Let Us Help; We Speak Wingnut
Vernacular English has many counterintuitive expressions, such as the common New York area phrase, ‘I could care less,’ as used to indicate that the speaker doesn’t care about something. (The expression actually implies a disregard on the part of the speaker toward his or her own disregard.)
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo finds himself stumped by a turn of phrase in the Wingnut idiom:
You may have seen the reports that British officials are on high alert for a possible terrorist attack on the Chunnel during the Christmas holiday. A tempting target, I’m sure, and more power to the Brits if they have obtained good intelligence and are taking action to thwart an attack. But this passage from The Guardian jumped out as a ominous sign that at least some among our friends across the pond have lost all perspective on the terrorism threat, in much the same way as we have here:
Last week Sir Ian Blair, the head of the Metropolitan Police, described ‘the threat of another terrorist attempt’ as ‘ever present’ adding that ‘Christmas is a period when that might happen’.
‘It is a far graver threat in terms of civilians than either the Cold War or the Second World War,’ he said. ‘It’s a much graver threat than that posed by Irish Republican terrorism.’
Is he serious? A greater threat to civilians lives than world war or nuclear annihilation? What happened to the stiff upper lip?
Neither the Second World War nor the Cold War presents a grave threat to British civilians this Christmas season, nor does Irish Republican terrorism. Ergo…
Ergo they are all in the past..
despite the new production of Dr. Who, the spectre of time travel will not hurt us in the near future.
but the world still has brown people to hate! Merry Fuckin’ JESUS CRISTmas!
i like christmas cookies, but the internet ones are a bit sticky. that was me.
That great ambassador for Britain, Noel Gallacher of the pop band Oasis, once explained his bizarre lyric…
“Slowly walking down the hall/
Faster than a cannonball”
… by pointing out that “cannonballs don’t go very fast if they’re not shot out of anything.”
Doesn’t have much to do with the post, but anything I can do to alert my American cousins to the existential threat of Oasis makes me feel I’m doing my part.
With regard to the ‘could care less’ thing, here in the UK we use the expression ‘couldN’T care less’ which, given that that phrasing actually makes sense, it seems reasonable to assume that the New York expression somehow lost the ‘n’t’ in the dim and murky mists of time.
In fact, terrorists pose a much graver threat to civilians than the Sun going supernova.
It’s a matter of inflation. Lives today are simply worth more than lives way back in the days of WWII and the Cold War. And if you think that 20 million Russians is a large death toll, remember that the conversion rate is currently at 1 British pound = 51.5 Russian rubles. So all the deaths in WWII are worth like 856.7 deaths today.
Silly David Kurtz to assume a life is a life is a life.
Actually, people in the States use “I couldn’t care less” as well. The two phrases are pretty much interchangeable, which just makes it weirder.
As for the wingnuts, it’s rather simple. Whomever we’re facing right now is The Greatest Danger We’ve Ever Faced. Simple, I know, but it’s the only way to explain how the Nazis and the Soviets were less dangerous than some pissed-off Muslims with exploding hair products.
The terrorists are a greater threat than Space Nazis from the Planet Omicron 7 (and a 3d6 +6 death ray) making the sun go supernova. In fact, the terrorists ARE Space Nazis, just the MSM won’t tell the American people the truth because they, um, want the sun to go supernova.
Terrorist don’t worry me nearly as much as invasion by Transformers.
But craigie, the transformers are already here, amongst us, in disguise. They recently came out of a giant space ship which crashed into the side of a mountain millions of years ago, and hasn’t been noticed since man evolved, despite Denver ending up a couple miles away.
Why hasn’t it been noticed? A combo of Ward Churchill, gay people from Boulder, and barely disgused transformorobotochildkillerislamofascist bias on the part of the press.
Entire city superstructures are now transformer sleeper cells, tho. The only solution is to nuke san fran and pieces of nyc, and to blow up all consumer electronics and replace them with newer, shinier, more expensive versions to be sure they aren’t robots in disguise.
Even more dangerous than the aliens that landed in the 50s? Wow, that IS dangerous!
OK Sir Ian, I guess that gives you permission to do WHATEVER you feel necessary to protect your job. Wow, I’m glad you told me YOU were the only thing standing between Britannia and oblivion. God Save Sir Ian.
Sadly, I think it’s even simpler. Terrorists who may or may not be planning to blow up the chunnel with what may or may not be more than 3 ounces of gel cleverly disguised as dippity-do pose a far greater threat than WWII or the cold war because those things are over. They happened to other people. Anything that is a threat to me, real or imagined, automatically trumps anything that actually happened to people I don’t know and never will know because they’re, y’know, dead.
“These are not the wingnuts you’re looking for”
“These are not the wingnuts we’re looking for”
Terrorists pose a greater threat to us than Xenu and his army of Thetans.
This is true, actually…
I just watched “The Five Deadly Venoms” for the first time and let me tell you, The Scorpion will mess up your day big time. The Centipede, too.
Apprapos of…nothing. Just thought it was a cool movie (now I get some of Kill Bill’s references, as well as the Wu Tang Clan’s).
Terrorists pose a greater threat to us than Xenu and his army of Thetans.
This is true, actually…
I dunno…terrorism is always a distinct possibility, but Scientologists just scare the shit out of me. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned nihilists? To me, it’s easier to deal with people who just couldn’t care less.
I mean “could.” I think.
Terrorists who may or may not be planning to blow up the chunnel with what may or may not be more than 3 ounces of gel cleverly disguised as dippity-do pose a far greater threat than WWII or the cold war because those things are over. They happened to other people. Anything that is a threat to me, real or imagined, automatically trumps anything that actually happened to people I don’t know and never will know because they’re, y’know, dead.
Smiling Mortician, I am afraid that you have broken the kelvin-cold kernel at the heart of all wingnut logic.
“God bless me and my wife / My son John and his wife / Us four / No more.”
Of course, in another dark era of global commercialism, a fictional character became famous for saying “God bless us, every one”, but Tiny Tim, he dead. And your average wingnut fears no Ghost of Christmas Future, thanks to Xanax, Ambien, and a total lack of imagination.
Incidentally, the “could care less” language variant seems to have started showing up in NYC during my childhood (1960s), and was explained at the time as a form of double-reverse-irony: The full formation was to be understood as “Possibly I could care less, but only by an amount of caring so small as to be measurable only by advanced scientific instrumentation.” This degree of verbal sophistication was thought to be unique to the Big Apple, although (as with all such sophistications) I suspect it is common to every city that could ever be mistaken for Ankh-Morpork.
It’s a crazy situation, but all I need are cigarettes and alcohol.
😉
I used to believe that the terrorists were the greatest threat in the history of the world, a kind of black plague-nuclear annihilation-world war-meteor collision kind of existential risk, where they would kill me, develop new technology so they could re-annimate me just so they could kill me again, but today I live not in fear.
Why?
Because Santa Clause brought me the ultimate in 21st century post modern urban survival tools, and now I face the terrorists (and BART) without trepidation. What is this all powerful tool, you ask?
A titanium Spork. Yep. No rust, not ferrite metal, and an all purpose tool for eating hummus to sopa to satay. Yep. No fears here anymore, I sleep well…
mikey
Merry Happy Xmas Holidaze, Mikey! May your spork serve you well during the upcoming solar return & many more of them to follow!
“Now I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho.”
Alan Rickman reading the message scrawled on the sweatshirt of a dead associate in “Die Hard.”
Boogy, boogy, boogy…BOO!
Ha ha, made ya jump.