Ukraine and Russia are not the same country.

My family is firmly in the "Here they beat you up for the Russian language" territory. Nationalist relations prevented my gaining Polish citizenship. Amusingly, I am not sure if I qualify for Ukrainian citizenship, which would be analogous to denying one of the Kennedy clan (ya know, JFK, RFK, etc.) Irish citizenship. I saw an interesting comparison of Ukraine and Ireland, which I sort of agree with. And why I compare myself to the Kennedys.

 

That sounds like Russian, but I can't understand it...

This is pretty good on the differences between the two languages. 

Or Just because a language belongs to a particular family doesn't mean that they will sound alike since English is a Germanic language. It shares a lot of similarities with Dutch, but most English speakers can't understand spoken Dutch.

The Cyrillic Alphabet

I'm reposting this here since Wordpress stinks for editing. There's a quote in here which it doesn't do. I also wanted to add a video. That said:

I made a comment about how people in Europe kill each other over what religion they practise or language they speak. Slavic languages have the added factor of varying alphabets, which is interesting when you deal with the pan-Slavic crowd. They sort of have a point in that the languages are similar enough that you can be understood about the way most Scandanavians can understand each other. Then you get to the Alphabets. The former Yugoslavia was torn apart by religion and differences in Alphabets. Likewise, Polish and Ukrainian are fairly similar until you get to the Alphabet.

This is the Polish alphabet.

The Ł is pronounced like Elmer Fudd saying the letter "W". So, Wrocław is pronounced like Vroswav. In my opinion, the German transliteration of Breslaw (with a German accent) works better for non-Poles. The alphabet is a romanised version of Ukrainian/cyrillic.

Ukrainian and Russian both use the Cyrillic alphabet, but slightly different versions. There are four letters in Ukrainian missing from Russian (ґ, є, і, ї), and four letters in Russian missing from Ukrainian (ё, ъ, ы, э). Also:

One frequently cited figure is that Ukrainian and Russian share about 62% of their vocabulary. This is about the same amount of shared vocabulary that English has with Dutch, according to the same calculations. If you expand your sample by scraping internet data to compare a broader range of words than just those 200 ancient “core” words, the proportion of shared words declines. One computational model suggests that Russian and Ukrainian share about 55% of their vocabulary.

Using that higher figure of 62%, though, a Russian with no knowledge of Ukrainian (or vice versa) would understand roughly five in eight words. To understand this, have a friend cross out three out of every eight words in a newspaper and see how much of the text you can follow.

from Ukrainian and Russian: how similar are the two languages? https://theconversation.com/ukrainian-and-russian-how-similar-are-the-two-languages-178456

Anyway, the Cyrillic alphabet also was a force which prevented Russians from invading a good part of Western Europe. I mean, can most people read Cyrillic? Now, turn it around to the Roman alphabet for the average Slavic language speaker. You don't need guns to prevent a Russian invasion--Road signs work quite well.

On the other hand, these nations have different enough cultures that it requires a certain amount of sensitivity toward that fact which gets into how one transliterates Kyiv (or pronounces it for that matter).

 

More like Kew, or the "ł" in Polish, which I learned from my Ukrainian cousin.

My "slavic" heritage is more western (Ukraine, Poland, "Czechoslovakia"{1}, etc.) with my ancestors being definitely Austro-Hungarian. This is why I was musing on this topic: way more variation in Slavic languages outside of Russia.

Footnote:

{1} this saves listing a bunch of former and current countries due to European cartographical changes.

Spotting Russian fakes of Ukrainian documents

It's actually really easy, but you need to speak Ukrainian, or Russian. And some Ukrainians speak both.

On the other hand, Official Ukrainian documents are in Ukrainian since that is the official language. A simple example will give you an idea of the difference. This is "you are welcome". The phrase on the top is Ukrainian and the bottom is Russian.

Нема за що! (Nema za shcho!)

Не за что! (Ne za chto!)

