Was the "Axis of Evil" an axis before W called it one?
We've known about the power of naming things, people and places since the Bible and before. The power resides not just in the way a name represents a particular reality, but the way it heightens that reality, and even creates a new, more distilled one. In Genesis, God creates reality by speaking. Adam orders his reality by naming the creatures that are paraded before him. The names of many significant Biblical sites are given as testimony to their historic significance.
Americans are very divorced from the significance of names: our geographical and proper names derive from other languages -- Latin, Spanish, French, Native American languages, Anglo-Saxon dialects or the Queen's English, to name a few -- and so we tend to forget that the name really means something, really tries to capture an essence of that place. For example, the name "Chicago" certainly came from an Indian tribe, though we don't even know which one. Some think that "Chekagou" meant either stinky, wild onion, or skunk. The Chicago Public Library prefers a more noble meaning. Depending on which translation you go with, you get a completely different take on how the place, upon receiving a name, was perceived.
So names are open to interpretation. They can be multi-faceted, ambiguous; the origin of the name is often as inscrutable as the person, place or thing to which it's given.
W, however, saw in Iran, Iraq and North Korea a kind of anti-American conspiracy, and he sought to eliminate all ambiguity and interpretation on the matter. He used the word "Axis" to conjure up America's enemy in perhaps our last just war, and he used "Evil" because he lives in a Star Wars mindset.
I don't have time to look it up, I'm just asking: did the "Axis of Evil" really exist before he named it? Or did he, God-like, give it reality by speaking the name?
In any case, as soon as he dubbed those countries an "Axis of Evil," not only did they begin to coalesce into something very much like an Axis of Evil, but everyone wanted in.
My prescription: W should begin a rigorous meditation practice. Prayer doesn't seem to be working.
--T.A.
"M. M. Quaife in his book Checagou asserts that the significance of the name was anything great or powerful."
A great or powerful stink, of course!
(The translation I heard was "skunk cabbage;" presumably because a lot of it grew there.)
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So the question about W. was: when he uttered the words "Axis of Evil," was it prophecy -- or self-fulfilling prophecy??
Posted by: amba | October 11, 2006 at 11:01 PM
So, this is all Bush's fault? I should have seen THAT one coming. :0).
Posted by: karen | October 16, 2006 at 11:03 AM