"Ah, but the strawberries, that's, that's where I had them, they laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the ward room icebox did exist..."
"Ah, but the strawberries, that's, that's where I had them, they laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the ward room icebox did exist..."
A great reference! though what came to mind for me was Alice in Wonderland; the sort of unsanity that only makes sense from a perspective entirely detached from normal logic. In particular, the American right and Trump himself make me think of Humpty Dumpty, who spends his time arguing with Alice over semantics. A particular quote sticks out to me:
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be masterтАФthat's all."
In essence, if you control language, you control everything. And Trump grasps this, though he's entirely lost his marbles at this point. His sycophants like Carlson understand it well however. But Trump still manages to do this, if only because he has managed to turn language into something that means whatever he wants it to mean, and furthermore, manages to drag us along to deal with his nonsense.
I've been quoting this myself more and more in recent years.
Alice is one of the great works of deep satire in the English language, right up there with Huck Finn and Jonathan Swift. Except possibly many times more subtle. I re-read the two books at least once a year. Each time they are newer and more relevant than the time before.
When you want to find an apposite quote from a text in the base canon of our culture, you can almost always find what you need by turning to Shakespeare -- or to Alice.
A mind enlivened and enriched by Alice is a mind with its guard up against falling prey to deceptive cant and malicious hypocrisy.
"The windmills,"
"Ah, but the strawberries, that's, that's where I had them, they laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the ward room icebox did exist..."
"The first thing you've got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots."
A great reference! though what came to mind for me was Alice in Wonderland; the sort of unsanity that only makes sense from a perspective entirely detached from normal logic. In particular, the American right and Trump himself make me think of Humpty Dumpty, who spends his time arguing with Alice over semantics. A particular quote sticks out to me:
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be masterтАФthat's all."
In essence, if you control language, you control everything. And Trump grasps this, though he's entirely lost his marbles at this point. His sycophants like Carlson understand it well however. But Trump still manages to do this, if only because he has managed to turn language into something that means whatever he wants it to mean, and furthermore, manages to drag us along to deal with his nonsense.
I've been quoting this myself more and more in recent years.
Alice is one of the great works of deep satire in the English language, right up there with Huck Finn and Jonathan Swift. Except possibly many times more subtle. I re-read the two books at least once a year. Each time they are newer and more relevant than the time before.
When you want to find an apposite quote from a text in the base canon of our culture, you can almost always find what you need by turning to Shakespeare -- or to Alice.
A mind enlivened and enriched by Alice is a mind with its guard up against falling prey to deceptive cant and malicious hypocrisy.