Now, one way that people who have shown that the documents saying there are Biolabs are fake is that the documents produced to demonstrate that are in Russian. The difference is like that between Swedish and Danish: someone who isn't familiar will not notice too much of a difference. But someone who knows the languages will spot them immediately.[1]

Also, machine translators will "burp" if you can get a transcription of the document and try and translate it in the wrong language. Parts will be total jibberish if it isn't translated correctly. Here are some examples:

As I have mentioned in a couple of posts: Ukrainian is closer to Polish than Russian. The major difference between Polish and Ukrainian is the alphabet. Russian is different from Ukrainian.

So, yeah, I believe someone when they tell me the documents are fake: especially when the ones they show me are written in Russian! 

And people in the US think these clowns could mess up their elections. 

паляниця, і до побачення ! [2]

 Footnotes:
[1] I know this from watching Nordic Noir.

[2] Don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about if you don't understand this.

"It's high time we move from the coloniser's language."

And these people want to speak Swahili...

OK, I have to laugh as someone who speaks the two most common languages spoken in Africa: English and French. Portugese is the third.

Swahili, which takes around 40% of its vocabulary directly from Arabic, was initially spread by Arab traders along East Africa's coast.

It was then formalised under the German and British colonial regimes in the region in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, as a language of administration and education.

And though it has been spoken about before as an alternative on the continent to English, French or Portuguese as a lingua franca, or as a commonly understood language, there is now a renewed impetus.

What is getting lost here is that Swahili is also a "coloniser's language". The Swahili helped inland Africans trade ivory, grain, and even slaves, for the foreign merchants' knives, farming tools, fabrics, and porcelain.

Slave Trade and Slavery on the Swahili Coast, 1500-1750: Arab traders captured Zanj to enslave them, but generally speaking, medieval geographers rarely mentioned the slave trade on the Swahili coast, although they often did so for other regions, particularly western Africa. 

In other words, Swahili, even though it is a Bantu language is also culpable if we are going to talk about the slave trade. But the common link between Swahili, English, French, and Portugese is that they allowed diverse linguistic groups to get along. 

Africa has something in common with Europe and some other places: that is multiple small cultures speaking mutually incomprehensible languages (there's a post about that coming up). So, having a standard common language helps make things run smoothly. It's fun listening to ignorant people talk about language since:

Various colonial powers that ruled on the coast of East Africa played a role in the growth and spread of Swahili. With the arrival of the Arabs in East Africa, they used Swahili as a language of trade as well as for teaching Islam to the local Bantu peoples. This resulted in Swahili first being written in the Arabic alphabet. The later contact with the Portuguese resulted in the increase of vocabulary of the Swahili language. The language was formalised in an institutional level when the Germans took over after the Berlin conference. After seeing there was already a widespread language, the Germans formalised it as the official language to be used in schools. Thus schools in Swahili are called Shule (from German Schule) in government, trade and the court system. With the Germans controlling the major Swahili-speaking region in East Africa, they changed the alphabet system from Arabic to Latin.

I think I've mentioned how many different native languages exist in Africa, but it is a major shitload. And let's add this in for good measure:

But Ms Lankai's classroom at the University of Ghana in the capital, Accra, is some 4,500km (2,800 miles) west of Swahili's birthplace - coastal Kenya and Tanzania.

Dig deeply enough and you will find the major languages owe a lot to colonisation and trade.

And that includes Swahili.

Sources: 

• BBC: Swahili's bid to become a language for all of Africa
• Wikipedia: Swahili language

Oh, ye of undetermined gender

 I think what is bothering me about the "woke" trend of listing your pronouns is that a lot of the people doing it are "CIS Gendered". That is they identify with their birth gender. The bit with listing pronouns came with the people who are "non-binary", or haven't quite figured out what exactly they are.

Hence, they need to tell people what pronouns to refer to them as. And they dislike the English gender neutral pronoun "it".

I do know this has been going on for a while now, but I don't think that someone who has to worry about what pronoun someone will use to describe them (he/her/it) will ever really be truly satisfied.

My pronouns are we/our and fuck you peasants....

