Bush's "Words"

Often, while listening to G.W. Bush's speeches, I noted the propagandistic nature of the words he used--glittering generalities, virtue words, name-calling, labels, demonizing, slogans--and the lack of substance of the speeches in general. By that I mean when you eliminate all the emotionally charged words there was little left that could be considered a message or information.
From the web site "BushCountry.org" I obtained copies of his speeches to examine, to see how he could say very little, yet leave everyone with the impression that he had made a marvelous and substantive speech.
First of all words are just not words with explicit meaning to everyone. Some words mean different things to different people; freedom, peace-loving, collateral damage, the flag, patriotism, all have some emotional meaning to people and elicit different responses. Politicians, preachers, corporations, and others who manipulate people for their own purposes, know this and have lists of words readily available for use.
Words (glittering generalities), such as: compassion, determined, future, free, leadership, resolve, skill, faithful, proud, armored charges, mission, God, faith, belief, all used in Bush's State of the Union speeches, got a lot of applause from his side of the gallery.
Glittering generalities are like tinsel, ornaments, and lights placed on an ugly tree. At first glance everything looks beautiful but when you look close it is just a barren stick.
I took a yellow marker to his "tree" and marked all the virtue words--glittering generalities, name calling, and slogans and rewrote the speech from what was left. The result is the following:

State of the Union Address January 20, 2004

To the speaker, Vice President, and citizens--tonight the US has a problem and the government is doing something about it.

Tonight US troops are deployed all over the world fighting the enemy.

Law enforcement people are on the watch for the enemy in order to protect US citizens and allies from them.

Americans work hard, the economy is growing, and tax cuts are helping.

The Congress can take pride for passing bills on reform of school standards and for prescription drugs for older people.

The US has problems--they can be solved, a choice can be made on believing that the enemy will not hurt US citizens, that some countries don't like the US, we can decide to like economic growth, change Education and Medicare, or go back to past policies and political arguments.

The US has not come to this point, through problems, only to stop and not finish work. The US citizens are doing something and expect the government to do something. In their attributes the citizens of the US are showing that the country is able.

The government's job is to protect citizens. Two years have passed and there have been no other attacks, but that does not mean there is no threat. There have been attacks in other places in the world and the enemy is planning to attack everyone. But because of our good attributes we will not be defeated.

The war started in the US, we must give our protection agencies more power to find possible enemies and to sieze their assets by renewing the Patriot Act. Invading citizen's privacy while investigating certain lawbreakers has worked and so we should do the same against possible enemies too. The US government needs to make it easier to go after those who might be the enemy. Don't let part of the Act expire.

The US is attacking the enemy who started the conflict. The US has imprisoned some of them, the US and allies are following the enemy around the world, many of them are dead or captured, and the rest are in unknown places and we will find them.

As part of the conflict the US is intimidating those countries that are susptected of having and aiding the US's enemies, the US refuses to let them threaten the US.

The first enemy to be attacted by the US was hostile Afghans, who helped others hostile to the US and now the US backed Afghans can vote, let women participate, and things are going well there, the US backed Afghan army are continuing to fight hostile Afghans and others considered to be enemies.

Since the last speech here, the US and a few allies ousted Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people no longer have him as ruler and are no longer under his rule.

After beating the enemy, those who didn't stand and fight the US are doing so now, joined by other US enemies. The US, and a few allies, are making progress, Saddam was found and is now in prision, 45 of 55 wanted by the US have been captured, and forces are moving about and fighting the enemy.

Rebuilding Iraq is hard but the thing to do. The US has always been willing to do so. Last January Iraq's only law was the word of its ruler--today the US and Britain are supporting Iraq in drawing up new laws and a bill of rights. The US and allies are working with the Iraqis and the UN to turn over sovereignty by the end of June.

As US backed rule takes hold in Iraq, those opposed to the US will resist more. They are trying to resist but the US will not be afraid of the enemy. They will fail and the Iraqis will rule themselves.

The speech continues on in a simlar fashion. The many speeches he has made are similarly constructed, so much so they are like TV plots cranked out by writers on Malibu Beach, or a computer program with a data base of virue words--plug in a few ideas and out comes great sounding gibberish.