Another Instance of Newspeak

California taxpayers subsidize abortion tourism.

— Brietbart headline

GOP crazies are accusing Democrats of a weird form of political point-scoring.

They're calling it "abortion tourism."

Republican Senator Steve Daines used the term only yesterday to decry a Democratic bill meant to protect a woman's right to travel across state lines for an abortion.

He claims that state-funded "abortion tourism" appeals to "greedy woke corporations," because it lowers the cost of paid maternity leave.

Some left-wing columnists begrudgingly agree with him.

Give me a break.

"Abortion tourism" isn't a thing.

It's no more a thing than "colostomy farming."

Abortion is a medical procedure. Tourism is a facet of the leisure industry.

Plastering the two terms together does not make them a thing.

It's only another Orwellian coinage.

The GOP loves Orwellian Newspeak, the language of 1984 that the ruling party in the novel created "to diminish the range of thought."

Newspeak comprised a "verbal shorthand," Orwell said, that "consisted of words deliberately constructed for political purposes."

These words packed "whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables." 

Their purpose was "not so much to express meanings as to destroy them."

When you destroy meaning, Orwell showed us, you destroy thought.

Right-wingers like Daines would no doubt deny they're using Orwellian Newspeak.

They'd insist that "abortion tourism" is merely a linguistic cousin of "medical tourism," the term we commonly use to describe international travel for medical care.

They'd insist that "abortion tourism" carries no particular judgment.

But that defense is disingenuous.

They know the term is a wry distortion which implies that the woman who seeks an abortion is frivolous—a tourist; and the abortion clinic that serves her is a leisure-industry profiteer—a Disneyland with stirrups.

When nothing could be farther from the truth.

"Words, Nathaniel Hawthorne said, "how innocent and powerless in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."

Earwash

Now wash out your ears with this.

— Paul Harvey

Were its apostles—Hannity, Levin, Ingraham, et al.—not so flagrantly gangsterish, conservatism might have more adherents.

As things are, "conservative" is an aspersion and only 36% of Americans own up to the label, according to Gallup.

That percentage that hasn't changed in three decades.

To increase conservatism's base would take a thorough cleansing of the outhouse that is "conservative talk radio" today.

And it would take the reincarnation of Paul Harvey.

A staple of ABC News Radio, Harvey was carried on 1,200 stations throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, reaching nearly 15% of the US adult population.

Famed for his tagline, "Now you know the rest of the story," Harvey had a quirky, affected delivery, a kind of velvety staccato that he stole from "old-time" announcers and which he made his own by introducing frequent—and senseless—pauses.

Cherry-picking the day's news and adding backstories, Harvey used his daily broadcasts as a platform for an obvious, but unstated, Midwestern conservatism.

Through his copy, he loved to picture instances of self-reliance, honesty, modesty, and diligence. 

He loved Horatio Alger stories and the gospel of hard work. 

He loved tales of sacrifice and heroism in war.

And he loved to berate big government for any effort to bring about economic justice.

"I was never one who sought to make the small man tall by cutting off the legs of a giant," he said of the Great Society. "I wanted to drag no man down to my size, but only to preserve a way of life which might make it possible for me, one day, to elevate myself until I at least partly matched his size."

Harvey's partisanship, veiled by his Puritan-cum-Pollyanna attitude, set him apart as a broadcaster.

So did his commercialism.

Like today's podcasters, Harvey would commingle sponsors' messages with his copy, so that editorial and advertising content flowed seamlessly from his lips.

The practice—we now call it "native advertising"—earned him the label "the finest huckster ever to roam the airwaves."

"I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is," Harvey once said.

A testament to his gentle conservatism, Harvey received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush in 2005.

It's the highest honor a civilian can receive.

"Americans like the sound of his voice," Bush said at the ceremony.

"Over the decades we have come to recognize in that voice some of the finest qualities of our country: patriotism, good humor, kindness, and common sense."

You sure won't find anything remotely like those qualities on conservative talk radio today, where venom and lies are the stock in trade.

Now you know the rest of the story.

Our Florida Fascist

The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan.

— Henry Wallace

Make no mistake, Ron DeSantis is a fascist of the first order.

Scapegoating is his go-to strategy, as it was Hitler's.

Consider DeSantis' latest fundraising appeal, brought to my attention by a praiseworthy article in the neo-Nazi, pro-Trump magazine The American Mind.

