20 January 2017

Uncommon Commentary #529: UC #525 Follow-Up

I'm not a "Never Trumper", and certainly not one of the "Not My President" radical rabble--I regard the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency as being more comical than outrageous--, but I must say that the optimism that many "conservatives" (see the list of domanisms, below) are expressing about a Trump presidency is positively surreal, and demonstrates that hope springs eternal.
This doesn't mean that there's no reason to think that Trump's tenure will be an improvement over that of Emperor Nerobama. (How could any change from his misrule not be an improvement?) His Cabinet selections are largely astute, although I would not confirm Rex Tillerson, who, like Trump, is a businessman with no foreign-policy experience, to be Secretary of State. (choice that deserves comment is that of Rick Perry to supervise the Department of Energy.  Perry is a good man, but why should a Trump administration even include a Secretary of Energy?  Early in this decade, it was fairly widely recognized in the GOP that, if Washington's spending is ever to be brought under any degree of control, entire departments of the US government must be eliminated; the prime favorite for such elimination was the Department of Energy, and, if I recall correctly, one of those contestants for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination who said that he would abolish said department was Gov. Perry.  It seems that the law of physics is right: Energy can never be destroyed.)  Lawrence Kudlow will make an excellent economic advisor, though only if Trump, whose ego seems to be similar in size to Obama's, actually takes his advice. (I can't believe that Kudlow approves of Trump's potentially catastrophic opposition to free trade; protectionism is what caused the Great Depression.)
"America", however, does not need to be made "great" again, contrary to Trump's campaign slogan; it needs to be made worthy of blessing by God.  Elevating to our highest office a man who has been divorced twice (and whose present "wife" has posed in the nude for photographs), who publicly uses obscenities, who verbally assaults anyone who can be considered an obstacle to the achievement of his goals, who shares the outgoing chief-executive's support of same-sex marriage, who tells as many lies as does any career politician, whose attitude toward the opposite sex is almost as bad as Bill Clinton's, and who supported Dunghillary only four years before his first presidential bid, is no way to do that.

04 January 2017

Miscellaneous Musing #89

The only sounding of "Israel" that makes any sense in English is IZ-ray-el.  Unhappily, the name has long been sung as IZ-rye-el, and this cause of vexation seems to be gaining currency in speech as well.  (This mispronunciation presumably is the result of the fact that "Israel" has been transmitted to us through the classical tongues Greek and Latin, in the latter of which "a" and "e" together represented the sound that we use for the pronoun "I".)  I suggest that you start practicing the proper pronunciation now, because one thing that you don't want to do is rile me!