Stop calling me.
I'm a dedicated political conservative. I believe in freedom before free stuff, independence rather than dependence, and equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. I believe in the United States Constitution and quite a few of the amendments thereto. I believe in balanced budgets, whenever and however possible.
I believe that sometimes tough decisions have to be made. I believe sometimes the right thing isn't the easy thing. I believe in personal responsibility.
I'd like to see some from you.
While millions went jobless, and the ill-considered Affordable Care Act loomed on the immediate horizon, what is it that you were worried about? It was whether or not CNN and NBC will run programming featuring (or "promoting") Hillary Clinton.
Was that really the biggest problem facing the United States of America?
I remember a call to action requiring some hundred dollars or so of my money so you could run a full-page ad in the New York Times decrying some Democrat or Democrat policy. Is that all it takes to change things? If it is, I'd like to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times next week declaring me to be the winner of the next Powerball jackpot. After that I'd take out another ad declaring world peace and an end to all hunger and disease. Hell, I'd take out two ads just in case someone's starving on Mars, too.
Full-page ads do nothing. NOTHING. Whatever it was you were railing against in that ad happened anyway. Whatever you called about tonight will happen anyway. And who cares what CNN and NBC show? Are they relevant anymore in an era of on-demand programming via satellite and internet?
What I'd like to see is legislation from the party. What I'd like to see is a concerted effort to win the hearts and minds of people by explaining once and for all time that we don't want senior citizens and children to freeze to death in the dark with empty bellies. We want people to have affordable access to medical care. We want everyone to have a decently-paying job.
It's time to show that spending tax dollars wisely and to the greatest effect isn't racist, or sexist, or any kind of -phobic that anyone can think of.
It's time to return power to the States, where the Founders intended it to be. 100 years of income tax later, we have an out-of-control government that needs serious curbs on spending and where it's allowed to stick its nose.
You talk a good fight--no, actually, you don't. The party fights more for re-election than it does for principle. I smell a whiff of "we're out of ideas and stalling for time" coming out of HQ there, folks.
Running McCain against Obama was insanity--McCain has all the charisma of a wet sponge. Running Mitt Romney against Obama was slightly more savvy, as he has the charisma of a dry sponge.
Oh what the Hell--I'm available for 2016. Call me--for that only.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
No smarts == no vote
I just know this is going to get me in trouble.
I read a fair number of political blogs and commentaries, and the responses to those blogs and commentaries. The majority of the respondents (across the spectrum of opinion) are so functionally illiterate they don't realize they're functionally illiterate. This appears to correlate with several other factors, to wit:
Someone once told me that everyone is entitled to an opinion. I suggested that statement was incorrect. I believe everyone has the responsibility to render an opinion that is well-informed and well-thought-out. Anything else is a waste of perfectly good oxygen. I'm sure everyone is also entitled to be a complete moron, yet I don't believe it's a good operational policy.
I'd like to advance the proposal that any individuals expressing any opinion similar to those in the bullet list be removed from the polls. Anyone who whines about "those idiots in Congress" should realize that said idiots were voted in by other idiots. Expecting that the Idiot Vote will somehow elect individuals of character and intelligence is a bit like expecting to find filet mignon as the filling in canned beef ravioli.
I read a fair number of political blogs and commentaries, and the responses to those blogs and commentaries. The majority of the respondents (across the spectrum of opinion) are so functionally illiterate they don't realize they're functionally illiterate. This appears to correlate with several other factors, to wit:
- Claiming that Joseph McCarthy was right all along.
- Insisting that the US government is trying to control our minds via "chem trails."
- Suggestions that UFOs are spacecraft from extra-solar planets.
- Belief that Elvis is still alive.
- Fears of a "One World Government" conspiracy.
- Belief that corporations are evil.
- Asserting that immigrants are taking "our jobs."
- Asserting that the world would be a better place if we'd all just stop competing and love each other.
- Animals have human rights.
- Belief that "alright" is a word, even if otherwise evidently literate.
Someone once told me that everyone is entitled to an opinion. I suggested that statement was incorrect. I believe everyone has the responsibility to render an opinion that is well-informed and well-thought-out. Anything else is a waste of perfectly good oxygen. I'm sure everyone is also entitled to be a complete moron, yet I don't believe it's a good operational policy.
