WORDS

     I like words. No, I love words. I like the written word and the spoken word. Words can enlighten, they can instruct, they can amuse, they can move you to anger and to sorrow. And they can deceive. It is not the words, but the user of words who we blame for misusing words. There are books of words which tell us, with words, how those words can be used.

     When Guttenberg invented movable type and a printing press in the mid 1400s, it wasn't to print the Bible that was his first use, as is often proposed, it was to print indulgences for the church. The church which Martin Luther protested against. And the very use of indulgences was one of the things that convinced Martin Luther to protest. It then was used to print the stories that the public loved. A public that was learning to write and read.  The Bible had been forbidden to lay readers at the time. Perhaps the church hierarchy wished to prevent the laity from being woke. Whatever the reason, it was forbidden. Look up the story of John Wycliffe and the Lollards. So instead of distributing bibles, like the Gideons, the Guttenberg press made story-telling possible. Stories that mocked the church, like Canterbury tales, and a few decades later, Shakespeare. Somewhere along the way, erotica came onto the scene thanks to the printing press. I'm too euro-centric to know if there were competitors to the Gutenberg press, but offset type clearly won the day. Perhaps like the VHS video-tape beat out Betamax due to pornographic movie companies adopting VHS.

     All art is moved by words. If your art is visual, or musical, words are used by critics and promoters of art. Even if your art is mime, or juggling, somebody needs to promote you. Mark Twain, one of our eminent men of letters, once said of finding the right word: 

     

" The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large.              matter. It's the difference between the lightning bug and lightning."

If you take the time to find the right word, you will take the time to find the right note, or the right color. You will compose the right sentence, find the artistic medium that moves your audience. The problem we find ourselves confronting today is that a rather large portion of our population is satisfied with a mere lightning bug when it comes to words. And that prompts them to fall for political horseshit. Even more problematic, they elect people who speak in the same hyperbolic manner that they themselves use. These people that they gave the keys to government to, then create laws for all of us that are too often flawed or based on unsound opinions. Hyperbole, as used by the lightning bug crowd means to overstate a fact or opinion. For the lightning crowd, hyperbole means to overstate a fact or opinion not meant to be taken seriously. And thus we get a sizeable portion of the republican party. A party peopled by people promoting books like Sen. Hawley's book on, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. What is missing, I suspect, from this boring tome is that masculine "virtues" (I enclose that word in perintheses) have been the only virtues encouraged for public life for the entire span of human existence, until about 1919, when the Womens Rights Amendment became law. By the same token, white masculinity has had the natural right to define what is virtuous, a condition that still exists thanks to red-state gerrymandering.

     To add to our current dysphoria, there are people high up in the aristocracy that owns our current political system who use words quite well. Well enough to convince the lightning bugs that they are worthy of their regard. Well enough to coax their base that whatever opinions they hold do not need further examination. And thus we get the House version of the conservative conference. Or the Senate Republican conference with people like Sen John Kennedy of La. He has a BA from Vanderbuilt and a JD from University of Virginia, yet he talks like he stepped off of the pages of Al Capp's cartoon strip, L'il Abner.

     L'il Abner was a successful comic strip in newspapers for many years, it was even a Broadway play in the 1960s. Sometime later, we were convinced by people of higher ambitions for humanity, probably from groups that were not white and masculine, that we shouldn't make fun of people with fewer opportunities for education. That noble deed was not accompanied by better rural education. Oh, we tried for a while during LBJs War on Poverty. But Republicans, and  the Dixiecrats who would soon become republicans, could not stand the thought of people of a darker hue getting the same education as little Nigel. Nor could they stand the thought of women attaining higher aspirations than Home-maker of the year. So they created private schools and started to restrain funding for public schools. That has led us to question "woke policies" in some of our red-state schools, or fears of Critical Race Theory in states whose racial history needs to be criticized. So we find ourselves, our aspirations held up by characters right out of L'il Abner: Mammy and Pappy Yokum attending MAGA rallies in their fashions depicting racist and fascist ideology. Legislators in states and the federal government capable of making us think of Daisy Mae, Stupifyin' Jones, Marryin' Sam, General Bullmoose, Appassionata von Climax-who I think is carried off handily by Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Fearless Fosdick. And we find ourselves somewhere between Joe Btfsplk and the Schmoo. 

    We don't know when this will end, or where. We hope that, in the end we will still have a popular democracy to rebuild on. We cannot be sure of that. A fat fool who thinks he is still mayor of Dogpatch, is preparing for a second run for the presidency. Between now and the election this guy will have many more days in court being defended for such crimes as harboring government secrets, including nuclear secrets, at Mar a Lago, charges in Georgia for illegally interfering with the election, more charges of making unwanted sexual advances, nearly 2 dozen,  and other charges we have never seen a president charged with. Dogpatch adores Trump still. In fact they accuse Democrats of "weaponizing" government against Trump. The very government that Trump tried to weaponize against the opposition party.