{"id":30343,"date":"2023-08-08T18:39:58","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T22:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=30343"},"modified":"2023-08-10T15:26:09","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T19:26:09","slug":"thoughts-large-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2023\/08\/thoughts-large-84\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts @ Large: 84"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\u00a7\u00a0 This travel rule originated with my spouse, but I concur:\u00a0 Any on-the-road restroom where you have to ask for the key will make you regret having asked for the key.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a7\u00a0 I was slicing radishes for our dinner salads when I made a tiny but generously-bleeding cut on the end of my thumb.\u00a0 Acknowledging my inherent lack of skill with knives, I said to my spouse, “If I had lived in the 1850s, I’d be dead by now.”\u00a0 (Hmm, ya think?)<\/p>\r\n

\u00a7\u00a0 How the shame of shame has changed.\u00a0 On August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment for conspiring to cover up a criminal act.\u00a0 Not half a century later, President Trump led a conspiracy to overturn the result of a legitimate election and then has the temerity to insist that his First Amendment rights demanded this of him.\u00a0 Yes, the First Amendment protects your right to be an asshole, Mr. Trump, so you be you.<\/p>\r\n

Interestingly, temerity<\/em> comes from the Latin tenebrio<\/em>, “person who operates in darkness<\/a>.”\u00a0 This must also be the Latin root word for trump<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a7\u00a0 If I may share this once-upon-a-time excerpt from Bill Moyer’s May 1976 PBS interview<\/a> with then-presidential-hopeful Jimmy Carter:<\/p>\r\n

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Q:<\/i> Governor, when you say, “I will never lie, I will never mislead you,” people have more doubts about your perception of reality than they do about your integrity.<\/p>\r\n

Governor Carter:<\/i> I understand.<\/p>\r\n

Q:<\/i> Other people are now saying, “Jimmy Carter is trying to put one over on us. But Jimmy Carter just doesn’t understand the way Washington … works.”<\/p>\r\n

Governor Carter:<\/i> I understand that. And I have thought about that a lot, because I’ve been in debate a lot, and one of the great surprises to me in the campaign was that when I made that simple statement 18 months ago \u2014 not in a fervent way, not even in a way to surprise anybody \u2014 that I, as a candidate and as a President, I’m not going to lie to you, that it became so controversial.<\/p>\r\n

Q:<\/i> Why were you surprised?<\/p>\r\n

Governor Carter:<\/i> I was surprised … it was a controversy. The first time I ever voted was in 1948.\u00a0 I voted for Truman.\u00a0 He’s still my favorite President.\u00a0 I don’t believe that Truman ever told me a lie or told the American people a lie. He may have, but I don’t believe he did.\u00a0 I think other Presidents since then have.\u00a0 I don’t see any reason for it.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

We have traveled light-years beyond Jimmy Carter’s spacetime.\u00a0 Spin is now the currency of the realm.\u00a0 Liars are embraced if they tell us what we want to hear.\u00a0 Truth?\u00a0 How quaint!<\/p>\r\n

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