Ok, I have come at the English language as someone who speaks it as a second language, even though technically it is my "maternal" language. I am tempted to say the next sentence in German, but German is the language that comes most naturally to me. People literally think I am German. Unlike in France, Germans will speak German to me.

I am indeed multilingual speaking English, French, German, and Dutch/Flemish. English is my "lazy language", but German comes a close second.

I have a serious problem with "gender neutral language". Does the modification of pronouns really change much about society?

Oddly enough, according to the grammarians, the first gender-neutral pronoun was generic he. How can he be gender neutral?

In 1542, William Lily wrote a Latin grammar, in English, proclaiming the ancient doctrine called the worthiness of the genders: “The Masculine Gender is more worthy than the Feminine, and the Feminine more worthy than the Neuter.” Henry VIII made Lily’s Latin the official grammar of all English schools. At the time, English was not considered a language worthy enough to have a grammar. But that soon changed, and when English grammars started to appear a century later, that worthiness doctrine led English grammarians to promote generic he. If you didn’t know the gender of an indefinite like someone or anyone, or a member of a class, like the reader or the student or the grammarian, grammar books—even a popular 18th-century grammar written by Ann Fisher—said we must refer to that person with the generic he.

I'm not sure what the story is, but the "masculine" is also the neuter in French.

Anyway, while people claim that changing pronouns can somehow change attitudes: that doesn't seem to really be the case. Genderless languages: Chinese, Estonian, Finnish, and other languages don’t categorize any nouns as feminine or masculine, and use the same word for he or she in regards to humans. 

As I said, technically, the English language is supposedly "gender neutral", yet some people object to its "binary" nature despite its "gender neutrality".

When this shit started somebody posted something idiotic about pronouns. My comment to which went something like: "if pronouns determine gender, then maybe we should get rid of pronouns and get rid of people". A lesbian friend said that some woman wrote that, to which I replied it was me!

The issue is that "gender neutrality" has been attempted for quite some time.

It seems to do fuck all to end whatever issue some people have with pronouns.

Oh, and a hat tip to Dennis Baron, who I think is a brilliant grammarian for his work on parsing the Second Amendment and a couple of super paragraphs that I grabbed to use here. I'm not sure what my linguistic skills are other than I speak/use languages (machine and natural), but I think he is really bang on.

Hey, Beth Nguyen, was it America that ruined your name, or was it the English language?

I just read a New Yorker article by Beth Nguyen called America Ruined my Name for Me. It seems her name is Bich Minh Nguyen. You can guess what Anglophones do with that. Or as Beth says:

I cannot detach the name Bich from people laughing at me, calling me a bitch, letting me know that I’m the punch line of my own joke.

Of course, like everyone else, the answer for why this happens is simple: racism!

I would suggest another reason: Linguistic.

"Bich" you see means "Jade" in Vietnamese and is pronounced "Bic". She could have changed it to "Vic"or "Vicki" since as she points out Asian children often have second names, which is helpful if your name is "Phuc" or "Phouc".

On the other hand, you can guess that Anglophones pronounce "Bich" as "Bitch" which Ms. Nguyen attributes not to linguistic differences, but to the fact that people in the US are anti-Asian. One the other hand, I would be pretty certain if she had landed in Australia or New Zealand, or any other anglophone nation, that the same problem would have occurred.

Maybe not so much in Canada, and definitely not in France. She probably wouldn't have written this article had her family emigrated to a Francophone nation, which was a definite option for them. That's because "Bich" would be associated with a different animal than what it is in English.

"Biche" in French means "doe": a sweet and gentile animal. Alas, Beth is the only "Bich" I have ever met. So, I really can't get into this. And for all I know she may have gone to France. Anyway, she should be happy she wasn't named "Phuc" or "Phouc" since that one is pretty universal.

On the other and, I can understand a desire to fit in which "Bich" doesn't in an anglophone country, but on the whole I'm not sure if that rises to the level of racism. After all, her family came to the United States and didn't try to move on to Quebec or France. France would have been another option since Indochina was once a French Colony. And obviously, the "racism" wasn't bad enough that the family decided to move back to Viet Nam. They remained in the US.

