"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
“Are the Presidential Debates ‘Rigged’ Against Trump?”
*duh*
If they were real debates, then The Trumpery wouldn’t have an even vain hope against even the worst public speaker on the national stage, the Queenie Cacklepants Cylon (Worst? Why, its Human Emulation Module is so defective that every time it engages, the thing looks and sounds like a deranged Bonobo chimp wearing a defective shock collar, that’s how bad the thing is).
As it is, with Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind Talking Heads posing their agenda-driven questions (no doubt directly from the Hivemind’s daily download from the mothership orbiting Uranus–well, it’s as ‘kind and gentle’ a spin to put on the Hivemind’s monolithic narrative as any), all The Trumpery has to do to energize his base s show up and berate the Hivemind Podpeople for their biased approach.
Nah, what would REALLY stack the deck against The Trumpery would be if Gary Johnson were included in the show trial “debates.” THAT would chap his gizzard no end. Oh, and the Queenie Cacklepants Cylon? It’d need a LOT more oil on its disposal chute’s hinges to try to dump enough fecal matter (salvaged from banal politicians, concentrated and stored for use in its pronouncements) to make any impact at all.
If I ever tire of Phreddie P. Phineas Phocksphire Pharquhar, I think I would be happy to adopt “Nanny McPhee” as a sobriquet. . . although my Wonder Woman thinks “Manny McPhee” would be a bit less gender-bending. 😉
Had a guy ask me where I got the “30,000 emails erased by Hillary Clinton” info, because the last he’d heard is was maybe a couple of hundred. I think I have located where he’s been living:
As Peter Grant quoted when he posted this, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” ~ Mark Twain
BTW, I recommend Peter Grant’s sci-fi milfic/space opera books as HIGHLY appropriate for readers whose literacy reaches (legitimate) middle school levels, no matter what their ages. Sometimes a bit saccharine, but that’s better than destructively “gritty” in my book, especially for young readers. Think sci-fi milfic/space opera pretty much as written by Zane Grey. Or maybe less fantastic “Doc” Smith translated though a Zane Grey-ish filtering. *heh* (The more I think on that, the more Grant’s new Western series makes real sense.)
A big bonus is that Grant’s books seem to be very competently edited, so that readers are rarely led astray (and mistaught) by misused words, poor grammar, and punctuation errors. That’s just competent line editing. In addition, the content editing eliminates all (or almost all) of the plot bobbles so common to many books published nowadays, even (sometimes especially!) from big publishing houses. This is important, IMO, since reading engaging stories with good morals and ethics that are WELL-WRITTEN can help readers just pick up all these good things along the way.
Of course, unless a book is exceptionally well-written (and by that I mean of stellar class, worthy of survival to become an enduring classic such as “Pilgrim’s Progress”), didacticism can be a killer. No, just well-written (and competently edited) stories that have moral, ethical characters facing conflicts and choosing wisely, and therefore teach good lessons without having to stop and pound lessons into the reader.
Of course, there are competently-written books whose protagonists are bad examples for readers to emulate. I despise that sort of crap.
Poorly-written books that either have protagonists who are “good” examples or protagonists who bad examples are both to be condemned as simply poorly-written books. I find both to be anathema.
And then there are the kinds of books thatb Holly Lisle has correctly classified as “suckitudinous fiction.” Technically well-written but worthless “lit-ra-chure” such as Fitzgerald is celebrated (by self-made moral morons) for having written. Of them I can only say, “Gagamaggot.”
Peter grant’s fiction is all, as far as I have read in his sci-fi milfic/space opera (I have not yet read his new Western novel), light, entertaining, sometimes saccharine (to the point of nearly Goody Two-shoes saccharine), well-written fluff that is highly appropriate for YA readers and engaging even for folks nostalgic for an earlier ethos in sci-fi, where a more elevated moral/ethical behavior would be expected.
The joys of good grammar include clearer communication, but also include the “joy” of sometimes making an otherwise enjoyable set of lyrics grating to the ear. *heh* For example, John Jacob Niles should be retroactively slapped upside the head for,
I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die.
For poor on’ry people like you and like I…
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
No, “like you and like I” has the pronouns in the objective case position, not subjective case. The often made lame excuse of adding a mental “are” is no better than correcting it to “like you and like me.” In fact, it’s worse, apart from “like you and like me” ruining Niles’s rhyme scheme.
It’s unfortunate that Niles died in 1980, because he really deserves a dope slap for this abomination. I’d offer remediation for this stanza, but then I’d have to fix the rhyme schemes of the other two verses to match, and I’m not quite sure it’d be worth the effort. Of course, that would afford the opportunity to fix the really awkward last line in the second stanza. . .
I have a quirk, I guess one might say. An example might be, I need to have my cooking utensils hung in EXACTLY the right place–the place where I expect them to be. If a spoon I need to stir a soup is hung just two places off from its place, I have a devil of a time finding it, sometimes (OK, oftentimes). I’ve been known to look all through the kitchen for the RIGHT spoon, because not only is it not in its place, but imagining it being in another utensil’s place is just. . . wrong.
I have experienced something similar if someone referred to “The Messiah” (as a musical work). I am–or was for years–prone to ask “Who is that by?” since Handel’s work is “Messiah.” Now, I know every single note of the Spicker score for “Messiah,” but for years “The Messiah” used as reference to that work kinda threw me. *shrugs* Of course, this usually only causes problems with things I know well.
No, I do not fit the loosey-goosey DSM-IV OCD diagnostic criteria.
One thing that’s sometimes irritating is reading a book or watching a show written by someone who’s merely bright and trying to write about/write dialog for a “genius.” Unfortunately, the merely bright writer quite often just cannot grasp the flower of “genius” that’s within the nettle of his muddled idea of genius.
Note: I am only “merely bright” and in no way a “genius” (tested out on the low end of the MENSA IQ quals which in NO WAY define “genius”). However, I have been blessed to know and benefit from association with more than a few folks who are so bright they almost make my eyes bleed, *heh* hence my dissatisfaction with fictional representations of “genius.”
10 points for the (scrambled and adapted) literary reference. Points may be redeemed for “pie in the sky,” as it were. Or bragging rights. Quisquis/whatever. *heh*
