Words have meaning

There is another side to H.L. Mencken’s wonderful quote that I often cite — “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary” — and that is that some of the hobgoblins are real, not imaginary. And most of those, of course, are practical politicians.

There’s another side to Tom Petty’s wonderful quote I use all the time — “Most things I worry about never happen anyway” — and that is that some things I worry about do happen sometimes.

Zig Ziglar said that when his guy did not win the presidency, he would give himself 24 hours to feel miserable, and then he would pick himself up, dust himself off, and say, “Well, this man is my president.”

Consider this my 24 hours.

A man who fantasized publicly about putting bullets into a political adversary and his children was elected attorney general of Virginia on Tuesday, as was a liar who promised a socialist utopia in New York City.

Words have a way of frightening me, because I think scary people choose their words carefully. The words the Third Reich employed were especially frightening, because they hypnotized otherwise reasonable people into condoning unspeakable horrors.

I have never said out loud or written down how uncomfortable I am about the agency named Homeland Security, because its name scares me. The word Homeland in that context is too similar for my tastes to “Fatherland,” the Reich’s appellation for Germany.

Similarly, I wonder why anyone would embrace a label like “democratic socialist” as if that was a good thing to be. The phrase is too close to “national socialist” not to give me pause. It was the national socialists of Germany who wreaked such havoc in the 1930s and 1940s. No nation should aspire to go there again. The greatest horrors of the 20th century arose from the embrace of socialism and its cousin, communism, but it seems that time has taken the edge off that terror and made those terms acceptable in civilized company again.

These thoughts are off-brand for a guy who wrote a book called Refuse to be Afraid, but I must admit I am afraid of history repeating itself as Powers That Be work to make our Fatherland secure and national socialists draw huge crowds. It will be different this time, the socialists promise. They always make that promise, history shows, and just like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, once in power they yank the promise away to reveal their true nature. Perhaps those mesmerized by socialist promises are even too young to know who Lucy and Charlie Brown are, and they need instead to hear the old fable about the scorpion who hitched a ride across the river.

Of course, the point of Refuse to be Afraid was not that fear isn’t real or that there is nothing to be afraid of; the point was that we should not let our fear control our actions. And so I’m giving myself these 24 hours to fret — taking no action except to write down these thoughts — and tomorrow I’ll pick myself up and dust myself off. My only solace is that that man is not attorney general of my state and that man is not the mayor of any city near me — yet.

Nothing new here

I got nothing new today, really. The best I can do is repeat myself. On the other hand, my same old, same old does bear repeating.

• H.L. Mencken summed up politicians of all stripes through the ages more than a century ago with his oft-repeated quote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

The political class and advertisers are taught to frighten as many people as they can, then present themselves or their product as the solution. When you feel afraid, my best advice is to consider why the speaker wants you scared, then refuse to let your fear guide your decisions.

• Sometimes you just have to pet your pet until you are unspeakably calm again.

• Jesus was asked what the most important law was, and he answered with two: Love God and love your neighbors. Yes, I said that yesterday, and I would repeat it daily until you’re bored and it sinks in, whichever comes first.

Darkness wants us scared and angry and suspicious of each other. Light shows us our common humanity. Darkness gives you the thought, “Yes, we have a common humanity but you don’t understand!” Light shows us how much we have to learn before we, ourselves, truly understand.

Sunrise comes later every day, and sunset comes earlier, this time of year. We have six weeks or more of this before the days start getting longer again, but make no mistake, it won’t be long before the light begins to conquer the darkness again. It’s always that way, and this winter will be no different.

The guy who wrote Ecclesiastes said there’s nothing new under the sun, and there’s nothing new in this blog post. I’m praying that maybe this time it sinks in.

A century of progress

It was the most traumatic day of my professional life. After years of telling us that our competitor was the most evil of corporations, our newspaper’s owner had gathered us to announce he had sold his business to that same evil corporation. We had vowed we’d never work for those monsters, but here he was telling us that we were indeed working for them, as of midnight last night.

I was standing along the wall in a near panic. Should I run? Should I walk out of this room into an unknown but certainly better-than-this future?

As I was contemplating my many bad options, I glanced down and saw a colleague taking notes on a pad that had a cartoon and a saying at the top of the page.

“100 Years from now, none of this will matter,” it said.

I laughed.

It was a reminder not to take it all too seriously. It got me through that day and the ensuing years — the corporation wasn’t really that bad until a few years later, when nearly all of the old owner’s warnings proved true — but whenever times got tough, I remembered that in 100 years, none of this would matter.

But some of this will matter, won’t it, otherwise how is progress made? How do we help eagles and pelicans rebuild their numbers? How do we stop polio from killing kids? How do we know not to judge people based on the color of their skin or the way they worship or don’t? How do we end up treating each other with more love, kindness and respect, perhaps, than we treated each other 100 years ago?

Somewhere along the way, somehow, the message was exchanged — this little bit here, and that little bit there, they matter. “This is how you will be known, that you love one another.” With that imperative in mind, the way of things slowly but surely improves. Diseases are conquered, the needy get food and shelter, lives are extended with quality time. Yes, our worst instincts somehow prevail as well, but the best in us gets better.

It’s not always that obvious, because the worst of us have such loud voices and sometimes it seems as though evil is winning the day. But we each are capable of evil and good. And if we reach for the good answer to every conundrum and deliver ourselves from evil with the supernatural goodness that offers to help, we can resist the evil and move our lives forward, along with the lives around us.

Yes, 100 years from now, some of this will matter. The specific trials of today will be forgotten, including our names, but if we seek to do kindness and love, if we love one another, the world will be a kinder and more loving place.

From all I’ve learned, the world was baser a century ago, but people like us strove to make it better. We must maintain that pace.