Anyway, Beth admits she has always given fake names in restaurants, which has moved on to writing the article I am responding to with the name "Beth Nguyen". So maybe the "racism" isn't that vicious that it can't be escaped from. I'm pretty sure her Western friends didn't mind if she was "Bich", "Beth", or whatever. 

Since I am bilingual, I see "Bich" and think of "Biche", a doe, a sweet animal. My pronunciation of her name would probably also be wrong since it would be more in line with the French. That's my problem with her article. It's dangerous to make blanket statements about people.

Prior to Brexit, I identified as British, but post-Brexit I am European. While I can pretty much pick and choose amongst a few of the European nationalities, it is the Frencophone nations which I identify with most these days. That means both my US and French "homelands" have been at war with Vietnam. France was probably the worst.

But, I didn't see "Bitch" when I read your name "Beth": I saw "Biche". That would have been the way I pronounced it.

Sticks and Stones I

“Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
American Physician, Poet, Writer, Humorist and Professor at Harvard,
1809-1894

"Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but names / words will never hurt me."
English proverb

A subject came up on another blog yesterday, to which I responded; thinking about that subject kept me awake longer than I would have liked last night. Thank you again, Pen, for providing me with a forum in which to write about those things. The subject that I pondered was responding to telemarketers with sexual language intended to make them extremely uncomfortable, so they would hang up, so no one would call back. There was a certain distinct glee in the notion of using language and sexuality to make callers uncomfortable; given certain homophobic attitudes, it is I think fair to assume most of this language would be directed towards women, not men.

I argued for courtesy, brevity, and clarity in expressing offense. Some individuals supported that, either fully or partially; others disagreed with my position, at least one in a moderately offensive manner. I responded with more restraint than my first impulse, but with asperity. That restraint left a lot of unexpressed feelings, so voila, they are expressed here.

As a backdrop, I am researching the subject of sexual abuse and sexual harassment of women in the military, returning women veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan specifically, and the traditions and culture of the military. Since I have not served in the military, I had a very productive conversation with Pen, who served in the military for a number of years. He gave me insightful observations from his experience.

Have patience, I will reach my eventual point, long way round; in the end I think the point will be better made.

When I was a very small child, I was very blessed to have as a regular baby sitter, a man who was a dear family friend, and also our family dentist, although he was much more than 'just' a dentist or oral surgeon. When I was much older, I came across his impressive entry in Who's Who, and learned just how remarkable he really was. He was the first person to recognize that I was an unusually smart child. He lived in a beautiful Georgian house; his den / library had high ceilings, with built in bookcases full of books all the way up, an enormous antique desk, and a fire place with a beautiful original oil painting hanging over it. Best of all, this room had both a microscope AND a telescope in it; I was given every encouragement to explore ALL of it to my heart and mind's content. There were never any 'don't touch' restrictions, despite all of the objects throughout the house were extremely valuable. It was a house where adults lived, not children; their children were grown and away at college. I thought it was the closest thing there was to heaven on earth.

I remember being encouraged to take books off the shelf, even books from the very highest where I had to be lifted up, books that we would then go through together. It didn't matter what the subject was: poetry or literature, history, bacteriology or some other science, philosophy, anything and everything. We would read it together, and talk about it. By talk about it, I don't mean in the usual way that adults tend to talk 'down' to children, but more as equals, mentor teaching protege. I remember he said my questions challenged him; I remember that the way my mind worked often made him laugh, laugh out loud, laugh until he had tears in his eyes. I never, ever had the feeling that he was laughing AT me. I sensed he enjoyed watching me think, he approved, that he was a kindred mind and spirit; in many ways, he understood me more than anyone else in my childhood.

