Words ( #BOTB & #IWSG )

         Words are the reason I write.  They also provide an effective way of communicating verbally.  Life is pretty well encompassed by words.  And then there is The Word...


The Insecure Writer's Support Group

Join us on the first Wednesday of each month in Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group--a forum of writers who gather to talk about writing and the writer's life. For a complete list of participants visit Alex's Blog. 


The co-hosts for the September 2 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, J Lenni Dorner, Deniz Bevan, Kim Lajevardi, Natalie Aguirre, and Louise - Fundy Blue!

September 2 question - If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner, who would it be and why?

        This year with all that has been going on I've been thinking a lot about George Orwell. I've only read a couple of his books--Animal Farm and 1984.  There might have been another book that was not fiction, but now I can't recall what is was.

          In a sort of fixation to find pandemic related movies, I tracked down a passable copy of 1984 on YouTube for my wife and I to watch.  Orwell's thinking was rather prescient of our times though he had to have been influenced by the wave of fascism that swept Europe in mid-twentieth century. The guy had not only a good grasp on the English language and a clever approach to words, but he was a literary critic as well.  Seems like someone who could be helpful getting my writing in shape.

          Wikipedia says the following:

In his essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946), Orwell wrote about the importance of precise and clear language, arguing that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation because it shapes the way we think. In that essay, Orwell provides six rules for writers:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

        If nothing else, this set of guidelines might be nice to print out to have posted in ones writing space. 

         And while I'm on the subject of words, how about three very different songs that were big releases from three different decades by three different artists competing in another...


Battle of the Bands

        Battle of the Bands is the blogging event started by Far Away Series and now hosted by StMcC Presents Battle of the Bands.   This event happens each month on the 15th and on some there is also a Battle on the 1st of the month.  My blog is one of those with a second Battle excepting over these summer months.   The premise is simple:  Listen to the songs presented below and then in the comments vote for your favorite and tell us why you liked it.  Then visit the links listed near the bottom of this post for more Battle action.



Bee Gees  "Words" (1968)






Neil Young    "Words"  (1972)




Missing Persons  "Words"   (1982)






Time to Vote!
        
           Put your preference into words.  Which song do you prefer?   Hopefully you have an opinion of some kind.  You don't have to know about music to have an opinion since it all comes down to your own personal taste.

        Please vote on your favorite by letting us know your choice in the comment section and tell us why you prefer the version you chose. Then after you've finished here, please visit the other blogs listed below who may or may not be participating this time around. And if you've put up your own BOTB contest let us know that as well so we can vote on yours.


Here are some other places where you might find BOTB posts:

 StMcC Presents Battle of the Bands

 ‘Storms and Stardust’ 

  'MIKE'S RAMBLINGS'

'Curious as a Cathy'

Sound of One Hand Typing

The Doglady's Den 

Angel's Bark  

Jingle, Jangle, Jungle 

Cherdo on the Flipside 

A I Love Music


Winner of this Battle Announced on Monday      September 7
       
        Lately I don't get many comments on my results posts, but I see the page hits showing up in my analytics so I guess people come back to at least check.  I will post my results, but likely have an economy with words.  Well, that is, unless I really have something that I want to say.


          Would you want a literary critic as a beta partner?  During the pandemic have you been drawn to more dystopian type films and books?   What is your favorite resource for finding interesting words?  

Time Travel, Revisionist History, and the Liberal Agenda

 "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."    1984 by George Orwell

A mosaic stitched image of Stone Mountain, Georgia, United States. Taken with a Canon 5D and 70-200mm f/2.8L at 200mm. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         When the CW television network debuted The Flash in 2014 I was enthusiastically on board from the first episode.  Since I had been a big fan of the first short-lived incarnation of The Flash in 1990 and sad to see its demise after only one season, I welcomed the reinvention of the superhuman speedster in a television era where special effects technology would be so much better.  The characters in the new show were well developed and fun and the story was not so far-fetched that I could reasonably buy into it.  But then, as will invariably happen with such genres, the writers of The Flash went into realms of the absurd that I could no longer accept.  I've stopped watching The Flash.

         Superhero stories like most science fiction and fantasy typically require healthy doses of willing suspension of disbelief and yet there can be limits to just about everything.  In The Flash I could accept the increasing array of super villains and even the alternate universe.  However for me the entire "flashpoint" concept--the changing of a timeline where the Flash entered a world where he had memories of another timeline that no one else knew with subsequent plots revolving around events connected with the new timeline with plot points interjected from the previous timeline--this concept annoyed me.   To me an ability for someone or some power to be able to change the past or create an alternate past has no logic and becomes downright silly.

        Oddly over the past few years we've seen a number of television shows and films with similar past-changing plot devices.  This past TV season alone I've gotten caught up in Frequency (derived from the 2000 film of the same name) and Timeless.  In both, the element of going back in time in order to change the timeline of history does bother me, but the stories have been so engaging and are so well written that I was able to forgive the illogical premise.   I also recall seeing other films and shows that used the device of changing time (Looper comes to mind) but I can't name any others at the moment, but I've been less forgiving of most of them.

