Might
he lash out militarily now, to distract his people …? Yes, he might, but then he’d only be violating another rule
of geopolitics: “The First Rule of
Holes” -- when you’re in one stop digging.
The problem with that sound but rather
self-satisfied piece of advice, is that there exists an alternate strategy,
repeatedly exemplified in history, the fuite
en avant: which is to say, discard
the shovel, and resume with an excavator.
That is what the world has to
worry about.
Herewith a look at the political linguistics of
the idea.
~
Phrase of the Day: “sunk
cost fallacy”
[Post from 15 Oct 2014]
Today’s WaPo offers an instructive application of a notion we previously examined under the headline “fuite en avant”: namely, the sunk cost fallacy:
The
sunk cost fallacy can be disastrous. World War I and the Vietnam War were
examples of nations falling for the error, with combatants doubling down on
failed strategies, in part because they had already invested so much, making
decisions based on what had happened in the past rather than solely on the
costs and benefits for the future.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/15/house-republicans-are-falling-for-the-sunk-cost-fallacy/?hpid=z3
The author, Neil Irwin, draws the relevant analogy
with the current behavior of the House Repo’s
(as we shall dub them).
Another pertinent comparison would be with the
currently crucial phrase raising the
debt ceiling. The general public may be excused for
imagining that this means “increasing future deficit-spending”, whereas all
that is legally driving it is the obligation to service debts already incurred by past action; it would spare us much ire and confusion were we to denominate the process, not “raising
the debt ceiling”, but “honoring our debts”.
Herewith our original post on the concept in
general and its vocabulary.
Phrase of the Day: “fuite en avant”
[original postdate 24 VI 2012]
The
usually excellent Oxford-Hachette dictionary rather muffs this one,
defining it only as “headlong rush” (Note to the unsuspecting public:
the phrase is never applied to Pamplona bulls, nor a bottom-of-the-ninth
audience rushing for the exits). The large Collins-Robert is somewhat
better in giving a concrete use: “la fuite en avant du gouvernement dans le domaine économique:
the government’s relentless [dbj: “dogged” would have been better]
pursuit of the same economic policy in spite of all the evidence.”
Google it on the internet, and you get (from a source that is not quite
clear) “course effrénée vers l'inconnu, même au risque d'erreurs importantes”, which ably covers part of it.
The
most recent use of the phrase I have heard, came half an hour ago, in a
Medi1 broadcast concerning Syria’s downing of a Turkish jet. Turkey
had indignantly called upon the NATO military alliance (hey cool! yet
another Mideast war!!): yet neither side, said the newscast, in their
heart of hearts desired a fuite en avant: which in this context could be translated “(pointless/knee-jerk) escalation”.
The
phrase is important because, concise and stereotyped, it denotes a
certain psychopolitical pathology, and thus -- lying ready-to-hand in
our Wortschatz -- actually helps us recognize cases thereof when they
arise. (This notion is explored at greater length in the chaper “The
Stokes Conjecture”, in The Semantics of Form in Arabic.) The basic idea is: “Well okay, that didn’t work; but maybe if we do the same thing again only more of it/faster/harder, it’ll work this time.” (This cantilevered emotion, common among politicians, is believed to be controlled by the pineal gland.)
In its strictest use -- literally ‘flight
forward’, and not merely ‘soldiering on’ -- the term tightens the
stakes a notch, over mere pointless perseverence, mere more-of-the-same
-- the sunk funds fallacy, a.k.a. “throwing good money after bad”. For in the French phrase, you actually up the ante, hoping not only to win this hand, but to make up for previous losses.
Fuite en avant
has long been one of my favorite phrases, in large part because of its
complex meaning, and its lack of an equivalent in English. But later a
new term spread generally throughout our American tongue, one which,
while not an exact equivalent, still covers important shared territory:
doubling-down.
