Last night while in bed you were checking on the Wall Street demonstrations because you know someone involved. Nothing was in the Sunday Enquirer even though similar small demonstrations had also begun in Portland, Maine and elsewhere. In the Sunday supplement Ken Burns has an article on his new PBS series, “Prohibition”. Burns suggests that these times in the United States are like those then, with absolutes ruling the political day. You were for prohibition or you were against it. You are for small no debt government or you are against it. No middle ground. And, you add abortion as another for or against, no middle ground.
In the near conclusion of Burns’ USA Weekend, “Is it the end of civility (again)” he states:
“. . . You start to realize that part of the business of America is messy. Democracy is messy. But it’s better than anything else. Sure, it might be nice if everything ran on time and there was no gum on the subways and no graffiti anywhere, but are we willing to accept the level of despotism it would take to achieve such control?
‘Liberty is never being too sure that you’re right,’ said Judge Learned Hand, a leading figure of the Prohibition-era judiciary. I think that when you have a sense of absolute certainty, you are in big trouble. And if you pass laws from a sense of absolute certainty, we are all in big trouble.” (p. 7)
The above reminds me of our contemporary Tea-Partiers, and now we have another grass roots group emerging from New York City. This is what their website, which can be easily googled by printing “Occupy Wall Street”, has to say:
“Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.”
I am surprised to see the group is already on Wikipedia. For those interested in viewing its beginnings and background. Well, I am certainly not part of the one percent nor I am a part of the top ten percent. We have a good life but we honestly earned and responsibly saved and invested much of it through a combined sixty-nine years of public service. My empathy leans more towards the OWS than the Tea-Partiers but to each their own. It’s still a free country.
You are bothered by these political divisions in that you, with your dark humored attitude assume things might get worse to the point that the country divides itself literally into two political countries. – Amorella.
Yes. I would not be happy about that, but I don’t know what else we might do, that’s the depressing part.
It’s back to your not having any control. Just like the reason you took ‘flying lessons’ on a CD so when you were in a plane you felt you could at least attempt to land a plane if no one else could. – Amorella.
That’s true, Amorella. This is who I am. At least in dark humor I can keep my own voice to the last. Obviously it is a defense mechanism. I’m sure it plays a huge background part in the writings and blog too for that matter. I keep my voice.
I am reminded here of the old adage: “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” – Amorella.
Hey, I’m pretty much skinned, Amorella, down to bare bones, that’s the way I see it.
You hesitate on your headline but that is what this is about. Be honest, boy. - Amorella.
Boy, the M-W word of the day is an apt one for these times.
The M-W Word of the Day for October 2 is:
newspeak \NOO-speek\ noun, often capitalized: propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings : double-talk
Examples:
"With all the twists and turns of newspeak, it's virtually impossible to figure out exactly what any candidate stands for anymore," complained Brian.
"The cramped media room at Emerald Gardens was packed with sweaty print and radio reporters and half-a-dozen network cameras as Freddie Hutt offered up a tutorial in the language of sports management newspeak -- a language that made it seem as if the St. Pats had no responsibility in starting the bench-clearing brawl but had been innocent bystanders." -- From Michael McKinley's 2011 novel The Penalty Killing
Did you know?
The term "newspeak" was coined by George Orwell in his 1949 anti-utopian novel 1984. In Orwell's fictional totalitarian state, Newspeak was a language favored by the minions of Big Brother and, in Orwell's words, "designed to diminish the range of thought." Newspeak was characterized by the elimination or alteration of certain words, the substitution of one word for another, the interchangeability of parts of speech, and the creation of words for political purposes. The word has caught on in general use to refer to confusing or deceptive bureaucratic jargon.
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You are up in the bedroom and it is after twenty-one hundred hours. Worked in the back yard refurbishing the ground around last year’s new red maple tree was planted. A new crab apple is being planted tomorrow in the southwest side yard. – Moved downstairs as Carol moved up to watch one of her shows while two others are being copied.
Working outside in the fairly clear cool sunny sky was refreshing. Cleaned up and ordered our favorite large specialty pizza from Papa John for supper with enough leftovers for lunch or supper tomorrow. It is by far our all time most delicious and economical take out meal. – Andy Rooney had his last regular broadcast on Sixty Minutes tonight. Daughter Kim and I went to see him talk at spring graduation at Miami University in 2002, a year after she graduated from Miami. We had a good time.
You suddenly stopped because you have nothing else to say. – Amorella.
Andy made a living writing for over fifty years. He is ninety-two and he doesn’t like the fact that he is going to die. He didn’t really grumble about growing older but his body is well-weathered by living on this planet all those years. I think he just doesn’t want to talk about it because it won’t do any good to do so. He’s a wise man in that way.
I wonder, if I was not spending time on this blog each day would I be working on book five by now?
No. This is because you want an authenticity in a fictional work that takes place long ago among the Dead. The authenticity, for the most part, has to come from your heartansoul in their time. Readiness is all, so the saying goes; your mind has to be ready to receive such a story. The works are framed with your telling an imaginary Angel such a fiction which when you think about it takes a tremendous amount of audacity, boy. If you were a believer you could conjure up a real enough Angel I suppose, a believable one, at least to yourself, but your agnostic framework cannot call such a one forward because you love science and physics and particularly quantum mechanics to displace belief.
For this I have good reason.
I do not deny it, if you did not, your work would not be seen as authentic by my perspective. – Amorella.
I wish to change the above to: “For this I have good (perhaps imaginary) reason.” But I cannot bring myself to do it.
This is because in this context, “perhaps imaginary” is a rationalization, boy. And, you hesitate because you know this internally.
It may all be imagination, Amorella. I do not know what is true within the subjective part of my mind.
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