trivial effort man can lie, does he believe oh, probably not
If we would learn what the human race really is, at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.
A Hartford clergyman met me in the street, and spoke of a new nominee – denounced the nomination, in strong, earnest words – words that were refreshing for their independence, their manliness.
He said, “I ought to be proud, perhaps, for this nominee is a relative of mine; on the contrary I am humiliated and disgusted; for I know him intimately – familiarly – and I know that he is an unscrupulous scoundrel, and always has been.”
You should have seen this clergyman preside at a political meeting forty days later; and urge, and plead, and gush – and you should have heard him paint the character of this same nominee.
You would have supposed he was describing the Cid, and Great-heart, and Sir Galahad, and Bayard the Spotless all rolled into one.
Was he sincere?
Yes – by that time; and therein lies the pathos of it all, the hopelessness of it all.
It shows at what trivial cost of effort a man can teach himself a lie, and learn to believe it, when he perceives, by the general drift, that that is the popular thing to do.
Does he believe his lie yet?
Oh, probably not;
From The Character of Man in The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2010).
in any instance violated the injunctions incur punishment
Not sure what you think about on February 22nd but I often think of the old black and white John Wayne movie, Fort Apache.
After a long journey of crummy trains, stage coaches and other hardships, the new Commanding officer (Henry Fonda) and his daughter (Shirley Temple … yes that Shirley Temple) arrive at Fort Apache to find that not only were the officers at the fort not one bit concerned about the trials their new Commanding officer might be experiencing but his officers were having a party!
When he walks in the music and dancing comes to a halt and Fonda, cold, correct and angry, is introduced and everyone stands around staring at the floor until Fonda says, “… I take it this dance is not in my honor.’
There is quiet and John Wayne speaks up, ‘It’s a birthday dance, sir.’
Birthday. Whose birthday?
General George Washington’s, sir.
And Fonda shrinks down into the floor.
On Monday, March 4, 1793, George Washington was sworn in for the 2nd time as President of the United States.
He gave the shortest inaugural address on record.
With 135 words, General Washington said:
I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.
Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.
After serving as a Virginia Delegate to the Continental Congress, then serving as Commander in Chief of the Army, then Chairman of the Constitution Convention and finally, the General said that, after all that if there was any … ANY … instance found where he violated his oath of office (preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States) he deserved both Constitutional punishment and upbraidings or intense, formal, or severe criticism (according to the online dictionary).
democracy most fragile thing on earth, it rests upon you and me
Democracy is the most fragile thing on earth, for what does it rest upon?
You and me, and the fact that we agree to maintain it.
The moment either of us says we will not, that’s the end of it.
It doesn’t rest on anything but us; it doesn’t rest on armed force, the moment it does it isn’t democracy.
It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.
From the preface page to the 2017 Edition of the book, Advise and Consent by Allan Drury (WordFire Press: Colorado Springs, Colorado , 2017).
Advise and Consent is one of those books AND film adaptations that I can read or watch again and again.
Watching the movie today I have to laugh the Minority Whip of the Senate arrives a the Capitol Building in a cab, walks to a news stand and buys and paper and only then learns what the President did overnight.
In today’s instant news coverage, I marvel that anything got done back in 1959.
I mean the poor guy woke up, got dressed, had breakfast and got to work before he had any news on which to plan his day.
According to Wikipedia, “Advise and Consent is a 1959 political fiction novel by Allen Drury that explores the United States Senate confirmation of controversial Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell, whose promotion is endangered due to growing evidence that the nominee had been a member of the Communist Party. The chief characters’ responses to the evidence, and their efforts to spread or suppress it, form the basis of the novel.”
A Mr. Tom Kemme, in his book, Political fiction, the spirit of the age, and Allen Drury (Bowling Green State University Popular Press: Bowling Green, Ohio. 1987), writes that, “The basic assumption underlying Drury fiction is that totalitarian Communism is intrinsically evil and that Communism’s ultimate goal is world domination, an end or goal that Communists will strive to achieve by whatever moral, immoral, or amoral means are expedient, including propaganda, lies, subversion, intimidation, infiltration, betrayal, and violence.”
Had anyone been able to tell Mr. Drury that such a threat would be coming, not from Communists buy from within the Government, he would have dismissed the plot as impossible to believe.
But if we make one slight change, that phrase can be read …
The current administration is intrinsically evil and that the current administration‘s ultimate goal is world domination, an end or goal that the current administration will strive to achieve by whatever moral, immoral, or amoral means are expedient, including propaganda, lies, subversion, intimidation, infiltration, betrayal, and violence.
Just that last bit is worth repeating.
The current administration will strive to achieve [its goals] by whatever moral, immoral, or amoral means are expedient, including propaganda,
lies,
subversion,
intimidation,
infiltration,
betrayal,
and violence.
It’s worth repeating Mr. Drury’s warning.
Democracy is the most fragile thing on earth, for what does it rest upon? You and me, and the fact that we agree to maintain it. The moment either of us says we will not, that’s the end of it. It doesn’t rest on anything but us; it doesn’t rest on armed force, the moment it does it isn’t democracy. It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.
It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.
obscurely fallen by death, something that we can look upon with pride
Adapted from the poem, Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France.
Ay, it is fitting on this holiday, Commemorative of our soldier dead, When—with sweet flowers of our New England May Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray— Their graves in every town are garlanded, That pious tribute should be given too To our intrepid few Obscurely fallen here beyond their seas. Those to preserve their country’s greatness died; But by the death of these Something that we can look upon with pride Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make That from a war where Freedom was at stake America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.
