Nov. 08, 2003 - 22:17 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

You Say It

There is I think, a barnyard miasma that wafts over politicians and corporations that spreads and clouds their thinking, to be somewhat polite in trying to express my opinions. There are quite a few of us I guess who feel much the same. One person who's diary pretty well brings it out and in fact makes me wish I had written much that she has written, LA The Sage often comes out and in essence calls a spade an "effin" shovel rather than "an implement to move ground from one place to another." (A rather indelicate phrase) - my apologies for an apt description. Sorry madam, I don't imply you yourself use that language, but it does make a point.

There is an article in The Rocky Mountain News this morning under the Colorado Voices section by Rick O'Donnell that stirs me to almost hysterically cheering him on.

Titled, "The Big Bad Wolf."

He starts out with a quote, "One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are merely a statistic," said Joseph Stalin who committed genocide across the Soviet Union.

He says, "Institutions often brutalize people, and Big institutions -- Big Labor, Big Religion, Big Business, Big Government -- tend to brutalize absolutely.

Mr. O'Donnell makes this observation, "Reason: When large institutions take responsibility for problems, professionals take over and abstractions prevail as numbers replace individuals and analytical categories replace the human dimension. To explain these abstractions, institutions use a language known as "officialese," made up of meaningless, Dilbert-like, empty-calorie code words."

Then Mr. O'Donnell pounds the point home, "Even worse, officialese is often used to avoid moral responsibility. During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon spoke of "pacifying villages," which meant to drop napalm on innocents. Corporations speak of "right sizing" and "streamlining" as tens of thousands of workers lose their jobs. International bureaucracies speak of "harmonizing" laws as unelected international bureaucrats usurp decision-making power from elected legislators."

Then Mr. Donnell goes back into a period of history before I was born, "During tremendous labor strife at his Colorado mines in April 1914, John D. Rockefeller Jr. testified to Congress on the importance of keeping his mines union-free at 'any cost'. A congressman asked if he would 'do that if it costs all your property and kills all your employees?" 'It is a great principle,' Rockefeller replied. Two weeks later, 13 miners, two women and 11 children were killed at the Rockefeller owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company when a miners tent colony was pelted by machine guns and set on fire. Principles are abstractions by definition. For the sake of Rockefeller's 'great principle,' Colorado became home to the Ludlow Massacre."

Mr. O'Donnell mentions, "Nearly a century later, Coloradoans still pay in countless ways when big institutions lose sight of their responsibilities to us as individuals - e.g., as citizens, shareholders or investors. Two modern examples are mutual funds and high schools." He mentions, "Mutual funds are supposed to be stewards of the savings of small investors, who don't have the time or savvy to invest in individual stocks and bonds. Unfortunately, big mutual funds with tens of thousands of members and billions of dollars under management found it too easy to make illicit gains for their own accounts. These ill-gotten gains came at the expense of the little guy, people like you and me, who have no way to keep track of what the management of a big mutual fund is doing."

Then Mr. O'Donnell goes into schools here in state. "Meanwhile, in neighborhoods across Colorado, thousands of Colorado teenagers attend big, comprehensive high schools - some with upward of 4,000 students. These schools now typical of Colorado's urban and suburban high schools are called 'comprehensive' because they offer a wide-ranging menu of course offerings from art and physics to music and shop. About the only thing in short supply is a rigorous education where each student can connect with a teacher to master basic literacy and math skills."

Then Mr. O'Donnel cites figures:

Seventy-three percent of all Colorado 10th graders are not proficient in 10th grade math.

Colorado has the third-highest rate of 16- to 19-year olds dropping out of high school -- nearly 40 percent statewide and 50 percent among minorities. He then has this to say; "The usual arguments from educators is that they need big high schools to achieve 'economies of scale,' which is officialese for finding a cheaper way to offer a 'comprehensive' education."

Mr. O'Donnells parting shot, "Author George Orwell warned that officialese is 'designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.' As children, we learned that Little Red Riding Hood needed to beware of the Big Bad Wolf pretending to be grandmother. As adults, we need to keep in mind that the Big Bad Wolf still comes in many disguises."

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I suppose that Mr. O'Donnell, to avoid controversy didn't mention the law and order element so prevalent in labor problems back then. I quote from the book, Legacy Of The Ludlow Massacre - A Chapter In American Industrial Relations by Howard M. Gitelman -- ISBN 0-8122-8099-7 "As the strike dragged on, violence erupted and lives were lost. Units of the Colorado Militia entered the coalfields. Representatives of the Wilson Administration made several attempts to foster mediation." "April 20, 1914, a pitched battle, followed by widespread rioting, took the lives of twenty-four men, women and children." (O'Donnells figure is 26). According to the book, "During the preceding months, most units of the state militia had been withdrawn from the coal fields. No serious disturbances had occurred for some time, and the troops had become as restive to return to their families and jobs as the state was to have them off the payroll. The few units that remained in the field were composed largely of mine guards and company hirelings, who had taken the places of departing militia men. On April 20, shooting between the militia and the miners broke out at the Ludlow tent colony. As commonly happens in such situations, conflicting reports leave unresolved the question of who fired the first shot. The gun battle raged throughout the day and reached its climax when the militia overran the colony, looted the tents, and after dousing them with kerosne, put them to the torch. Ten men and one child were killed in the shooting. The following day two women and eleven children were found dead of suffocation; the burning tent over their heads denied them oxygen. The subterranean room was reported to have served as the camps confinement/birthing place."

There were other places here in our state where violence against laborers at mining sites occurred, one near Denver. That seemed to be the usual action against labor strife then, law and order with the big guns and company goons with the clubs and other weapons.

As I have written before about euphemistic language which cloaks reality with nicey-nicey language, I am NOT handicapped (that's what they do for horses and athletes) I am crippled. I am not a senior citizen, I am a citizen who happens to be -- ha ha age challenged, or something of the sort. The use of acronyms and euphemisms, I think disguise what really IS. Smooth talk while we are robbed blind or put to one disadvantage or another.

Check out LA the Sage's site, it is well worth the read, written by a woman who truly knows the score.

Well you know the smooth talkers know many smoke screen words, you might think its all in how You Say It . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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