The vehicle, god, as it turns up on U.S. currency, in public oaths and
in the pledge of allegiance faces the tap-tap of the Supreme Court’s gavel
today.  Self-declared atheist Michael
Newdow has sued, not for damages, but for removal.  Since the tenor
of god rings variously in the pledge and elsewhere, summoning associations from
The Omnipotent Creator to soul-force to the authority of the democratic state to
George Burns at his cigar-dragging finest (did you see that one?), I think the
Court could suggest a compromise: prefer the lower case.  Without god in
the pledge, what else could one nation be under?  Mustn’t it be under
something (other than Canada)?  Or is the state now above all else, supreme, global,
ever-present? 

If the lower case compromise doesn’t work, perhaps we could move for a
homophone such as gawd or ghad.  Yeah, that’d be progress
toward the philosophical differentiation. But what would it
change?  Meaning?  God is on the dollar bill in my wallet, but
it’s not on my ATM card or monthly statement or paycheck receipt–all of which
bear authority, currency, faith in shared value.  And this is where I’ll
stop, since I’m not so much trying to play out anything insightful about the god
debacle as I am trying to distract myself from not being in San Antonio for
C’s.  *I will not think of C’s. I will not think of C’s.*  Kvetch-blog,
therapeutic.  In all honesty, I was just trying to use a few interesting
and new (for me) terms from Richards’ chapter on metaphor: vehicle, tenor and adequated (as in, a metaphor deadened for carrying only one idea, at which moment it ceases to be a metaphor). If not for this blog, I would keep it all to myself.