In it, DeSantis asks donors to recognize their common enemy.

"Our country is currently facing a great threat," he begins. "A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state that you and I would hardly recognize."

And who is the common enemy donors should fear?

"The radical vigilante woke mob," he says; a hard-charging horde of hysterics comprising teachers, writers, athletes, philanthropists, scientists, CEOs, and liberal politicians. 

This is the mob, DeSantis says, that burned our cities in 2020, crucified Karl Rittenhouse, and stigmatized anti-maskers; this is the mob now persecuting the January 6 insurgents.

The radical vigilante woke mob will not only "tear down monuments and buildings, but tear down the American spirit," DeSantis writes. "They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education."

DeSantis is fairly blunt in identifying precisely who populates this steamrolling juggernaut: Jews, Queers, Blacks, and Commies.

"Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country," he says. 

"We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater, all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution. 

"We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws, burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight."

But, never fear, the radical vigilante woke mob has met its match: Ron DeSantis.

"I am choosing to counter this enemy with faith, with reason, and with freedom," DeSantis declares. "As Governor of the Free State of Florida, I have chosen to lead with a vision that builds America up, rather than tears it down."

If this drivel sounds all-too familiar, it's due to its resemblance to Hitler's rantings.

Hitler targeted only Jews and Commies, because Germany in the 1930s had few open Queers, and even fewer Blacks; and called the common enemy the "Jewish influence," instead of the "radical vigilante woke mob."

But the differences end there. Hitler's message uncannily mirrors DeSantis': we must annihilate our internal foes, or we'll all become Bolshies; and I'm the man to do it.

"In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it," Hitler said in 1939. "During the time of my struggle for power, the Jews received my prophecies with laughter when I said I would one day take over the state and settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious—but I think for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. 

"Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth—and thus the victory of Jewry—but the annihilation of all Jews in Europe! 

"The nations are no longer willing to die on the battlefield so that this unstable international race may profit from a war or satisfy its Old Testament vengeance.

"The Jewish watchword 'Workers of the world unite' will be conquered by a higher realization, namely 'Workers of all classes and nations recognize your common enemy!'"

Now hold on, wait a minute!

Does a passing similarity between DeSantis' and Hitler's rhetoric actually make them kin? Or, as they say in Hollywood, is the resemblance strictly coincidental?

In other words, am I fretting over a libtard's bugaboo?

A more companionable commentator, columnist David Brooks, would say that I'm not, despite his conservative leanings.

He sees DeSantis and his craven followers as the vanguard of "the terrifying future of the American right," which he describes as "the fusing of the culture war and the class war into one epic Marxist Götterdämmerung."

DeSantis, Brooks argues, will use the power of the state—since teachers, preachers, journalists and marketers won't do it—to ram right-wing beliefs down everyone's throat.

Hitler called that conformity the "national community."

DeSantis calls it "We The People."

With no room for dissent, or for bodily or intellectual autonomy, there's not much difference.

Our Ingrained Responsibility to Stay Informed

Most people do not really want freedom,
because freedom involves responsibility.

— Sigmund Freud

It has become quaint in American to believe in responsibility.

You can avoid taxes, dodge military service, abandon your children, snub your neighbors and rob retailers—all while shirking any responsibility.

You can cheat your employer, scam customers, rip off investors and fleece donors—all while shirking any responsibility.

You can even become president and shirk any—and all—responsibility.

But as Americans, I believe, we do have one ingrained responsibility, a responsibility that we cannot shirk: to stay informed.

It's a civic and a moral responsibility, no matter how we eventually might use it, to gather and digest accurate information.

To do any less—to remain content with a litany of lies, inanities, and propaganda—is to remain a chump, a sucker, an idiot, and an ignoramus.

We have far too many of these sorts of nincompoops—the so-called "low information citizens"—for our nation's wellbeing.

I for one am disgusted with them.

They're like spoiled little kids, afraid they'll be frightened or saddened by fairy tales that haven't already been read to them a hundred times or more. 

Jack Nicholson-style, they can't handle the truth—and are willing to forego freedom, rather than acquire and accept information when it runs counter to their fantasies.

Unable to discern fact from fiction, they're allowing their lives—and, worse, the lives of their fellow Americans—to be ruled by profit-seeking charlatans.

