Hyperbole

“Truthful hyperbole" is a contradiction in terms.

— Tony Schwartz

Spartan. Dangerous. Terrifying. Nightmarish. Horrific.

Too often in recent days, I've heard these words used by journalists to characterize the temporary hospitals that are propagating the country.

Spare me.

Valley Forge was spartan. 

Vietnam was dangerous. 

The Blitz was terrifying. 

Aleppo was nightmarish. 

Auschwitz was horrific.

In fact, the temporary hospitals are havens for the sick. 

And the job our military is doing is nothing short of herculean.

There's a hyperbole you don't hear enough.

Hedging

You can fudge. 

You can waffle. 

But if you're really low-life, you hedge.

The verb hedge, meaning to "screen yourself from a bad choice," comes from the Old English noun haga, meaning "fence."

The Brits stole haga from the German word Hegga. The Germans stole Hegga from the Latin word caulae, meaning "sheepfold."

In Merry Old England, hedge came to mean "shelter," because the homeless—highwaymen, knights and vagabonds—would sleep under hedges.

By the 16th century, hedge was used as a verb meaning to "dodge" or "evade." By the 17th century, it began being used to mean to "bet against loss."

Money-lenders in the time would make an unsecured loan to a borrower only were he willing to roll it into an outstanding loan that was secured.

The lending practice was known as hedging.

Of course, gentlemen never hedged.

That may have prompted Samuel Johnson, in his 1755 Dictionary, to say hedge "notes something mean, vile, of the lowest class."

Johnson didn't beat around the bush.

What Is to Be Done?

Last fall—before Covid-19 even had a name—I read historian Maury Klein's 900-page masterpiece A Call to Arms.

Little did I know I was reading the playbook Trump ought to have.

December 7, 1941, hurtled America into war with the Axis.

FDR—a leader who listened—saw in 1939 that to win, the US would have to "bury the Axis in weapons."

(On December 7, the US ranked 28th in the world in the size of its military, which relied on obsolete equipment, weapons and ammunition left from previous conflicts.)

To bury the Axis, FDR undertook what Klein calls "the greatest industrial expansion in modern history.”

But mass mobilization wasn't easy. Union leaders, bureaucrats and businessmen—especially businessmen—pushed back, as did many citizens.

FDR simply pushed harder. 

He guaranteed wary businessmen not only that the government would buy every item manufactured no matter the length of the war, but would assume all the costs of converting the factories back to peacetime production for 10 years thereafter.

The president also enlisted hundreds of "czars" to ride herd on every conceivable raw material, process and product—czars who were experts, not toadies, daughters and sons-in-law.

Within only months, FDR built America's colossal "arsenal of democracy," using brains and brawn—not blustery bullshit.

And America rapidly buried the Axis.

Blame the Left

If you do something bad, never, ever blame yourself.

— Donald Trump

The president's all about blame.

But who's to blame for him?

The left.

The late American philosopher Richard Rorty made that clear in his 1998 book Achieving Our Country.

In the first six decades of the 20th century, according to Rorty, the left tackled big issues like income redistribution and civil rights (think of the New Deal and the Great Society).

But in the latter decades—disillusioned by the Vietnam War—the left got sidetracked. It was led to champion only niggling issues like reparations and cross-dressers' rights (think of Anti-Columbus Day and the Transgender Legal Defense Fund).

Rorty predicted that tragic digression would lead to Trump's election.

American workers would see that government doesn't give a hoot about jobs and wages, Rorty wrote, and "decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots."

And there you have it: America has elected a demagogue to distract itself from its misery.

We have only ourselves to blame.

NOTE: To learn more about Richard Rorty, listen to this podcast.

Lambs to the Slaughter

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Across America this weekend, fundamentalist clergymen are calling congregants to worship, despite the alarms sounded by scientists, while, inside the White House, pro-business advisors are calling the nation to "reopen" immediately.

Why do followers put credence in such advice?

Do they all harbor a death wish?