Commentary
No, I’m not angling for a job with the government, ideally one of those cushy consulting gigs that are all the rage these days, and when Canadians see the cost, I do mean rage. On the contrary, I’m applying the principle that to understand what people are thinking, you should listen to what they are saying.
It even works on yourself, as in “How can I know what I think until I hear what I say?” And it certainly works on politicians. In this case the key point is that, confronted with a senior Canadian vice-admiral’s lament that we’re missing vital AUKUS discussions of “advanced technology in terms of the artificial-intelligence domain, machine learning, quantum, all of these things that really matter moving forward,” the defence minister’s office burbled, “Through the Five Eyes and our bilateral partnerships, we will continue to work with our closest allies to keep Canadians safe.”
Now it is obvious that this response attempts to change the subject, which was not the Five Eyes. But I want to draw your attention instead to a standard rhetorical trope of the Canadian government when confronted with some obvious, nay contemptible, lapse in performance of its core duties: that weasel word “continue.”
People are widely disposed to regard themselves as well-meaning, ethical, and misunderstood. Especially if they adopt a victim mentality, they also feel justified in resorting to otherwise improper tactics. Indeed, one reason for discovering what you yourself think by listening attentively to what you say is to make sure you don’t hear excuses from your mouth you would reject from someone else’s. And if you do, it is wise to probe deeply not into your rhetorical strategy but your ideas.
The same is true of people in public life. We have learned repeatedly and painfully to take tyrants’ pronouncements about intentions seriously. Yet we so often say no, it’s just a cover for their real intention to accumulate “power” or something. It’s not. People want power to accomplish goals, they don’t want goals to accomplish power.
Thus, to continue continuing, when Canadian politicians declare that they will “continue” to do something they are not doing and would have no idea how to do if they tried, they are not lying. Far from it. They are conveying their sublime sense of their own excellence, due to which they must be performing their jobs superbly and only lying partisan enemies or mentally-defective “ideologues” could claim otherwise.
If this assessment seems improbable, consider that millions of your fellows vote for them election after election. If so many voters do not see those in power or their job performance the way we do, why should they themselves not yield to vanity and continue to grade their own work highly?
So beware this governmental word “continue.” Not because it means they’re fooling you. Because it means they’re fooling themselves.