Tonight Rachel Maddow and MSNBC present a program on WHY we went into Iraq. I can’t wait. She said last night it’s already sparking controversy, etc. But where from? Fox News? Who cares. Darryl Issa’s behavior in the committee on the IRS “scandal” (there is none) shows what Republicans are made of. Issa is one of the richest, most intelligent, and articulate Republicans, and he behaves in an immoral and disgusting manner, so what can we expect from the GOP or any conservative other than glorification of any U.S. military action. Anyone for invading Ukraine? Oh, that’s right, we’re on their side; it’s the Russian IN Ukraine we’ll be invading…… no, attacking, to defend Ukraine against the Russians. But wait, lots of Ukrainians seems to want the Russians there, so who are we defending against the Russians, the Shiites or the Sunnis…….. er, I mean, the pro-Russkies or the anti-Russkies? And how many Americans know the difference between Russians and Ukrainians? How many know what a Ukrainian is? Or what a Russian is other than a Communist. I mean, after all, Republicans at the highest levels are still talking about the Soviet Union, defunct some decades now.
SO ———– a PERFECT scenario for another war for the U.S. to get into. Now we’ll learn the difference between Odessa and Kiev, maybe even the difference between Minsk and Pinsk, if we get that far………. oh yeah, one of our pilots will get shot down over one of them.
OK, but let me switch to language for a moment.
Remember when Bush called himself the “decider” and everyone made fun of him? Conservatives sniff at that unseemly behavior, but it really was more the comedians who made fun of Bush and they make fun of Obama, too. (conservatives don’t get that; they decide everything on the basis of religion disguised as ideology, so their guy is always right, like Jesus, and the other guy is always wrong, like Satan). So what was the big to-do about the “decider”?
The word is “decision maker”. “Decider” doesn’t work like “kicker”, one who kicks, or “thinker”, one who thinks, or “tinker”, one who tinks….., no, that’s one who tinkers, but “tinkerer” is also listed as a variant, although “tinker” is both a noun and a verb, transitive and intransitive, with various extended meanings; it is from Middle English “tinekerer”, one who works with tin.
So people who are sensitive to language pricked up their ears (probably the origin of “prick” for penis, though mine doesn’t prick up as easily as it used to) and wondered what was going on. Why didn’t he just refer to himself as the decision maker? Then one wonders, does he know the word “decision maker”? Those who liked to disparage Bush’s education simply attributed it to his lack of reading and studying. The more astute, like me, felt it betokened what has become the Mark of Bush: he is incurious. He just doesn’t care or pay attention and when he thought of himself as the one deciding things, he did what a very large number of people do when they say things like “groundment” or groundation” for “grounding”, as in put on hold, like a pilot or a kid, they just go for any old derivative and plug it on to the base or root word. So we get “decider”. It makes sense, we understand it, it’s just not idiomatic English. So when people call Bush an idiot, they are wrong. He just doesn’t give a tinker’s dam.
I’ll add to this after seeing the program tonight.