If there’s a word (hyphenated forms allowed) that best describes my political bent, it might be anti-strident. The Oxford Dictionary gives one sense of strident as “presenting a point of view, especially a controversial one, in an excessively and unpleasantly forceful way.” To this I would add, the stridency I deplore is not simply harsh but ruthless: it cares only whether its arrow fells its target. Truth, kindness and responsibility are redundant.
Our national discourse — if one can call it that — slides further into stridency every week. And each side gives it a push. But don’t misinterpret this as an equivalency: the far-right, and much of the not-so-far-right, are unabashedly meaner-spirited to their “opponents” than are the far-left. One need only consider the right-wing’s long-standing demonization of Anita Hill, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi to see what modern witch hunts are like.
[Donald Trump’s witch hunt claims boil down to “You don’t like me and that’s why you think I did something wrong. Which I didn’t.” Give him credit for being two-thirds right.]
While neither end of the spectrum is much interested in winning listening contests, I feel compelled to point out the media-awfulness of North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race between Cheri Beasley, Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court, and Ted Budd, U.S. Congressman from a rural district tucked between Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Raleigh and Durham.
Budd’s supporters apparently feel that stretching the truth beyond recognition is justified, if it secures the really-important task of… upholding the truth? Here are two scenes from an anti-Beasley commercial that aired in our parts, courtesy of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by Senator Rick Scott of Florida:
Sequential scenes from National Republican Senatorial Committee anti-Beasley TV ad
The message that the NRSC hopes to deliver, in this misleading ad (which was pulled off the air) and others being shown in this area, is that Justice Beasley is not simply soft on crime but wants to help convicted child pornographers find new victims on social media.
That’s not good, right?
I find it sad that the appeal of one party amounts to Free To Be the Damn SOBs We Are and that this has become a winning formula. Anti-strident ain’t doing so hot these days.
My guess is that the five most popular photo subjects are sunsets, sunrises, dogs/cats, grandchildren and autumn leaves. This being the last day of October, I thought that a set of images devoted to Fall would be in order, which I have posted here at ART@CHC.
If there’s a word (hyphenated forms allowed) that best describes my political bent, it might be anti-strident. The Oxford Dictionary gives one sense of strident as “presenting a point of view, especially a controversial one, in an excessively and unpleasantly forceful way.” To this I would add, the stridency I deplore is not simply harsh but ruthless: it cares only whether its arrow fells its target. Truth, kindness and responsibility are redundant.
Our national discourse — if one can call it that — slides further into stridency every week. And each side gives it a push. But don’t misinterpret this as an equivalency: the far-right, and much of the not-so-far-right, are unabashedly meaner-spirited to their “opponents” than are the far-left. One need only consider the right-wing’s long-standing demonization of Anita Hill, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi to see what modern witch hunts are like.
[Donald Trump’s witch hunt claims boil down to “You don’t like me and that’s why you think I did something wrong. Which I didn’t.” Give him credit for being two-thirds right.]
While neither end of the spectrum is much interested in winning listening contests, I feel compelled to point out the media-awfulness of North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race between Cheri Beasley, Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court, and Ted Budd, U.S. Congressman from a rural district tucked between Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Raleigh and Durham.
Budd’s supporters apparently feel that stretching the truth beyond recognition is justified, if it secures the really-important task of… upholding the truth? Here are two scenes from an anti-Beasley commercial that aired in our parts, courtesy of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by Senator Rick Scott of Florida:
The message that the NRSC hopes to deliver, in this misleading ad (which was pulled off the air) and others being shown in this area, is that Justice Beasley is not simply soft on crime but wants to help convicted child pornographers find new victims on social media.
That’s not good, right?
I find it sad that the appeal of one party amounts to Free To Be the Damn SOBs We Are and that this has become a winning formula. Anti-strident ain’t doing so hot these days.