Have you ever noticed that Aleister Crowley's Liber Oz
is composed entirely of monosyllables? The intent is clear; he wanted
this to be accessible to all, even to the illiterati who run the show.
Which
got me thinking: someone really ought to do a lexical analysis of the
speeches of Ronald Reagan. I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts 99%
of the language he employed came straight from Middle English, a tongue
most suited for mud huts and mere survival. You wouldn't catch him
dilly-dallying with all those "abstract" words derived from namby-pamby
languages like Greek, Latin and French--there'd be way too many syllables to get across the goggle-box to a non-reading electorate.
Speaking
of reading (or lack thereof), do you remember newsman Sam Donaldson interviewing Ronald
Reagan at home, when he first ran for president? After a tour of the
premises in California, head rotating this way and that, searching out
the absent, Donaldson queried, "But where are your books"?
While
we're on that subject, it's always bugged me that members of the
booboisie constantly refer to Reagan as the "Great Communicator." In a
previous incarnation, I was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science
and handled our junior level course in Telecommunications. I always
began the semester with a definition of the word communication,
indicating that four aspects comprise it. You must have a transmitter, a
receiver, a medium connecting the two and semantic content. Which one
of these was the "Great Communicator" lacking?
It
further occurs to me, Reagan was the Augustine of our era. And the sad
thing is, ever since the Age of Aquarius, we've had no Capella to
counteract.
Next essay: A Letter about Language
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