language – Pat’s Answers Blog

If it walks like a duck

Did you know that the phrase “if it looks like a duck…” was originally about a mechanical pooing duck?

duck with bucks

Many people, particularly politicians, like to use the popular “duck test” when making a point about a particular issue or object – “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

Did you know that the phrase “if it looks like a duck…” was originally about a mechanical pooing duck?

In 1738 a French automaton maker fooled the world into thinking he’d replicated life, and accidentally created a flippant philosophical conundrum we are still using.

Although the first printed example is thought to be from an American poet in the 19th century, legend has it that people were saying this long before, in the 18th century, about a certain mechanical duck. And they were being very serious.

That mechanical duck was built to astound audiences, by quacking, moving it’s head to eat some grain which the mechanical marvel seemingly digested and then after a short time, the machine would round things off by plopping out a dollop of, what has been described as, foul smelling sh*t.

It just goes to show how more refined things in the 21st century are in comparison to the 18th century – as this automatic waterfowl was famous throughout Europe!

Not surprising then that the phrase entered common parlance.

While the general populace today is less likely to be taken in by a brass clockwork automaton, we still have a real life example in today’s political “leaders” of both sides of the aisle.

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov used a version of the Duck Test in 2015 in response to allegations that Russian airstrikes in Syria were not targeting terrorist groups, primarily ISIS, but rather West-supported groups such as the Free Syrian Army. When asked to elaborate his definition of ‘terrorist groups’, he replied:
If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist.

In their own way, today’s politicians walk, quack, flap, swim, consume wealth and gift us with copious amounts of organic effluviant.

So, if it walks like a duck…

Lame duck

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Of plain talk and holes

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Deep State actors and the news media are in a race against reality.
When they are cornered, and they are out of options, Deep Staters have a nasty, but a really predictable habit of racializing everything.

They have been doing it to Donald Trump since the day he announced his candidacy.

Senators Durbin and Graham wanted to force their bipartisan DACA deal on the president, a program as divorced from reality as any episode of the Kardashians.

They thought that they could con Trump into agreeing to their solution that didn’t meet the president’s baseline and actually increased chain migration. The president, to their faces said it was dead on arrival.

Somebody went to the press, who has proven to be a reliable anti-Trump co-conspirator. They pedaled the story that Trump had referred to Haiti and unspecified African countries as s-holes and we should try to get Norwegian immigrants here instead.

SENATOR DICK DURBIN, D-ILL., MINORITY WHIP: “His comments said things which were hate filled, vile and racist. Calling the nations they come from (inaudible), exact word used by the president. Not just once but repeatedly.”

Now the president in a tweet denied that he used that language and Durbin clarified later that the president was referring to African countries whose citizens regularly use the visa lottery system, not Haiti itself. Two Senators who were in attendance at the meeting backed up the presidents’ version.

Now, setting aside the alleged remark for a moment, would you describe any of these countries as Club Med?

Let’s take a look at some of the real facts about a few of the countries that can’t keep their own people from leaving.

Now, let’s begin with El Salvador. Its capital has the highest murder rate in the world.

Somalia is one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism and is a safe haven for terrorists across the globe.

Sudan is one of the four countries on the U.S. state sponsors of terror list in addition to a lot of other bad facts.

Mexico is on the State Department’s “Do Not Travel” list because of safety concerns

They are rank with corruption, repression and,it’s obvious that they offer their citizens little hope of a better life.

In other words, they are hell holes. But, for the Democrats and their media allies who are forever feigning in affinity for the third world, facts don’t matter. After all, race baiting the president is so much more fun.

Trump is not the first profane president. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon are just two in recent memory who were notorious for their salty language. It’s just that the elites and their media lap dogs are so far removed from the people they purport to “serve” that they just don’t get it.

Joe and Suzy Sixpack think it’s wonderful. They think Trump doesn’t go far enough.

They want him to really let loose. They don’t know why he’s pussy-footing around. They love it when he tells it like it is. Trump says what he, and they, believe.

People like their candidates or officeholders to stand up and say what they believe instead of worrying about offending some group. The last president we had who didn’t seem to govern by poll numbers and group think was Harry Truman who was known for “telling it it is”. He also threatened to punch a news person in the nose for insulting Truman’s daughter Margaret. It seems as though President Trump is, in some ways, channeling Harry Truman.

If so, I would like to rework a phrase from the Truman era; “Give ’em hell Donald!”

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Things are seldom as they seem

Just a little something to go with your morning cornflakes:

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
George Orwell – “1984”

Where communication depends on accurate reportage, we are woefully slipshod in our use of language. In an online forum… in general everyday life, no biggie.

In a SHTF EOTWAWKI situation, on the other hand, it could mean the difference between living or dying, (although the word “lightning” and “lightning bug” have the same root, not many of us, given the choice would opt to be hit by lightning over being hit by a lightning bug).

This blog is not meant to lecture anyone but to, as gently as this grumpy old man can be gentle, suggest a self-assessment of the way we use language, (which is, at best, an inexact method of communication). It is my intention to communicate as accurately as possible and cut through the fog of falsity with which we find ourselves surrounded.

“the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
-George Orwell