Dog Whistles and Plausible Deniability

New category; The Joy of Lex, in which I examine words, language and how they are used.

In this post, I mean to talk about two different devices used in political speech -- the dog whistle, and plausible deniability.  These are often confused because they are both forms of double meaning.  But they use of double meaning differently.

A dog whistle is so-called because dogs have a different range of hearing than humans.  In particular, they can hear higher frequencies, so that actual, literal dog whistles exist that dogs can hear but humans cannot.  A dog whistle statement, then, is one that has one meaning to the general public and another, covert, meaning that only a small number of insiders recognize. The goal is to convey a hidden message to a select group of listeners that the general and journalistic public miss.

Plausible deniability, on the other hand, is a statement with two readily apparent meanings, one offensive and one inoffensive.  When a politician makes such a statement, both meanings are clear, not just to insiders, but to the general and journalistic public as well.  Indeed, the whole point of plausible deniability is to be called out for the offensive meaning and then whine that one is being unfairly accused by the liberal media.

One point here, then, is that dog whistles are generally not about race.  Indeed, our society has become so absurdly hypersensitive about race that racial dog whistles are almost impossible because almost anything can be said to have a veiled racial meaning.  I have even heard questions about whether Obama is too skinny to be President interpreted as a coded racial appeal. 

So if you can't get even to most covert racial comment past the public, what is a genuine dog whistle?  When George W. Bush criticized Dred Scott as an example of judicial activism, that was a true dog whistle.  The right-to-life crowd immediately understood that he was comparing abortion to slavery.  Outsiders were simply baffled.  Paul Ryan may have pulled off a brilliant dog whistle in his convention speech, when he said, "[T]he greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves."  The face value meaning of that statement, the way it is most likely to be interpreted by the general and journalistic public is as a promise not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, even though his budget plan proposes to do just that.*  But it has been suggested (alas, can't find the link) that this is actually a dog whistle, having nothing to do with the poor or social spending, but as a call to protect the unborn from abortion.  If so, then THAT is a highly successful dog whistle.

By contrast, an example of plausible deniability is Mitt Romney's claim that Obama gutted welfare-to-work requirements.  The racial subtext is clear.  But let's face it.  The main point of making such a comment is to make the racial subtext clear. Google "racist dog whistle."  Most of the links are of conservative sites complaining about the unfair accusations.  Some complaints are well-founded (See "Obama too skinny" above).  But with comments like one about gutting the welfare-to-work requirement, it is hard to see them as anything but attempts to provoke an accusation of racism in order to be offended by it.  And that is not, by any reasonable standard, a dog whistle.

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*Well, to make the poor bear the brunt of spending cuts, anyhow.  No doubt the tax cuts, defense increases, and exemption of Social Security and Medicare will prevent the budget from actually balancing.

I Don't Understand Haiku

I mentioned before that I do not understanding haiku.  What I do recognize about it is that Japanese poetry is just not as lavish as English poetry.  And really, in traditional English poetry, lavishness of language is as much a part of our poetic tradition as rhyme and meter.  These days, of course, rhyme and meter often give way to free verse so without lavish language, what is left of poetry?

That was my problem when I first learned about haiku in late elementary school and junior high.  My teachers explained that haiku was a type of Japanese nature poem without rhyme or meter, in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.  So I tried to write it and got the 5-7-5 pattern right.  But I tried to fit the lavishness of English poetry into those 17 syllables and was never able to.  And besides, whenever we heard or saw real haikus, they never had that kind of lavishness.  In fact, they seemed kind of dull and mundane. 

Looking up haiku in the Wikipedia, I find that it need not be a nature poem, only to have a seasonal reference.  Still, traditionally it has been about nature, so I am going to compare it with descriptions of nature in English poetry.  Wikipedia gives some Japanese classics.

old pond . . .
a frog leaps in

water’s sound

the first cold shower

even the monkey seems to want

a little coat of straw

how many gallons
of Edo's rain did you drink?

cuckoo

Compare that, now, with some admittedly extreme descriptions of nature in early 20^th Century English poetry.

The Highwayman (Alfred Noyes)

The wind was a torrent of darkness amid the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor.

Comparing that to haiku, the first thing that occurs to me is that any one of those lines could probably make an entire haiku.  The next is that the haiku would probably not contain anything as fantastic as a torrent of darkness.