As published in Poems By Alan Seeger, (New York Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York ,1918).
In the Introduction to the book, Poems, one William Archer, a Scottish author, theatre critic, wrote, “He had hoped to have been in Paris on Decoration Day, May 30th, to read, before the statue of Lafayette and Washington, the “Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France,” which he had written at the request of a Committee of American residents; but his “permission” unfortunately did not arrive in time. Completed in two days, during which he was engaged in the hardest sort of labour in the trenches, this Ode is certainly the crown of the poet’s achievement. It is entirely admirable, entirely adequate to the historic occasion. If the war has produced a nobler utterance, it has not come my way.”
Margraten in The Netherlands, one of 14 permanent overseas military cemeteries set aside for America’s World War II dead that the U.S. government maintains in perpetuity.
It is an article about visiting a cemetery in Holland for US servicemen who died in Europe in World War 2.
Mr. Darmen writes, The American service members buried in the soil of Europe grew up in a country where many respectable politicians claimed America had no business preserving peace on the European continent or promoting freedom in the world. There was no NATO, no United Nations, no American-led global order.
When you stoop down on European soil to read an American soldier’s name on a grave, you see how policies sold as “America First” can lead to unthinkable suffering and loss.
Travel through Europe today and you’ll see the war-forged American-European partnership embedded everywhere — in gleaming embassies and in hulking military bases, in ubiquitous English-language ads and in the YouTube clips streaming on teenagers’ phones. But nowhere does the tie between the people on both sides of the Atlantic feel more intimate as in the World War II cemeteries.
In today’s Europe, the need for such a partner remains. At Margraten that August morning, I spoke with a Dutch woman who’d come to visit the cemetery with her young son. He was learning at school about “the problems in the world,” she explained. He’s a little bit nervous, she said, about what would happen “if the Russians come.” She gestured at the rows of graves all around her: “So it’s very important to see everything.”
My son got blown up in Afghanistan and is banged up in lots of other ways.
I have an Uncle who was blown up in Europe with a lot more visible wounds.
I have a Great Uncle who was shot in France.
My Great Grand Father had a confederate bullet in his chest from the day he was shot in Virginia in 1862 until the day he died, 50 years later.
I take my hat off to their service and to all veterans on this day.
On Veterans Day it it good to remember what Mr. Lincoln said at Gettysburg.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
As Mr. Darmen writes: But in their beauty, ambition and scale, the cemeteries have also always sent a message to Europeans, a reminder of the costs Americans were willing to pay to ensure the cause of liberty in the world.
Pavement etiquette is “getting worse,” he says, in part due to smartphones. He pauses to point out how many people around us are walking while staring at their phones. “I call these people neck breakers,” he says. “People stuck at a 45 degree angle on their phones, not with us in reality”.
Writing about Mr. Cameron Roh, Ms. Ferrier states:
As a member of gen Z, Roh has always “lived and breathed social media”. Born and educated in Ohio, he got a glimpse of his future at high school, when he had to deal with “hallway rage”. People in corridors, people loitering … “I’m gonna be late to my destination because of you? No way, that’s gotta stop,” he says. “I’ve always been a fast walker, always knowing where I’m going.”
He films people breaking his self-created ‘laws’ of street decorum and posts the videos online – with many viewers expressing their gratitude. So watch out if you’re rushing along on your phone or wheeling a small bag that could be carried …
Given Roh’s reservations about smartphones, the irony that his entire body of work is filmed and parsed through a screen is not lost on him. “The world is so disconnected,” he says. “We’re just consumed by our phones and our AirPods. You think it’s just gen Z and gen Alpha, but it’s everyone now. Age is not even a defining factor. But doing what I do, it’s a way of getting out, an activity, so I’m walking with purpose.”
I admit I hadn’t thought so much about this when walking unless I am Savannah or Beaufort and surrounded by those tourists and the tiny sidewalks.
But driving?
People with the ‘texting gap’ of 50 feet or more in front them while they keep their peripheral vision locked on the road so it won’t interrupt their interaction with their device.
That feeling of knowing where I’m going and they don’t, especially since I live in a ‘vacation paradise’ so you can count on an overly large number of out of town and mostly lost drivers.
I cannot tell you how many times I have been cut off, and I mean dangerously cut off, as someone gets driving directions from their device and ‘have to get over or miss my turn.’
The kicker is WE ARE ON AN ISLAND.
YOU CANNOT GET LOST.
If you miss your turn, you can connect at the next corner BECAUSE THERE ARE ONLY TWO ROADS on this tiny island.
SO there are those.
Then there is my state of mind that says, “I’m gonna be late to my destination because of you? No way!”
That’s what kicks into gear when driving while surrounded by tourons.
Tourons is a term that originated with US Park Rangers at Yellowstone Park to identify those drivers who stop all traffic so they can take a photo of squirrels and other wild life.
I just LOVE being behind tourons when I drive home at night.
We get to the bridges and suddenly cars are going 20mph and swerving back and forth because we are ON A BRIDGE …over WATER!
OH COME ON!
I’m gonna be late to my destination because of you?
No way!
BOY Howdy but Geeeeeeeeeeeee whiz!
Those People stuck at a 45 degree angle on their phones.
No Haiku For You 