#29 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Sunday May 16)
Good morning!
A few thoughts:
It is no shame to have pride in one’s heritage. And it’s okay to admire the heritage of others. These two notions are not incompatible.
Some say secularism has supplanted religion. But I think politics, sadly, seems to have supplanted religion.
We’re going to inch up to 60% vaccinations in the U.S. Then it will stop, having not yet reached herd immunity. Why? Fear, conspiracy theories, lack of trust in institutions and the stubborn belief that it’s just another over-reach by government.
We will need booster shots in the Fall.
Travel this summer will be insane. Look for crowded airports.
We’re going to miss Angela Merkel.
Rudy Giuliani, former police chief and “America’s Mayor,” will be indicted and will lose his law license.
DC, with every argument of logic in its favor, will not become a state any time soon.
Economic expansion and relative calm will see the Democrats retain control of the Senate, against historical precedent. The House is a crapshoot but I think the Republicans might flip control; although Democrats will win more votes (and by a lot—it is the perverse result of effective gerrymandering).
We are going to be printing dollars overtime for the foreseeable future. Inflation will return.
GRAMMAR
My constant gripes about the explosion of terrible grammar, run-on sentences and the overuse of adjectives and adverbs, Martine Singer recalls:
“As my English professor said: “beware of adjectives that travel in packs, like wolves.”
Then there is this grammar remembrance from Jerry Coben:
“To your point about effective writing, I’m reminded of a line delivered to my 1L Con Law class at NYU by a legendary professor, Norman Dorsen. In the middle of an exposition about the holding in a case we were then studying, he suddenly stopped, made sure he had everyone’s attention, and said:
‘Here’s the best advice you are going to get in all your years of law school. When you think you are finished with the brief you’ve labored over, but are taking one last read through it before filing, and you beam with pride because you have read again the sentence you wrote that jumps out at you as the best sentence ever written in the history of the English language...TAKE IT OUT!"
Have a good day,
Glenn