The Speculative Turn hits the Far East

HERE.

I can’t read the language in question, so don’t ask me why the Donald Rumsfeld video is there.

And now that we’re on the topic, there are two points about Donald Rumsfeld’s reception abroad that always mildly puzzled me. They’re not inexplicable, just mildly puzzling.

1. Of the whole Bush team, it was always Rumsfeld who seemed the most hated in Europe. Given the unique level of contempt he always expressed for Europe and especially France, I guess that’s not so surprising. But in the USA, I think it’s fair to say that it was always Dick Cheney who was viewed as the evil shadow in the room, while Rumsfeld was seen more as just a cocky SOB who did break a lot of laws, but perhaps less conspiratorially and Darthvaderishly so than Cheney. All I’m saying is, I often sensed a weird disconnect in anti-Bush conversations involving both Americans and Europeans when it came to the exact status of Rumsfeld in all of this.

2. Another thing I never understood is that, especially in the UK, Rumsfeld seemed to be widely viewed as a comical mangler of the English language. I think this was a misunderstanding as well. The true comical manglers of the English language in U.S. politics have been Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin, and to a lesser extent G.W. Bush and (more intelligently) his father Bush the Elder. But Rumsfeld? No, I can assure you, Rumsfeld’s little paradoxical word games and riddle-like sentences (“the known unknowns”, etc.) were nothing more than signs of a haughty view of his own cleverness. Thus I was always baffled when in the UK he seemed to be presented as another Quayle. Two totally different phenomena, Quayle and Rumsfeld, and two totally different psychologies.

Here’s a sample of Dan Quayle, combining banal (and thankfully, transient) slang with shallowness of thought in addressing the residents of American Samoa:

“You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.”

Or Quayle (titular head of NASA!) on the topic of Mars:

“Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as Earth]… Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.”

But that’s not Rumsfeld at all. Here’s an example of a Rumsfeld quote that is often (wrongly) presented as Quaylesque:

“We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead.”

The problem is, you had to hear Rumsfeld’s smirky tone when he said stuff like this. He was trying to be funny, whereas Quayle was always dead serious when he said dumb things like this.

Anyway, my point isn’t to defend Donald Rumsfeld here, just to express my puzzlement at the way his often odd statements were forced into the Procustean bed of “dumb American politician” when the appropriate category would be “insufferable smartass.” Not sure why the Europeans keep missing this. Maybe it’s something with tone, but I have yet to meet an American who makes quite the same mistake vis-à-vis Rumsfeld, whereas it’s now pretty much standard with smart Europeans I know. Even Americans who want Rumsfeld put away as a war criminal have never called him stupid, I don’t think. Or even inarticulate.