This wonderful man had a profound influence on the development of my intellect, and on the formation of my character. He taught me to dare to challenge limitations, especially artificially imposed limitations, including assumptions about restrictions by gender. I remember my early discussions about shyness, and fear. He taught me fear was sometimes a good thing, that it could keep you safe; but it also could be a bad thing, if it took over control by the rational mind. He taught me to evaluate risk for myself, that risks could be calculated and managed; that I should dare whatever I thought worth the effort, but never foolishly. I grew up hearing the message over and over that most people are uncomfortable around smart people; that boys and men especially didn't like smart women because they viewed them as threatening to their egos, even smart men, but never from him. I remember saying that people who didn't enjoy intelligent women were boring; I refused to pretend to be less smart. He was amused by my rebellion.

As my dentist, he was the first to recognize that redheads have different pain reactions, and have a different response to both local and other anesthetics, before it was better researched and documented. He measured my pain perception and tolerance / resistance with a type of dolorimeter that directs a puff of air towards the eye, when it was still a new science. When I needed dental work of any kind, we discussed together how much it might hurt, for how long, and what the options were for controlling pain including the pros and cons of medications. Control of pain decisions were given to me; with the empowerment of those discussions, I usually opted for minimal medications, or none. We discussed the importance of knowing how much and how long something would be painful, of mind over matter for that period. He was always accurate and candid with me, and with the other aspects of our relationship, built up a very deep trust. When he deemed it necessary to remove all four of my impacted wisdom teeth, I didn't hesitate, when he recommended Novocain instead of a general anesthetic because he felt it would be important for me to be able to move my head and hold my head in certain positions. He showed me the x rays and explained everything fully; he would have to work quickly because Novocaine wears off unusually fast for me. For that reason, he would do one side, top and bottom, one day, and the other side a couple of weeks later.

During the surgery, from the beginning, there were painful complications. It resulted in bleeding, requiring cautery. As I was tried to swallow the blood that wasn't sucked up by the tube on the side of my mouth, he asked his assistant get the cautery unit. It should have been in the surgical suite, but was in the other dental treatment room. When she came back, this unprofessional woman said, very loudly, "Oh, my GOD! Look at all that BLOOD." This was not good, but I didn't let her comment get to me. I made a face, as best I could given the circumstances, rolling my eyes.

My dentist was very critical of her conduct. Worse than her original mistake, she continued on about the blood. I was not only a patient, I was in the relationship of a protege, a word derived from the Latin protegere, to protect. My mentor lost his temper, in a way I had never seen from him, ever. He not only raised his voice, if not exactly yelling, he used words that shocked me. He made a vulgar, crass, derogatory reference to blood, specifically menstrual blood and this woman's experience. I have never had the involuntary response to blood that many people feel, both men and women. But there was something about the ugliness of what he said and how he said it and meant it that made me feel very suddenly sick inside, small, a naked kind of vulnerable, and helpless; that was the intent of those words, although not directed at me. It was the absolute opposite of the empowerment, the sense of control, including the mastery over pain, that I had built up.

As a teenager, I did not have the armor against words and attitudes that I have now, including skills dealing with sexually abusive language; nor the mastery over my emotions that I have tried to acquire with maturity. What I felt showed in my face; I certainly wasn't verbalizing anything, in the middle of oral surgery. He looked down at me, and stopped cold; he asked me if I was okay. Then he stepped into the hall where in my hearing, he apologized to his employee. When he came back into the oral surgical suite a few moments later, he gave my hand a squeeze, and talked me back to where I needed to be to finish that surgery. I had been shaken by his words, by the ugliness of the thoughts and the hostility, but my trust was stronger.

As a result of this experience, I gained an insight into the destructive power of thoughts and words, even the destructive power of sexuality. It gave me an empathy to the nature of pain and control that comes to mind on the topic of torture I would never have had without losing my control during a surgical procedure. From this, I think I understand what Judge Sotomayor was trying to say, albeit badly, when she spoke about her experiences as a woman and a minority resulting in a better understanding of others' experiences. I take it to mean not only understanding feelings generally, but things like separating truthful statements from untruthful ones made in court testimony.

This was certainly the formative experience that came to my mind when I commented on using sexually explicit language to make a telemarketer feel uncomfortable in annoyance. To me it seemed a drastic difference of degree, but not a great difference in kind, to the mind set that causes the unpleasant, damaging experiences of women in the military, and the failure of the military in many instances to adequately respond to them.