I'd like to advance the proposal that any individuals expressing any opinion similar to those in the bullet list be removed from the polls. Anyone who whines about "those idiots in Congress" should realize that said idiots were voted in by other idiots. Expecting that the Idiot Vote will somehow elect individuals of character and intelligence is a bit like expecting to find filet mignon as the filling in canned beef ravioli.
Don't You Just Hate?
The other day someone of my acquaintance started out a sentence with "I hate..." and finished with something utterly trivial. I realized right then how tired I was of hearing that sort of thing. Is that all we have anymore? Does the opposite of positive feelings always have to be hatred?
We used to have scales for these things.
Modest diversion: the most important book I read in high school was S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action in a sophomore-level semantics and logic class. That book, along with learning to write proofs in geometry, synthesized the brain that I have today--or have had since that time, I suppose. Understanding that the map is not the territory (Alfred Korzybski, 1931, from Eric Temple Bell) freed me from a lot of misconceptions about how to read the reality around me--although I'm in no wise a proponent of neuro-linguistic programming theory. (Further reading on the subject has indicated that Scientology also sprang from Korzybski's work, more or less—but that's even more madness than NLP.) End diversion.
People like binary semantics--that is, they like opposites. We have a lot of those in English (I'm sticking with the language I know best). Here's a table of some examples:
Let's go back to that table. The opposite of "cold" isn't "hot," it's "not cold." "Warm" is not cold, right? The opposite of "white" is not "black" because both of those are just sensory impressions--and contradictory impressions depending on whether you're seeing transmitted or reflected light. We could change that to the opposite of "red" (the political among you just thought "blue") but given that red is just a wavelength of radiation, the best we can do is a mathematical inversion (there's no such thing as a negative wavelength) so the opposite of "red" is a very long radio wave. That's not nonsense, but it's not useful, either.
We can make a case for "fasting" being the opposite of "eating," but sleeping (and anything else that isn't eating) is also a viable opposite. "Fasting," after all, really means a deliberate choice not to eat for an interval of time; the part where one doesn't eat is simply "not eating."
If we characterize "day" as being when the Sun (or part of the Sun) is above the horizon (viewable), and "night" when the Sun is below the horizon (not viewable), then "night" and "day" are true opposites. "Morning" and "evening" are entirely different concepts not related to the apparent position of the Sun in the sky.
That leaves "love" and its opposite, which would be "not love." "Like" is not "love." You knew that already, right? "Dislike" is also not love—but it's also not "hate."
Somewhere in the middle of all this is the idea that you have no opinion or engagement at all with the topic, which tends to freak out some sorts of people, who can't imagine not caring about something. (The irony is that there are a lot of things they don't care about, but as they haven't recognized it, the dichotomy isn't apparent to them. They'll figure it out they both understand and can spell "dichotomy"—which for some of them, will be precisely never.)
Back in the 1980s or 90s there was a small population of waitresses who would ask after your dining experience with the phrase "did you just love it?" My answer was always a polite "yes," because I didn't want to ruin the rest of the lady's day with a dissertation about how one shouldn't invest emotion in inanimate objects, and that while the particular meal was reasonably satisfying, no meal would ever rise to that level. Instead I gritted my mental teeth, replied in the positive, and waited for them to go away.
I didn't like the experience, but I didn't hate it.
These days a middle- or high-school student might ask if one likes Justin Bieber. If the answer is "no," the immediate follow up is "why do you hate Justin Bieber?" (See how "hate" somehow became the opposite of "like?") The idea that there's a middle ground in which one has absolutely no opinion seems foreign to teens—and to some adults, too. Too many adults, in my opinion.
(For the record: where this Bieber person is concerned, I'm displeased with his various public antics, and as I haven't heard any of his music, I have no opinion. I intend to go on having no opinion.)
Many people profess to hate guns, but I think they hate what some people do with guns (to wit: shoot other people). Hating inanimate objects is a sign of mental illness, or at least of modest derangement.
Many people profess to hate followers of other religions or political persuasions. While I'm not one to join hands in a circle and sing "Kumbaya," I think that sort of hate is a sign of derangement as well. Hate, like fear, usually causes one to make bad choices. We've had enough of those already.
