Saturday, March 28, 2020
The best thing
Random followup to the magnificent Harding speech.
I'd never heard or read this speech before, but we heard and read ABOUT it in high school "history" class. As with all good things in "science" and "history", we were not allowed to look at the original source. We were INSTRUCTED that Harding was a corrupt numbskull. We were INSTRUCTED that the only notable thing about his Normalcy campaign was the "fact" that Normalcy was not a word**.
Ha ha ha, we learned. What a dummy. He couldn't even speak English.
You nasty fakers, Harding could outspeak and outwrite anyone. We were NOT ALLOWED to know it.
The best thing about the Internet is that we are now able to READ and HEAR original sources on every possible subject. We don't have to drive hundreds of miles to a specific museum or library to find them. When the media or authorities tell us ABOUT some old or unorthodox writing or concept, we don't have to take their evil word for it.
= = = = =
** In a technical sense, by their grammarrhoid standards, they were partly right. Using another web service that would have been impossible in real libraries:
Normal was strictly math jargon until 1900 when Freudians brought it into common usage. Normality started a bit later, and it's pretty clear that Harding coined Normalcy as an alternative to Normality. So Normalcy wasn't a word until Harding said it, but it was a word AFTER he said it. A word in common usage is a word, no matter how many grammarrhoids claim it isn't.
Observing that the Ngram thingie chose red for Normalcy and blue for Normality made me curious. Is there a political and cultural difference? An informal ngram on this blog's archive answered the question clearly. Normalcy appears 16 times and Normality appears 4 times. All uses of Normalcy are in my own writing, all uses of Normality are in hrefs from NPR or Zerohedge. "Blue" types consciously reject Normalcy because it's associated with the corrupt dummy.... or more precisely with the non-globalist. "Red" types use Normalcy because it's shorter and easier to pronounce.
Normal was strictly math jargon until 1900 when Freudians brought it into common usage. Normality started a bit later, and it's pretty clear that Harding coined Normalcy as an alternative to Normality. So Normalcy wasn't a word until Harding said it, but it was a word AFTER he said it. A word in common usage is a word, no matter how many grammarrhoids claim it isn't.
Observing that the Ngram thingie chose red for Normalcy and blue for Normality made me curious. Is there a political and cultural difference? An informal ngram on this blog's archive answered the question clearly. Normalcy appears 16 times and Normality appears 4 times. All uses of Normalcy are in my own writing, all uses of Normality are in hrefs from NPR or Zerohedge. "Blue" types consciously reject Normalcy because it's associated with the corrupt dummy.... or more precisely with the non-globalist. "Red" types use Normalcy because it's shorter and easier to pronounce.Labels: Equipoise, Language update
¶ 12:53 PM