And even worse yet, these dunces are blind—oblivious to the real-world consequences of their willful ignorance. 

By supporting charlatans, they're unwittingly accelerating the erosion of human rights and civil liberties—rights and liberties our forebears struggled to gain for us. That blindness represents the very apotheosis of irresponsibility and poor citizenship; and an assured dead end for our democracy.

But asking these dimwits to "connect the dots" between their ignorance and its outcomes—to accept blame for the suspension of our personal freedoms—is a waste of time and energy. 

I'd sooner ask my cat to solve a quadratic equation.

Above: Battle Flag by Andrew Wyeth. Tempera on wood. 30 x 22 inches.

Razor Sharp

 

The pre-election torrent of GOP bullshit that's wafting across America has prompted many of my friends to promote the addition of critical thinking to the elementary school curriculum.

They're afraid for their children's future.

I'm all for introducing critical thinking into every classroom—but believe it's unlikely to happen.

So what's a parent to do?

Let your children play with a razor.

The handiest tool in the critical thinking chest is Ockham's Razor.

In logic, Ockham’s Razor, named for a 14th-century philosopher, is the "law of simplicity."

Ockham's Razor cuts through bullshit by insisting pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate ("plurality should not be posited without necessity"). 

As such, the law opposes complexity (plurality) and favors simplicity (unity): whenever you have two competing theories, the simpler one is the right one.

Ockham's Razor can cut bullshit positions to shreds in only seconds, which is why you should let your kids play with it.

Here are just three examples.

Trump's election loss

The GOP insists Trump lost the 2020 election because Democrats in swing states conspired either to alter votes for Trump, discard votes for Trump, inflate the number of votes for Biden, or some combination of all of the above.

The simpler explanation of Trump's loss: the majority of American voters favored his replacement.

Child molestation

The GOP insists all gays molest children because all gays are predatory. It further insists that anyone who molests a child must be gay. Lastly, the party claims any gay who denies that he or she is sexually attracted to children is lying.

The simpler explanation for child molestation: some men fixate on children as a result of developmental problems occurring in utero. Adult sexual preference has nothing to do with pedophilia.

Mass shootings

The GOP insists mass shootings result from evil and are an inevitable "price of freedom." They can only be curbed by increasing the number of armed "good guys."

The simpler explanation of mass shootings: the ready availability of guns enables aggrieved individuals to act out their fantasies. Boosting the supply of guns will only facilitate these acts.

Now it's your turn, parents.

Give your kids a razor to play with. It will make them razor sharp!

What the Frock?

I have little respect for Southern Baptist pastors.

Tarot card readers have better credentials.

But when they preach the kind of abject hate Pastor Dillon Awes preached last Sunday, my disrespect turns into contempt.

Marking the start of Pride Month, Awes told his flock that every single gay "should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head."

Hitler-like, he called the mass executions "the solution for the homosexual in 2022."

Realizing his solution might sound a tad harsh, Awes deferred to Scripture.

"That’s what God teaches," he said. "That’s what the Bible says. You don’t like it? You don’t like God’s Word."

I never realized the Ancient Israelites had guns, or shot sinners in the back of the head. 

You learn something every day.

Awe's boss, Pastor Jonathan Shelley, backed his underling's bloodthirsty solution, insisting, "This is not murder but capital punishment."

In case you're wondering, Pastor Awes' Stedfast Baptist Church occupies a strip mall in Watauga, Texas, a suburb of Forth Worth. 

The pastor, of course, doth protest too much.

His obsession is no doubt an instance of reaction formation. 

We'll soon hear, in the manner of so many clergymen, that Awes has been arrested on charges of pedophilia, a crime that, in Texas, earns you a 99-year sentence. 

Fine with me.

As Hunter S. Thompson said, "Anybody who wanders around the world saying, 'Hell yes, I'm from Texas,' deserves whatever happens to him."

Pastor Jonathan Shelley further justified Ames' venomous sermon by claiming all gays molest children.

"It is our duty," he said, "to warn families of a real threat that exists in our society."

Therein lies my concern. 

Were these two morons not influential, they'd be irrelevant—nothing more than two out-of-touch Texas snake charmers.

But they are influential.  

My fear is that scapegoating gays for all of society's problems will become a core GOP tenet; and Pastor Ames' "solution," a GOP policy.

Poetic Facts

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

— George Orwell

Conservatives love their myths.