The Skater of Ghost Lake (William Rose Benet)

Ghost Lake’s a deep lake, a dark lake and cold;

Ice black as ebony, frostily scrolled;

Far in its shadows a faint sound whirs;

Steep stand the sentineled deep, dark firs.

Once again, you could probably make a haiku out of either of the couplets.  It also occurs to me that I was wrong in saying there is only so much lavishness you can fit into 17 syllables.  Each line in The Highwayman is 15 syllables; each couplet in Ghost Lake is 20.  And they contain a lot of lavishness. 

These poems also point to the importance of meter in English poetry.  Meter can be quite complex; it gives poetry a rhythm that immediately distinguishes it from prose; and it can be use to invoke an image –a highwayman galloping on his horse in The Highwayman, or ice skating strokes in Ghost Lake.   In both poems, the nature description is merely setting the scene for the longer, narrative poem.  The description is not really there for its own sake, but mostly to set an atmosphere – eerie in Ghost Lake, extravagantly romantic in The Highwayman. 

To my English-trained ears, Japanese haiku seems flat and prosaic by comparison.  I have to wonder how the lavishness of English poetry sounds to Japanese ears.  Is it powerful and vivid, or comically over the top?  Certainly, I will acknowledge that poetic language can be too lavish, especially when lavishness of language makes it hard to understand what the poem actually means.  In high school, the entire class, including the teacher, was baffled when Ghost Lake said:

Ice shooting fangs forth – sudden – like spears:

Crackling of lightening – a roar in their ears!

Only in looking up the poem on the Internet to prepare this post did I get an explanation – the skaters skate out onto thin ice and it cracks underneath them.  How would one express that in haiku?  Without “ice shooting fangs forth,” I am sure.

The Highwayman  and Ghost Lake are admittedly extreme cases.  Most English poems are not quite that lavish.  But consider a more restrained description of nature, like William Cullen Bryant’s To a Waterfowl:

Whither ‘midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day

Far, through their rosy depths dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

This is not as lavish as the previous two poems, but has some dramatic  images – glowing heavens with rosy depths and the figure of migratory bird “darkly painted against the crimson sky.” 

When I first tried to fit the lavishness of English poetry into 17 syllables of haiku, I did not include any “torrents of darkness,” or “ribbons of moonlight,” let alone “ice shooting fangs forth – sudden – like spears.”  But I did try to convey something like Bryant’s glowing colors of sunset with a dark figure against it – a bare tree in my case.   But trying to create a lavish image in 17 syllables just didn’t work and wasn’t like real haiku at all.  I might attempt it now in plainer terms:

A black silhouette

Of a leafless winter tree

Against the sunset

That contains the requisite syllable pattern and is not too lavish.  I do not know enough about haiku to know if it is any good.  But I do know that it does not really convey what I want to say.  The beauty of the sunset is in its glowing, formless blend of colors.  The beauty of the tree is in its sharply defined, colorless form.  And although we usually see the beauty of a tree in its leaves and regard a bare tree as looking dead, barren, and ugly, against the sunset a leafless tree is suddenly more beautiful than one with leaves because they no longer obscure the clarity of its outline.  I doubt that I am a good enough poet to convey that no matter how many syllables you gave me.  And I don’t know if it is conveyable in haiku at all.

And that is perhaps why haiku baffles me so much.  I expect a nature poem in English to create a visual image, like trees bending in the wind, or fir trees around a winter lake, or a bird outlined against the sunset.  The classic haiku do not appear to be painting a visual image.  And I do not understand what it is they are setting out to achieve.

So here is my plea to any readers out there who understand haiku better than I do.  Can you convert any of those English poems into haiku.  And can you explain how to find the beauty in poetry without lavishness?

Complete Lunacy

The Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division has officially been topped. Many thanks to David Frum for pointing out the Mad Revisionist, the ultimate in satirical lunacy. Yes, the Mad Revisionist denies the existence of the moon. No, not the Apollo moon landing, the moon itself. Really. (Though of course, not seriously). 

