Washblog

They have a saying in Texas ... and I'm sure it's out here somewhere in the Payloose or someplace else ... "fool around me once and ... er,"

"fool me around once or twice ... er, "

"fool around with me or my wife ..."

Oh what the hell ...

Concepts are fungamental ... you don't need to go read no phillysophicles plays and dial-a-prayers to figure out the basic stuff.

If this Socrater guy and Arstiphupperlips came into the bar where I'm drinking and start spoutin all that foreign-illegal-Greecey-immigrant talk, I'd know how to put em in their place ... me and my brush-cuttin chain saw.

you dang intellechal's are presickley the reason why statecraft and good governance should come out of the end of a beer bottle and not some dang misoverestimated thespiaknickers class at UW or them other Kudzu-League schools. You know which ones I'm talkin about - those schools where lots of thinking gets done but aint none of them won a Rose Bowl in my lifetime.

Your's Truly,

Jake Turnrose

I dodged right quick, but the Scrabble Game warn't so lucky. Fluffy hit that table and game board like a kamikaze pilot hittin a aircraft carrier and all my 3-letter words and fine defense went helter skelter. I ain't won a game with the little woman since like was a about to beat her then.

Sorry guys, sometimes this old fella inside me just boils up and takes over. I'm possessed by the oldest fart on the the Willapa Bay.

... a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Mr. Emerson

our own Sophists,

our own rush / hannity big mouths and pot bangers, AND,

our own Lincolns?

From a supply and demand perspective:

our country is over run with wanna be Sophists - since we live in a culture hostile to math and science and engineering, a huge percentage of the college educated can only manipulate PowerPoint.

the liberal / progressive world has few funded pot bangers and big mouths.  The lackluster support shows in that the subset of the population who enjoys big mouths only has wingnut big mouths to listen to.  I believe the root of this problem of too few big mouths is that the money in the Dem party comes from the professional / managerial elite, and they are culturally hostile to pot banging and big mouths.

finally - waiting for Lincolns, or, even second string Lincolns - as much as I love Howard, there has to more than 1 of him, and if there ain't -

so lets get some Sophists and Pot Bangers and f#$%ing WIN!

rmm ;)

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

Who are they that complain unto the king,
That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?

By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly
That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.

Because I cannot flatter and speak fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy.

Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abused
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

/ comment start

actually, this was written about 400 years ago !!

(bet none of you could guess that !!)

and, it was in a play,

and, it was spoken by one of the most ruthless, deceitful, blood thirsty scum characters ever.

Richard III.

I had this quote on the wall of my office when trying to survive working at microshit.

/ comment end.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

It's also nearly impossible, as you know.

Simple eloquence is like a good melody - very difficult to create and even more difficult to create on demand. Rhetoric can be fantastic stuff. I don't think we would call Shakespeare a "Sophist". But it's fantastic when it simplifies into something meaningful.

When you simplify the Republican message, you get to things which are fundamentally untrue, or compromises between the truth and the world as some people would like it to be, or falssely remember it to have been.

Progressive rhetoric has to simplify to something that may not be yet but we all know and believe could be. On the way to that simple case, we have to be willing to say what needs to be said. If some of our phrases are more easily understood than others, it just means we have to repeat the things that are harder to say until somebody comes up with a way to say them simply.

But to do any of this we have to know our principles. They are the over-arching narrative of which all speeches describe a sub-arc.

Clear thinking, clear speaking.

Jack Kerouac believed in first drafts only -- that the clarity and the quality of the thought was the important thing and that the written word could do no more than capture such a thing.

I recently consulted with April Sotura, a voice coach: Voicing Self.  I appreciate her approach which, as her page expresses, has to do with the coherence that comes from authenticity.  I recommend her!  

Now I'm thinking in connection with your piece -- of course, it's structure too. People's minds grasp for patterns and we need repetition.  It's no coincidence that people like April Sotura are musicians.  

Speaking well, I think, has something to do with being other-directed.  What I mean is that in order to speak well, you need to be focused on the people and situation at hand and give up attention to unrelated issues, such as your own fear that maybe you're not coming across as brilliant, etc.  You need to really care about whether others can understand you -- and whether you are offering them something worthwhile.

The distortion of speech in politics today reflects a dissociation with reality.  Speech is used to manipulate.  I see the impact of political consultants and vendors, on the whole, as destructive.  They force politicians to focus on wins and losses -- rather than on the issues we elect them to address.  

It becomes a big circular illusion.  And all the while real people suffer real pain.  So a primary task is to bring our language into greater coherence with the realities we face.