They don't want to hear that Betsy Ross didn't design the American flag—no more than they want to hear that Blacks didn't arrive in America as "immigrants" or that Ronald Reagan didn't have an ounce of intelligence.

They'd much rather cherish myths.

Liberals aren't much different, when it comes to it.

They don't want to hear that early feminists didn't burn their bras or that Martin Luther King was less than a saint.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Joseph Goebbels famously said.

The same holds for myths or, more accurately, "poetic facts."

The Betsy Ross Flag is one such poetic fact.

Betsy indeed worked as a seamstress in Philadelphia and was acquainted with George Washington, due to his occasional attendance of her church.

But that's as far as things went. 

That Betsy made our first flag was a yarn spun by her grandson, who in an 1870 speech claimed she'd been hired by Washington to design a flag for his army.

Harper's Weekly, an immensely popular magazine, picked up the speech and spread the tale nationwide.

Talk about "false flags."

The story was nothing but star-spangled bullshit.

"Every historian who’s looked into it has found no credible evidence that Betsy Ross made the first American flag," historian Marc Leepson told National Geographic last year.

The "Betsy Ross Flag" is a myth made of whole cloth.

And it's become lodged in the fabric of history—much like the "voluntary" nature of slavery and the "genius" of Ronald Reagan.

An analogous tall tale concerns how the Betsy Ross Flag was unveiled.

Flags in general weren't flown by infantry during the Revolutionary War; they were flown only by ships and forts.

But that fact didn't deter patriotic Delawareans from insisting the Betsy Ross Flag was unfurled for the first time at Cooch's Bridge, site of the only Revolutionary War battle in the state.

Cooch's Bridge—fought September 3, 1777—was a British victory, so perhaps the fiction felt consoling.

Howard Pyle's The Nation Makers

The hard facts were: the Continental Congress indeed resolved—on June 14, 1777—that the nation would adopt a flag comprising stars and stripes; and it made that resolution public three months later—on the very day of the Battle of Cooch's Bridge.

And so it seems the first announcement of the flag became the first appearance of the flag.

The fiction took root in Delawareans' imaginations not in 1777, but in 1940, when it was included in The Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, whose author claimed that "circumstantial evidence" proved the story to be true.

And the circumstantial evidence? 

A "history painting" by Delaware artist Howard Pyle that appeared on the cover of Collier's Magazine in June 1906.

Pretty flimsy evidence—especially when you consider the painting depicted another battle altogether.

Historian Wade Catts told National Geographic the Betsy Ross Flag wasn't carried into the Battle of Cooch's Bridge for practical reasons.

"The American formation fought as an ad hoc light infantry corps," Catts said. "The whole purpose of the infantry was stealth and secrecy, so it is highly unlikely they would have carried a flag into battle."

But how much more comforting is it to cherish the poetic fact that the embattled Americans carried the Betsy Ross Flag into the Battle of Cooch's Bridge?

And how unromantic to say that it never happened.

As the late historian Ed Bearss was fond of saying, "It never happened—but it should have."

Gundamentalist Mike

Not only do we have Second Amendment rights because
God gives them to us, but also the Gospel.

— Marty Daniel

Among the scores of abhorrent characters created by novelist William Faulkner, the small-town vigilante Percy Grimm was one of the most abhorrent.

Whenever justice needed a hand, Percy Grimm donned his National Guard uniform, holstered his automatic, and assembled a posse—mostly poker players from the American Legion hall.

In Light in August, while leading such a posse, Percy chases down the escaped mulatto convict Joe Christmas, shoots him, and castrates him, shouting, "Now you’ll let white women alone, even in hell.”

Faulkner created Percy Grimm in 1932.

Years later, the novelist would describe him as a "Fascist galahad," a two-bit storm trooper who's only tolerated by townspeople because they find his patriotism "quicker and truer than theirs."

"He's not prevalent," Faulkner said, "but he's everywhere."

Percy Grimm is indeed everywhere, even today; presently in the form of the gundamentalist.

Like the members of any cult, the gundamentalist simply cannot abide a mainstream viewpoint.

In the case of the gundamentalist, the mere hint of "gun control" unleashes a Grimm-like fear of miscegenation.

I'll give you an example.

This Wednesday, local police arrested a crazed gunman in a town near me, just 24 hours after the mass shooting in Texas.