Why, you may ask. Well, apparently a conference of historians retorted to Holocaust deniers (or, as they call themselves, Holocaust Revisionists) by calling for serious study of the Holocaust, presumably on the theory that the more extensive and detailed the study, the more indisputable. Someone asked why the conference never explicitly affirmed the existence of the Holocaust. Exasperated, the leader said that for a conference of historians to affirm the existence of the Holocaust was like a conference of astronomers affirming the existence of the moon. To which the Mad Revisionist said, “[W]hy did this scholar single out the moon? Why would a scholar, so familiar with academic standards of evidence, use such language to imply that the existence of the moon, unlike any other issue was a given and not subject to proof? What, in other words, was he trying to hide?” And further:

But don’t all qualified scientists and astronomers agree that there is a moon? Indeed, but shouldn’t one be suspicious of such unanimity, when universities are supposed to be forums for open debate of controversial issues. Even a layperson like myself knows that scientists are not supposed to approach issues with preconceived notions. Yet this principle is cast aside when the moon is at stake. You will never see the revisionist perspective on the moon being taught in institutions of higher learning, even as a controversial opposing view. In fact, in order to even become a recognized scientist in the current atmosphere of academic repression, one must pay lip service to the establishment’s orthodoxy. Could you imagine a student who argued the revisionist viewpoint on the question of the moon being awarded a degree? He would be hounded out of the university in an instant! How can one explain such behavior from institutions that are supposed to serve as forums for the free exchange of ideas, except to conclude that the establishment has something to hide? 

Needless to say, no attempt is made to explain what this so-called “moon” that we think we see actually is. Mad Revisionist contents himself with attacking the theory of the moon’s existence. It ends with an offer of $100,000 for anyone who can prove the existence of the moon.

Mad Revisionist apparently came up with the site specifically as a satire on Holocaust deniers, but let’s face it. It works just as well to mock creationists, truthers, birthers, Birchers, people who think the moon landing was faked, people who think Elvis is still alive and really, anyone who is unwilling to let mere evidence stand in the way of belief. 

Perhaps, though, I was wrong to say that The Moon: A Propaganda Hoax tops the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division. Both are brilliant and hilarious works of satire, but in different ways. Dihydrogen Monoxide is meant to be convincing. Scientifically illiterate suckers are actually supposed to fall for its scary-sounding pronouncement and realize they have been punked when they find out what H2O really is. The Moon, by contrast, is intended to sound just like conspiracists, yet offer a satire so broad that no one could possibly fall for it. Consider it an attempt to refute Poe's Law. I guess we will see if it succeeds.*

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*Not that I think anyone could possibly be convinced that the moon does not exist. But could anyone be convinced that someone is seriously arguing that? To just from some of the responses Mad Revisionist has gotten, the answer appears to be maybe.

Is it Just Me?

When I read about the upcoming Republican Convention, I kept hearing that a tropical storm was brewing and that it might escalate into a full-fledged hurricane.  Am I the only one who had to remind myself that the news reports meant that literally?

Apologies

 know I have not been posting in over a month.  Personal issues have been taking most of my time and energy.  Will attempt to get back to it, but no idea how much time or energy I will have to spare.

Stimulus, Austerity, and Patriotism

When an economic crisis hits, there are two schools of thought on what to do.  They might roughly be called “spend more” and “spend less,” or, to use their more formal names, stimulus and austerity.   The theory of stimulus is that government spending more can make up for the reduction in private spending and thereby boost the economy.  The theory of austerity is that there is an inevitable bottom that must be reached, and that any attempt to delay the inevitable simply prolongs the pain.  The trouble is that it can be extremely difficult to prove or disprove either theory because neither turns out to be politically viable most of the time.

The trouble with stimulus is that it is counterintuitive.  When everyone else is having to cut back, people’s basic instinct is that government should make sacrifices, too.  Besides, as the saying goes, people fight more over a shrinking pie than an expanding one.   Everyone’s natural reaction to a shrinking pie is to insist that no one else get any more, and to try to shrink everyone else’s share to grab more for oneself.   This in particular means insisting that government cut back to spare more resources for private citizens.  The trouble with austerity is that, although intuitively pleasing, it has most factually unpleasant results.  People are willing to make sacrifices to some extent, but usually only in return for a fairly near-term improvement.  When austerity turns out to be deeper and more painful than anticipated, and not to produce short-run improvement, it runs into resistance.

There is one exception.  One thing is strong enough to overcome people’s aversion to big spending in a depression or (it would appear) ever greater calls for austerity.  Patriotism.  (Or, some would say, nationalism).  If one’s country is seen as being in danger, normal inhibitions can be set aside, and extraordinary sacrifices can be accepted.

