Flailing About

Johnson has been flailing about desperately.

— New York Magazine

The cognitive dissonance Republican Senator Ron Johnson suffers would pain an intelligent man, according to New York Magazine. Nonetheless, Johnson must wonder how he can call the louts who assaulted the Capitol on January 6 "tourists."

"Johnson has been flailing about desperately in search of a resolution to this contradiction," the magazine says.

The verb flail, meaning to "whip," is an 11th-century word that originally meant to "thresh" or "winnow." 

Knight wielding a "flail"

A flail was a Mediaeval farm tool made of wood and leather. Its name was borrowed from the Latin name for the same tool, flagellum, from which we also get the verb flagellate, meaning to "flog."

When we see a flail today, we think of knights doing battle, but the flail was never a weapon. 

Mediaeval artists merely convinced us it was.

By depicting flail-wielding knights in illuminated manuscripts, medieval artists led later viewers to imagine that these wily cavalrymen must have used flails to terrorize foes. 

But, the "flails" wielded by knights were actually goads—wood-and-rope cattle prods that somewhat resemble flails. Knights used goads to prod their horses.

Medieval flail

The spiked iron "flails" in museum collections today are in fact simulacra: 19-century copies of a 10-century weapon that never existed.

So when you read that Johnson is "flailing about," don't think of knights of old. 

To flail about means to "whip around," to "engage in erratic movements."

Paperwork

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.

— Pearl Bailey

I'm awash in paperwork thanks to a surgery back in December. 

Letters, notices, statements, receipts, affidavits, invoices and those curious cryptograms known in healthcare as "EOBs." Scores of EOBs.

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming," Wernher von Braun said.

Healthcare is a lot like rocketry.

A surgeon can repair a shattered ankle, but it might not be worth the paperwork.

There's one area of society where we can turn paperwork into a positive, however.

Law enforcement.

Cops often overlook crimes because "it's not worth the paperwork" to process the suspects.

Congress should pass a new law quintupling the paperwork required to process Black suspects.

The Paperwork to Overwhelm Police Officers (POPO) Act would do more to cure systemic racism in law enforcement than any defunding program.

Congress, you listening?

The people demand it.

The American Forest & Paper Association should, too.

Above: Clip Art. Print by Adam Hilman.

Against the Grain

He who goes about to reform the world must begin with himself.

― Ignatius of Loyola

I often hear people say they're proud troublemakers, eager to go "against the grain."

In our narcissistic age, we've gotten that Elizabethan idiom backwards.

In Shakespeare's day, to go "against the grain" meant to resist not the herd's instinct, but your own; to act in ways contrary to your own desires; to be a spartan, not a contrarian.  

If you've ever used a plane, you know that to go "against the grain" isn't just hard: it's impossible.

But try we must. 

The Catholic priest Ignatius of Loyola, who died only eight years before Shakespeare was born, urged his followers to try through the injunction agere contra, Latin for "act against."

Whatever it is you intend to do, Ignatius preached, resist your first instinct. 

Go against the grain.

We're advised today to "go with our gut," but in Ignatius' time that idea was thought dangerous. 

Your gut is too selfish. It leads you away from just acts. It leads you away, people thought, because human nature has been robbed of justice, thanks to Original Sin.

The source of this notion was the "universal teacher" and church doctor Thomas Aquinas. 

Aquinas taught that our "fallen nature" is in every regard still uncorrupted except in the area of justice. 

Left to our own devices—our gut instincts—we're always going to act unjustly, thanks to Adam and Eve. Because they defied God, the instinct for injustice is baked into human nature. It manifests in our worst habits and most insidious impulses.

Given our narcissistic bent, we could all use a little of Ignatius' advice to agere contra. 

Imagine how much better off we'd be if, rather than performing a "gut check," we checked our gut.

Addicts would get sober. 

Fat people would lose weight. 

Lazy people would contribute. 

Killers would lay down their handguns. 

The wealthy would pay taxes. 

Politicians would speak truths. 

Cynics would take heart. 

Mean people wouldn't suck.

I hope to go against the grain and put a little agere contra into daily practice myself.

You with me?

Verbosity

Verbosity wastes a portion of the reader’s life.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In the midst of Britain's "darkest hour," Winston Churchill paused to write a one-page memo scolding his war cabinet ministers for verbosity.

"Clarity and cogency can be reconciled with a greater brevity," he told one of them. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts."

That memo, entitled "Brevity," is one of Churchill's most famous.