Their report, posted on Facebook, identified one of the gunman's weapons as an AR-15.

The police report generated a heated discussion about the right to own AR-15s for hunting.

When stating her opposition to the weapon for that (or any) purpose, Diane mistakenly called the AR-15 an "assault rifle," instead of an "automatic rifle."

That provoked Gundamentalist Mike to scold Diane for her Liberal's ignorance:

"Good lord!," Mike wrote. "AR stands for 'Armalite,' not 'Assault Rifle.' 'Assault Rifle' is a fake, Democrat talking point used since the 90’s. Picture a stock Mustang or Camaro. Then picture that same car with 'accessories' designed to make it look more sporty, or badass, if you will... plus with engine/drivetrain work designed to make it perform better than factory. That’s all an AR-15 is. It’s a hunting rifle, with accessories."

Diane, ladylike, apologized for her error, prompting Liberal Tom to jump in and say to Mike, "What a bunch of nonsense! You are trying to tell me that an AR-15 is just a .22 bolt action with accessories. The AR-15 is not a hunting weapon."

After much insult-trading between Mike and Tom, I commented to Mike, "Well, you sure do love your guns. Guess they substitute for virility."

Mike replied, "Hardly. And a very typical, and pedestrian statement. But as a gun enthusiast, yeah they’re pretty cool. It’s OK to be scared, just don’t belittle everyone else who isn’t."

He punctuated his comment with a half dozen predictably puerile emoticons.

"Who's scared?" I asked.

"Apparently you," Mike replied, "if you think having a gun has anything to do with manhood. That’s just a stupid fucking statement. It’s OK to be scared of them, I just don’t happen to be."

I then offered gun-loving Mike—who looks like a biker—some food for thought. 

"Men experiencing SD are no more likely to own guns than men without SD," I wrote. "However, the members of the Second Amendment Cult work overtime to compensate for inadequate genitalia by decking themselves out as angels of death. The cult itself connects gun ownership with SD."

Mike responded, "That wins the Internet for the stupidest comment of the day so far."

With Percy Grimm in mind, I replied, "The failure of a mythical America to materialize has resulted in a flight by White men into predictable defense mechanisms: regression into childlike tantrums and abject dependence on unquestioned authority; the projection onto the historical victims of violence—including castration—the desire to perform symbolic castration by taking away 'our guns;' the projection onto the victims of sexual predation, whose supposedly dangerous sexuality must by controlled by laws and police power, the desire to take 'our' women; the seemingly natural identification with the real oppressor, whose interests his victims force themselves to believe are their own, and whose bidding they will willingly do, if it gives them an opportunity to assert illusory power. This can be understood to be, at least in part, a psychosexual disorder, common to modern men struggling to survive contemporary capitalism in multicultural societies."

That quieted Mike.

And with that I feel it's now time for coffee.

Fake News' Forerunner

When you strike at the morale of a people,
you strike at the deciding factor.

— William "Wild Bill" Donovan

You may recall that, in March, a web video circulated in which Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked fellow Ukrainians to surrender.

Forensics experts within hours identified it as a "deepfake," and the major platform providers deleted the video—but not until this Russian-made propaganda piece had reached millions.

When we think of fake news, we tend to think of Russia, Q-Anon, and—first and foremost—Fox News.

But the US government perfected the art of fake news—at the time called "black propaganda"—80 years ago.

In March 1943, against FDR's wishes, Colonel "Wild Bill" Donovan formed the Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Forerunner of the CIA, the OSS had been Wild Bill's brainchild. 

He modeled it after Britain's MI-6 to function as an immense spy ring comprising 13,000 soldiers and civilians, including celebrities like John Ford, Sterling Hayden, Stephen Vincent Benet, Archibald MacLeish, Robert E. Sherwood, Paul Mellon, Carl Jung and Julia Child (over a third of the spies were women).

But the Moral Operations Branch was something else. 

It was specialized.

A distant admirer of Joseph Goebbels, Wild Bill fashioned Morale Operations to be the US government's propaganda arm. 

Its mission: to sow doubt and distrust within the armies and civilian populations of the Axis nations.

You win a war, "by mystifying and misleading the enemy," Wild Bill said.  

"When you strike at the morale of a people, you strike at the deciding factor."

