Tag Archives: rhetoric
Here we go again…
Here we go again! Political mechanics (rather than celestial mechanics, quantum mechanics, or auto mechanics) brings the Silly Season of a presidential election around once more. Tonight, in Iowa, the results of the first of the Primaries will give us the first clues whether He Who Must Not Be Named gets traction.
The social mechanics, along with technology, seems to make this election cycle unlike any seen in American politics. Despite a common assertion, the world (society, really) does evolve and change!
So no one knows what will happen tonight!
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13 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, beer, Bernie Sanders, Cygnus X-1, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, Flat Earth Brewing, GOP, Hillary Clinton, HRC, Iowa Primary, Leon Wieseltier, Marco Rubio, politicians, Republican Party, rhetoric, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Silly Season, social issues, Ted Cruz, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Opinion, Politics
There is a bit of delicious schadenfreude with regard to the mainstream (“establishment”) Republican party scrambling to correct for The Donald. The GOP spent years training their electorate to respond to noise and nonsense; now they’re stuck behind an interloper cuckoo bird who’s a master at noise, nonsense, and (worst of all) media.
Between the chirping Donnie Boy and the incoherent lipsticked pit bull, it’s quite an entertaining show. Of course, no one will actually vote for the guy, right? Those big crowds just turn out to see the show, right? They’ll never show up at the actual caucus…
Right? Right??
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22 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, Bernie Sanders, cable news, common cuckoo, cuckoo bird, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, HRC, illusion, lies, Marco Rubio, Martin O'Malley, Republican Party, rhetoric, social change, social issues, striped cuckoo, Ted Cruz, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Politics, Rant
Washington (D.C.) is the expected epicenter of an approaching patch of extreme weather, an historic storm that is, in large part, due to the damage our modern society has done to the environment. And utterly without irony, there’s going to be a big snow storm there, too.
The crazy weather does seem suited to the craziness going on in politics. As with climate change due to the increase of CO2, the flow of other pollutants into public discourse has changed the social environment.
The Earth’s weather is getting chaotic, and so is its politics.
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8 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, Bernie Sanders, cable news, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, HRC, illusion, lies, Marco Rubio, Republican Party, rhetoric, snow, snow storm, social issues, Ted Cruz, winter, winter storm | posted in Politics, Rant
My impulse was to here write, “It’s been an interesting week,” but in reality it’s just been a week much like those that came before it. The social weather forecast: continuing craziness with scattered outbursts of outright insanity.
President Obama gave his final State of The Union (SOTU) speech on Tuesday, and so I find myself writing about how proud I was of my president for the second time in as many weeks (and, very possibly, the only two times since he was elected).
Watching that speech, I kept thinking, “Where has this guy been for the last seven years?”
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6 Comments | tags: cable news, democratic society, dialectic, Edward R. Murrow, election 2016, illusion, lies, Nikki Haley, President Obama, rhetoric, social change, social issues, social media, social mores, Walter Cronkite | posted in Politics, Rant
Well, here we are in 2016, a Presidential election year, and — man, oh man — it’s going to be a weird one! High waters from several rivers seems to be converging to form a flood unlike any we’ve seen in modern politics. And while that’s kind of fascinating from a sociology perspective, as a citizen some of it seems kind of scary.
As I write this, actual rivers are flooding Midwestern cities in the USA, but the rivers I have in mind are reality shows, the interweb, and our social environment (where global unrest and terrorism is a primary topic). The flood here is a lack of sense, nuance, and thoughtfulness.
My question today: When did we so fully embrace lies and illusion?
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16 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, Bernie Sanders, cable news, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, evil, GOP, Hillary Clinton, illusion, lies, Marco Rubio, politicians, Republican Party, rhetoric, social change, social issues, social media, Ted Cruz, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster, truth | posted in Politics, Rant
I’ve been watching the cable news a lot lately, and it fills me with dismay. I’m seeing coming to fruition a crop that I’ve been warning about for over 40 years. I’ve referred to it as the Death of a Liberal Arts Education.
As this crop of useless weeds chokes the life out of the nutritious and necessary political and social fauna and flora, I find that we’ve arrived at an even greater loss: Utter Dialectic Failure!
That’s a topic for future posts. Right now I want to ask:
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16 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, Bernie Sanders, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, politicians, Republican Party, rhetoric, social change, social issues, social media, Ted Cruz, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster, violent society | posted in Politics, Rant
It was a number of years ago that the book you see pictured here on the right caught my eye. I was wandering around a bookstore, as book-lovers do, seeing what there was to see (and possibly buy). This may surprise you, but I’ve always enjoyed a good debate, so the book’s topic seemed attractive and a nice change of pace from baseball and science books or SF novels.
Plus: Aristotle, Lincoln and Homer Simpson! Who could resist that? A glance at a few of the pages showed an easy and breezy open writing style that went down nicely, and the bits I read were quite intriguing. I snagged it thinking it would be right up my alley, and that I’d enjoy it thoroughly.
I never got more than a third of the way through it!
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20 Comments | tags: Ancient Greeks, debate, For The Record, FTR, Jay Heinrichs, Plato, rhetoric, sophism, sophist, sophistry, Thank You For Arguing | posted in Opinion
Logos con carne 