"What is Honour? A word. What is that word Honour? Air."

The combination of Donald Trump's most recent tweet today, "If the press would cover me accurately & honorably, I would have far less reason to 'tweet.' Sadly, I don't know if that will ever happen!", and reading Philip Roth's Our Gang about Dick Nixon, who was pathologically wed to the concepts of "peace with honor" and "an honorable end to the war" (even if that insistence cost tens of thousands of  American lives in Vietnam during his time in office) got me thinking about Republican presidents and their obsession with that hollow abstract noun.

Is this a concept that is more important to Republicans? It seems that way to me. My feelings about the concept are more in line with Sir John Falstaff's in English literature's most famous consideration of honor at the end of Act V, Scene 1 of Henry IV, Part One when Prince Hal speaks to Sir John immediately before the battle at Shrewsbury.

From Bodleian First Folio:
http://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/text/392

FALSTAFF
I would it were bed time, Hal, and all well.
PRINCE HENRY
Why, thou owest Heaven a death.
Exit PRINCE HENRY

FALSTAFF
'Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No: or
an arm? No: Or take away the grief of a wound? No.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is
honour? A word.  What is that word honour? Air.
A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No.
Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon, and so
ends my catechism.
Exit

Quotes of the day (and possibly the year) from Jonathan Swift and George Orwell via Philip Roth

The first of many Philip Roth novels I have read was 1971's Our Gang (Starring  Tricky and His Friends), which appeared when I was in high school in the Nixon years.

In advance of the text of his 200-page satire about Trick E. Dixon, Roth chose these two epigraphs to appear:

"...And I remember in frequent Discourses with my Master concerning the Nature of Manhood, in other Parts of the World; having Occasion to talk of Lying, and false Representation, it was with much Difficulty that he comprehended what I meant; although he had otherwise a most acute Judgment. For he argued thus; That the Use of Speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive Information of Facts; now if anyone said the Thing which was not, these Ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving Information, that he leaves me worse than in Ignorance, for I am led to believe a Thing Black when it is White, and Short when it is Long. And these were all the Notions he had concerning that Faculty of Lying, so perfectly well understood, and so perfectly practised, among human Creatures." -- Jonathan Swift, A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, 1726

"...one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end … Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."  -- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

Lying and the degradation of political language weren't new in 2016, or when Roth wrote about them in 1971, or when Orwell wrote about them in the 1940s, or to Swift in the the 18th Century, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to fight against them by pointing out examples whenever and wherever they appear.

"... beliefs that would shame even a gorilla ..." The Bible Belt is voting today.

In honor of the GOP primaries taking place tonight in Alabama and Mississippi where up to 81% of the voters are self-described "White Evangelical Christians" and  45-52% of the voters are stupid enough to think that President Obama is a Muslim and only 12-14% believe he's a Christian (a triumph of white-flight Christian schools and home schooling lazily reinforcing treasured prejudices and stereotypes), the quote of this minor election night comes from the mouth of a young Alexander Portnoy, recording his first impressions of a visit to the home of Christian:

"Tacked above the Girardi sink is a picture of Jesus Christ floating up to Heaven in a pink nightgown. How disgusting can human beings be! The Jews I despise for their narrow-mindedness, their self-righteousness, the incredibly bizarre sense that these cave men who are my parents and relatives have somehow gotten of their superiority -- but when it comes to tawdriness and cheapness, to beliefs that would shame even a gorilla, you simply cannot top the goyim. What kind of base and brainless schmucks are these people to worship somebody who, number one, never existed, and number two, if he did, looking as he does in that picture, was without a doubt The Pansy of Palestine. In a pageboy haircut, with a Palmolive complexion -- and wearing a gown that I realize today must have come from Fredericks of Hollywood. Enough of God and the rest of that garbage! Down with religion and human groveling! Up with socialism and the dignity of man! [...]"

--Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

(p. 168 of 1969 hardcover)

I hope I offended somebody.