To this end, Morale Operations manufactured and delivered tens of thousands of pieces of fake news during World War II:

• It airdropped into Germany fake newspapers that claimed anti-Hitler resistance was on the rise.
  
  
• It airdropped flyers that showed the US produced a new warplane every five minutes—far more than Germany.
  
  
• It printed facsimiles of an official Nazi flyer after D-Day, changing the text to instruct German soldiers to shoot their own officers, should they order a retreat. The Germans unwittingly circulated the fake flyers among their troops.
  
  
• It mailed fake letters to the families of German soldiers that claimed their deceased sons were victims of mercy killings by Nazi doctors.
  
  
• It produced a fake weekly economics newsletter that suggested German businesses would prosper if the Nazi Party were removed from power.
  
  
• It instigated rumors designed to incite rebellion in Nazi-occupied territories. The rumors described successful revolts and assassinations that had never happened.
  
  
• It broadcast music programs on a fake radio station, embedding news reports of German defeats every hour on the hour. After Operation Valkyrie, the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, newscasters announced the names of hundreds of "suspects," hoping Germans would conclude that the plot was widespread than it actually was. The Gestapo executed 2,500 of the "suspects."

Even though FDR deplored such tactics, "Wild Bill" outlined them in the Morale Operations Field Manual, a 60-page handbook he published in January 1943.

The top secret manual stated that field personnel engaged in Moral Operations must be reliable Americans with "demonstrated proficiency in administrative affairs and the theory and practice of influencing human beings."

In their jobs, all field personnel would "within the enemy's country, incite and spread dissension, confusion, and disorder; promote subversive activities; and depress the morale of his people."

Target

I know how it feels to be the Kremlin's target.

After establishing that I'm a homosexual (although I'm straight), the Kremlin engineered my lifetime erasure on LinkedIn. All because I spoke in favor of limited gun ownership.

Don't cross these boys, as Nina Jankowicz also learned this week.

A graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, a Fulbright scholar, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a noted author, Jankowicz was removed Wednesday by Homeland Security from its new Disinformation Governance Board.

The Kremlin doesn't care for her, because she served while a Fulbright scholar in the foreign ministry of Ukraine in Kiev in 2017 and wrote a book in 2020 titled How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News and the Future of Conflict.

Worse yet, Jankowicz advised Volodymyr Zelenskyy on matters of Russian disinformation.

So when President Biden announced in April that she would head the new board, the Kremlin went into overdrive, deploying all its favorite mouthpieces (including Tucker Carlson and Senator Ron Johnson) to belittle Jankowicz.

These Kremlin mouthpieces threatened to rape her, kill her, and murder her family members. They called her mentally ill, a whore, a propogandist for the "great replacement," and—worst of all—a "nasty Jew" (Jankowicz isn't nasty or Jewish, just as I'm not homosexual).

They pulled out all the stops and the hatchet job worked in under three weeks.

One thing you can say about the Kremlin and its American mouthpieces: they may be effective, but they're not terribly original.

Words

It's only words and words are all I have to take your heart away.

— Barry Gibb

A stickler for words, I draw the line when you coin words to spare a group of people hurt feelings.

I'm not advocating the use of slurs and vulgarisms.

I refer to euphemisms.

Euphemisms are so Victorian.

So prim were they, Victorians couldn't abide mention of a breast or thigh at the dinner table. So they invented the terms white meat and dark meat. 

They couldn't mention the bathroom. They had to say restroom. 

They couldn't mention pants, only unmentionables. 

I'll take dysphemisms—straight talk—over euphemisms any day. 

Dog house over pet lodge. 

Stock market crash over equity retreat. 

Kill over pacify.

I've always been fond of comedian Jonathan Winters' famous dysphemism.

Winters, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was never committed to the psychiatric ward. 

He was sent to the rubber room.

Euphemisms are useful, of course, when we need to discuss taboo subjects or wish to shield others from unnecessary sorrow. 

They function in these instances as "verbal escape hatches."

But I lose patience with euphemisms when they're used dishonestly, whether by governments, corporations, political parties, or do-gooders.

When you say you plan revenue enhancements, do you think I don't know you mean higher taxes?

When you say new family size, do you think I don't know you shrank the amount of product in your package?

When you say climate change, do you think I don't know Earth's atmosphere is getting hotter?

When you say we need to aid the unhoused, do your think I don't know you mean the homeless?

Give me a break.

Your word substitutions are worthless.

