■ Yesterday's Proverb was darned grim, but Proverbs
19:19 is wise:
19 A hot-tempered person must pay the penalty;
rescue them, and you will have to do it again.
And haven't we seen this scenario play out in countless TV shows and
movies? Or in real life. See, for example
The
Dark Side of Forgiveness: The Tendency to Forgive Predicts
Continued Psychological and Physical Aggression in Marriage.
Or, as an exercise, finish the saying "Fool me once…"
■ At Reason, Sheldon Richman opines: Government
Protection From Russian Misinformation Would Be 'Cure' Far Worse
Than Disease.
Is American society so fragile that a few "divisive" ads, news
stories, commentaries, and even lies—perhaps emanating from
Russia—threaten
to plunge it into darkness? The establishment's narrative on
"Russian election meddling" would have you believe that. On its
face, the alarm over this is so ridiculous that I doubt any of the
fearmongers really believe their own words. They're attempting to
provoke public hysteria for political, geopolitical, and financial
gain. There's no more to it than that.
A lie doesn't get any truer if you saw it from 100% pure
domestic sources.
■ At the (probably paywalled) WSJ, Holman W. Jenkins writes
on the same issue: Social
Media Is the Trump of Industries. I found these reality-based
paragaphs telling:
Twitter,
Google and
Facebook's,
business model of letting the public have its diverse, antic,
usually misinformed and often dishonest say about public matters
is something new under the sun—and like all things that exist
under the sun, can be used for good or ill.
At the same time, only 85-year-old senators are wowed by a report that 135 million Americans were exposed to Russia-sponsored Facebook ads and messages over a 32-month period. Facebook delivers 517 million ad impressions per hour. User posts, messages, photos and shared links pile up at a rate of three million-plus per minute. The average American, from all sources, is estimated to see upward of 5,000 ads or branding messages each day.
This
Washington
Examiner article provides some numbers to compare:
the famous Satan vs. Jesus ad that
Democrats pointed to with horror got
"71 impressions and garnered 14 clicks"; the "Buff Bernie" coloring
book ad "had 900 impressions and garnered 54 clicks".
■ @kevinNR encourages us
to Bring
Back Political Parties. He manages two cheers for the
probably-illegal mainstream Democrat maneuverings during the 2016
primary season to tip things Hillary's way. Because:
The Democratic party had an excellent reason to exclude Senator Bernie Sanders, the same reason the Republican party had to exclude Donald Trump: He wasn’t a member of the party. Sanders is a socialist independent who briefly joined the Democratic party for reasons of pure political utility. Donald Trump is a . . . whatever in tarnation he is . . . who joined the Republican party for the same reason. Trump, a sometime Democrat and Hillary Clinton donor who had been aligned with the politically insignificant Reform party, knew that he needed the GOP’s machinery to win the presidency, or to even get close, and Sanders knew that his influence and power would grow from running in the Democratic primary rather than as a U.S. affiliate of the Monster Raving Loony party. (I miss Screaming Lord Sutch.) Sanders is no fool: His lakeside dachas aren’t going to pay for themselves, and there’s no money in third-party presidential campaigns — that’s just an expensive hobby. Ask David Koch.
I am a fan of neither party, but Kevin makes a pretty good argument
that the two-party system is an extra-Constitutional "secret sauce"
that makes our polity more stable.
■ And our Google LFOD alert rang for an LTE
in the Concord Monitor from Contoocook's Judith Kumin.
In all the debate about the origins of the “Live free or die”
motto, I am surprised not to have heard the following: Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, the Haitian independence leader who was born a slave, is
said to have used the slogan to galvanize his troops in the revolt
against France.
On Jan. 1, 1804, when Dessalines proclaimed Haiti’s independence, he
said “Jurons de combattre jusqu’au dernier soupir pour l’indépendance de
notre Pays!” (“Let us pledge to fight to the last breath for the
independence of our country”). The crowd responded, “Vivre libre ou
mourir” (“Live free or die”). Whereupon Dessalines declared himself
governor-general for life and shortly thereafter was crowned emperor for
life by the Haitian army.
Dessalines reigned for just two years before being hacked to death in
November 1806 by opponents of his autocratic rule.
Food for thought.
Judith isn't telling us anything we can't find at
Wikipedia.
Is it embarrassing that our motto may have been—gasp—of French origin?
And (perhaps worse) uttered by an "independence leader" on his way
to
mass
murder and
tyranny?
Zut alors!