        Time travel happens to be a favorite fictional genre of mine, but I have a hard time accepting the stories where someone goes back to change history.  To me that's like the story that has the "it was only a dream ending".  It's a gimmick that usually doesn't work well for me unless it's something on a less serious note such as the Back to the Future films.  If time gets changed to the point of a new outcome then was the outcome as remembered by the time traveler comparable to being only a dream?  And what does that traveler do with that memory and once returned to a future with a new outcome does that traveler have the memory of the new history line somehow implanted in their mind?

       For me there becomes an almost conspiratorial suspicion that this type of change plot line is a sort of liberal leftist agenda, whether it be purposeful or subconsciously devised, to become a part of the revisionist history movement that is becoming more popular in recent U.S. thinking in circles of academia and new progressive socialism.

        More often a tool of dictatorships and radical governmental change agents, the concept of historical revision is being seen in the movements to remove symbols such as statues of former heroes, primarily associated with the Confederacy, or the names of historical figures that offend certain people in new movements taken off of schools and other public buildings.  Many early explorers, founders, and shapers of the United States are now being looked upon with disfavor and gradually being eliminated from this nation's history or relegated to roles where they are deemed essentially unsavory.

       The agents of social change and certain academicians unable to physically go back in time in order to exert change seem to want to instead rewrite history books and change the landscape to no longer reflect an existence of anyone who engaged in anything that is now looked upon with an unfavorable eye.  The revolutionaries of the New Order of Thought would prefer future generations to understand a new and different history that is more reflective of the demographics of our time.

          Revising history is in the hands of educational institutions, politicians who exert the most power, social groups with the loudest voices, or whoever else becomes the victor in future struggles for dissemination of knowledge and lore.  The entertainment industry has been doing this for years as seen by theatrically released biopics and historical epics.

         More than once have I been disappointed after watching an interesting film and then, after being driven by curiosity to investigate further about the topic, to find that what I had seen was mostly a reinvention of actual history.  If in the future our textbooks and other references are changed to reflect the new history then who will know what the truth is.  Already we see a mythology of history appearing on the internet to the extent that we cannot always trust what we read.  This of course has always been the case to some extent in published materials, but with the internet it seems that revisionism could be getting worse.

         So George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were really jerks and not worth having a school named after them?   Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were part of an evil cause and should have their monuments removed from public view?   The United States legacy is really one of aggression and oppression?  Does the history of this country and the country as it now is deserve to be respected?  

         Oh, I'll still be watching the time travel shows and films.  I'll do my best to suspend disbelief as much as I can.   But nevertheless, this nagging fear will linger in my mind that maybe the trend to depict time travelers as being successful in changing history is really a nod of approval to the real history revisionists in our midst.  When society starts eradicating the truth, they might create an illusion that where we are now and where we are going in the future is wonderful, but they will also be building castles with foundations of sand.  

         What do you think of the revisionist history movements?    Do you like time travel stories in which history gets changed?   What is your favorite time travel television show or movie?  

          On Wednesday I'll be presenting a Battle of the Bands post which continues on the theme of today's post.  Two different songs from the seventies by two well known groups who went through numerous personnel changes over the years.  If you'd like to join the participants of Battle of the Bands to present your own musical battle then let me know so I can have your blog link added to the list.  It's great fun and we'd like to see some more musical tastes involved.   I'm sure you've got something you can add to the mix that will make things even more interesting that they are now.

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In Defense of Abortion and a Better Tomorrow

No woman can call herself  free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself  free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.   ---Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood)

“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.” 
 Margaret Sanger


       So enough of the President Trump nonsense.  It's time to discard the foolishness of conservative values and face the world of tomorrow--the brave new world of progressive thinking and moral reconstruction.  As I see women marching for their rights, I stand in solidarity with them.  The past is dead and needs to be forgotten.  The future belongs to those who are willing to accept radical change.  

        Planned parenting and abortion will pave the way to a better tomorrow.  In a tumultuous world that is overflowing with human detritus filled with hate, disagreement, and degradation; as well as an excess of population taking up space and consuming the resources of our beautiful Earth, perhaps it's time to reevaluate why we are all here and who should remain to make this world the Eden that it was meant to be.

         There are far too many people who wander aimlessly through their lives or the masses who seem to merely exist as little more than a burden upon those who support that vast majority of a basically useless populace.  The world and those who drive socioeconomic structure cannot continue without eventually reaching the critical mass of a world conflagration that destroys everything.  A new movement of Darwinian Purification must be undertaken in order to save humanity if humanity is indeed worth saving.  

           Abortion is the first logical step in the purification of the human race.  Currently, the primary arguments for abortion are to prevent unwanted children from coming into the world either because of economic reasons, health or well-being of the mother, some fetal problem that would lead to a defective birth product or mere inconvenience,  Perhaps we should begin to see most pregnancies as unwanted and unnecessary except for only in cases where the most perfect of the species would be brought into the world.   Selective breeding should be the aim of future generations.

