#1linerWeds

One-Liner Wednesday — Deep Thoughts

Fandango24 Comments

BE3EFD51-64C3-4B3F-9D91-833E75A99FB0

“It is better to speak profoundly to just one than to blather at a world of idiots.”

Suze who blogs at “Suziland Too or Obsolete Childhood”

Yesterday I wrote a post in which I bemoaned how my blog stats were recently in a nosedive. I admit that I was being a bit whiny, and that’s when Suze put me in my place. She commented, “It is better to speak profoundly to just one than to blather at a world of idiots…yes, you can quote me.”

To which, knowing that today, Wednesday, is Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt, I replied, “I just may do that. Stay tuned!”

I thought that Suze’s highly inspirational and motivational one-liner perfectly fit the bill for this prompt. I believe that Suze was telling me that

  1. I shouldn’t give quantity a higher priority than quality,
  2. most of my posts are nothing more than me blathering on about nothing,
  3. most of the people who read my blog are idiots,
  4. all of the above, or
  5. none of the above.

In any event, I thought Suze’s comment was, in and of itself, profound. Unfortunately, she has now set the bar quite high for me because I feel as though it’s incumbent upon me to come up with something profound to post about.

Omigod, where is Jack Handey when I need him?3A9F642F-96FA-47D1-8E56-1EB1EA37F669

 

One-Liner Wednesday — Truthiness

Fandango12 Comments

“May you only hear from others what you’ve already been telling yourself.”

President Donald J. Trump

Okay, I lied. As much as that sounds like something Donald Trump would say, he didn’t say it. The quote came from Jordan Klepper, comedian and host of The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, a show on Comedy Central, which, sadly, was just canceled.39BC413A-F482-495E-B48B-8703064A11C8But doesn’t wanting to hear only what he already believes sound like Trump’s modus operandi? He labels anything he doesn’t like as “fake news” and calls those journalists who don’t write positive things about him “enemies of the American people.”

Unfortunately, only wanting to hear from others what you’ve already been telling yourself is not unique to Donald Trump and Jordan Klepper. And it doesn’t make much of a difference if you’re on the left or the right. We are such a divided nation right now that most of us tend to read, watch, or listen to whatever it is that reinforces our own partisan positions.

I refuse to watch Fox News. I only rarely watch CNN. I get most of my news from MSNBC. Why? Because they tell me what I am more receptive to hearing and more likely to accept.

About a dozen or so years ago, Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness.” Truthiness is the quality of seeming to be true based upon one’s intuition, opinion, or perception without regard to logic or factual evidence. It’s when someone feels, believes, or wishes that something is true even when it is not supported by the facts.

Truthiness is very similar to a concept espoused by comedian Bill Maher when he says, “I don’t know it for a fact…I just know it’s true.”

So fess up, people. How many of you really only want to hear from others what you’ve already been telling yourself?

Come on. It’s America’s birthday. Stand and be counted!

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

One-Liner Wednesday — Brave New World

Fandango11 Comments

Aldous Huxley smoking, circa 1946

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach us.”

English writer, novelist, philosopher,
Aldous Huxley

On the same day (and in the same decision) that the conservative majority of the Supreme Court justices upheld President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban, the High Court finally overturned the infamous 1944 Supreme Court decision blessing internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

For the first time in its history, the Supreme Court admitted that it made a very bad decision. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the Court’s decision in Korematsu v. United States, in which the government argued that the internment of Japanese-American citizens was necessary to protect national security, was “gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and — to be clear — has no place in law under the Constitution.”

It turns out that the government’s argument about the risk that Japanese-Americans were to America’s national security was bogus and had no basis in fact.

Now flash forward to 2018 and the 5-4 ruling on Trump’s travel ban along partisan lines. The Court held that Trump has broad powers under immigration law to act to protect national security. That national security argument put forth by the government in the travel ban case is also bogus and had no basis in fact.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared the majority opinion on Trump’s travel ban to the “gravely wrong” decision in Korematsu v. United States. She wrote, “By blindly accepting the Government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security, the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one ‘gravely wrong’ decision with another.”

Botton line, the Supreme Court justices who ruled yesterday to uphold Trump’s Muslim travel ban used the same bogus national security claim that the justices used to permit the imprisonment of Japanese-American citizens 74 years earlier.

So Huxley was right on target. The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Trump’s travel ban is yet another example of not learning very much from the lessons of history.

Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt. Sorry for such a serious post, but I’m just not feeling the humor much in recent days.

One-Liner Wednesday — Laughter

Fandango11 Comments

23F69370-F48F-4AFE-9C37-D088438B5662

“Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.”

Humorist Arnold H. Glasow

I need a larger dose of laughter in order to combat the side effects of the Trump era.

Written for today’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt from Lynda G. Hill. Image credit: JudaM @ Pixabay.

One-Liner Wednesday — The Way You Write

Fandango22 Comments

img_1494

“Don’t write so that you can be understood, write so that you can’t be misunderstood.”

President William Howard Taft

Actually, I try to do both. I write so that the message my words are attempting to convey can be easily understood. And in doing so, I hope that I won’t be misunderstood.

You see, I’m a rather ordinary writer and my writings are not very complex. I don’t have too many hidden meanings or twists and turns. So it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist to get my drift. Know what I mean?

I am a logical, rational thinker and I try to write that way as well. That is one of the reasons I am not a big fan of poetry. Poetry hurts my head. I am intimidated by most poems (outside of limericks). Not only do I not understand poetry, I often misunderstand what the poet is trying to say.

My most dreaded moments in high school literature classes were when the teacher would call on me and ask, “Fandango, what do you think the poet was telling us?” My responses to such questions often turned into word salad. I would hope that, when strung together, my words would sound insightful. They never did.

Anyway, I’ve meandered way off topic and my one-liner post has gone on for way too long.

Happy Wednesday.

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