third world county

Yeh, every time I hear or read a mangled expression like that (“It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon”) I know the speaker or writer perhaps has access to a lot of words, but the synapses connecting sound with meaning just aren’t there.

And that, my friends, is what I experience 99% of the time a politician opens his mouth: sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or worse, mangled beyond meaninglessness. But wait! There’s more! Over at Take Me to Your Lizard, I ran across this description of the Giant Step From Reality that is The 0!’s public speaking:

…all this seemed familiar to me, listening to him speak and watching how people reacted to his voice. It took a while but then I remembered why. Obama has the same ability as Saruman, the supposedly good wizard gone very, very bad in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy to lull the weak-minded with his voice. In the second book, The Two Towers, we find this description of Saruman’s voice on page 183:

…..Suddenly, another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke, they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell only lasted while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

Of course, one must note that at least Saruman began as a good person. One cannot have that assurance about a Chicago politician. But at least now, perhaps I understand a tiny (miniscule, vanishingly small) bit of the comments from folks who rhapsodize about how wonderful a public speaker The 0! is. (But only a wee, teeneintsy tad, cos I’ve never been hypnotized by the man’s supposedly dulcet tones.) I have, since I first heard The 0! speak, thought he was a particularly poor public speaker, because nothing he says makes any sense, and he always seems so… disconnected from what thin content his speeches do contain.

But for some, apparently his voice or something about his presence entrances them, short-circuits what little minds they do possess and leaves them with the impression that something was said.

But for me, his halt, stumblebum delivery and his emotional emptiness coupled with the subliteracy of his teleprompter programmers and the lack of anything actually said has kept me scratching my head up until now. But now I get it, if as “through a glass darkly” (KJV language for “in a cloudy, messed up funhouse mirror” :-)). The complete disconnect between words and meaning and the multiple auto-lobotomies his listeners have subjected themselves to have obviously combined to effect a magic that is quite apart from the rational world of cause and effect. That “magic, entrancing voice” is all simply projection by a bunch of folks who’re NOT nearly as bright as “rocket surgeons” *heh* and so are projecting an illusion of greatness upon the foggy shadow that is The 0!

That’s as close as I can come to grasping why some can actually listen to the same speech I do and come away thinking what they do of the ToTUS’ pet parrot.

That is to say, I still don’t understand it at all, of course. Stupidity that immense is beyond the mind of man to grasp.

My thanks to Nicole, of Autumn People for pointing out the VodkaPundit article that led to the Saruman post.