Wonderful speech! Terrific! Brilliant. Very.”
 
(He is easier to manage when surrounded by non-stop adulation.)
 
Just one tiny point. Not a criticism. No, not at all. Far from it. It’s just that some old fogies were puzzled a bit, ever so slightly, by one feature of that brilliant speech- really brilliant. Very brilliant. Very.
 
It’s just a minor point. In ancient rhetoric the speaker has to decide the type of speech he is going to give. Will it be like the speeches one hears in a law court, a “dicanic” speech.  You remember the term, I am sure, from your Ivy League education.  In that kind of speech you could attack some public enemy, like John Lewis for ”talk, talk, talk, but no action.” Or indict someone for “carnage,” or some similar crime.  You are good at that kind of attack. Terrific really. Really.
Old fashioned orators, not nearly as brilliant as you, had to decide whether to give that kind of speech or another. Each kind with its own set of rules. Another kind of speech could, for example, call on people to vote one way or another on some matter of policy, or for one candidate in an election. You know, a “symbouleutic” speech.  That way you could revive all the lovely slogans from the campaign and see if they still fire people up. You know the good old stuff, “Make America Great Again.”  You’re great at that. Big League great!
 
But here’s the problem. You have to figure out what type of speech you are going to give, and the occasion you find yourself in dictates the choice.  You were in a ceremonial occasion, so you had to use the third type of ancient rhetoric:  which tells you how to give a ceremonial or “epideictic”speech.   
 
You can’t mix and match.
 
But in a ceremonial speech you can still choose whether to praise or to blame. It has to be one or the other, otherwise the speech will fall flat on its face.  
--
Poor Number 45, how do we break it to him? He forgot thee basic rule of rhetoric .She oscillated between two of his favored ingredient, vitriol, and sweet self-praise.  Which would be the recipient of his unrelenting hyperbole?  He never seemed quite sure, and so, as any ancient rhetorician would have warned, his speech fell on its well-coiffured face.

​ 
 
THE INAUGURAL
 
The past cannot judge the present, but it can, if we are willing, provide a measuring bar by which we can make our own judgments..  So, as we approach the inauguration of a new president, it makes sense to read again Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address. His words echo across the years – just seven hundred and three of them, without bombast, boast or bragging. Many of us know the concluding sentence by heart; surely it is time now to speak them once again, loud and strong:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
 
Yet the sentence before this one gives, perhaps, a clearer sense of the mind behind the words:
 
   

 

Yet, if God wills that [this war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
 

  

The theology of the passage I do not fully comprehend, but I think I recognize English prose when I hear it, and the connection between speech and thought; the ability to comprehend complexity underlies both. The two go hand in hand, supporting, nourish one another, sustain the mind of the speaker and the spirit of those who listen, then and now.
 
 

Sick of  tweets? Here is James Madison;s personal  motto on his signet ring: VERITAS  NON VERBA  MAGISTRI, Freely translated:           THINK FOR YOURSELF!

What is a tweet? It is the fusion of a literary form (crude though it be) with a technology. The fusion has a nuclear-like capacity, when used to destroy enemies. Trump  was  first to figd that out.  Brilliant!

​Had enough? Tweets are dangerously easy, but has there  ever been a technology that has so swiftly transformed American  politics?  They have sure worked brilliantly for Trump.  But  Why are they so powerful? 

​It’s all made up, phony, false, fictitious.  Disgraceful. He changed all the facts just to make me look bad. But tell me this, Who won at Pylos? Not you, Thracian. Too bad!.
Tomorrow: something new, a meta-tweet!.  

​Ivanka says only a wooden wall can keep us safe.   Smart kid but I’m even smarter. Our wall will be steel, all the way from Oropus to Eleusis, very big, very high. Very. Peloponnesians will pay, maybe later but big time 

​Nazi-like lies spread by the liberal media.  Fake news.  Xerxes has nothing on me.  Nothing.  But what would be so bad if we had better relations with Persia? 

​An extremely credible source has called my office and told me that Themistocles has no credible proof of Athenian birth. He does hang out in a gym for half-breeds, you know. Interesting!