Today, November 12, 2010, is my father-in-law's 87th birthday. Yesterday, November 11 and also Veteran's Day, was mother's 103rd birthday. I did not call my father-in-law today, because I was busy early, and later he was en route with my youngest son Nate to Okemos, Michigan (don't ask), and out of teleph0nic contact. I did not visit my mother's grave because I hate it; no matter the situation, no matter the time of year, no matter anything, I break down and bawl like a raw-souled animal when I see it. I often vomit, too. So I just don't go there much.
Word to the wise: Try to avoid having your mother die on you when you're 9.
Friday, November 12, 2010
A Time It Was and What a Time It Was
I have decided to put a somewhat old, quite personal letter on this blog. The reason I do it is so that if anyone should ever want to figure out what makes me tick, this will aid them. I will say no more about this for now.
Nope. Changed my mind.
Nope. Changed my mind.
Monday, November 1, 2010
bullshistory
One reaction to my coining of bullshitistry the other day was to pronounce it improvable. Benjamin Margolies suggested bullshistory instead.
I agree that bullshistory sounds better than bullshitistry, because it's shorter by a few letters and easier to pronounce. But it doesn't mean the same thing. While bullshitistry means skillful lying, bullshistory means distorted accounts of the past--not really the same thing at all, since the purveyors of the latter don't think they are telling mistruths, and hence in their own minds are not lying.
If a person cannot tell the difference between saying something mistaken by accident and doing so deliberately, then they are moral illiterates. Of course, this is remarkably common today, as when those mainly on the Left refuse to distinguish the Bush Administration's mistakenly thinking there was a lot of WMD in Iraq. There wasn't, but all the principals of the Bush Administration believed, for pretty good reasons, too, that there was. So to say that these principals "lied" about the matter, which is the standard vocabulary of many in this regard, is both inaccurate and preposterous. They were mistaken, yes; but they did not deliberately mislead others. (I know; I was there.) It's like the difference between a well-meaning pedestrian inadvertently giving wrong directions to a stranger in a car asking how to find a local address, and a nasty stranger deliberately sending the seeker off in the wrong direction. Again, if you cannot understand the distinction here, you're an imbecile.
In that light, it is altogether possible that bullshistory has an even wider application nowadays than bullshitistry, since most of the nonsense being peddled is not done so with malice aforethought. Today we have the Tea Party account of U.S. history, which is hilarious when it's not scary, joined to an older leftwing systematic distortion, epitomized by Howard Zinn's popular "peoples history" of the United States. My friend Ron Radosh has written over the years about both, and has recently done so again. He needs to take up the term bullshistory if he continues in this vein; it's just too perfect to omit.
So, for that and other reasons, I am very glad for Ben's effort in this direction: Thank You, BM!! (speaking of bullshit, you've really got to do something about those initials.......)
I agree that bullshistory sounds better than bullshitistry, because it's shorter by a few letters and easier to pronounce. But it doesn't mean the same thing. While bullshitistry means skillful lying, bullshistory means distorted accounts of the past--not really the same thing at all, since the purveyors of the latter don't think they are telling mistruths, and hence in their own minds are not lying.
If a person cannot tell the difference between saying something mistaken by accident and doing so deliberately, then they are moral illiterates. Of course, this is remarkably common today, as when those mainly on the Left refuse to distinguish the Bush Administration's mistakenly thinking there was a lot of WMD in Iraq. There wasn't, but all the principals of the Bush Administration believed, for pretty good reasons, too, that there was. So to say that these principals "lied" about the matter, which is the standard vocabulary of many in this regard, is both inaccurate and preposterous. They were mistaken, yes; but they did not deliberately mislead others. (I know; I was there.) It's like the difference between a well-meaning pedestrian inadvertently giving wrong directions to a stranger in a car asking how to find a local address, and a nasty stranger deliberately sending the seeker off in the wrong direction. Again, if you cannot understand the distinction here, you're an imbecile.
In that light, it is altogether possible that bullshistory has an even wider application nowadays than bullshitistry, since most of the nonsense being peddled is not done so with malice aforethought. Today we have the Tea Party account of U.S. history, which is hilarious when it's not scary, joined to an older leftwing systematic distortion, epitomized by Howard Zinn's popular "peoples history" of the United States. My friend Ron Radosh has written over the years about both, and has recently done so again. He needs to take up the term bullshistory if he continues in this vein; it's just too perfect to omit.
So, for that and other reasons, I am very glad for Ben's effort in this direction: Thank You, BM!! (speaking of bullshit, you've really got to do something about those initials.......)
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