Language Follies 8

 “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . .”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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It would have been more correct for Emerson to have stated,  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of some little minds . . .” As evidence I call to the witness stand Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

In a recently published book, filled with “[v]enom, score-settling, fiction, self-absolution, self-aggrandizement,” according to the Guardian UK, (1) Representative Greene demonstrates that her little mind is consistency-free. On the one hand, she claims that “Democrats abandoned the House chamber to the rioters and exited without resistance, in contrast to brave, gun-toting Republicans”; on the other hand, she asserts that “innocent conservatives and MAGA  grandmas  . . . peacefully walked through the Capitol on January 6 instead of real threats.”

Rioters or peaceful grannies? Which were the brave, gun-toting GOPers guarding against?

It’s foolish to expect an answer from someone who dwells on Planet Wacko.

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I would suggest that Rep. Greene read the writing on the wall—at least the writing on the walls of some UK soccer fields and purchase the shoes that are “Designed for Connection.” Perhaps she could walk herself into a connection with reality, if not consistency.

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The intrusion of reality into a false world is one purpose of parody. 

Here’s a cigarette advertisement that ran for a good while in the latter part of the 1940s:

And here’s the parody (aka, reality):

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To finish the month with a flourish, I offer three of my favorite pieces of mail:

1. What Middlesex County, New Jersey has to say about Yosemite National Park in California I don’t know. But I am to be the spokesman. What an honor!

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2. 
   
   I am of course determined not to miss out on “$0 benefits.” Who wouldn’t be?

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     3.  Speaking of determined, I can’t wait to discover “THE BEST WAY TO PROCESS HINDQUARTERS.” 

Where’s my knife?

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Going to the supermarket? How can you resist buying a pizza sauce that’s “Pizzeria Style”?

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Back in the 1940s, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was really customer-friendly; for the price of admission they gave you a seat.

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And while we’re in the 40s (1949, to be precise) let’s note that Marjorie Taylor Greene (she of the space lasers setting fire to California forests) had a congressional predecessor, Senator Owen Brewster, who claimed that forest fires in Maine were set by foreign saboteurs.

Plus ça change and all that. 

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(1) https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mtg-review-far-rabble-rouser-070011370.html

 

Round and Round

We have the Hebrews to thank, it has been said, for giving us the belief that history is linear and not circular. It was, however, a member of the tribe, Karl Marx, who claimed that history does repeat itself: appearing first as tragedy, and then as farce.

I was never a believer in the circularity of history, whether manifesting itself as reincarnation, the transmigration of souls, or Yeats’ “A Vision,”* most prominently displayed in his great poem “The Second Coming.” However, recently, I have found reason to share Marx’s view about historical repetition, although I’m not sure that his formulation is correct, or if the reverse is true—history appears first as farce and only later as tragedy.

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Since in the last few years I have had more spare time than I know what to do with it (yes, I know that I could engage in saving the whales or mining crypto), I have undertaken a kind of historical research by trawling the archives of The New Yorker magazine. I am on my second go-round; having begun this tour in 1940, I am now into the autumn of 1971. What has stood out most prominently this time around is that the state of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s was uncannily like what we face today, a half-century on.

In this blog post I have gathered together many cartoons and comments from back then which I think you will plainly recognize as distant mirror images of our own time.

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Now on to the political.

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2022

Former President Donald Trump called for the US Department of Education's abolition during his Saturday speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.

Trump told a crowd that prohibitions need to be brought in on teaching "inappropriate racial, sexual and political material" to American schoolchildren.

"If federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education," he continued.

https://news.yahoo.com/crowd-cheers-trump-calls-abolition-093209367.html

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Philip Hamburger visited Kent, Ohio in 1971, one year after Ohio National Guardsmen murdered four Kent State students who were protesting US actions in South East Asia. Here's what one local interviewee said:

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2022

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Saturday said “no one can convince” her that the rioters behind the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol were not anti-fascist protesters 

https://news.yahoo.com/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-no-193748469.html

"As another example, the sting they did involving Gretchen Whitmer was fake. Just like those who instigated January 6. It was a fake deal. Fake. It was a fake deal," Trump said. . . . 

Trump also alluded to conspiracy theories about the Capitol riot being orchestrated by FBI agents, propagated by his allies, including Ted Cruz and Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-jan-6-riot-gretchen-whitmer-kidnap-plot-fake-cpac-2022-8

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l. E. Sissman 

Review of Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968

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And Finally:

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*  “All things are subject to a cycle of changes, which can be regarded as bi-polar, passing from a state of objectivity to one of subjectivity before returning to objectivity again. This can be seen as a form of oscillation, or a circuit around a wheel, and divides experience into the two halves of objectivity and subjectivity.”

(Got that?)

https://www.yeatsvision.com/Overview.html#AV