The Bering Strait Bridge

Very strange and totally unexpected, this. That my political will should find its voice again and finally slough off the dead weight of the malignant illogical who have dominated discourse for so long: hate-mongers, and shrill, every last one of them, fostering straw argument upon intended lack of clarity, and through pure laziness and underestimation of audience, linking unlike to unlike, as if the rejection of one entailed the necessary rejection of the other.

Parse *that*, my friends.

Friggin' obfuscators. But, you know, at worst, obfuscators waste my time.

Piety in rhetoric is the real cagey beast -- is, in fact, most often a downright out-and-out shitty rhetorical device.

I challenge you. Think of a person of your acquaintance whom you'd qualify as "pious." Now, are you having warm fuzzies or are you feeling a wee bit disgusted -- either with said person or with your own hypocritical self?

I'm just sayin'.

To keep myself in check, for you must concur that I'm on the edge of discourtesy, I had recourse to A List Of Fallacious Arguments -- from which the following is a citation:

In the context of debates, a Pious Fraud could be a lie. More generally, it would be when an emotionally committed speaker makes an assertion that is shaded, distorted or even fabricated. For example, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was accused in 2003 of "sexing up" his evidence that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Around the year 400, Saint Augustine wrote two books, De Mendacio[On Lying] and Contra Medacium[Against Lying], on this subject. He argued that the sin isn't in what you do (or don't) say, but in your intent to leave a false impression.

As much as I would love to talk, discuss, and debate salient points of socialism/Socialism or Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian sensibilities -- for I would be in a position to learn a lot, and want to, too -- I can no longer stomach the clinging, dangling, desperate dingleberries posited by some right wing journalists and bloggers -- those cozy little pearls of turds in the middle of what might have been an honest communication...

William Bradley wrote a piece today for HuffingtonPost.com, making reference to the recent reign of bombasters and generally blowing off steam. All citizens of good political will need to get this crap out of their collective and individual systems. Open the window and scream that you aren't going to take it anymore.

CNBC can see Russia from its house. It's just one example of a fin de siècle
folly, albeit one of the most recent and dramatic.

This is clearly end-of-an-era time, but some of the old era standbys haven't gotten the memo. Or been able to read it.

Jon Stewart's already legendary takedown of the CNBC financial "news" network was an extraordinary rebuke of a fitting stand-in for a clueless money culture.

It should have been obvious the era was ended with the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, not to mention the sweeping victory of Barack Obama. But the old attitudes -- which represent a sort of intellectual entropy -- have been very persistent.

He goes on to mention Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Katon Dawson, even Joe the Plumber.

I hope he feels better.
I am beginning to.
It doesn't hurt to state the obvious; Certainly, I need iteration upon iteration when asked to absorb what I don't like (or almost anything, actually).

Constant repetition of lies has been this nation's steady diet for eight years. Its cunning simplicity is genius. Witness the Dick Cheney Show on CNN yesterday.

Cheney, against all odds and normal perceptions of reality, still insists that things went great for the past eight years. He and George W. Bush bear no responsibility for the near-meltdown of the financial system. Their policies of torture kept America safe and strong, notwithstanding the general unreliability
of torture as a means of interrogation, or the international opprobrium it brought America. Oh, and the Iraq adventure, which has kept the Americanmilitary pinned down for six years and empowered Iran? A smashing success.

He sees Russia from his house, too.