In a democracy, a wannabe tyrant is just a comical figure on a soapbox unless a huge wave of supporters lifts him to high office. Bob Altmeyer Much has been written about autocrats and despots. At whatever scale, home, school, work, or an entire country, these people rule as dictators using fear and the threat … Read more
The small rodent known as the lemming is often used as a metaphor to represent someone who mindlessly follows a crowd toward catastrophe. This is because it is commonly believed that lemmings commit mass suicide every few years by jumping off a cliff and drowning. The metaphor is useful because there are, indeed, people who … Read more
In Sacrament meeting recently the speakers were a young couple fairly new to our ward. They both spoke on the topic, “From small things come that which is great.” What caught my attention, though, was that neither of them wore protective face masks. The practice in our ward has been for speakers at the podium … Read more
Republicans frequently employ the informal fallacy. This category of faulty reasoning includes such problems as ad hominem (personal) attacks, begging the question, equivocation, false dilemma, faulty analogy, inconsistency and more. (Here is an interesting list). Informal fallacies are not fallacies of logic (those are called formal fallacies). Rather, they are fallacies caused by faulty premises … Read more
As a blogger in the Mormon Democrat space, I have recently realized that I may have been seeing the struggle through too narrow a lens. I had thought that Trumpism, and the even more radically fascist post-presidency Trumpism, was primarily a problem of lies versus truth. My response has been to relentlessly tell the truth … Read more
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again. Alexander Pope Both the diagram and the quotation above illustrate the human tendency to think we know more than we do. They do not discourage learning, but remind … Read more
The other day at Costco I found a novel by Stacey Abrams entitled “While Justice Sleeps.” It is a courtroom thriller set in the Supreme Court of the United States. A quick glance at the back inside cover flap told me that this book was, indeed, written by the Stacey Abrams from Georgia that I … Read more
It is clear that there is much evil in the world. The people of the world need to repent of many things. But before we point our finger at everyone else, the soul-searching , and the repentance, needs to start at home. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but … Read more