New Pope and Two Pieces

I don't have anything nice to say about the new Pope.













The husband occasionally remarks to me "You're a piece of work, do you know that?" I'll respnd with "What does that mean?" All I get next is a wry grin. So I looked it up. Hmmm. Knowing him....knowing me....he's teasing - mainly - but it seems there's no cut and dried definition of the idiom. Some think it's another way of saying "You're an asshole", others think it just refers to a person who's being a little obtuse, obscure, obnoxious or difficult - I'll put my hand up to the first two ob...s, not the last two - as if!

"A piece of work", I was later able to enlighten Himself, comes originally from Will Shakespeare's Hamlet - Act 2:

Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Rosencrantz:
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

The Bard was putting a touch of irony into Hamlet's words I believe.






How about that second "piece" : a piece of cake? It's less ambiguous, easily interpreted. It refers to something that has proved, or is expected to prove, to be an easy task.

Origin of the phrase is less clear. Most sources quote a line from one of Ogden Nash's poems in a book, The Primrose Path, published in 1936. I haven't yet identified the exact poem, but the line goes: "Her picture's in the papers now, And life's a piece of cake." Did Nash invent the phrase himself, or was it culled from elsewhere? He was certainly no slouch when it came to inventing words! The phrase was rapidly picked up, or so it seemed, by British airmen in World War II. In 1943, author of Spitfires over Malta wrote: "The mass raids promised to be a 'piece of cake' and we expected to take a heavy toll." The phrase, possibly from that source, gained popular usage in Britain even faster than in the USA, but did the author of that book read Ogden Nash ?

Other possibilities for the origin of "a piece of cake", beyond Ogden Nash's use of it are: from ancient Greece, when a "cake" was a toasted cereal bound together with honey. It was given to the most vigilant man on night watch. Aristotle is quoted as having written in "The Knights": "if you surpass him in impudence, then we take the cake".

The idea of cake being "easy" seems to originate in the late 19th century. Cakes were given out as prizes for winning competitions. There was a tradition in the US South, the slavery states, where slaves would circle around a cake performing a kind of strutting dance step. The most outstanding pair would win the cake the in middle. The term "cake walk" came from this, also meaning that something was easy to accomplish....as in "it'll be a cake walk".

There is an equivalent French phrase for "piece of cake": c'est du gâteau; in Latin America also: "como un queque" meaning very easy - queque = cake. The first recorded use of "c'est du gâteau" was around 1952, according to Le Robert's Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions, so doesn't pre-date Ogden Nash's use of the phrase.

Although Ogden Nash's "piece of cake" is the first printed use of the phrase, it could well have been in oral use before that; or, Ogden Nash being Ogden Nash, a real piece of work one might say - he could have combined the traditions of Greece with traditions of the Southern States of his own land, and come up with the now common idiom. Piece of cake!

See also
HERE and HERE.

Hidden Wrongs and "The Essential American Soul"?

While news of the Pope's rather aptly timed resignation has knocked the issue covered in this post out of the headlines , I'll not replace my original theme because it's an issue closer to home and one which ought not to be sidelined.

There is, anyway, an element of hidden wrongs in both the Pope story and the issue brought up below.

As a commenter wrote under Saturday's post, current astrological configurations and transits make it a time ripe for the "outing" of many hidden wrongs. Saturn now transits Scorpio, Pluto transits Capricorn in mutual reception: Saturn is Capricorn's ruler, Pluto is Scorpio's ruler - this serves as a kind of underlining of all that the signs and planets represent to astrologers. Saturn and Capricorn = the establishment, institutions, law. Pluto and Scorpio = secrets, darkness, matters relating to sex and passion, death, the cleansing and transformation of areas where there is decay. The Roman Catholic hierarchy, especially this Pope, both now and before his elevation to Head of the R C Church, have been instrumental in keeping hidden rampant sexual abuse of children by their priests on a worldwide scale. The situation, and astrological time, is ripe for exposure and eventual transformation in areas related to old institutions such as the R C Church and to governmental bodies.