This has been known for some time on the subject of stimulus.  Hitler, it has often been commented, was the ultimate Keynesian.  This is embarrassing, both to Keynesians, who don’t want to be seen in such disreputable company, and to anti-Keynesians, who don’t want to admit that it can work at all.  But, of course, Hitler was able to revive Germany by military buildup.  Ultimately, other countries’ economies revived as well, as they made military buildups to match Hitler.  And it is not just that ordinary people and politicians are more likely to agree to the necessary levels of spending if it is seen as necessary to avert a country’s peril.  National peril is also often necessary to allow central bankers to overcome their fear of inflation and match the fiscal expansion with monetary expansion – in plain English, to finance operations by printing money. 

It now appears that austerity, too, can be tolerated if it and only if it is seen as a patriotic exercise.  This was less than clear before, because up till now making deep cutbacks in a depressed economy was not seen as patriotic.  Our classic example have been Latin American countries forced to accept harsh IMF austerity programs in exchange for loans to service foreign debt.  The Latin American public has shown little patience with such measures because they have not been seen as patriotic.  Leaders may talk about their country’s honor being on the line if it does not pay its debts, but to most people, this looks like a Yankee imperialist IMF squeezing innocent people for the sake of Yankee imperialist banks.  Refusal, not austerity, has been seen as patriotic.  Likewise, in parts of Europe today, resistance to more austerity has been strongest on the Right because demands for cutbacks have been imposed by the internationalist European Union.  But we are also seeing an extraordinary counter-example in the Baltic states.  Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have been much praised for their seemingly endless appetite for pain.  And why should this be so?  The answer appears to be that they see austerity as a necessary patriotic sacrifice in order to win the protection of the European Union against Russia.  That calls for an end to austerity came from the ethnically Russian party only went further to convince Latvians not to heed the siren song of comfort because it was only a trap set by the Russians.  The Irish, too, have shown remarkable patience in the face of suffering.  If Ireland were not an independent country, if the austerity had been demanded by the English, Ireland would be in mass revolt.

This leads to three conclusions, both rather depressing.  Austerity is wearing out its welcome in Europe, and calls for stimulus are beginning once again.  But, in the absence of a military threat, stimulus is unlikely to get very far.  Meanwhile, stimulus has worn out its welcome in the U.S., and Republicans are calling for deep austerity.  They sometimes pitch it in patriotic terms, as selling our children’s future to the Chinese.  But once austerity starts to bite, Americans are unlikely to have much patience for it, either.  Finally, judging by the saber rattle of Mitt Romney and some of his advisors, they may know all this.  They may have decided that, just as FDR brought us out of the Great Depression by WWII, they will end this one by starting WWIII.

False Memory: pp. 376-413 (with additions)

As we last left Dusty and Martie, they had just heard Susan's message on the answering machine that her phantom rapist was none other than Dr. Ahriman, and realized that the clues were there all along. They call Dr. Closterman's office and leave a message with his answering service that they have a medical emergency.  They pass the time waiting for his call-back by putting the cassette with Susan's message into an envelope labeled "Susan," finding Dusty's trigger name in The Manchurian Candidate (Viola Narvilly), and each reading the trigger name and first line of haiku to the other, with frightening results.  When the phone rings, they fear it might be Ahriman, ready to take control, but it turns out to be Closterman.  He doesn't want to talk on the phone, but invites him to his house.  They decide to flee, pack their bags, bring along the gun, and take Valet the dog.

Closterman offers them a beer, but they take only coffee.  After a bit of dancing around, he tells them what he knows.  This is the part I discussed at the outset as the only part of the novel that could be taken as a serious attempt to refute the recovered memory movement.  Closterman says that when some preschool children claimed they had been sexually abused, Ahriman was assigned by the court to interview the children, and he was assigned to examine them for evidence of injury.  Ahriman came away with frightful tales of abuse, but Closterman found no physical evidence of it.  This is when he explains that hypno-regressive therapy is unreliable, especially in children.  Checking around, Closterman learned that something similar happened when Ahriman was practicing in Santa Fe, and that it culminated in a woman, mother of one of Ahriman's child patients, shot her whole family and killed herself.  Unfortunately for Ahriman, the woman's husband, though badly wounded, survived and swore he saw Ahriman at the window during the shootings, watching.  At this point, Ahriman skipped town.  Something similar happened in Scottsdale, Arizona, although with less detail, and Ahriman ended up skipping town there, too.  Dusty decides he wants a beer after all, and Closterman comments that talking about Ahriman does not promote sobriety.  (What is it with these people and alcohol?)


