A Word A Day

Many of you may already be aware that Wordsmith sends out a “word a day” email so we can all get a little smarter, or at least more eloquent. I could not resist passing on today’s word and “thought for the day” because both are so relevant to our current circumstances.

I don’t comment much about politics. Everyone has an opinion about the government and our candidates and the upcoming election and I don’t think anything I might say would be all that relevant. I don’t know any more about the candidates than the next person because I am only privy to what they want us to know. I’m not sure I like or dislike either man enough to make a confident decision at this point, but I suppose I will soon have to try. Of course I don’t imagine for a moment that the Electoral College really cares what I think anyway. I kept foolishly waiting for choice #3 to arrive on the scene and it just didn’t happen. I think in the future we should actually have four choices, two from each party, but that is just my silly idea.

The thing I DO have an opinion about is the word for today: redoubtable. It means “arousing fear or awe; evoking respect or honor.” I think everyone in government, from the President on down, has given us ample reason to erase that term from our vocabulary. I don’t know about you, but I HATE seeing our President and First Lady making the rounds of the talk shows. It’s demeaning to them and to the office. They might as well be hawking Amway! When I was growing up I thought the President was the “best of the best”, culled out from among the ordinary people to be an example for us all. It seems now that the idea is to make the President seem as ordinary as possible.

And the candidates for every office bombard us daily with an embarrassing array of negative, negative, negative ads. Doesn’t anyone have a positive plan for the future? I remember when political speeches used to be mostly about hope and promise and progress. Now they just make me worry about what I will be doing to survive the next four years, no matter who is in office. If you care about who really runs the country look to the lobbyists, the incumbents in Congress, and the “money men” behind the figureheads. That is who should get our attention, not those who are talking on television.

I leave you with this, borrowed from Wordsmith:

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy and the handicapped. -Hubert Horatio Humphrey, US Vice President (1911-1978)

Comments

[Megan]

The four candidate proposition would be interesting.

I wonder that the office of President has grown into something too vast, too encompassing, having to deal with too many issues. I wonder if the Founding Fathers had any idea where their democracy was headed with a country of this size, with issues that are this complex.