So.....back to my original theme:

Glenn Greenwald wrote last week in The Guardian, on the release of the "assassination white paper" a legal memo from the Obama Department of Justice seeking to justify the assassination of US citizens (not to mention unfortunate murders of non-American citizens) :

The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield..............If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable.

And yet, according to The Hill's poll based on a nationwide survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted on Feb. 7 by Pulse Opinion Research (Note: Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research) ~~

.................of the 1,000 Americans polled (a bipartisan group of likely voters) most were "inclined to support the government in its lethal attacks on citizens and non-citizens it deems to be terrorists."
And continues:

The poll found that 53 percent of likely voters said it should be legal for the U.S. government to kill non-U.S. citizens who meet that description. Meanwhile, 44 percent said it should be legal for the U.S. government to kill American citizens who it believes are terrorists and present an imminent threat.

By contrast, 21 percent of respondents thought such an action should be illegal if the target is a non-U.S. citizen. A slightly higher percentage of voters, 31 percent, thought killing individuals whom the government believes are terrorists should be illegal when the target is an American citizen.

A significant proportion of respondents — 26 percent and 24 percent, respectively — said they were not sure if such attacks should be legal, regardless of whether the target was an American or not.

When asked whether they oppose or back the administration’s drone program, however, a significantly higher percentage of voters voiced their support. Sixty-five percent of respondents said they support the use of unmanned drones to kill “people in foreign countries whom the US government says are terrorists and present an imminent threat,” while just 19 percent of voters said they oppose the policy.

Is that poll trustworthy though? Isn't it possible that questions were skewed in such a way as to obtain a desired result - desired by those paying this polling company, who needed to have the public "persuaded"? The company conducting the poll is in business, making $$$$$$$$, their aim is not necessarily factual enlightenment of the public. People reading, tweeting and Facebooking this poll's results will likely be thinking/writing along the lines of "Look at this all of you doubters! You're wrong! You're extremists and you're anti-American.... see here how many people think it's okay!" Brainwashing par excellence! And the very reason why The Powers That Be (or those behind 'em) are so keen to have control over the Internet. They already have control of TV, yes both Fox and MSNBC - and the rest!

Well-meaning commenters often blame "US voters" or the ignorance of US citizens generally for the dire straits in which the US finds itself morally. Democracy here has been corrupted though, at least in the case of national elections. Voting does nothing but put a rubber stamp on something already designed by the oligarchs - the power behind the curtain. There is no real choice in national elections. US Citizens have, through passivity, apathy, fear or simple misunderstanding allowed things to go rotten, but this has been over a long period of time, more decades than are covered by this present generation of citizens. That, though, is no excuse for continued sleepy passivity and apathy going forward.

The only alternative to that "excuse" for the position of citizens of the USA on the issue involved here would have to be this, as written by D.H. Lawrence in his Studies in Classic American Literature:

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

There are, I'm certain, many, many - perhaps the majority of citizens of the USA who have never killed a fellow-human, or even a fellow-creature of Earth, and yet, if these citizens are willing to stand by without protest and allow their democracy to crumble, allow unjust killings to be carried out in their name....then, I'm sorry to say they really are killers by default. The idea that all's fair in love and war doesn't wash here. There is no declared war. The so-called War on Terror isn't a war - there is no Theatre of War, no battlefield. War on Terror has been nothing short of an excuse. An excuse to continue the attacks and occupations originally being retaliation to the attacks on the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001.

Peter G. Cohen wrote, concluding his piece CIA Drone Killings Don’t Make Us Safer:

Finally, we must face the fact that many nations are now acquiring drones and some are arming them. If they follow our example, we are creating an international situation in which any nation can kill people in other nations whom they dislike. By destroying the restraints of law, we are encouraging a lawless age. This is a terrible heritage to pass on to our children. Remember, you may not be able to see or hear the drone that is aiming a missile at your home. The smart way to handle drones right now is to pass national and international laws forbidding the use of armed drones away from a battlefield.