The
metaphor comes from the world of gambling; and accordingly, in a
country which reverenced Maverick, and which could seriously consider a
casino magnate (whose name shall not stain this page, but which rhymes
with dump and rump and frump) as a candidate for President, retains a certain roguish allure. Doubling-down may not be a winning formula, but it leaves open the possibility that the cards are hot tonight; whereas fuite en avant always designates an unwise and even foolhardy move.
Note: Doubling
one’s wager, when raised from a nonce impulse into a betting strategy,
is known (in French, and thence in English) as the martingale. This bright idea is probably rediscovered by every boy in each generation; he is chagrined, later to learn, that the policy is statistically unsound.
In French, this term is again used figuratively, as:
In French, this term is again used figuratively, as:
La martingale à haut risque de Mitt Romney
En
choisissant le moine-soldat Paul Ryan comme colistier, le candidat
républicain a l'élection présidentielle américaine vient de faire un sacré pari.
http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2012/08/14/la-martingale-a-haut-risque-de-mitt-romney_1745954_3232.html
*
Pour d’autres
friandises
de la confiserie
du docteur Justice,
consultez:
*
A related and subtle word, also with its origins in the
world of wager, is surenchère.
As:
Mariage homo: la surenchère du PS
Les députés socialistes veulent
inclure la procréation médicalement assistée (PMA) dans le texte
Here the French Parti socialiste
(which in reality is not so much socialist as bobo -- bourgeois-bohemian) ups the ante: Not only do they wish to join inverts in a parody of
matrimony, but to insure that those whom Nature has expressly made, not to
procreate, may yet by artificial
means pass down their defective genes. (An apter phrase might thus be fuite en pente, fuite en enfer.)
~
~ Recommendation posthume ~
“Si j’étais encore en vie, et
que je désirais un bon whodunnit,
que lirais-je?"
Micmacs divorce --Pouah!
(Je suis Charles de Gaulle, et j’ai
approuvé ce message)
~
A milder counterpart of doubling-down is soldiering on; its slogan, “Hope springs eternal”. As, Christopher Robin’s toy train with
its “string sort of thing”:
It’s
a good sort of brake
but
it hasn’t worked yet.
Also distantly related: a Hail Mary (in
football). Related, because
desperate and flashy; but, distantly, because, unlike the case of fuite en
avant or doubling down, losing a Hail Mary play is no worse (does not impact
your score) than losing a more conservative final play. Given the rules of football, a
swansong hail-Mary is entirely rational.
And: bet your bottom dollar; go for broke.
As, confronted with the morass in Vietnam:
And: failure forward.
And: bet your bottom dollar; go for broke.
As, confronted with the morass in Vietnam:
Nixon might order
an escalation, in a go-for-broke bid
for victory.
-- Stephen Ambrose,
Nixon: the Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972 (1989), p. 305
And: failure forward.
~
A classic example of an unstable and self-defeating fuite is the song about the “Little Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly”,
for reasons left unspecified. To
get at the fly, she then deliberately swallowed a spider, which “wriggled and
jiggled and tickled inside her”; so to get rid of that, she swallowed a
bird; then a cat; then a dog; then
a cow; and finally a horse: whereupon the song abruptly ends (on a
rhyme: “she died, of course”).
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
Relief for
beleaguered Nook lovers!
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
In his brilliantly-written book, Liar’s Poker (1989),
Michael Lewis describes (p. 218) the S&L crisis as of 1981, and the decision to go for
broke: “The U.S. Congress decided
to let the savings and loans try to speculate
their way out of trouble.”
(Speculation, of course, having been the way they got into this pickle
in the first place.)
[Update 18 June 2015]
Alexis
Tsipras s'est mis tout seul dans une ornière. D'abord en se faisant élire sur
des promesses irréalistes, ensuite en ignorant la véritable situation de
l'économie grecque. Aujourd'hui, il n'a plus que des mauvais choix: soit il
obtempère aux demandes de réformes de ses bailleurs, au risque d'être lynché
par ses électeurs ; soit il poursuit sa fuite en avant vers le précipice
d'une sortie de l'UE (le fameux «Grexit»), et le danger posé par la colère
d'une population ruinée n'est pas moins grand.
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