The Bush/Chavez tiff and the language used to report it. A jeremiad.

My president is in Brazil right now, pushing for Ethanol development, with the aim of avoiding future dependence on the oil of “rogue nations.” A country like Venezuela comes to mind as one of those potential candidates, especially considering the rhetorical war is being carried out right now between Bush and Hugo Chávez. This wrangle is met with my simultaneous delight and horror. Delight, because any mockery of Bush tickles me, and Chávez’s mockery is always particularly colorful. Horror, because, well, it’s Bush he’s talking about. Also horrifying is the New York Times’s unprofessional and uncritical treatment of George Bush, and its consequent knee-jerk demonizing of Chávez. One does not like to think that the New York Times so supinely allows itself to be spoon fed the Bush doctrine, but considering the quotes I am to discuss, how can anybody see it any other way?

Here for example is the Times explaining Chávez’s popularity with the poor:
“Mr. Chávez has built that influence in part by showering poor communities with money for housing and health care and by freely dispensing oil at cut-rate prices” (3/9/07).
Note the dismissive overtones in “showering,” which intimates an excessive and lavish bestowal, as if Chávez were an aged billionaire and Venezuela’s poor his trophy wife. Also implicit in the verb is the an air of manipulativeness, suggesting that housing and health care for the destitute were tantamount to panem et circenses. Surely Venezuela's poor are all sitting there in their warm new homes, not starving, not dying of diarrhea anymore, yet adumbrated with a sneaky feeling that Chávez must be up to something fishy. Oh for the good old days when your relatives were getting disappeared by the death squads of the previous leadership. At least then you knew the government was fucking with you.

It turns out that part of Bush’s strategy for reducing Chávez’s influence in South America is to regale the poor with the same fundamental necessities. Here’s the Times again:
“Before arriving here, Mr. Bush announced a number of programs to help the poor in the region, whom he referred to, in Spanish, as ‘workers and peasants.’ He promised hundreds of millions of dollars to help families buy homes and said he would dispatch a Navy hospital ship to the region to provide free health services” (3/9/07).

Eh, wha? Housing assistance and free health care? Isn’t that what pinkos like Chávez dish out? I fail to understand by what logic the New York Times presents one man’s active strategy for reducing poverty and destitution as some kind of cynical manipulation of the masses, while a few sentences later affirms its nihil obstat regarding another man’s promise to do exactly the same thing. If anybody can explain to me why Chávez’s free houses and health care are “bad” and Bush’s free houses and health care are “good,” I welcome him or her to enlighten me.

Even more sobering, let it be remembered that Bush is promising benefits not to the poor in his own country –and there are plenty here too – but to Brazil, a country offering certain economic advantage. Imagine if New Orleans petitioned Washington for free permanent housing, or indeed if any city on the continent asked for its own off-shore health clinic… certainly the White House’s response would be quite different in such a case.

There is another manifestation of Bush’s (and the Times’s) double talk that is far more disturbing, and dangerous: the contradictory rhetoric of “free trade.” The two following excerpts neatly sum up how free trade works according to its American proponents.

Specimen 1:
“Asked by a reporter about Mr. Chávez’s ‘so-called alternative development model’ calling for nationalization of industry, Mr. Bush said: ‘I strongly believe that government-run industry is inefficient and will lead to more poverty. I believe if the state tries to run the economy, it will enhance poverty and reduce opportunity.’ He added, ‘So the United States brings a message of open markets and open government to the region’” (3/9/07)

Specimen 2:
“Mr. da Silva (president of Brazil) is hopeful that the United States will reduce its tariff of 54 cents a gallon on Brazilian ethanol, which is made primarily from sugar cane — a trade barrier that protects the American farmers who produce corn for ethanol. But when Mr. da Silva was asked about the possibility of eliminating the tariff, Mr. Bush jumped in. ‘It’s not going to happen,’ he said” (3/10/07).

Perhaps tariffs don’t present a perfect example in which “the state tries to run the economy,” but they certainly are a fine example of the state meddling with the economy, and that is getting close. And furthermore, aren’t tariffs, plainly speaking, the antithesis of open markets? Why is it that the New York Times never calls attention to this glaring irregularity between Bush’s rhetoric about open markets on the one hand, and his refusal to remove trade tariffs on ethanol on the other? Why then do we still have to put up with this duplicitous hot air about free trade?

The only logical answer is that we shouldn’t have to. Considering the great gap between the language of free trade and the actual practice of it, I suggest that all news sources recognize that “free trade” and “open markets” are indeed names, but not in any way descriptive terms. Following the practice of good scholarship, newspapers should hereafter contextualize these terms either by italics, inverted commas or the cautionary “so-called.” For presenting these terms without such caveats is propaganda, plain and simple. There is no such thing as free trade or open markets in the current economy; therefore we need to stop using language that assumes either term as an ontological truth. While “free trade” is a term used with evangelical fervor by Neoliberals, that very fervor should alert us to the reality that the trade they speak of is a religion, and not a science. And this religion, like so many others in history, has become a vehicle for profiteering by its high priests, who to cover up their self-serving operations invoke the name of an entity that does not exist.

I issue this modest proposal for language reform only in part because of my political leanings. It is also a plea for intellectual rigor. It is extremely disturbing that weak thought and imprecise language have muddied the waters of rational discourse to such a degree that we don’t know which way is up anymore. In this flux of nomenclature, identical housing and health care proposals by Bush and Chávez are somehow construed as opposites, and no one bats an eye. In this murky haze of significance, free trade – a complex economic theory with a rich intellectual tradition (even if I do not subscribe to it, may I not admire its pedigree?) – is heedlessly bundled with trade obstructionism, and no one even notices the shell game taking place before his or her eyes.

If the aims of the right were pursued with at least a modicum of consistency and clarity, we could at least respect, if not agree with, their arguments. However, considering the duplicitous and intellectually condescending way the current administration pushes its agenda, and the ovine way that supposedly respectable institutions like New York Times follow about their shepherds, it is clear that rational discourse is not the point. We are living in a new political situation, where our discernment in political matters, and thus our participation in a democracy, has no use. It doesn’t matter if we agree with or respect their opinions, nor does it matter if their argument is coherent. For in this new world, critical thought has no use except when aimed against the enemy, and language has no meaning except to propagandize the ruling party.

There is a technical term for a political reality such as this…it's called fascism.