Even though I’m a science-based guy, I’ve come to appreciate language and words. I don’t know where this came from. My brother is also a science guy, and admits he doesn’t get good vibes from poetry or lofty prose. By contrast, I do, at least now.
I believe my transformation was made possible by what I learned as a kid coupled with a liberal arts education. There is a memorable passage by the Proverbist. He said, “Train a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6). Perhaps it was subliminal, but I must have learned something that stuck with me during fourteen years of formal English education (twelve before college and two in college).
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Language is a city, to the building of which every human brought a stone.” I’ve come to appreciate the artistic arrangement of words and phrases, the use of simile and metaphor, as well as irony, alliteration, puns and paradox. These figures of speech enflesh (a metaphor) and give substance to prose, as well as adding nuanced understanding and beauty.
Just as humans are formed with organs and molecules are made from atoms, words are constructed from building blocks. Democrats claim they ascribe to democracy. This term derives from the Greek word demos which means people and kratia (cracy) translates as power. Hence, the people have the power. Bernie’s Bros may think otherwise if their candidate is again denied the Democrat party’s Presidential nomination as happened in 2016. But I wonder about such things because Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He’s an Independent running as a Democrat.
As I watched the recent Las Vegas Democrat debate, I thought about the word plutocrat. This seems to apply to “Doomberg” er… Michael Bloomberg. A plutocrat is a person whose power is derived from their wealth (Webster). Bloomberg’s wealth bought him a ticket to the Democrat dance (metaphor), but he looked like a deer in the headlight (simile) during the political attack of Faux-cahontas (pun) aka Elizabeth Warren. She was on the war path and took his scalp! It may be wrong, but a frisson of schadenfreude resonates in me today (These are good words; look them up).
An autocrat is a ruler with absolute power, such as a dictator or a king. China’s communist dictator Xi Jinping is an autocrat, meaning rule by one. Bloomberg, who has huge business relationships with China, once said that Xi Jinping must answer to his constituency, the Chinese people. Bloomberg is either incredibly naive or his statements are duplicitous.
Americans take for granted our inherited philosophy of English common law where even “the President is not above the law.” Nancy Pelosi and Democrats seem to have adopted this phrase as their mantra in their incessant pursuit of their Moby Dick (personification), Donald Trump.
European law is different and descends from Roman law where Caesar’s rule is absolute. This is why you never want to be tried at the Hague.
We have a representative republic. We vote for those who are supposed to listen to and represent us. A republic is a system of government predicated on the rule of law. I’ve come to question whether Washington cares for what WE The People think. And apparently there is a different tier of Justice for Hillary Clinton, the FBI’s Comey and McCabe, and the proverbial John Q. Public. Perhaps we now live under an autocracy headed by unelected, elitist, Deep State bureaucrats.
A technocrat is a member of a technically skilled elite group, especially one concerned with management or administration. I hate to pile on (metaphor) “mini-Mike,” though all the Democrats are doing so. However, Bloomberg seems to deserve the bashing after insulting farmers, factory workers, and machinists in addition to women, gays and people of color. He’ll probably get around to insulting white, Anglo-Saxon protestants like me, eventually – if he survives the Democrat circular firing squad. The urbane billionaire and former three term mayor of NY City (he bought the third term) believes information technology is of a higher order than the work of plebes who grow his food, manufacture his iPhone or generate the electricity to power it. Unfortunately, WE The People have delegated our republic to elitists and unelected political technocrats like the NSC’s Colonel Vindman, recently fired by President Trump.
I am struck by the contrast between President Trump’s positive message of Make America Great and the Democrat message of gloom with their persona of anger. Facts reveal that America is better off after three years of Trump than eight years of Obama. The former President is now even claiming credit for the Trump economic boom!
And what do the Democrats propose? They want more taxes (Washington never seems to have enough money), to ban fracking which has made America energy independent, to throw out the rule of law, unless you are an illegal alien, to abandon national borders and send our jobs and prosperity to China in the pursuit of globalism. The platforms of Democrats like Bernie, Faux-cahontas, Buttigieg and Klobuchar are dangerous. Biden is just pitiable. And Mini-Mike is actually not-so-smart, but is just a rich, condescending prig whose party alliance vacillates like Bernie’s and Piere Dilecto’s (Mitt Romney’s Twitter nom de guere).
These days there’s a lot of “crat” (euphemism) out there, and it’s hard to discern what is the truth. Pilate once asked Jesus, “What is truth” (John 18:38)? Was Pilate seeking facts, being philosophical or was he just being a snarky, autocratic skeptic? Read the passage and seek Jesus’ answer.
I seek the truth everyday as I read more than a dozen newspapers and information blogs. I try to gather data and then sift reports through the lens of experience, tradition, reason and scripture. John Wesley used these techniques (the Wesleyan Quadrilateral) in his pursuit of truth and the ineffable. I now apply these when scanning the “windows” on the world and sifting the news.
There is a cautious old saw that seems so applicable these days and especially in an election season. It goes, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” As a citizen I work to stay informed. I challenge you to do so as well.
