Day: June 10, 2020

One-Liner Wednesday — Violence and Incompetence

Fandango31 Comments

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“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

Isaac Asimov, American science fiction and popular science writer

This quote comes from a character, Salvor Hardin, in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation saga. Hardin uses this saying to mean that violence is such a useless option that only the incompetent would use it, and even they would only use it as their last resort. He feels that the incompetent are eventually forced to resort to violence because a better solution remains outside of their grasp.

Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, in reference to the protests in cities across the country after the brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, called America’s streets the “battle space” and called upon governors to “dominate the battle space.”

Donald Trump and his Attorney General, Bill Barr, ordered police to use tear gas and flash bang grenades on peaceful demonstrators in order to clear the streets of Washington, DC (aka the battle space) near the White House so that Trump could walk across those streets for a brief photo op of him standing in front of a church awkwardly holding up a Bible.

Trump has deployed members of the active-duty military to “quell the protests” and threatened to attack the demonstrators with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.” He tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Issac Asimov died in 1992, but he was uncannily prescient with that quote about violence and incompetence, given what has been happening in America’s “battle spaces” over the past few weeks under the “leadership” of America’s most incompetent president.

Written for today’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt from Linda G.Hill.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #73

Fandango28 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

You’ve heard of extra sensory perception, right? You know, ESP. There are three forms of ESP.

  1. Telepathy — the transfer of information from one person to another without the use of sensory communication.
  2. Clairvoyance — the acquisition of information about places, people, or events without the use of normal sensory contact.
  3. Precognition — the acquisition of information about a future event that could not be anticipated through any known processes of inference.

So my question to you this week is:

Do you believe there is such a thing as ESP? Or is what some suggest to be ESP merely that there are people who are highly intuitive and are very good at reading people’s very subtle signals?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

FOWC with Fandango — Twist

Fandango23 Comments

FOWCWelcome to June 10, 2020 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “twist.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.