You seem a rather odd sort to be a cabdriver

[June 15th, 2005] "You seem a rather odd sort to be a cabdriver," says my British passenger.

"Well, the job market is such that I can't seem to find anything commensurate with my abilities."

He laughs. "There, you know the word 'commensurate,' you've just bolstered my point."

We start talking about the differences between British and American cabdrivers, language, and politics. About how when people stop using complex and subtle words they lose the ability to express complex and subtle thoughts, and then maybe the ability to even think them at all.

About how George Orwell once said that "political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable." About how this is easier to pull off with simple soundbite words.

He asks if I had seen British MP George Galloway thoroughly school the U.S. Senate recently, using the sharp rhetorical tools that the British parliamentary system requires to shred senators' arrogant and false accusations to bits. I say yes, but that it seems like political discourse here has lost all complexity and subtlety, to the point where some politicians lack the language to even know they had been schooled.

We both sigh.

By the time I drop him at the airport, I am so thoroughly disheartened that I pull off for a few minutes to think. I suddenly wish Hunter Thompson were still alive. Or that I or anyone else had the will and talent to take his place.