           However, abortion should be the one small step to advance humankind into the better tomorrow.   Unneeded unproductive humans should also be eliminated.  Any persons who are in any state of dependency in order to survive should be allowed to die or be exterminated.   This would include all who are disabled, sub-level intelligence, subsisting on welfare, institutionalized, or any other non-contributory segments of society.   Vast areas of populations in the world should be eliminated by arranged warfare subsidized by dominant governments or other means of organized extermination.   Whatever peoples who are determined to be unnecessary masses of resource consumers detrimental to the environment and economic well-being should be brought into control.

          As this process of population control continues, a focus should be directed toward eliminating the elderly.  Upon reaching a determined age such as 35, each person should be monitored according to their health and ability of self-sustenance.  When health or economic conditions dictate, these persons should be culled from the population pool except in cases where there is a special factor of contributory reasons to keep them alive.  

           These measures suggested in the above treatise might seem like extreme radical ideas to some who are stuck in old ways of thinking, but this is not a time for outmoded belief systems.  Tearing down the establishment is a good thing for the future even though it may not seem to benefit many of us living now.  But, after all, the future does not belong to us.   It does not even necessarily belong to all of the unborn children yet to be conceived.  Babies have no say in the future either.  


"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
- George Orwell


"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." - Isaiah 5:20


         Do you think the world is overpopulated?   What do you think is the best answer for a better future on Earth?   Were you reading between the lines?

Let's Do It For Our Children!

George Orwell - Author series (Photo credit: New Chemical History)

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
— George Orwell, 1984

           Since we've reached the year 2013 is it time for the clocks to start striking thirteen?   Sure, things have been strange for several decades, but are they about to become even stranger?

            I'm not going to dissect the words spoken by the President of the United States on Wednesday January 16, 2013 or the nonsensical babble of his buddy Joe.  I think I may have incensed enough readers with a few of my more recent posts and I don't need to make things worse by pointing out the code words and diversionary tactics of this speech, but I do want to declaim the tactic of using "the children" to sway an argument or tug at heartstrings to get what we want.

           It's a purely emotional appeal that is used as a propaganda strategy.  Advertisers use it all the time.  No parent wants to deprive their children of their safety, health, comfort, or pleasure in life.  Nearly all parents want the absolute best for their children whenever possible.  They want their children to have the best toys, clothes, food, and experiences.  They rarely want their children to face deprivation or danger.  It's the normal way to be.

          The provision and well-being of our children affects every single one of us.  After all, we are all parents or know someone who is a parent.   Children are a part of our daily lives and most of us have the desire to save every child and give them the best opportunity for a quality life that our society can provide them.   We sacrifice much for our children and it is well that we should.

           However, doesn't using the children to propagandize and promote a political agenda seem a bit underhanded?   Is it right to use children as a device to manipulate emotions to overrule rational thinking to get what we want?

            I've been guilty of this myself.  In my nearly twenty years working in a business affiliated with fund-raising, we evoked the name of  "the children" to encourage people to dig deeper to give more money to whatever cause we were promoting at the time.  After all, "It's for the kids".  Make the audience feel bad.  Make them feel like they must do something even though that something may not necessarily be the right thing when put into place in the bigger picture.

            Showcasing the children is not always a bad thing.   "Jerry's Kids", the young cancer patients at St. Jude Hospital, or "Save the Children" seem to be fine causes over all that have a decent long range mission in mind that will benefit many children in the future.  If the intent is righteous then I don't mind.

             It's the politicizing of the children that annoys me the most.   I can deal with politicians giving their speeches before a background of union members, interest groups, or their own supporters.   It's a common cliche that's rather stupid looking in my opinion, but it's a great photo op for the politicos.  If a bunch of sheep-faced people want to stand behind some blithering politician, then more power to them.  Maybe they'll even get shown on television.

           But please, political agendists, don't use "the children" as props for your cause.  Creating a reactionary movement because of some sensational incident by invoking all children as the cause du jour is merely a cheap appeal to the feelings of those who are not thinking out the entire issue.  

            I love my kids and my grandkids and I want everyone's kids to be alright.  I also want to protect children from the dangers of the future just as much as the immediate dangers.  I want to protect the children against things we are talking about now, but I think it might be even more important to protect them from the things that many of us are not talking about.   We are holding the future in our hands--so what do we plan to do with it?

          Stop the agenda driven rhetoric that is driven by emotions.  See the absolute logic if you can.  Today it may be 23 executive actions, tomorrow it might be 33 executive orders, by the end of the year we might be looking at who knows how many legislative actions costing more money than is worth spending.   Thousands of words.   And we know the danger of words.   Words can be far more dangerous than weapons and have a far more lasting effect.

          Maybe I need to dig up my copy of George Orwell's 1984 and reread it.  

           

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