The Power of Words

This is the post I was supposed to write yesterday. I had decided on a mostly pictorial post, featuring signs that make me laugh, and I had quite a few of them. In particular, the one about the US military’s identification chart always cracks me up. They have a blanket policy of denying the existence of any new military craft until they have no choice but to tell the truth ; par for the course for any security-minded government. However, as I was thinking about that, the post took on a darker tone  as I ruminated on the more harmful lies we’ve been told by our leaders in all sectors of society– business, military, governmental, and my light-hearted pictorial post became a polemical rant about the venality and mendacity of those in positions of power and trust. Earlier that day, I’d been reading Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. If you are not familiar with it, I’m quoting it here now:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

It is one of the most amazing speeches of all time. Every time I read it, I get goosebumps. Four minutes long, and he actually says he doesn’t think anyone will remember his words. Abe, if only you knew. These are the speeches that make mankind follow leaders even to the gates of Hades. Words can be deployed as a weapon, for good or for bad and yet, as I was getting into full rant-mode, I felt a check in my spirit and I cancelled the post.

Today’s main story in the papers was about Tony Blair apologising for, and admitting culpability for his part in the mess the Middle East and a substantial part of the Arab world has become. Two simple words 12 years later, ‘I’m sorry.’ Of course that does not make up for the nightmare that has ensued, and it’s pretty cold comfort for the bereaved, the maimed, and the refugees.  Does he mean it or is he just trying to save himself? I’m not sure it matters that much. The words themselves won’t fix what has been broken. And yet, and yet. We all do terrible things and have them done to us. The acts that we find hardest to forgive are those where the culprit shows no remorse, where they think they can bluff their way out of trouble because we’re too stupid to believe the evidence of our own eyes. I guess I’m going to try and use my words carefully, at least until I get carried away again…..

To leave you in the light-hearted spirit I had intended, Craig Brown writes an occasional series of columns imagining 21st century responses of the Twitterati et al to past events. My favourite is one in response to Martin Luther King’s equally astonishing ‘I have a dream’ speech. I bring you Tony from Basildon’s response:

‘We all have a dream, mate. But you don’t hear us going on and on about it’

Comedy gold. Apologies to all Basildonians; blame Craig Brown, not me. Have a fabulous and inspired week.