Pearls of expression.

As Biden doubles down on the bad (yet deliberately distracting) hand of what was hoped to be an optically humanitarian policy of vaccine mandates, the masses are getting restless as well as fired…

Solution?

Criminalize the non-consenting as anti-vaccine, anti-science or anti-American “flat-earthers” while denying open discussion on such otherwise relevant topics as basic math, constitutional law, calm science or individual rights…

Meanwhile, those who won’t tow [sic] Biden’s increasingly incoherent mandate (or Don Lemmon’s always coherent ignorance) are losing jobs and/or [being] forced to prioritize (in a Jeffersonian way) individual liberty over financial security.[1]

Choice stuff. You can cut the censorship with a knife these days. These days of Orwellian propaganda and MSM utter [garbage].

As an aside, to not a few people the proper spelling of “lose” has become one of the great mysteries of our time. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon it seems to me but maybe it’s just because skulking around the internet, as I do, exposes me to a great deal of writing that has not seen the eyeballs of any editor. Error correction is also the source of much whoa, it’s true, but I’m not sure that explains the prevalence of this particular mistake.

Coming up on the outside is the difficult task of spelling “toe” as in “toe the line.” Anyone who’s ever seen a formation of troops must surely be able to guess that the phrase connotes obedience to authority, conformance to a standard and not towing anything. But no.[2]

There’re the perennial stinkers of lie/lay, there/their/they’re, criterion/criteria, phenomenon/phenomena, infer/imply, and the dreaded “there’s” plus plural noun of your choice, the incorrect use of which words alerts me to the possibility that the conclusion that the writer or speaker has reached has been arrived at by a process involving but casual observation, little research, limited reflection, and intermittent attention to the rules of logic.

Get the small stuff wrong and I should trust your larger point? is my basic thought here.

Notes
[1] “Distraction As Policy While Our Economic Rome Burns.” By Matthew Piepenberg, ZeroHedge, 10/16/21.
[1] If I’m going to confer the honor of a “Pearls of Expression” designation on our excellent author here I’m just going to decree that I know he knows better.

6 comments

Skip to comment form

    • Divemedic on October 17, 2021 at 2:17 PM

    Here are mine: its/it’s, your/you’re, cache versus cachet, lose/loose

    Sigh. The list goes on.

  1. LMAO. What with so many grim tidings greeting us 24/7, I recommend looking at it all as comic relief. After all, you provided so much of it today, quite different from your usual self-well-edited entries. Whoa indeed to your usual seriousness. 🙂  Too loose to lose.

  2. Divemedic – and how. One thing I’ve always enjoyed about my family has been our love of the English language and its endless subtleties.  One sister was a particular fan of Jay Leno’s “Headlines.” As was I.

    Derbyshire at Taki’s Mag now (15th) has a funny example of a letter of recommendation written for a certain doctor: “You will be lucky to get this man to work for you.”

    One lady I knew once referred to someone’s being a “notary republic.”

    Are you a real dive medic?  I used to dive in my youth and knew a fellow who went down one day only to draw his finger across his throat to signal a problem to his buddy. He died and it mystified me why he didn’t just ascend with what air he had in his lungs.

     

      • Divemedic on October 18, 2021 at 4:31 AM

      Yes, I am a Master Diver and a Paramedic.

  3. Pascal, glad it gave you a laugh. You have to laugh at it all. We’re not the first to think we’re headed for hell in a hand basket. But the guy who came up with “O tempora. O mores.” for sure didn’t foresee the absurdities of our current culture. Normally I think “there’s nothing new under the sun” but I rather think we’ve broken the mold with our relentless, sustained stampede toward civilizational suicide.

  4. “There’s no time too loose!” — the maxim of the libertine.

    “There’s no time, Toulouse!” — What a “The End Is Near” prophet proclaimed to a town in France.

    “There’s no “Time Two,” Louis!” — From an argument over the music of Dave Brubeck.

Comments have been disabled.