"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names / words can never hurt me" was a rhyme we were all taught as children. It is not true. While physical violence is certainly a very different thing than words, words also can have a serious, significantly damaging impact on each of us. That is as true for men as it is for women.

As I wrote these words, believing I was in control of those feelings, I had an enlightening experience. I am taking care of a young dog, a two year old intact male, a beautiful borzoi, for a friend. I was one of the first people to hold him when he was whelped by C-section; I bottle fed him from that first day, comforted him if he got stepped on in the whelping box. We have a deep connection, a strong rapport, this dog and me. As I was sitting at the keyboard, tapping out the first paragraphs, rereading, editing, spellchecking, this dog was sprawled out in another room, oblivious. As I was working on the paragraph with the unpleasant memory, he suddenly came barreling out of that room over to me, laying his head on my arm. I petted him, talked to him, gave him a quick kiss on the 'sweet spot' between and slightly above his eyes...... and expected him to go away. That kind of intermittent touching base between canine pack members is routine, also with their humans. There was nothing unusual, except perhaps the timing.

But he didn't go away; he picked up a squeaky dog toy, a really annoying squeaky toy, and lay down behind my chair, in a defensive position. I am very attuned to dog body language, and to the significance of relative positions, between dogs, dogs and people, dogs and... things. It is an essential skill in retraining dogs, especially dogs where there are aggression problems. This dog doesn't have aggression issues, but he exhibits behavioral cues. Other dogs were not allowed to approach; although more subordinate in the pack order, he briefly assumed the dominant role of pack enforcer. I was home alone, but I doubt that he would willingly have allowed any person to approach me. My best educated guess, was that he sensed more than I had understood, hoe those memories were distressing. I cannot explain how he could pick up on that from another room, but I trust my instincts in reading dog behavior; they have stood me in good stead. It was not the first time I have observed dogs sense things in ways that are not easily explained, especially service dogs. This boy has excellent service dog potential; he is unusually perceptive.

I got up for more coffee, did other things, and the entire time, he was my shadow, a 'Velcro' dog; not his usual behavior. When I came back to the computer, to add this final paragraph, he resumed his protective position until I was near the end. Then he got up, nuzzled my hand, and returned to his original spot in the other room to lie down again. His job was done. Mercifully, he did not take the annoying squeaky toy with him. So now, I am apparently no longer emotionally vulnerable; I have resumed my role as human pack alpha.

Addendum

In writing Sticks and Stones, there were several things I wanted to accomplish. I leave it to the readers to decide how close I came. I wanted to write from a female perspective in a mostly male genre; I wanted men to see through the eyes of women. I wanted to write about the power of language.

The only way I could think of to use words skillfully enough was to use a real experience, an experience of my own. I followed the admonition to writers: write what you know. So, thank you Pen, for the compliment that I am brave, but I don't think I deserve it.

In writing about being female, and the destructive power of language and men, I wanted to write about the positive aspects. This is why I chose to write about my mentor. It was not my intention to 'bash' men, but to acknowledge those men throughout my life who through language, and through their qualities of character and intellect, each in their different ways created an environment where I could challenge and develop my abilities, my skills; where I could identify and pursue my interests. That includes as the most recent example, writing here.

I have never tolerated bullies. When I was a junior in high school, a male senior was bullying a younger student. I politely asked him to stop, twice. Unwisely, he did not. After the second request, I lost my temper in defense of that younger student, much as my mentor had lost his temper. I did not raise my voice, I did not use vulgar language. That was not my style; I was always 'ladylike', but I was vicious, I was fierce. I used language to wound, with precision, with calculation, as if it were a very sharp knife. Because the bully had not stopped when asked, I felt free to be punitive. The intention was to hurt him, to reduce him to tears, if not in front of me, as soon as he was alone. My high school boyfriend, who witnessed this, afterwards said to me very simply, that I went off on the bully "like an exploding grenade." He very gently made me realize that given my far greater ability to use words so effectively, I became a bully, however well intentioned I began.