It demanded that all ministers and their underlings avoid "officialese" in writing, and keep all memos brief—no more than a page long.

Brevity, Churchill promised, would save readers time—time better spent outsmarting their Nazi adversaries.

Churchill singled out pompous and clichéd gobbledygook as particularly wasteful.

"Let us have an end of such phrases as these: 'It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations,' or 'Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect,'" Churchill wrote. 

"Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational."

Brevity, Churchill promised, would not only save the government time, but "prove an aid to clear thinking."

Churchill was right, on both counts. 

Concise usually is precise—provided you avoid clichés.

I once had a boss who traveled a lot. 

When responding to draft sales copy or ideas and suggestions from me while she was out of town, she'd send me extremely concise emails.

But they consisted of nothing but clichés like "Off brand," Wait, what?'' and "Meh."

Concise, but not precise.

I always had to await her return to the office to learn what she expected me to do. 

She both wasted my time and set back my projects.

Clichés are fine when you have nothing but praise or approval to offer. "Lovin' it!" for example. "Good stuff!" Or, my favorite, "Boffo!"

Clichés are also fine when you can't help out. "Sorry, haven't a clue." "Sorry, not in my wheelhouse. "Sorry, no can do." (Churchill, for example, telegrammed FDR asking for help with the evacuation of Dunkirk. FDR replied simply, "Good luck.")

If you want to be a good boss or colleague—a helpful, thoughtful one—take the time to write concise, but precise, directions. 

"Ask Legal to review the entire contract one more time before you send it to the customer. The sales guy changed a lot of our boilerplate. Not sure that's kosher. Ask for it back within 24 hours."

"Make the subhead the major headline. It's stronger. And add a call to action."

"Ask Meghan whether she wrote code for another client that calculates shipping costs. You can just plug her code in. But be sure it can handle Euros."

In The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, Australian philosopher David Stove argued that verbosity is more than long-windedness and muddled thinking.

Verbosity reflects a grotesque "character defect;" a trait he calls "pathology of thought."

Verbosity, Stove says, signals "a simple inability to shut up; a determination to be thought deep; a hunger for power; and fear—especially fear of an indifferent universe."

I've certainly observed that character defect during my career.

The best bosses I've ever had were also succinct and enviable writers; the worst were inarticulate psychopaths who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. 

The memos they produced were long, flatulent and inscrutable. 

The next email you write, please, take a few moments to edit yourself. Kill the clichés. Get to the point. Be specific. Then trim every third word. 

Your reader will thank you. 

Tragic Finale

The stupid, crazy, irresponsible bunglers. They've finally done it.

— Bill Maguire in The Day the Earth Caught Fire

If you need a refresher course on Donald Trump's inexhaustible loathsomeness, Nightmare Scenario is the book for you.

Authors Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, both reporters for The Washington Post, present a gripping, 450-page account of Trump's "handling" of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To cut to the chase, Trump handled the virus like Captain Smith handled the Titanic. Never once did he consider Covid-19 to be anything more than an annoying crimp in his reelection plans, the book confirms.  

Villains in the play—Alex Azar, Jared Kushner, Scott Atlas, Peter Navarro, Stephen Moore, Mike Pence and, center stage, Trump—abound. They far outnumber the heroes, so don't expect to be anything but despondent at the end. Samuel Beckett is cheerier.

As I paged through Nightmare Scenario, I felt as if I were reading the script for a never-made Hollywood film, the concept for which was "All the President's Men meets The Day the Earth Caught Fire."

Based on White House emails, documents and 180 interviews, Nightmare Scenario is a study in hidebound leadership and more: fear, fantasy, sycophancy, infighting, betrayal and ineptitude—especially ineptitude.

You learn that, while the villains' roguery meant that their chances of ever stopping the virus were nominal, their contempt for critics and rivals—and America's citizens—was boundless.

You also learn that, by the time Covid-19 reached our shores, staff-wise Trump was down to the very bottom of the barrel. Anyone with skills had long ago abandoned Trump's foundering ship. Anyone with integrity had been thrown overboard.

The publisher's blurb calls the book "the definitive account of the Trump administration’s tragic mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the chaos, incompetence, and craven politicization that has led to more than a half million American deaths and counting."

That sums it up well. The whole point of Nightmare Scenario is a tragic one. The actors in the play should be ashamed, as should the minority of voters who put our government in the hands of a failed reality-TV host. They're collectively guilty of the deaths of a half million citizens—and counting.