The Radical Present Tense

by Smitty

Morgan Freeberg brings one of those back-burner thoughts to the front of the stove:

You might say "In times like these, we have to pull together and nobody can make a profit providing a service so essential to the rest of us." You would not say "Because it’s Tuesday and my butt itches, we have to pull together and nobody can make a profit providing this service." With the latter, even a flaccid mind would immediately recognize — duh, hey wait a minute...if the service is so essential, how do we make sure it continues to be provided if nobody can make a profit providing it? But "In times like these" goes over like Free Ice Cream night in Hell. Why yes! That makes perfect sense!

But it isn't confined to socialism. All stupid ideas benefit from the "Times Like These" cliche. It's like covering a turd in a chocolate-crusty coating.

When creating various advertising and propaganda, there seems to be a drive to narrow the focus of thought in the audience. All is emotional, all is now. Fear and the unknown loom.

"In times like these" seems both to allude to prior, similar times, and to retire them from consideration. You know, "these times". You wouldn't want to look dumb in public by asking "To what specific time to you refer?" of the speaker. That would be rude. Everyone else is shaking their heads knowingly.

"In times like these" implies knowledge of these times, and sufficient analysis to know what must be done. It builds trust. Whatever the speaker is saying must be done is probably a good idea. We really don't need to fret the future. We can trust the person, right?

Let's look at an example from BHO, emphasis mine:

Now, like all of you, my responsibility is to act in the interest of my nation and my people, and I will never apologize for defending those interests. But it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 -- more than at any point in human history -- the interests of nations and peoples are shared. The religious convictions that we hold in our hearts can forge new bonds among people, or they can tear us apart. The technology we harness can light the path to peace, or forever darken it. The energy we use can sustain our planet, or destroy it. What happens to the hope of a single child -- anywhere -- can enrich our world, or impoverish it.

How on earth, one wonders, was this conclusion reached? "Any point", we are told. Clearly we are in the presence of omniscience.

How about a more stylized approach to the BHO passage?

Is Morgan Freeberg slipping?

by Smitty

I'm not going to try to worm my way out of it. House of Eratosthenes has been a premier blog in the ol' Google Reader. Always there with thorough, geeky analysis, good humor, and added value to what he links.

But I wonder if he's losing his touch.

Here he quotes Josh Olson, a screenwriter:

At this point, you should walk away, firm in your conviction that I'm a dick. But if you're interested in growing as a human being and recognizing that it is, in fact, you who is the dick in this situation, please read on.

Yes. That's right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.

Says Freeberg of Olson:

I’m looking for the occasion upon which I might shamelessly steal them, and thinking back on some situations in which I could have stolen them had I been aware of them.

Now, Morgan, let me put it to you in geek-speak:
s/dick/racist/g
That's right. You understand that, from the POTUS on down, Olson encapsulates succinctly the proper response to the intellectually dishonest left, and their zombie minions.

"We the People," in an amazing week, have:

• Rejected Van Jones.
• Told the POTUS "We don't need no education/thought control".
• Found a Congressman with the courage to yell fact in a crowded fiction.
• Blown the lid off rotten ACORN, and perhaps restored the possibility of a valid census.
• Thumbed the nose at an attempt to distort the meaning of a national tragedy eight years ago.
• Put a very large number of "just folks" on the Mall to underscore the fact that we are as serious as lung cancer about what the Congress/Administration are doing.

We are not the dicks. That would be Obama/Pelosi/Reid. The tri-dumb-virate.

New word: naïvel

Naïvel (adj.):

Comination of naïve + evil. This adjective covers the progression of audience opinion of a speaker from the first state to the second. It is frequently useful in the context of a public figure attempting to sell a steaming pile of nonsense as a reasonable statement. The audience wants to take the speaker at face value, because that is what reasonable people do.

The first thought in the mind of the audience is: "Wow, the guy forced to answer for this event must have been really naïve to buy off on that chain of reasoning in the first place."

That thought fades out with a disquieting aftertaste. Given the probabilistic nature of confidence in anything said by a public figure, the audience moves to a state where:

1. The intelligence required to hold the public office should preclude such naïvete,
2. Therefore, the likelihood of there being more facts to the story is quite high, and the motive for the steaming loaf of nonsense, instead of candor, might be reasonably attributable to sheer evil.

Example:
White House press briefing.
Robert Gibbs: Major?
Fox News Correspondent Major Major Major Major: Given the presumably thorough screening applied to Executive Office positions, how is it possible that Van Jones was hired, considering the amount of blatantly anti-American output the gentleman produced this decade?
Gibbs: Well, we were unaware of any of that.
Major^4: Dude, like, tha' is soo the naïvel, and stuff.


Update:
Linked at Reaganite Republican Resistance.

---

This post is really a shameless attempt to be cool like Morgan Freeberg.

Freeberg sticker roundup

by Smitty

House of Eratosthenes has some quality bumper stickers for you.
I don't agree with the dismal quotation he embeds at the bottom. Our country is as dead as "We the People" allow.

Oh, that saucy Freeberg

by Smitty

The House of Eratosthenes, that ardent and eloquent supporter of Sarah Palin, has a thoughtful rumination on the lady, with a punch line that is so great as to out-Sullivan Sullivan.

Of course, some of this is trickery on my part, since I’ve been pretending not to know things I know. Got a call from Palin’s press secretary yesterday evening, in response to a private e-mail I sent the Governor. It was about yet another theory, one not yet explored by anyone. Bulls-eye, first try! And since this is The Blog That Nobody Reads, there is no damage involved in spilling the beans here.

I was right. Sarah Palin never

Very, very well done, sir.

Freeberg nails it again

by Smitty

  You'd think that "it" would get tired of being nailed. If you followed the Rule 5 URL yesterday to Freeberg's Ten Terraces, number 5 in the taxonomy raised hackles for being as enthusiastic about marijuana (and other drug) legalization as Carrie Prejean and this blog are about the destruction of marriage.
  Freeberg doubles down on his point, and draws a comparison with lotteries. The comparison is a high-level one, and the point made is one about sapping the human spirit.
  Back in the day, there was a string of dope comedy flicks by Cheech and Chong. One of them, and it's really not important enough to research, had a character smoking something which had been urinated upon by an iguana or something. Over the course of the movie, the character transforms into a lizard. Hah, hah, ain't that a hoot? Even though I was yet a teenager when I saw flick, I recall finding the point profound: you will eventually become that which you smoke.
  Too many relatives in my extended family are basket cases and drains on society as a result of body chemistry experimentation. Caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine receive, to varying degrees, a pass. Their effects are not seen in the same debilitating light. Good news, bad news, who can say?
  To have the government consider legalizing any currently banned substances, particularly when ideas of health care legislation are in play, is an entry into paradise engineering, indeed.