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 If someone offers his condolences and, right after,
adds some however, though or but he is in reality
saying "my condolences" but negating it soon
after with an "it serves you right."
By Alberto Dines
It's time for grammar, among other things, to lower our blood pressure. The political
simplism that preceded the Black Tuesday doesn't seem to have been interrupted after the
slaughter. It's intact and unharmed, fueling resentments, ready to ignite sacred wraths
and holy indignations. The majority of the Arab and Islamic leadership were categorically
sympathetic to the victims' families or to the American people. Without attenuation or
justification. They were hurt by terrorism as much as those murdered. Fidel Castro, for so
long assaulted by American arrogance, was also unequivocal in his solidarity. He said what
he felt, period.
But in the rhetoric of our cordial celebrated society, infected with commas and
detours, it was inserted as an attenuating resource—a little particle usually
destined to link parts of a phrase. Disguised as a pause between two ideas, it has a
deleterious, disaggregating function. Without even being touched by the death of so many
Brazilians, some of the brief and formal laments for the catastrophe were followed by a
disturbing and insulting but.
In the innocent conjunction it's revealed the volcano of rancor still had not been
calmed, curtailed or purged by last week's blood bath. Here comes the grammar to remind us
about things we don't pay attention to when using the language. Conjunctions are used to
link sentences: when additive they work as reinforcement—this is the case of the
stubborn and—when adversative they establish the contrast between the
respective meanings. If someone offers his condolences and, right after, adds some however,
though or but he is in reality saying "my condolences" but
negating it soon after with an "it serves you right."
The political "show" presented by the PT (Workers' Party) on TV this Thursday
was perfect in every sense, including its mention of the terrorist attacks: neither but
nor half but. The repudiation to the violence was brief, clear and the grief,
sincere. But the PT is a Party that's getting ready to exercise the power, and it is able
to extirpate emotions, choose words that express them and, by and large, avoid the
pitfalls of phrasing. It's able, more than anything else, to immunize itself against the
poison of the discourse's ambiguities.
This consternation was not shared by the majority of militants or associates who
marched through the papers' pages of smoldering rage and wrath, clearly satisfied with the
getting even shown in such a spectacular way on TV.
Rapidly grieved, the six thousand missing—including the 17 Brazilians—were
soon compared to the dead in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Hanoi, Chile, to which were
added the hungry masses of Africa and Latin America's legions of poor wretches. Swinging
between justification and vigilantism, with the decisive help of buts, the cruel
vindictive arithmetic illustrates a moral relativism from which certain leftists—or
pseudo leftists—were still not able to escape. Nor will they escape soon while they
continue intoxicated by the dogma that the end justifies the means.
From this spiritual daze don't escape people anointed in international contests: people
awarded the Peace and Literature Nobel prizes, tenured professors and illustrious
individuals in all sciences and knowledge, rationalists and aestheticians, Marxists and
aristocrats. Historians trained to look at humankind under the perspective of
centuries—and the journalists used to immediately interpret its
spasms—surrendered themselves to the amok unchained by terror. Even bankers so
cautious in their emotions and investments took out of the closet their Crusaders' banner.
Incapable of being horrified or feeling pain, and therefore incapable of humanizing
themselves by suffering and solidarity, the fiery harbingers of the "we are
even" are blowing up all bridges that lead to dialog and tolerance. The xenophobia
that only now they notice had been pulsating for a long time in their totalizing and
totalitarian speeches, in the way they divide the world between those who deserve
compassion and those who deserve condemnatory passion.
George W. Bush is the least desirable person to lead the U.S. at this moment. There is
no doubt about this: all of his appearances (starting with a speech in a Florida school in
the morning of the assaults and ending ten days later with the speech to Congress in
Washington) widely expose his unpreparedness, an intellectual void and a psyche that only
knows how to express itself through clichés. The uncomfortable realization cannot lead us
to an alignment with fanaticism, terrorism or with those cynical invocations destined to
minimize, excuse or justify the barbarism committed Black Tuesday.
In the current evaluations an elementary data is being forgotten: the assaults were not
accompanied by public declarations, ultimatums, conditions or demands. The absence of
public statements or authorship indicates an indiscriminate war against all, against
humankind. The initiators of the crime are not from the left, not even progressive. They
are neither agents of the savage capitalism nor revolutionary, reformist, ecologist,
thirdworldist or antiglobalizationist. They don't want a strong or minimum state. They
don't want states, laws, codes, norms for living or respecting. Besides killing
indiscriminately they are intent on sowing hate, igniting fires, exacerbating suspicions,
and prevent any possibility of understanding, approaching or tolerance.
In displaying grief with half sincerity or full insincerity, the lucid commentators
with their adversative conjunctions and the moral relativism are only vouching for
violence as political language. In reality, they are condemning the victims as the only
guilty ones for what has happened
Alberto Dines wrote this article for Jornal do Brasil where he
signs a column. He became a journalism professor after directing major newspapers and
magazines in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Lisbon (Portugal). He is the author of several
books and the creator of Observatório da Imprensa, an Internet site and TV program
that presents criticism of the Brazilian media. You can reach him at dines@jb.com.br
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