We slip the word "hate" into our communications far too easily—perhaps because the media likes to use superlatives when describing the issues or events of the day—and we tend to say it when we don't mean it. I certainly hope "hate" isn't what's meant, since I worry that the mental processes of someone who really hates mustard or certain patterns of plaid might be a little scary to observe up close.
We used to have scales for these things.
Modest diversion: the most important book I read in high school was S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action in a sophomore-level semantics and logic class. That book, along with learning to write proofs in geometry, synthesized the brain that I have today--or have had since that time, I suppose. Understanding that the map is not the territory (Alfred Korzybski, 1931, from Eric Temple Bell) freed me from a lot of misconceptions about how to read the reality around me--although I'm in no wise a proponent of neuro-linguistic programming theory. (Further reading on the subject has indicated that Scientology also sprang from Korzybski's work, more or less—but that's even more madness than NLP.) End diversion.
People like binary semantics--that is, they like opposites. We have a lot of those in English (I'm sticking with the language I know best). Here's a table of some examples:
| Concept | Opposite Concept |
|---|---|
| Cold | Hot |
| Eating | Fasting |
| Love | Hate |
| White | Black |
| Night | Day |
Four of those are wrong.
You see, semantically and logically, the opposite of A (where A is some idea or quality) is "not A." The problem is that we tend to think of compass directions when we formulate these concepts, even though most things don't have direct, compass-style opposites. What is the opposite of peanut butter? Using a not-A formulation, we conclude that everything that isn't peanut butter is its opposite; ball bearings, pheasants, and television reality shows are all the opposite of peanut butter. In a practical sense, peanut butter has no opposites—and doesn't need any.
Let's go back to that table. The opposite of "cold" isn't "hot," it's "not cold." "Warm" is not cold, right? The opposite of "white" is not "black" because both of those are just sensory impressions--and contradictory impressions depending on whether you're seeing transmitted or reflected light. We could change that to the opposite of "red" (the political among you just thought "blue") but given that red is just a wavelength of radiation, the best we can do is a mathematical inversion (there's no such thing as a negative wavelength) so the opposite of "red" is a very long radio wave. That's not nonsense, but it's not useful, either.
We can make a case for "fasting" being the opposite of "eating," but sleeping (and anything else that isn't eating) is also a viable opposite. "Fasting," after all, really means a deliberate choice not to eat for an interval of time; the part where one doesn't eat is simply "not eating."
If we characterize "day" as being when the Sun (or part of the Sun) is above the horizon (viewable), and "night" when the Sun is below the horizon (not viewable), then "night" and "day" are true opposites. "Morning" and "evening" are entirely different concepts not related to the apparent position of the Sun in the sky.
That leaves "love" and its opposite, which would be "not love." "Like" is not "love." You knew that already, right? "Dislike" is also not love—but it's also not "hate."
Somewhere in the middle of all this is the idea that you have no opinion or engagement at all with the topic, which tends to freak out some sorts of people, who can't imagine not caring about something. (The irony is that there are a lot of things they don't care about, but as they haven't recognized it, the dichotomy isn't apparent to them. They'll figure it out they both understand and can spell "dichotomy"—which for some of them, will be precisely never.)
Back in the 1980s or 90s there was a small population of waitresses who would ask after your dining experience with the phrase "did you just love it?" My answer was always a polite "yes," because I didn't want to ruin the rest of the lady's day with a dissertation about how one shouldn't invest emotion in inanimate objects, and that while the particular meal was reasonably satisfying, no meal would ever rise to that level. Instead I gritted my mental teeth, replied in the positive, and waited for them to go away.
I didn't like the experience, but I didn't hate it.
These days a middle- or high-school student might ask if one likes Justin Bieber. If the answer is "no," the immediate follow up is "why do you hate Justin Bieber?" (See how "hate" somehow became the opposite of "like?") The idea that there's a middle ground in which one has absolutely no opinion seems foreign to teens—and to some adults, too. Too many adults, in my opinion.
(For the record: where this Bieber person is concerned, I'm displeased with his various public antics, and as I haven't heard any of his music, I have no opinion. I intend to go on having no opinion.)
Many people profess to hate guns, but I think they hate what some people do with guns (to wit: shoot other people). Hating inanimate objects is a sign of mental illness, or at least of modest derangement.