Triumphs in Publicity #315

The art of publicity is a black art.

– Learned Hand

Publicists are dodgy by nature, but some handle it better than others.

A publicist who appeared on CNBC in October deserves a medal for his artful dodge.

He appeared on the weekday program Power Lunch to puff up investing in the tech firm Upstart.

The publicist was clearly addled when the host asked him a simple question.

"What does Upstart do? What kind of company is it?"

The publicist paused, frowned, then pretended his audio had cut out.

He never answered the question, leaving the host to confirm that Upstart was a great investment.

Triumph #315: 

Asked an unwelcome question, he claimed jiggy audio.

Postscript: CNBC has since declared Upstart a "disaster." On Friday, its stock price fell 55%, placing the company among the week's "top five biggest financial losers," according to Seeking Alpha.

Wokescolds

When the left becomes grimly censorious,
it incubates its own opposition.

— Michelle Goldberg

During an interview with a professor of English yesterday, I asked whether the late novelist John Updike belongs in the modern canon.

Wryly he answered, "It depends on whose canon."

The cause of his caution was obvious: not knowing who I was, the professor wanted to be spared another bashing by a possible wokescold.

Wokescolds—those busybodies who bash you for any show of disinterest in their causes—are the bane of the Democrats.

They're why the party will lose the midterm elections.

Wokescolds are dangerous because they're smug and obnoxious.

While they relentlessly shame us for our indifference to special-interest issues like "transgender equality," "microaggression," and "cultural appropriation," they remain blind to the fact that most of us care more about guns, gas, and the stock market.

They're dangerous because they make ready targets for right-wing hipsters, who can mobilize uninformed voters with post-apocalyptic visions of a Stalin-style government—even though 8 of 10 Millennial voters don't know who Stalin was.

So here's my two cents.

Wokescolds should take a vacation. 

A long one.

I recommend Mexico. 

With its tropical beaches, boutique hotels, and feisty cuisine, Mexico offers the ideal spot for a getaway.

Just ask Ted Cruz.

And while on vacation, I recommend that the wokescolds bring a little light reading.

Aristotle's Rhetoric would do nicely.

That's where they'll find these morsels of wisdom:

A statement is persuasive either because it is directly self-evident or appears to be proved from other statements that are so. In either case, it is persuasive because there is somebody whom it persuades. 

But no art theorizes about an individual. Rhetoric is concerned not with what seems probable to a given individual, but with what seems probable to a whole class of people. 

Rhetoric, too, draws upon the routine subjects of debate. The duty of rhetoric is to deal with key issues in the hearing of persons who cannot take in a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

Got that, wokescolds?

And if Aristotle doesn't convince you to drop the smug and obnoxious rhetoric, maybe you should stay in Mexico—permanently.

After all, you'll love it down there. 

I hear the Mexicans are debating transgender bathrooms.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

— George Ball

I belong to several Facebook groups that relish the past. 

"Abandoned Homes America," for example.

"Paperback, Pulp and Book Collectors Anonymous."

"The Golden Age of Hollywood."

These groups attract fellow aficionados: people avid about old houses, books and films.

But they also attract whiny weirdos who can't handle the here and now.

"As many of us get older, we might hearken back to simpler times," blogger Michael Kwan write in Beyond the Rhetoric. 

"We may look upon the present with a certain level of disdain. We might admonish 'kids these days' for ruining everything. But, are we all just falling victim to the golden age fallacy?"

Nostalgia, also known as the "golden age fallacy," insists we'd be more content in times gone by.

Nostalgia drives malcontents and misérables to look backwards for happiness.

Nostalgia a disease of longing. 

It's so crippling that philosopher Karl Jaspers blamed the most heinous sorts of crimes—murder, arson, and child molestation—on it.

Not every contemporary psychiatrist believes nostalgia is a mental disorder.

But I do.

That's why I'm disturbed by the relentless Facebook posts like, "We have too much today an overindulged society, as kids we ate what was on the table" and "Bring back Aunt Jemima, screw the woke crowd!" (both verbatim quotes taken from "The Golden Age of Hollywood").

I see those crabby statements and think, with Jaspers, "There's a potential child molester."

Michael Kwan calls wistful reminiscence a "flaw in the romantic imagination of people who find it difficult to cope with the present."

I think it's a much deeper—and darker—flaw.

A flaw in character.