But Closterman did not come forward.  That was because two thugs threatened him.  And, Dusty recognizes, the thugs were not just cheap muscle; they reeked of authority.  Apparently Ahriman is not acting alone.  Someone powerful is behind him.  Closterman and his boyfriend (he is gay) give them all they know about Ahriman's past to investigate.  Dusty tells Closterman that he had an uneasy feeling about New Life Clinic, and Closterman tells him that Ahriman is part-owner.  Dusty and Martie race to the clinic to rescue Skeet.  Along the way, Martie has her worst panic attack yet, as Ahriman commanded.  Dusty uses the triggering name and haiku for the first time, to stop it.


Meanwhile, Ahriman has been doing three things:

1. Playing complex role-playing games without too much regard to the rules.  Ahriman apparently likes role-playing games which actually makes sense.  What he does with patients is, after all, just a giant role-playing game.  The way he mixes the battle of the Alamo up with Al Capone and the FBI is good for a laugh or two, but does nothing to advance the plot.
2. More preening and posturing about how evil he is.  Yeacch!
3. Providing genuinely valuable exposition.  Between the silly game and the annoying preening and posturing, he manages to reveal what the reader already suspects -- that he was the one who gave Martie  The Manchurian Candidate to make the game more exciting.  He is also aware that Dusty has been reading it, but not too concerned.  He also reveals that, as Dusty suspected, his ability to control Skeet after saying "Dr. Yen Lo" without going through the haiku is a malfunction.  In fact, Skeet's brain is so drug-addled that he malfunctions regularly.  Ahriman originally ordered him to commit suicide because he couldn't fully control him.  He heads for the clinic to once again order Skeet to kill himself, not trusting him to be fully controlled over the phone.

The bit about Skeet is useful in that it explains the biggest and most essential anomaly of the novel -- why is Dusty able to control Skeet without going through the proper haiku.  Needless to say, without that little episode, Dusty would never have been able to figure out what was going on.  What it miserably fails to explain is how Skeet was able to write the name "Dr. Yen Lo" every time he was called, for a total of 39 times.  Everyone in the novel, Skeet included, has always gone catatonic upon hearing their trigger name.  So how is Skeet able to keep writing it down?  Nor does it do any good to say that this is malfunction.  The strong implication is that Skeet malfunctions unpredictably.  This would require the same malfunction every time.  In short, unlike numerous other dangling clues, Skeet writing the name of his tormentor over and over is not only unexplained, if violates the whole premise of the story.  It is never explained.  It badly needs explaining.  

Skeet is not actually Ahriman's patient, so Ahriman goes to the clinic on the pretext of visiting one of his real patients there, an unnamed "famous actor."  Ahriman has taken the famous actor as a patient on behalf of his powerful higher-ups, and goes to the clinic to program him to bite the President's nose off as a warning that the President is Getting Too Close.  After programming the actor, Ahriman plans on casually dropping by Skeet and telling him to kill himself.  We also learn that, contrary to Dusty's earlier impression, the New Life Clinic is not staffed by brainwashed pod people.  In fact, "Although a mind-controlled workforce . . . would eliminate demands for increased wages and fringe benefits, the possible complications were not worth risking."  We are not told what those complications are.  Thinking it over, though, it would be difficult for Ahriman to take every employee at New Life Clinic aside for the three sessions, complete with IV stand, needed to establish control without attracting attention. And if clinic employees regularly started acting strangely after being along with Ahriman or receiving mysterious phone calls, that might also be noticed.  

Dusty and Martie show up in Skeet's room after visiting hours, saying his mother is sick.  This manages to create a fine mixture of humor and suspense as the nurse on staff, with the best intentions in the world, goes to warn Ahriman, while Skeet keeps finding one reason after another to delay leaving.  They have escaped by the back exit by the time Ahriman arrives.  He persuades the nurse to check the front while he goes out the back exit.  It is not clear what Ahriman intends to do when he finds them.  Shooting them dead would attract most unwelcome attention.  Ordering Dusty (who has a gun) to commit a double-murder-suicide, would be less suspicious, but reflect unfavorably on the clinic.  Taking control of all three at once is probably not doable.  Whatever he has in mind, we never find out because they take off at high speed before he can catch them.  Ahriman gets a good enough glimpse of Dusty to know that he knows.