What’s the difference between the free lunches offered by POTUS-Elect and by POTUS’es-also-ran?
Author: Kilgore Forelle
Words Poorly Used #73: Avoiding War
There were a post and a thread of discussion on Facebook today covering the POTUS-Elect’s nomination for Secretary of State. Someone ventured that we (the USA, I suppose) would “avoid war with Russia.” One, we never avoid war, it is the health of the state (per Randolph Bourne), and it is the wealth of the oligarchy. And it is the joystick of the powerful. Two, haven’t every POTUS and SOS always avoided war with Russia, or did I miss an episode? Give a little, take a little, but don’t break up the game.
Words Poorly Used – Another Devil’s Dictionary #1
I particularly want to say thanks to my Writers Group friends who sent links that brought about quite a bit of thought in the Forelle cranial vault. Emerging is an homage to Ambrose Bierce, the author of The Devil’s Dictionary.
Words Poorly Used #72: Oligarchy
I got in trouble last month for using the term “oligarchy” in, admittedly, a pejorative sense. Here’s what I wrote on Facebook: “No matter how one votes tomorrow, the winner will be oligarchy A or oligarchy B (where A = B).” Very good friends called me to task for this logic fallacy, justifiably so since I had committed several logic fallacies, the worst of which was the fallacy of begging the question. My premises assumed their own truth without establishment. Is the USA really run by an oligarchy?
Words Poorly Used #71 — Majority
The two party system has grown from the fallacy of conflation. Each party annexes wedge issues, then does nothing with them other than to form majorities within the herds of people. Neither is a true majority, but a majority of a majority and/or a majority of a minority. The former is rare, the latter is…
Words Poorly Used #70 — Market
The market is chaotic, therefore adaptive, responsive, communicative, evolving, instantaneously. The state is the attempt to freeze change, therefore inimical to markets. The claim is that markets can be stabilized by central planners. The market, however, is as a river flowing to the sea. The staying power of markets is the ability to survive change,…
Divide and Bloat
Nobody asked but … The one set of law, civil, is too simple to support an oligarchy. It can operate virtually without legislation. Criminal law demands infrastructure (which provides institutional and inertial weight). Its legislation is of infinite extension, like Mandelbrot patterns. Corporate law is an attempt to overcome the simplicity of civil law. Kilgore…
Burn-in
Nobody asked but … Burn-out is a well-known problem. It happens when reason is overheated by passion, but further when that ardor generates friction. Like a meteor entering an atmosphere, our enthusiasm begins to consume itself. There is a cost, paid in self-destruction, when one meets ignorance and apathy on every path, anger and aggression…
Small Samples
I have begun reading Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. It’s a bit of a rocky start. His premise is that we are, as a species, becoming less violent. He offers the idea that out of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, the murder rate was 25%. The scam here is that if you…
Headlines II
Nobody asked but . . . Now here is a reasonable headline for the instant case discussed previously, “Ohio Supreme Court rules on police officer accused of having sex with a minor.” The headline and a reasonably well-written account of the actual case appear here. The crux is that prosecutors, who choose to proceed under…