Hope For Change

Funny how the change we talk about is not the change we get.

Eighteen months ago, the idea of change was very attractive to most of America - we didn't know what change meant but we were all for it. A year ago, the political left set the agenda for change; Obama warned his opponents that it was he who had won the election, and the agenda was his to control. Nine months ago, the TEA parties gained momentum and started to say what change meant to them. Six months ago, the anti-war leftists found that they had been hood-winked; some of the first real change was when they decided that any Obama supported war must be a good war. Three months ago, Obamacare lost the support of the people, yet the democrats couldn't figure that out. Now, TEA supporters set the agenda for change, even while the old symbols of power (congress and the media) oppose it.

Last summer one of my democratic friends crowed that change was upon us. It was just too bad for the rest of us that the change we got was not the change we thought we were voting for. Or maybe he saw the writing on the wall, and was getting used to the idea of real change.

True power isn't political or military. America is in the midst of a peaceful revolution. Let's hope it stays peaceful when the politicians and media wake up.

Linguistics

When it comes to the spoken word, clarity is indispensable. You can’t give it out. Some might say indisposable. I looked it up – indisposable is not a word. So the longer you consider indisposable and indispensable, the more you miss how folks are trying to confuse you.

Let’s back up. By clarity, I mean the ease of someone else glomming on to what you say. Each of us has a limited number of neurons to process sounds into speech. Like some evil Star Trek computer that can be tricked into inaction by trying to divide by zero, brain power gets used up by trying to puzzle out mush-mouth speech. Too few neurons will be left for thinking about the meaning of the words.

One of the reasons American English is becoming the Esperanto of our day is because everybody can understand those words we yell at them. Despite their unappealing aesthetics, our hard, clipped consonants are easy to hear. Singers in English emphasize those consonants lest the words become lost in the music. There's little that Italian and French singers can do to make their words understandable, so songs in those languages (especially operatic arias!) are full of banal lyrics repeated twenty or thirty times until everybody gets them. In any language, an effective orator carefully chooses words that are easiest to hear, even if we have no idea what he's talking about - like hope and change.

Mandarin Chinese also is fairly easy on the ear. It emphasizes clear consonants. Some would say the sing-songy nature of the language detracts from its clarity. Maybe the Chinese people just don't want to sound like French opera. Regardless, the pitch in which a vowel is said actually makes a word more understandable. And hilarity ensues when two different words sound the same except for the pitch in which you say them.

Not all dialects of English preserve the good points of the language. Some British speakers, especially the ones hired by National Public Radio to read the news to Americans, favor the soft consonants of French. Not every Brit is that way, mostly the Scots and Eliza Doolittle. And so before going on the air, each news reader attends a special class to reverse the effects of Henry Higginism. I go to sleep listening to the BBC news on NPR - by the time I figure out what they say, my brain has no neurons left to mull over the thoughts that would have kept me awake.

People in the American region of New England reduce all their vowels to a single "ah" sound. That makes it difficult for the rest of us to distinguish their words. New Englanders often claim that we understanding-impaired Americans are a little dim. We say they don't know how to enunciate. Their obstreperousness is the problem. About the time we figure out their words, they've given up on us and have moved on to a new topic. But when they reciprocate by not understanding us, we speak slowly and enunciate carefully and yell a lot. Just thinking about New Englanders causes me to use ill-defined words in choppy sentences.

What I'm saying is obvious, yet is contrary to common sense. The obvious part is that when we speak plainly and loudly, most folks will understand our meaning. But it's not very common sensical to the few of us who have been kicked in the groin after asking for a glass of water - we think that careful enunciation may not really matter. And if kicked by a New Englander, we may believe that enunciation is counter-productive. Perhaps we best understand the sounds that we are used to. Maybe. All I can tell you is this: after spending a week in Boston, I could make out every word that was spoken. I just wish that I had understood what they were saying.

Ideologues Attack Tea Parties

Some tea party bigwigs took another step towards integrating with the Republican party. They've got a new logo that expresses their support of the constitution of the USA. Well, who doesn't back the constitution? Every politician of any position on the liberal-conservative spectrum pays lip-service in support of the constitution. They just want to interpret it in ways that buttress their own agendas. Please tell me, self-annoited tea party aristocracy, shall we blindly endorse the constitution as defined by the courts? Or could there be some gnostic way to interpret what the founding fathers really meant?

