Making the World More Understandable

Tag Archives: clear communication

Balance in Politics (or, I Like to Run My Head into Walls)

Balance in Politics (or, I Like to Run My Head into Walls)

One of the places I feel WAY too many people have lost balance is politics. I know that the attention is going to a minority group of people who like to be all obnoxious – not to the majority who may or may not sympathize with the extremists but are not so extreme. The problem is that the noisy extremists suck the air out of everything else. And currently, many of them are becoming real threats to others. Why has debate become battle?

Don’t turn your debate into a battle.

It seems to me that the noisy minority believes whole-heartedly in their freedom of speech, but not of those of people with differing opinions. They believe in their right to not mask or vaccinate, but not in my right to not get sick. They believe in the history of their parents and experience and do not allow for the teachings and experience of others. And we’ll just skip the “my body, my choice” hypocrisy. What these people do not seem to understand is that a person’s freedom to swing their fist ends before the it hits my nose.

Hollywood Makes My Point

More and more, I’m reminded of the final speech in the movie The American President. The whole thing is good, I suggest it to everyone as it hits several relevant points. However, for this post, I’ll stick to this:

“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest.’”

(I dug the quote out of the IMDb website.)

Balancing Politics

If you haven’t guessed, I lean heavily towards the liberal end of the scale. More importantly, I lean heavily to the rational end of the scale. I can appreciate someone else’s opinions when the person can explain to me how they arrived at those opinions. I may not agree, but I can appreciate. (By the way, “because it’s true” is not an explanation.)

If you say what you think don't expect to hear only what you like.Balance in politics does not mean that everyone agrees. It’s that everyone allows for the disagreements, attempts to appreciate the other points of view, and quits swinging their fists before hitting someone else in the nose.

Here’s another thing, the extreme minorities at both ends of any scale are critical for American politics. They challenge how the majority of us in the middle think and feel about issues. When given equal airtime they provide balance. The problem is that “equal airtime” thing. We watch the news that tells us what we want to hear – not necessarily a balance of all viewpoints. What’s worse is that the news caters to that mindset. Shows that invite people who have a different opinion than the host and have a RATIONAL discussion on the topic is getting harder and harder to find.

Additionally, one extreme group (currently) seems to be louder and more obnoxious than the rest – sucking the air out of every other point of view, extreme or not.

– Lorrie Nicoles

Provocative Words

Provocative Words

Welcome to my “Ode to the Thesaurus.” One of my favorite Facebook pages is The Writer’s Circle. I always seem to glom onto their lists of Other Words For <fill in the blank>. I’ve several of them clipped into my Blog Ideas notebook in Evernote. One I’ve been looking at a lot lately is for… Continue Reading

1 Step Clear Communication

1 Step Clear Communication

As a ghost blogger, I frequently write about the 7 this and 5 that. Everyone, even people who don’t like numbers, seems to love numbers in blog headlines. The number tells the reader how much they will learn in that post. Well, I am not part of the “everyone.” Mostly because, as a ghost blogger,… Continue Reading

Words That Don’t Work: Nonplus

Words That Don’t Work: Nonplus

I believe that a person with a basic understanding of the language ought to be able to understand content published for the general population – even if they encounter a word they haven’t seen before. Obviously, text books, scientific articles, philosophical debates, and the such are likely to contain words that will send the reader… Continue Reading

The Hazards of PowerPoint

The Hazards of PowerPoint

This blog originally started as a guest blog for my friend Elizabeth Bachman; lately, however, I’ve been wanting to refer to the content, so I thought I’d spin it for myself. While I’d rather write a presentation than give one, I sit through them with some regularity. And I’ve sat through some really BAD presentations.… Continue Reading

Properly Pronounce!

Properly Pronounce!

In a blog that I don’t think I’ll publish, I discussed the importance of proper pronunciation. That rant focused on how commonly people drop Rs from words such as “library” and “February.” And while I do find that tendency annoying, the blog itself was just a little too pissy – even for me. That said,… Continue Reading

More “Bogus Grammar Errors”

More “Bogus Grammar Errors”

Last time, I talked about 2 of the 7 bogus grammar ‘errors’ you don’t need to worry about as explained by author Ben Yagoda. I was having a day of Latin grammar references that needed attention, so I skipped the so-called rules that I couldn’t directly connect to Latin. However, I’m so pleased that someone… Continue Reading

The Culture of Writing

Especially for larger software companies, documentation is something management easily outsources. The problem with outsourcing writing is that the culture of the writer and the culture of the reader frequently don’t match. The truth of the matter is that most Americans only go to the documentation when they are stuck beyond all reason. At that… Continue Reading