I can laugh now, recognizing how strong and secure this guy was at the time, to be comfortable with someone with my.... 'force of personality'. I don't think I changed that bully by being nasty, however much I enjoyed my verbal advantage. But this young man accomplished that with me by being wise, and gentle. He taught me a lesson, which I regret to say I have had to relearn from time to time, that like physical violence which tends to beget more violence, the hostile use of words elicits more of the same emotion.

Over on SitD, another blog, when the topic of abusing telemarketers came up, my first impulse was to respond aggressively. There are a few individuals who lurk there who have over a span of years in other venues seen me 'verbally draw blood', and who are may be waiting to see me do it again. It was not difficult to resist that first impulse, but it reminded me of my mentor, and of that old high school boy friend. It reminded me that while we may do it differently, women make the same choices to be as nurturing and protective, or as destructive, as men.

I have learned more from dogs than I have ever taught them. Every interaction must begin with first understanding, and then controlling oneself before trying to understand and train or a control a dog. The exquisite hound who guarded my chair when I wrote Sticks and Stones is a sabled red dog, the red in his coat is very similar to my own coloring, like an outward symbol of our inner connection. He is an extraordinarily sweet creature, but he was bred for function as well as beauty; he has a strong prey drive, in his very core he exists for the joy of the chase, and the thrill of the kill. In his own way, he has reminded me how even the most lethal ferocity can exist side by side with tremendous gentleness and grace inside the same skin. Dogs are born understanding what we need to learn consciously. What we do verbally in our relationships, dogs do nonverbally.

Fascism, Neither Pure Nor Simple - part I

(Fascism is)"the most misused, and

over-used word of our times"

"An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism"
Professor Roger Griffin,
Prominent author and lecturer on Nazi history
Oxford Brookes University, UK

In researching this topic, I tried to cover a variety of serious authorities in order not to let myself be suckered into too narrow or biased an understanding. It was important to me to use my existing knowledge as a beginning, but to make a serious effort to be certain I had a balanced, complete overview for a fair and evenhanded piece of writing. I lead this piece with a quotation from Professor Griffin, because so much of what I encountered came back to his work in the field, and the quote so succinctly summarizes what I found. The big three in the field consistently regarded by historians and political scientists as the defining experts are Griffin, along with Robert Paxton and Stanley Payne.

If I could distill what I researched, building on my previous understanding, into a single observation it would be this: that the word Fascism is used interchangeably with Authoritarianism, sometimes correctly, but most of the time incorrectly. Authoritarianism would be a more correct word than Fascism as it is used more than 90% of the time, a figure that is my own rough estimation from researching so far. That 90% usage reflects either an incomplete, or significantly erroneous understanding of one or more aspects of Fascism. The error in usage distributes fairly evenly across the spectrum of political ideology, from left to right; it is NOT the purview of one side alone. And it is THAT aspect, the distribution of the wrong usage, that seems to be at the heart of why the word is so misused. Nearly EVERYBODY uses it improperly, to some degree, and MOST use it improperly to a large degree.

The correct, well researched, well accepted definitions are not particularly hard to find or understand. What seems to be consistently underlying the misuse is applying it not as identifying an actual historic or contemporary fascist political movement, but using it derogatorily as an epithet or pejorative term against another political group or position than one's own to discredit it.

This broadly derogatory use of the term is not new, by any stretch. The consistency with which the term has been kept in use pejoratively is unparalleled by any other word I can think of, with the possible exception of "Nazi". The following quotation from George Orwell, author of "1984" and "Animal Farm" hit on this back in 1944, when he wrote "What is Fascism".

Orwell said:
"The word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’."

Obviously, it doesn't require familiarity with every single reference in the quote to understand that the term was being used all over the place, by every political point of view against nearly every kind of possible target, until any coherent meaning other than 'bad' is completely gone from common usage. That dates back to World War II, and the association with Fascism and atrocities. Prior to the close association with atrocities, there were some who were critical of Fascism as a movement, for different specific aspects of it, but there was not the quality of such broad condemnation in the name. Pre-atrocity criticism was specific. There was a definite sort of 'tipping point' in the usage.

