A pleasant late-summer morning. In my office, looking out on fields and trees, reading The Analects and making notes on which passages might fit into this or that chapter of the book I am writing. And this jumps off the page at me, as if Confucius was speaking directly to Bush and company:
Adept Kung asked: "To be called a noble official, what must a person be like?
"Always conducting himself with a sense of shame," replied the Master, "and when sent on embassies to the four corners of the earth, never disgracing the sovereign's commission - such a person can be called a noble official."
"May I ask about those in the next lower rank?"
"Their family elders praise them as filial children," replied the Master," and their fellow villagers praise them as brothers."
"May I ask about those in the next rank?"
"They always stand by their words and bring undertakings to completion. They may be stubborn, small-minded people, but still they can be accorded the next rank."
"And those who are running the government now - what do you think of them?" asked Kung.
"Nothing but utensils!" sighed the Masters. "Peck-and-hamper people too small even to measure." (13.20)
I take Hinton's "peck-and-hamper" to mean petty and harrassing, pointless and narrow-minded. And "utensil," like the contemporary American usage of "tool," is clearly derogatory. But that last phrase seems a perfect slogan for the of days of the Bush era:
Bush: too small even to measure.
To quote Bush, "What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position."
A tool, is being too polite....
Posted by: Tim | September 08, 2007 at 07:15 PM
"Vulcanize." And yet again, the English language slumps quietly in a corner and weeps.
Posted by: Metta | September 08, 2007 at 11:32 PM