#579 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Thursday February 9)
Good morning,
WORD OF THE YEAR, REDUX
A few weeks ago, mentioned the Merriam-Webster word of the year and runners-up. As a reminder, the winner was “gaslighting,” which seems appropriate, having entered common usage in the past few years and has become reflective of the zeitgeist of our times.
Typically, words of the year are determined by lexicographers and/or are established by frequency of usage in publications or searches. This year, however, the venerable Oxford English Dictionary adopted a different methodology. The OED did not count on experts or algorithms to determine its word of the year, relying instead upon a poll of interested readers. Those people who paid attention, a self-selecting lot no doubt, voted for the phrase “goblin mode.” For the uninitiated, Wikipedia defines its meaning as “a neologism for the rejection of societal expectations and the act of living in an unkempt, hedonistic manner, without concern for one’s self-image.” I think an example of this is, “he went fully goblin mode.”
The fact that this relatively obscure phrase (it’s not even a word) that is known to, and used by, a limited discrete segment of the population, is indicative of a problem—the ability of a relatively few people to control the outcome of a poll. What we have learned in the past few election cycles is that polls are not nearly as dependable as they once were thought to be. Not every poll accurately reflects the majority view of the group being polled (in this case, people who follow the OED and/or care about such things). The participants in polls are self-selecting. Further, sometimes polls are not terribly enlightening, regardless of the outcome. In this case, it hardly makes sense to reduce an exercise in determining the prevalence of a word to a popularity context. Democracy is not always the best way to reach a decision, particularly when trying to resolve something that is capable of “knowing” based upon fact and data. Instead, the few people paying attention were able to garner the imprimatur of the OED.
I remain perplexed over the value of the endless polls with which we are inundated all the time. First, I’m one of those people who, when presented with the opportunity to be polled, takes a pass. I’m sure many other people are similarly inclined. Second, I’m not sure I care whether some percentage of the population doesn’t believe in something that has been proven (e.g., evolution, or the relative safety of a car). There are many opinion polls that, more than anything, just point out the stupidity or gullibility of some meaningful swathe of society. But beyond this, I believe a lot of people read these polls as “maybe that’s right” instead of “these people are uninformed.” The presence of large numbers of people who believe unproven conspiracies to be true is not evidence that such things are true in any sense.
A SHOUT-OUT TO CHARLES SUMNER
After the altercation in the House during the voting for Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, we should recall most famous altercation in Congress—this one in the Senate.
It occurred during arguably the most contentious period in our history, when a free soil anti-slavery Senator, Charles Sumner (eventually one of the leaders of the new Republican Party), was beaten on the floor of the Senate by the ignominious Preston Brooks, who was reacting to Sumner’s speech against the Slave Power. Sumner was never the same and took years to return, during which his desk sat empty.
At least in the 1850s the violence on the floor of Congress was regarding issues a bit more important than the “issues” Congress often fights about today.
WE DON’T NEED AN FDR; WE NEED A GERALD FORD
Joe Biden is desperate to prove that our country is capable of being more than our collective fragments of fighting factions. He continues to be seeking compromise across the aisle—the only kind of politics he knows. This predisposition was evident in his State of the Union speech, when he took pains to acknowledge various Republican leaders and to extol the Republicans for voting on important legislation in the last Congress.
When I look at Biden and his accomplishments—and they are significant—they often are in sharp contrast to his less-than-lofty rhetoric, malaprops, and less-than-commanding presence. The model the Democrats try to compare Biden to is FDR, who followed the unsuccessful presidency of Hoover. But Hoover wasn’t the failure he is portrayed as by history. He presaged many of the actions taken by FDR and was a humanitarian of the highest order. The country’s institutions, while stretched during the Great Depression, were not near breaking point that they seemed to be reaching in the closing days of the Trump presidency.
I think a more apt model to which Biden might be compared is another president who also followed a disgraced president—Gerald R. Ford. Each came to office with the need to help the nation heal. Neither had the overwhelming support of a friendly Congress, which FDR enjoyed. Each had to dig their way out of economic calamity and failed wars—Vietnam in the 70s and Afghanistan in our current time. Of course, there were differences in ambition and temperment of the two men. Whereas Biden has been running for president—or preparing for a run—for much of his political life, Ford never sought the highest office, it being forced upon him by history.
Importantly, both men possessed the ability to convey empathy and the inability to sometimes convey something in clear sentences. Both were good men.
No great point here. Just ruminating over the value of a less-articulate, well-meaning leader in a time of economic calamity and challenges to our democracy.
ERRATA
From yesterday, the point I was trying to make in one of the bullet points was this:
Under Trump, the annual budget deficit increased each year (from the $665B deficit in Obama’s last year). The annual budget deficit has been reduced in Biden’s first two years.
Have a good day,
Glenn
From the archives: