Andrew Hagen

The Guardian carries a nice appreciation of William Hazlitt. (*) Now there was a writer.

In every decade a few words and phrases rise to prominence, and later fall off in popularity. Tipping point is one of the modish formations of today. In a Pentagon press conference this afternoon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave an excursus into the ontology of the tipping point. (*) There’s nothing special or especially ontological about the term tipping point, however. Synonyms include: threshold, watershed, and brink.

Update: 8 April 2003. Phrasing.

I have grown tired of irony. It seems that irony and its impolite litter ranging from satire to sarcasm have permeated to our society’s very bones. Without intending to pick on the web log Sixth International specifically, I pick on just them to make a point that applies to almost the entire contemporary culture.

The Sixth International Politburo were proud to be named ‘Enemies Within’ a few weeks ago by Jackbooted Tory Reactionary Peter Cuthbertson. Now Decadent Capitalist Oppressor Iain Murray’s new blogroll officially classes us as part of the International Left-Wing Conspiracy™. If our heads get any bigger, Andrew Sullivan won’t be able to see the Mao cap we’ve put on just to annoy him.

(*) (formatting removed) There is no way of knowing quite what the author is saying. How serious is he? What is the debate? What is, indeed, the point? My impression of public discourse is that we are screaming at each other as if in foreign tongues.

Yes, ironical reflection can be funny, and it often is. Today, however, on the Internet and in the mass media, it is taken too far. This must make me seem totally irrelevant to the those here in America who infrequently say what they mean, when and if they mean anything at all. Whatever is their point, mine is clear: if you wish to communicate, do not hesitate to use the tools of language, including irony, in moderation.

The web does a lot of things well. One thing that it does very well is provide an outlet for writers, including writers who could never have been published before. Tom Bradley delivers the goods, even in speech form, in “No Baudelaires in Babylon.” (*) Mirror (†)

Under the pseudonym “Juan Non-Volokh,” an unknown writer bravely charges out against the fashionable, Orwellian term, “homicide bomber.” (*) This anonymous person has a good point in not only that the term, popularized by Press Secretary Ari Fleischer (†), is intrinsically redundant, but also that “the only purpose of inserting the word ‘homicide’ is to make a political statement. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of the English language.” There have been other forceful criticisms of this egregious Newspeak in Squiish (‡), and from Tapped (§) and Japan Times. (**) Let’s systematically take the term apart.

• The term bomber refers equally to any soldier in a regular military unit whose task is to bomb the enemy, and to any terrorist bomber. When a bomber bombs, he is trying to kill someone. A bomber who succeeds in his mission has killed at least one person.
• The term suicide refers to an act that is inherently shameful under Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
• The term suicide bomber refers to terrorist bombers who kill themselves in the process of killing others with a bomb. It could also refer to kamikazes in regular military units, such as Japan’s kamikaze airmen in World War II. Usually, however, the term suicide bomber refers to terrorists, fighters who for political purposes primarily target civilians and are themselves not in regular military units.
• The term homicide refers to the killing of another, whether murder or self-defense. A suicide cannot be a homicide, because the suicide in itself does not result in the killing of another.
• The term homicide bomber, analogously to the term homicide, refers to the killer of another, whether he is acting in self-defense or aggression. It refers to anyone who uses a bomb to try to kill other people. Examples include a B-52 bombardier, Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, and the Bali bombers.
• Therefore, the term homicide bomber when applied to a suicide bomber, leaves out the important information that the bomber shamefully committed suicide in the act of trying to kill others.

As the critics have noted, this is a purposeful omission that is meant to advance a certain political agenda.

In fact, it does not advance that political agenda very well. As Joseph Lelyveld observes in the New York Times of 28 October 2001, the Arab media is wont to use not suicide bomber, but martyr.

In Gaza, a poll taken in June that Palestinian and Israeli analysts both respect found that 78 percent of the population approved of the attacks carried out in their name in Israel or on its frontiers — more by a long shot than presently approve of peace negotiations. In Gaza, in other words, support for bombings staged in support of the Palestinian cause has become a cultural norm.

Only, since it’s universally accepted that suicide is contrary to the teachings of the Prophet, they are hardly ever called ‘’suicide bombings.'’ That term — our term — can be translated into Arabic but seldom is. Those we call suicide bombers are called shaheed, or martyrs, which is how bin Laden has urged the entire Muslim world to view 19 hijackers who extinguished more lives in an hour and a half on a golden American morning than all those killed over the years, on both sides, in two intifadas and nearly five dozen suicide bombings launched by Palestinian groups — three times more, in fact.

(††) Surely Ari Fleischer must know this. The conclusion must be drawn that Ari Fleischer believes that those who usually hear the term suicide bomber—that is, those in the West—are not sufficiently opposed to suicide bombings, and that deception through Orwellian language is necessary to trick them into firmer opposition. It is upon this point that Fleischer’s reasoning founders.

We should condemn suicide bombings in the strongest possible terms. To rely on deceptive language such as with the term homicide bomber, only weakens our condemnation. The strongest condemnation is to hang the terrorists on the hook of their own making: their double shame of suicide and murder. If anyone’s rhetoric is in need of correction by Ari Fleischer, it is that of the Arab media as it shamefully portrays suicide bombers as heroes for the sake of boosting their own ratings and profits.

Update: 29 November 2003. Fixed Volokh URL.

Here, north of the Equator, a chill strikes the air. The waters of the earth turn slowly to frost and hail. Autumn is here. As the seasons change, the senses recover; the memory stirs. John Keats’s To Autumn eyes this time and espies its virtue. (*) A recent Atlantic article by Sven Birkerts provides an introduction. (†) Keats asks of his titular subject what is beauty. He eschews the approach of the aesthetician and attempts to take autumn’s properties directly into his perception—first by sight, then by touch, finally by hearing—certain all along of their beauty, seeking only to know them.

It is the tragedy inherent in autumn that is upheld here as beautiful, for in every ripeness is a future of decay and demise. The true glory of fall is not in a pretty snapshot of it, but in the groundwork it lays for the rebirth to come.

It’s been 1,587 years, and finally the library at Alexandria has been rebuilt thanks to the Egyptian government and UNESCO—institutions that have only been in existence for a few decades, and already they have done what no preceding institution for the past fifteen centuries did. (*) The reconstruction of the great library is a very good reason to be optimistic about the future of the Middle East. The library was once the premier center of learning in all of human civilization. It was so grand, it had many volumes that existed nowhere else. When it was destroyed, reams of recorded knowledge was forever lost. This library should be made into a premier center for learning again, not only for Islam, but for all civilizations. Just one thing. This time, for all those exclusive volumes, let’s store backup copies offsite! What would ancient Egyptian scholars have thought if they could have accessed the library on the Internet from around the world? (†) Maybe they would be cheered that after thousands of years of writing, we would eventually have the ability through digital technology to preserve old writings against mold, must, and willful destruction, and still have the wisdom to build those palaces of culture called libraries.

Fortunately, it did not win a Hugo Award. Smith and Rusch’s science fiction novel and prelude to a video game, The Tenth Planet: Final Assault, fails to inspire anything but this spoiler-laden review.
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