Score: Liberty 15 - Freedom 27

In the end, it was a convincing victory for Freedom, although Liberty was nipping at its heel for a while. Momentarily, it seemed that an upset was on the cards, but Freedom pulled ahead on the strength of a lengthy discussion of American ideals.

I am, referring of course to the Inaugural Address. The handy wordcount function in MS Word tells me that the entire speech had a total of 2086 words. 'Freedom' accounted for 27 of these, 'liberty' for another 15, while 'free' popped up 7 times (showing that a noun always sells better than an adjective; and, for this administration, a verb) and 'tyranny' had a decent showing of 5 appearances.

(Nb. The good folks at the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart were keeping score in an episode that aired way before this post so I can't claim any originality. Perhaps it goes to show that the speech lends itself to word-counting! I haven't seen that episode of the Daily Show yet, nor do I know if this segment will make it to the Global Edition, which is what we get to see on CNN here. In any case, our scores matched! And I had the same idea as the Daily Show team!!! My gosh ... wow, perhaps that writing career is not so out of the question after all, hehe.)

For a speech that mentions Freedom and Liberty so often, it doesn't exactly inspire any great hope for either ideals. The one-line precis is: "Do things my way or else". While many despaired for America after November 2nd, I think we now despair for the world. Even before the inaugural address, the world feared for what may come during this second term. What more now, when the war cry has been sounded? Who is the tyrant and where is the freedom?

On the merits of the speech itself, the White House hires very higly qualified people to write speeches for the President (at least, that's what The West Wing tells me), usually lawyer types that are armed with thesauri, dictionaries and copies of old speeches. All that brain power and they used 'Freedom' 27 times??? Sure, maybe they were going for 'reinforcement through repetition'. But 27 times? That seems to be more a case of 'running out of ideas'. It was aiming for 'inspirational' but landed somewhere closer to 'cliched'. The speech-writers may have consulted Civics text books more than they did the thesaurus. Actually, given that they repeated the same two words so many times, the thesaurus may not have come off the shelf at all (or be summoned on the word processor).

Maybe I shouldn't blame the speech writers. They were probably just working on instructions.

** "See, the idea is that I want to rule the world. I want to get those pesky rogue nations in line. Well, not all of them, just the ones with oil or something else my family business could use. Actually, come to think of it, just go for the whole world while you're at it. No harm having a few countries at the side. My cronies may need someplace to holiday when I am no longer here. And ... what's that you say? I can't just say I want to rule the world? Oh, okay, I guess you have a point. You know what, just tell them I am helping to liberate the world from tyranny. They bought it the first time, right? The election proved it; they gave me an overwhelming mandate, didn't they? Freedom, that's the word. You just have to use that, a lot. And Liberty, to mix it up a bit. Got that? Good. Bring it on!"

I did not actually hear the speech, only read the transcript. That was enough to make the bile rise. I could not have sat through watching and listening to him spout that arrogant, condescending message to the world. I can barely even see a photo of him in the papers or on webpages without instinctively flinching. I call it a "visceral cringe". I have read about others who have similar reactions. One person said that the sight of his face quickened her heartbeat and made the blood rush to her head, but in a BAD way! Another said that he may well be certifiably allergic to the man.

I sometimes wonder if I worry too much about a man who lives in a country so far away. How much does what he says affect my life? Perhaps not much, if we are looking at the direct, tangible aspects of getting about our daily lifes. But what of the rest of it, the things we don't see immediately or can't see or which are in the future? Chaos ascends (hey, first reference to this blog's title!!) and eventually influences everything. I worry because of this but I count myself lucky that I have less cause to worry than many people in many other countries.

** Imaginary monologue purely of my own invention. Any similarity to words actually spoken may or may not be entirely coincidental.