#269 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday February 8)
Good morning,
Today’s Tuesday and that means great contributions from others, in this case language and grammar:
THE CHEAPENING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
From Russ Chittenden—
“The thing that struck me most about Trump and his followers was the simplifying of our language. “They treated me badly, very bad.” No further explanation about how they treated you badly. And, of course, deliberate vagary about who “they” were. And superlatives. “They tell me it’s the best ever, the best anyone’s ever done, no one’s ever seen anything like it.” More precisely, superlatives in regard to the mundane. Like describing passing a perfunctory cognitive ability test in glowing terms – “They couldn’t believe it, it was the best they’d ever seen.” As if not being hauled off to jail by the CHP for drunk driving because you pass a field sobriety test is some prize-winning accomplishment. “I closed my eyes and touched my nose, they couldn’t believe it, those officers had never seen anything like that before.”
Norman Mailer once opined that the reason England had never succumbed to fascism was the English language, itself. Its sheer volume of words, its nuance, its complexity, its resistance to the simplification upon which fascism depends. Its tendency to expand, not reduce, the possibly of thought and precise expression…
Orwell also focused on the simplification of language. And the nationalization of language. We’ve been doing that for decades, at least since 911. ‘Homeland.’ ‘The Department of Homeland Security.’ I defy you to find any reference to America as a “Homeland’ before 911… Homeland is not an American construct. It’s European like ‘Motherland’ or ‘Fatherland.’ It’s nationalistic. We’re supposed to be based upon an idea, not a place. But I fear not anymore. We’re just a place like any other. Our thinking and our policy is based upon the fact that we’re a place; not an idea. After all, you don’t build a wall to protect an idea.”
“LEGITIMATE EXPRESSION OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE”
The ultimate bastardization of the English language. This is the phrase used by the Republican National Committee to describe the armed, violent attack on the Capitol last January 6th. But as they say it enough times, it becomes the narrative and enters the belief system of those looking for confirmation bias…
Of course, there is the further bluster of the Former Guy: “The Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them.” And this charming, statesmanlike line: "These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They're racists and they're very sick -- they're mentally sick…They're going after me without any protection of my rights from the Supreme Court or most other courts. In reality, they're not after me, they're after you."
A GRAMMATICAL STUDY WITH EXAMPLES
Here amusing grammatical spins on the jokes based on “walking into a bar,” courtesy Kiki Gindler:
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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 simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
Too much. I love it!
Have a great day,
Glenn