⚡️Mr. Foreman’s Amazing Electric Ephemera⚡️

“Guaranteed to take no longer to be read than takes a single cup of coffee to be drunk.”

ISSUE NUMBER ONE: “DEBATE”

I chose the word “debate” because the first presidential debate of the election took place last week. I didn’t watch this debate, but social media is covered in opinions about and reactions to it. I feel like I was there!

THE EXTEMPORANEUM

a thoughtful exploration of interesting topics enhanced by personal experience and opinion; topics begin at the Theme and, like growing trees, sprout branches into unpredictable areas

The Debates of 2016

Theory: either of these candidates — Clinton and Trump — would almost surely lose if the other side had ultimately nominated a less polarizing person. Election 2016 is the battle of Who is Loathed Less, which is why I’m certain that Hillary will win and the next four years will look a lot like the last eight years. I don’t know if this is good or bad, as I don’t think an American president’s legacy can be fully understood in its own time.

The less time spent on politics the better.

The topic of debates leads me to think about the most famous debates in our country’s history, from a time when candidates had to be loud.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

These debates took place while Lincoln was a lowly Illinois politician, paying the dues that would lead him to the presidency. You only really need to know three things about these debates: 1) they were about slavery, 2) each debate took a long time, and 3) Lincoln lost the dang election.

The debates themselves are a good read, if also very dated — the racism so despised by Lincoln and his contemporaries sounds nightmarishly bigoted to our modern sensibilities. Not even an actual racist would say Douglas’s words in a debate in 2016:

“I believe [this Government] was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races.”

Read that and then consider number 3, above: Lincoln lost the election.

As for the length of the debates: both Lincoln and Douglas spoke for 90 minutes, though not concurrently (in the case of the first speaker, who had an extra 30 minutes to rebut the second speaker). I wonder how many 90-minute speeches any candidate gives these days, let alone seven of them over three months. Less likely still is that they would be televised. Nothing newsworthy on television goes for that long without a break, except maybe CSPAN.

Speaking of CSPAN, I saw Obama speaking at the dedication of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, where he invoked another of America’s great men, a Douglass with an extra “s” and whose opinions on the matter of slavery could not have been more opposite the other Douglas.

Frederick Douglass

Obama used the adjective “leonine” to describe Douglass, which is an enviable turn of phrase. Adjectives are best when used sparingly, and if you’re going to use as few adjectives as possible, you’re going to want one adjective to be descriptive.

Not only does Douglass’s hair and intense expression make you think of a lion, “leonine” also covers other possible adjectives, like “regal, ferocious, stately.” It evokes Africa, too, a fact of geography inseparable from the plight of Douglass’s people. When you come up with such a perfect adjective like that, you close your notebook and take a nap.

As is the case with so many great people, some of the most noteworthy trivia aren’t what they do but what they don’t do. When Douglass visited Ireland and England, he was treated like a human being. The British had abolished slavery a generation earlier, and Douglass, still technically an owned slave in his home country, was welcomed as an equal. One group of supporters had collected enough money to buy Douglass’s freedom and they implored him to remain in Europe. But he didn’t stay in the peaceful safety of a society that accepted him, because he would not leave his wife and millions of his people behind.

This decision put him back in the belly of the darkest period in American history, which is where we, his cultural descendants, needed him. His contribution to our country cannot be understated.

THE RECOMMENDATAE

A selection of delights both digital and physical, curated for your enjoyment.

A song I’ve enjoyed ever since hearing it at the end of an episode of Silicon Valley is DJ Shadow’s/Run the Jewels’s “Nobody Speak.” The collaborators recently released a video for it, taking the concept of a political debate from a battle of words to, well, a battle. It is most definitely not safe for work. Click the screenshot to watch it.

Also, this was shot in three different countries: the US, the UK and the Ukraine. The entire 4 minute video takes place in one room.

THE ANECDOTUS

a memory retrieved from the depths of my mind’s ocean by bathysphere; or, a thing that happened recently

A rare pleasant memory from high school: my senior year humanities class, we were split into groups and tasked with proving or refuting the thesis “Women are inferior to men.” We were required to use only sources available to people at the time of the women’s suffrage. The setup was more trial than debate, and I cross examined one of the experts for the pro-women camp. I triumphantly won the debate for my side by asking a series of questions that were, in hindsight, completely unfair. I asked him to name some noteworthy female scientists, writers, artists, etc. He couldn’t, and the tribunal of judges were swayed to our side.

One of the judges was Mrs. Ragni, the venerable (ancient) German teacher, who later congratulated me for my performance. I rode that high for a long time and okay I might still ride it a little.

Thus concludes Pamphlet 1: “Debate.” I hope you had as much fun as I did. Co-written by Wikipedia.