While the Orwell quote can be taken as an attempt to be funny or sarcastic, it was less an exaggeration than you might think. Right now, I can do a web search or a search at my local library and turn up an overwhelming pile of data detailing references to fascism, nearly all of it incorrect. The right calls the left fascist, the left calls the right fascist. And some - although fewer - people in the middle are equal opportunity misusers of the word, calling those on the further edges of BOTH sides fascist for not being in the middle. Incorrectly. All, or very nearly all of them.

Obviously, I cannot end a piece on fascism here; that would be useless. Simply claiming it is used poorly but often, VERY often, is not enough. I asked for constructive criticism from the owners of both of the blogs that I write for, and it was consistently that I write 'long'. Well...but LONG. (You can stop laughing any minute now - I know it's true.) So to do justice to the topic, I'm going to try a new way to shorten up but still cover the content. I'm going to write in 'parts'; this is only part I.

I haven't determined exactly how many parts there will be; but only a few. My goals in writing, given my research to this point, is to present what fascism is correctly and accurately. Part II will be a brief (yes, brief!) history of the movement, its early roots and the 'inter-war' era developments; 'Italian' fascism and the related European movements (like the Spanish 'Falange') circa WWII; and post-WWII developments.

Next will be a brief description of what the central, core tenets of fascism are; what you need to have present in a political or social movement to BE fascist. Why not just present that information? Because without connecting it to the actual, historic fascist movements that CREATED the term, it remains ill defined. In making the effort to write this, to do it well and fairly, objectively, it is my intention to lessen, if only by those few who read this, the use of the term incorrectly. When I am done, whoever reads these words WILL know the difference between correct and incorrect use of 'fascism', small or capital F, and I hope will choose to use it correctly afterwards, and ONLY correctly, and may even choose to correct others using it wrongly.

The Oath of Office

“Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.”
- George Norman Douglas
Finnish Composer, 1865-1957

“If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.”
- Bible, Numbers 30:2

oath
• noun (pl. oaths) 1 a solemn promise, especially one that calls on a deity as a witness.
- Oxford English Dictionary

from the Constitution of the State of Alaska (emphasis added):

"All public officers, before entering upon the duties of their offices, shall take and subscribe to the following oath or affirmation:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Alaska, and that I will faithfully discharge my duties as . . . to the best of my ability."

The legislature may prescribe further oaths or affirmations."

I have read the oath of office for the state of Alaska very carefully. Nowhere in those 42 words (presuming one inserts the word Governor in the appropriate space) does it say "unless I decide not to run for a second term which would make me a lame duck governor", or "unless I decide I don't want to do the job anymore", or "except if I receive a 'higher calling' midway into my term of office".

Sarah Palin is a 'lame duck' by choice, not because - as in the case of President G.W. Bush for example - she had served the allowable terms as provided for in the applicable constitution, and therefore had no choice. I respect her decision not to pursue a second term of office, but then to use the resulting status as an excuse to renege on her oath of office is less excusable.

Palin did not swear to fulfill the duties of the office of Governor "unless I decide not to run for a second term" or "unless I become a 'lame duck' governor". She did not swear to fulfill the duties of the office of Governor "unless I decide I don't like the job after awhile". She did not swear the oath of office conditional to other job options, personal preferences and ambitions, or how the media would treat her or her family.

Palin has been very forthcoming about the importance of her religion in her life and in her politics. The Bible is very clear about the seriousness of swearing oaths; there is no ambiguity that an oath requires the swearer to perform what is sworn, as an important part of Christianity. The Palin oath of office was sworn on the traditional Bible, as a symbol of the sincerity and commitment of the oath taker.

And yet, those who support her enthusiastically protest vehemently any criticism of Palin's decision to abdicate the responsibilities of her office. No one is allowed to challenge Palin's motives or the wisdom of her choice, or that this represents a lack of commitment and a breach of promise to the people of Alaska who elected her to serve as Governor.

And yet, how can one not?