Is The Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

The past week I have been reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Stacy Schiff's Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), and Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind. I have not finished Solzhenitsyn. I was overwhelmed by the interrogation techniques used by the Russians due to the fact that many of these are being used by the local law enforcement upon my fellows. Sometimes, the truth is too dark and breathtaking when it removes the shiny curtain of imagined freedom to reveal the very evil one thinks cannot possibly exist in their own community.

Interestingly, these three books go together quite well and I cannot help but think that it was ordained by some greater will that they should have been brought together for my pleasure. Schiff's Vera shows us how to overcome evil, slipping through like water in the hand of Russian and German hatred; and live quietly, yet brightly in the persistent pursuit of one's love. If I could rename Schiff's Vera it would be And Then She Typed, Then She Transcribed, Then She Took Dictation, Then She Translated. Vera was not written how I would have written her, but it sure makes one think about typewriters, vehicles, and words, drive and fingers.

Nasar's biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. tied the trio together nicely. Nash makes a perfect metaphor for our current society and how it has become sick with schizophrenia. Everything that Nash suffered as an individual schizophrenic describes modern culture, except there is no sanitarium for the masses, and there won't be a Nobel Prize.

And now, I'm looking into propaganda, which is fairly dry when one has learned most of this information from reading good literature. Great writers expose their readers to the world of lies, truth, and ways of thinking critically. A great reader doesn't always believe the narrator if they know what's good for them.

Here is a quote on how propagandists play with numbers:

"'2 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents was due to drinking. 33% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. 24% of the pedestrians involved in fatal accidents had been drinking. Therefore, alcohol intoxication is a major cause of automobile accidents and drunk driving must be dealt with harshly'

That logic sounds impressive, but it's completely wrong. Consider the reverse logic:

'3 out of 5 fatal automobile accidents did not involve drinking. 67% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had not been drinking. And 76% of the pedestrians involved in accidents had not been drinking. Therefore, sobriety is undoubtedly the major cause of fatal automobile accidents, and sober driving must be outlawed immediately, and punished harshly'" ("Propaganda and Debating Techniques," A. Orange).

I don't know if we should be bandying those sober numbers about. A mother of a child who died at the hands of a sober driver may get ideas and form M.A.S.S. (Mothers Against Sober Sinners). We are at such a precarious point in our schizophrenic world that people would actually support banning sober drivers.

This is why we need to stop feeding our emotions and listening to those nasty adverts featuring the sobbing wife of a drunk husband who killed a father of a small and darling child with his car. It's pure emotion designed to pass a law which will eventually lead to another law and another until everyone is a criminal, and made to pay penance for farting and belching, or simply looking odd while driving.

I wish that those, especially the women, convicted of DUI and put through the illegal and humiliating treatment at the local gulag would put out an advert exposing the inhumane treatment they were subjected to.