Presidential election, 2016

[pbrower2a]

(11-28-2016, 05:48 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm a heating and air business guy. I'm not a writer or an academic or a book worm. If you don't use it, you don't need it, you don't value it and retain it. I'm sorry dude, I gradually lost the bulk of my writing skills some time during the 90's. I  assure you that if we were actually speaking, I would have a significant advantage over you. My verbal communication skills are used every day and are very important job wise.

You are useful. You are useful enough to make a very good living in an unglamorous job. I will take you at your word that you are what you claim to be because you have said nothing inconsistent with what you say you are and you do. If I had a son or daughter asking whether to take a career choice to do work like yours or be a glorified clerk... I would tell that child to do the unglamorous skilled work.  If you then want an intellectual life as a hobby, then you can have that on the side. After all, Baruch Spinoza ground lenses for a living and did philosophy on the side.

I would not be so sure that you would win a speaking contest with me. I have defects as a public speaker; I speak in a soft baritone voice easily lost in a crowd or in the presence of such things as heating and air conditioners that give off noise at the same pitch as mine. People generally speak much as they write. I have caught you misusing words before, and unlike me you would rather misuse a word than pause to find the precise word for the occasion. I may not be perfect, but I am a perfectionist. I am generally satisfied with a transcript because I can better analyze the content of a transcript than a speech in spoken form.

Quote:I thought you made a bad choice. I know what it is and what it entails and what it could result in as well. I read and comprehend meanings and most of what's written here just fine. I'm just not much of a writer as you've stated and I've agreed with many times.  A Pyrrhic victory requires a victory achieved with staggering/horrific losses. Clinton didn't achieve victory therefore it doesn't even apply her at all.  The Republican party committed very little and suffered no losses and made substantial gains from their victory therefore it doesn't apply to them either. I don't get you dude. I don't how you can proudly/ prominently proclaim that you're a teacher. BTW, the Battle of The Bulge or Midway wouldn't work as examples either. We won the Battle of The Bulge and Midway. The Battle of Bastogne, maybe.

I referred to the initial gains of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of the Bulge. The Wehrmacht defeated just about every American unit except the Americans in Bastogne whom George S. Patton had to rescue in his own risky charge. To be sure the Battle of the Bulge was a catastrophic blunder for Hitler, who saw practically the same position in the autumn of 1944 as the British, Belgians, and French were in after Hitler overran Holland. He failed to recognize how powerful the US Army was, and that that would prevent any German advance from the Ardennes to the coast of France or Belgium. I am tempted to say that every military blunder above a certain level of military operation looks at first like a brilliant move. Hitler got away with a risky attack in 1940 because his military opponents were badly organized and unable to counter-attack effectively. In 1944 the United States had plenty of troops to throw against a Germany reeling in the war against the Soviet Union. A badly weakened Army with supply problems and depleted forces is unwise to do anything to extend its supply lines and lengthen the front against a stronger enemy...

I have no military experience or training, and only because I am a bookworm can I tell you what I just said.

You may not have caught the figurative meaning of Pyrrhic victory as I applied it to a company that wins a so-called bidding war to get control of the assets of a dying business that has a good division or two and some marketable assets (close the manufacturing operation that loses money but less as an operating unit than if shut down and sell the real estate upon which it sits to a real-estate developer who wants a shopping/condominium/hotel complex on the site) but some big, ugly lawsuits from a division with a tainted product (like asbestos) and some nasty toxic-waste sites full of cadmium, mercury, chromates, and dioxin that won't be treated easily and cheaply. In that case the bidder of the more figurative bidding war has won the war but gotten fleeced.

What I expect as a Pyrrhic victory for the Republicans is that they have a very flawed person as President, someone unlikely to build any coalition except of people who will treat him as a brittle target for ridicule and contempt. a Congress full of yes-men that would have fewer problems to face in 2020 if they had someone less troublesome (like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or Mitt Romney as President), and many Republican -dominated state legislatures more interested in approving right-wing Amendments to the Constitution than in doing anything for anyone not already rich. Toxic waste (OK, this is hyperbole) is already coming from the President-Elect, he is facing the fan, and you can just imagine the consequences. Bungle a war or a natural disaster, incite racial strife by turning back race relations fifty years, and create Depression-like hardships for working people by turning labor-management relations back eighty years, have the Obama recovery falter on your watch, and watch the NATO alliance fall apart as European countries start fearing the USA more than they fear Russia... and the Republican Party has a Crisis Era going very badly. Most Presidents are trained attorneys who know how important words are and have learned great caution in their use. A President who uses language that sounds more like the taunts of a bully in the sixth grade than like a Professor of Constitutional Law is more likely to create problems than to solve them.

The Pyrrhic victory that I see for the GOP is that it wins a smashing success in an election that few but devoted partisans thought that it could win only to be ill-prepared to use the victory.