Exceptional?

 What's the point in arguing about the term "American exceptionalism?" We're a nation of imperfect people, founded on some amazing ideas of a democratic republic, enshrined in our Constitution. We've done some very noteworthy things; we've done some things that were stupid and even cruel. Accepting all these facets doesn't make us [1] less American, nor [2] less willing to accept or work on problematic parts of our past. Can we unify on this, too?   --Marie Byars

Try a New Tool

 

It's well past time for the "sides" [mostly referring to the culture wars] to think they can use the political system as a sledgehammer to "smash" their opponents into oblivion.  

No one's going anywhere, folks.  You're wasting a lot of energy, a lot of political capital, and a lot of your ability to try persuasion, instead.  --Marie Byars

Grammatically Correct

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony. --from social media

Pro-Life Bona Fides

Being pro-life, really being pro-life, means realizing you wanted these lives in the world when you see disagreeable toddlers in the grocery store or are seated near crying children on a plane.  Oh, and blaming it on bad parenting (as in "I'm pro-life, and the mother should definitely have had these children, but they're only being awful because she's a bad parent") doesn't count.  It also may not be true. 

Being pro-life isn't easy for anyone.  It's not easy for the mother who bore children at times that weren't convenient for her. But it's also not easy on the rest of society.  If you're Christian and pro-life, it doesn't fit the full Biblical ethic to make it solely "that woman's problem."  Be pro-life in the best sense of the word, and embrace the messiness that comes from children being in the world!

Hard But Worth It

An old sketch of mine.

Integrity is not easy. But it's important, and it's worth it.

The Second Coming

[A poem for our times---unfortunately]

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre*  

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;**

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi***

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,****  

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,****  

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--William Butler Yeats, 1919  (aftermath of WW I; beginning of Irish War of Independence; pregnant wife ill from 'flu pandemic)

*Widening gyre:  cycles or circular motions; Yeats was referring to his belief in cycles of history.   He felt that an orderly one that came with the birth of Christ was about to give way to chaos. [This writer, looking at history, would not agree it had been all that orderly since Christ's birth.] The times just after First World War, with the concurrent 'flu pandemic, brought a lot of "apocalyptic" thinking about. The devastation of those two events was enormous.  

**"The center cannot hold" is taken by some political scientists or laymen to suggest that a third, centrist party cannot take off in places like the United States.   The touchstone for the metaphor may actually be military:  The center of a battle line being broken through.  It may also be Yeats' sense that society's ties to religion or other traditional cultures or worldviews are being torn apart.  In this sense, it would be things that "center people" rather than a Centrist view.
    However, in our current tribalistic political times, it's sad thing that a Center once created by compromise cannot be heard.  It's not totally gone (though it seems more and more people are taking sides, and the rude voices try to drown the Center from both sides), but it doesn't have voice in our current society.  Note, also, Yeats saying the worse are "full of passionate intensity."
     (I would argue that our "First past the post" election system, the winner takes all idea, is a big part of the problem.  With ranked choice voting, more people risk voting for others in multi-party systems, not feeling they're going to "throw the vote" to the candidate they really DON'T like. They put that person 2nd, and if their preferred candidate is taken out of competition, their #2 vote still counts for something.  And it can go beyond #2, as far down as ranking is deemed feasible.)

***Spiritus Mundi: spirit of the world; the collective spirit of humankind.  According to Yeats, it is a mystical concept, ''a universal memory and a 'muse' of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or write."

****Apparently the AntiChrist, trying to mock and mimic Christ with its birth in a figurative Bethlehem.  Interesting, how is it slouching before birth?  Is this an accidental oversight?  Or is this a description of something so horrific it forces whatever its maternal creation is to slouch off in an evil journey before birth that mocks the holy one of Mary (pregnant with Jesus) and Joseph?  [Thoughts of Voldemort in Harry Potter, before he gets his body back. come to mind.  Also, a shadowy Tash overtaking Narnia in the last of the Chronicles of Narnia.]

The [Slave's] Complaint*

[written to be sung to the popular ballad, Admiral Hosier's Ghost] 

Forc'd from home, and all its pleasures, 

Afric's coast I left forlorn; 

To increase a stranger's treasures, 

O'er the raging billows borne. 

Frederic Shoberl, 1821 (depicting Virginia, USA)

Men from England bought and sold me,  

Paid my price in paltry gold; 

But, though theirs they have enroll'd me, 

Minds are never to be sold. 

Still in thought as free as ever, 

What are England's rights, I ask, 

Me from my delights to sever, 

Me to torture, me to task? 

Fleecy locks, and black complexion 

Cannot forfeit nature's claim; 

Skins may differ, but affection 

Dwells in white and black the same. 

Why did all creating Nature 

 Make the plant*** for which we toil? 

Sighs must fan it, tears must water, 

Sweat of ours must dress the soil. 

Think, ye masters, iron-hearted, 

 Lolling at your jovial boards; 

Think how many backs have smarted 

For the sweets*** your cane affords. 

Is there, as ye sometimes tell us, 

 Is there one who reigns on high? 

Has he bid you buy and sell us, 

Speaking from his throne the sky? 

Ask him, if your knotted scourges, 

Matches, blood-extorting screws, 

Are the means that duty urges 

Agents of his will to use? 

Hark! He answers!—Wild tornadoes, 

Strewing yonder sea with wrecks; 

Wasting towns, plantations, meadows, 

Are the voice with which he speaks. 

He, foreseeing what vexations 

Afric's sons should undergo, 

Fix'd their tyrants' habitations 

 Where his whirlwinds answer.**

— William Cowper, 1877; Stanzas 1-5 [English poet, hymnwriter & clergyman] 

 *The original title of this poem was "The Negro's Complaint." This archaic term was not intended to offend; it was the term used at the time. As you can see, Cowper took the heart and soul of the Black man very seriously. 

**Fierce weather in the Caribbean, where many English slaves were sent More information on Cowper (prounounced "Cooper") Biographical Info and Quotes of William Cowper

***Sugar cane in the Caribbean