Here's an idea - let's not define a tea party method of reading the constitution. Those viewpoints have little to do with the real problems facing us. Fire the leaders who spout worn-out republican platitudes. Tea parties will work best when we are politically independent. It is an American position to recognize that our country is overtaxed. We will only succeed in changing things when we join with reasonable people of both major political parties.

Of Pharisees and INOs

My hero, Pogo (well - Walt Kelly), said that there is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us, that it's hard to tell who should be reforming who. He must have been referring to the INO debate. INO - In Name Only; as in RINO (Republican in Name Only) and DINO (Democrat in Name Only). According to the hyper-partisans, INOs aren't good enough to be pure party members. The partisans put up with INOs for the little bits of good (like money) they can provide. So what is the social phenolphthalein we can pour on people to see if they are bright red or deep blue?

One answer is the Pharisee test. In the earthly days of Christ Jesus, the Pharisees were a political party in Jerusalem. Mostly they were good people who tried to keep the Law of Moses. But they had one big problem - they thought that keeping the Law meant obeying every nit-picking regulation that some other Pharisee said was a law. By doing so they failed to follow the true Law. To apply the Pharisee test to a modern party member, ask what it takes to be a faithful and pure party member. If he gives you a string of requirements, he's probably a pharisaically pure party hack. But if he has only a few important principles, he may be an INO.

Does this sound like I favor INOs? Yabetcha!

Motes, Logs and Pogo

President Obama has commented repeatedly about the level of the deficit under President Bush. Bush's deficits scare me, and for good reason - our children may drown in America's debts. Shoot, we may all drown. To misquote Pogo, "We have seen the enemy, and it is our profligacy." Obama tries to remind us that we can turn away from our errors. But one has to wonder if that is good for the country and good for Obama:

• Country - yes. A little fear helps us heed the lessons of the past. Maybe that will spur us on to eliminate deficits and pay down the public debt.

• Obama - no. Nothing good can come for the president by reminding us that the deficit almost tripled during his first year as president.

Here's some free advice for the president straight from the Holy Bible: quit talking about the mote in Bush's eye while the log remains in your own.

President Obama says he'd rather be a good one term president than a poor two termer. A good president would pay down the national debt and tell the country what it needs to hear. A poor president would be recklessly wasteful of the country's resources while spouting hypocrisy. I'm glad he wants to be good. But we have seen the president's enemy, and it is Obama.

Nashville Tea Party Convention

No, I didn't go. Can't afford things like that. 'Bout all I can afford is to sit around making snarky comments. So here goes.

The sloganizing at the convention annoyed me. All that chanting of "liberal this" and "socialist that". I had higher hopes for the tea parties. Back in the day at the start of the movement (last spring), the reason to attend a tea party event was to join with other people who think government is too big and we are taxed more than enough. But the politicians played their games. Republicans despised the tea parties for being like RINOs (Republicans in name only) and Democrats scorned them for being closet Republicans. Both resented the perception that the tea parties took some of the best aspects from both sides of American politics.

The Dems and the GOPs fought it out on who was going to define the tea parties - and they both won. The Nashville convention had all the charm of a Republican country club extravaganza. Both political factions should be proud that they have marginalized the tea parties. And the good people at the convention will likely be horrified when they wake up and realize that they are now seen as Republican lite - merely bit players in the same old partisan games.

Obama as the Prodigal Son

Tweets explained. "Obama is the American prodigal son. He wasted a presidential inheritance on dreams of collectivism. Now he longs for pods the swine reject."

If you are not Bible literate, this tweet may make no sense at all. Prodigal means profligate or money waster. Jesus' prodigal son did insult his father and leave home, but the thing that made him prodigal was that he wasted all his money on poor decisions.

Obama received a certain amount of political capital by being elected president. Every new president does. And every president spends this capital on a tough sell. Most presidents have something to show for it. Obama - not so much. He spent his capital on health care, and now he has squat.

After losing his fortune, the prodigal son in the Bible story was hungry and had nothing to eat. He was reduced to envying the swine who ate dry pods. So also Obama. The symptoms are that he heaps spite on the opposition party, then blames them for not working with him. Obama apparently envies the Republicans and stumbles around looking for a way to denigrate them. That's another bad decision.

Finally, the Hebrew prodigal son wises up and returns to his father's house. His father opens his arms and wealth to the son. It's yet to be seen whether the country will open our hearts to Obama. And it is yet to be seen whether Obama will wise up (I hope so.) One thing is for sure, the older brother of the Bible story detests his brother; little doubt the Republicans will make the same mistake.