Many people profess to hate followers of other religions or political persuasions. While I'm not one to join hands in a circle and sing "Kumbaya," I think that sort of hate is a sign of derangement as well. Hate, like fear, usually causes one to make bad choices. We've had enough of those already.
We slip the word "hate" into our communications far too easily—perhaps because the media likes to use superlatives when describing the issues or events of the day—and we tend to say it when we don't mean it. I certainly hope "hate" isn't what's meant, since I worry that the mental processes of someone who really hates mustard or certain patterns of plaid might be a little scary to observe up close.
The world is not an exercise in polar opposites. It's not an exercise in extremes. Almost everything we do is somewhere in the broad middle of the hypothetical bell curve, and making sure our language follows that seems like a pretty good idea to me.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Occupied on Wall Street
One day I'll understand what those Wall Street Occupiers are on about. That will be, presumably, 30 minutes after I pass from this Earth and stand before God, at which time I'll ask Him what those Wall Street Occupiers were on about. He'll probably frown and shrug and have to admit that even He has no idea.
It may or may not be a good thing for, as one strident protester put it, the large banks to spend millions of dollars to lobby the government to legislate in favor of the banks instead of the people, but let's not let the facts get in the way:
It may or may not be a good thing for, as one strident protester put it, the large banks to spend millions of dollars to lobby the government to legislate in favor of the banks instead of the people, but let's not let the facts get in the way:
- Banks may use their profits any way they wish. The stockholders may wish to see less money going to lobbyists and more to themselves, but again, that's not for me to say--nor for you to say.
- Banks don't get to vote for members of Congress. The people do. If you don't like what your representative or senator is doing, vote the loser out.
- You are not required to put money into a bank, or borrow money from a bank. If your bank engages in practices with which you do not agree (no matter how silly, misinformed, or uninformed your opinions might be), then don't do business with that bank anymore.
It's too bad the baying bloodhounds and bassets on Wall Street can't see that they've been victimized by liberal government policies just as much as they have been by "capitalism." Either they're not smart enough to realize that they're being manipulated by politicians into protesting, or they know and don't care because it suits them.
It's obvious to me that the Occupiers lack ambition. If they had any ambition at all, they'd band together and start a bank. Then they could show us how it's supposed to be done, couldn't they?
I'll continue not holding my breath.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Great with one glitch
If you're asking yourself why the first posting would be titled this way, all I can say is, the browser popped that as a choice then I clicked in the title box. I must have typed that at one time in the past, but I don't remember when. It's as good a choice as any, though, and may well be an overarching theme for the entire blog.
Yes, my name is James Hawk. It's one of my two names; being an adopted child, I'm blessed with a birth name and an adopted name. I use my adopted name for everything but writing. Using both names allows me to insulate my business life from my personal and writing life. No reason to embarrass my employer with what I'm going to write here--although it will never chronicle drunken escapades or regrettable party incidents, or anything else that might get me fired. That's because that sort of thing never happens to me, with me, or around me. My opinions on politics, religion, and modern culture, however, might run contrary to what Human Resources thinks I should practice (if not outright believe), and since employers like to watch what employees do on the social web these days, I think I'll just be James Hawk here and my other self at work. James Hawk doesn't work for the company.
So begins the blog of what I believe. Perhaps this is nothing more than an extended credo, and not all of it explicit. I have no illusions regarding who might be reading this--I expect I'll be the only one. It will help me get my thoughts in order.
Yes, my name is James Hawk. It's one of my two names; being an adopted child, I'm blessed with a birth name and an adopted name. I use my adopted name for everything but writing. Using both names allows me to insulate my business life from my personal and writing life. No reason to embarrass my employer with what I'm going to write here--although it will never chronicle drunken escapades or regrettable party incidents, or anything else that might get me fired. That's because that sort of thing never happens to me, with me, or around me. My opinions on politics, religion, and modern culture, however, might run contrary to what Human Resources thinks I should practice (if not outright believe), and since employers like to watch what employees do on the social web these days, I think I'll just be James Hawk here and my other self at work. James Hawk doesn't work for the company.
So begins the blog of what I believe. Perhaps this is nothing more than an extended credo, and not all of it explicit. I have no illusions regarding who might be reading this--I expect I'll be the only one. It will help me get my thoughts in order.
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