Always Choose Less Evil

My friends, as the Democratic field narrows down, many of us have been disappointed to see our favorites drop out.  And whoever is the eventual nominee, more of us will be disappointed.  Some will think that the nominee has a repugnant political philosophy and will make a genuinely bad president. A choice between a good candidate and a bad candidate is easy. A choice between two good candidates in a general election may be difficult, but it is a rare and happy luxury.  A choice between two bad candidates is also very difficult, but paralyzingly distasteful. To cast a positive vote for a bad candidate offends moral sensibility. But it does not offend rational morality.  The lesser of two evils is--less evil. To discern which is the lesser evil, and then to choose it, may be the most consequential vote you have ever cast.  

It strikes me that these are Britishisms new or much more common in American English in the last decade or so:
     1. "spot on" in the sense of being exactly right
     2. "take a decision" rather than "make a decision"
     3. "go missing" in the sense of vanish or disappear
     4. "take a meeting" rather than "have a meeting"
I think I've noticed other expressions that I can't call to mind right now.  Not necessarily complaining. Anyone disagree or have other examples? 

 

"Madison thought impeachment 'indispensable...for defending the Community against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate. The limitation of the period of service was not a sufficient security. He might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers' "
--fr. High Crimes and Misdemeanors by Frank Bowman

Btw peculation is stealing or otherwise misappropriating something to yourself, esp. public funds or property that you have been entrusted with.

You should have known when Trump
     flogged a ridiculous theory abt Obama's birth
     was forced to close down his "university" and foundation because of corruption
     mocked a disabled reporter and tagged his primary opponents with schoolyard epithets
     encouraged violence against counter-demonstrators at his rallies
     appointed to high office person after person who had to resign because of corruption
     has continually demonstrated his ignorance of government, history, and world geography
     said he believes Putin more than he believes his own national security people
     from the beginning of his presidency, insulted allies and praised authoritarians
     has lied daily abt all manner of things, momentous and trivial
Now here we are and you should have known.
     

However much our fellow citizens abhor Trump's action in Syria, there hasn't been talk of its being impeachable.  But I think it should be.  In Frank Bowman's book High Crimes and Misdemeanors, he recounts the history of impeachments in Britain and in the American colonies that the framers would have drawn on and says this:  "Another persistent thread in British impeachments is the charge that the impeached minister had pursued a policy at odds with the nation's basic foreign policy interests."

In my view of life, the concept of honor has had little place.  The truly moral actions dictated by a sense of honor generally can be reasoned to by other ethical routes.  And the actions recommended by honor alone are, by my lights, often morally suspect.  However,  DJT's abandoning the Kurds, good and faithful allies, to death and possible ethnic cleansing, I think, I feel, has stained my country's honor.

ElecTORal College, I Hardly know Ye

It has seemed to me that the accent in "pastoral" and "electoral" has shifted quite rapidly, from PAStoral to pasTORal and from eLECtoral to elecTORal.   But recognizing that my perception of rapidity may be wrong, I consulted a couple online dictionaries, not for what they thought was "correct," but for what they thought people were saying.  Dictionary.com lists only the first version of each word.  Merriam-Webster lists both pronunciations for each word, but gives pasTORal second and labels elecTORal nonstandard.  I take this to mean that the pronunciations that sound right to me are older and were current in the general population whenever these dictionaries were last updated.

So probably there are many folks around who changed the way they pronounce these words.  Is language change so insensible to you that you just didn't notice?  Did you change because you deliberately change to whatever you most hear?  Or did you just give up for fear of being odd or unintelligible?   As I may soon have to do.  But can I really make myself say "Beethoven's PasTORal Symphony?"