uber-corp entity that will assimilate the globe (what a friend of mine calls the "one giant Japanese fishing concern floating on the Pacific"), it will have to gain a monopoly on what scares us first. In killing the metaphor of "terror" and declaring "war" on it (the province of government and big industry), we are witnessing a hostile takeover of our fears, generally. I suppose there is one question left: Is this "hostile takeover" a metaphor or not? These days, it's difficult to say.
*Answers to today's quiz: 1) Bush/Jesus; 2) Jesus/Bush
Here's what the wolves themselves have to say about it: Wolf Packs for Truth!
But back to bears... Whereas the image of Russian bears tends to float for me, evoking images of the circus or the "bear market" of Soviet-style communism, the pack-of-wolves image locks in tight like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Whereas bears infiltrate your neighborhood, scare your children, maul Czechoslovakia, and rummage through the garbage like homeless beatniks looking for a handout, wolves aren't particularly threatening. That is, unless you do either one of two things to the metaphor. The wolves are threatening if they are trying to destroy your property (i.e. the terrorists are just spitefully envious of our wealth). Better yet, the wolves are out to get YOU - one of the livestock. Luckily, a rancher is there to help. He knows a little bit more about wolves than you, a lowly ruminant, do. And ruminants do not need a Bill of Rights. They just need to feel safe so that they're fat and happy come slaughter. (To this I say, "Four legs good; two legs baaaaad!) This second option has even more metaphoric-enthymematic punch. 1) Who else besides the trusty rancher keeps a flock? 2) And who believes he is a lone emissary of God? Answers* at the bottom of the page.
Oh, and I heard the strangest thing today. Bush was responding to a comment by one of Kerry's associates who said, by way of Bush's recounting, "The war on terror is a metaphor, like the war on poverty." To this Bush replies, "It's no metaphor," to a crowd of carefully screened, screaming supporters. To Bush, I respond, Uhhhh, it is a metaphor. Unless you are willing to grant the destruction of the meaningfulness of that word - and this position wouldn't surprise me given the administration's nonstop assault on the English language. One could say that every word use is a metaphor to some extent. What matters is the distance you have to travel from the word before you hit paydirt. You have to go a long way with "terror," so we conclude it is more metaphoric than most. The funny thing is that the path is circuitous, snaking through not only the 9/11 attacks, but all kinds of things - like terrifying protesters, the terror that your government may be lying to you, or the mundane terror of office cubicle life without the proper soothing pharmaceuticals. We declare war on it all! We also know that with the sweep of the hands on the clock, live metaphors die. They cease to be "hands." It seems to me that Bush is purposefully killing a metaphor. The whole crew is out there, circling it like Caesar's men. What does it mean to off this one? Well, if a "war on terror" becomes a real thing (rather than a flailing and opportunistic response to the actions of a handful of mostly Saudi hijackers), then it can be defined in any way those in the bully pulpit see fit. What a wonderfully rhetorical malleable real thing! And to seize upon the thing that even eeks out pleasure as a persuasive appeal--fear: that's time-tested. It occurs to me that if there is a giant uber-corp entity that will assimilate the globe (what a friend of mine calls the "one giant Japanese fishing concern floating on the Pacific"), it will have to gain a monopoly on what scares us first. In killing the metaphor of "terror" and declaring "war" on it (the province of government and big industry), we are witnessing a hostile takeover of our fears, generally. I suppose there is one question left: Is this "hostile takeover" a metaphor or not? These days, it's difficult to say.
*Answers to today's quiz: 1) Bush/Jesus; 2) Jesus/Bush
posted by thebaffler at 9:21 PM
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