How Good Is This?

How much better than this can it get for Dr. Emma Byrne who has a book coming out January 23rd titled, "Swearing Is Good for You" that her essay in today's Wall Street Journal—basically excerpts from her book—is just two days after President Trump's categorization that some countries are "shitholes" and the mainstream media prints a word starting with "shit" in their articles and tells us in many, many words why they are printing the word?

Dr. Byrne's essay has some absolutely delicious nuggets that go:

"...swearing eases pain, it would seem to work through our emotions, heightening confidence, increasing aggression, and making us more resilient."

"swearing acts as an analgesic."

"It is an escalation signal to give someone space before violence ensuses."

Now everyone is saying something that until now was never in mainstream print. And while it might seem everyone is acting angrily to the utterance, they are at the same time feeling better for acting angrily. Dr. Bryne is right.

If anyone has been a follower of this blog over the years you might have noticed that politics is basically never a subject. Too many other people do that. Why add to it? But when the president of the United states complains that immigration to this country seems to come from "shithole countries" an exception will be made.

Never mind the choice of words. Why would you expect immigration to come from non-"shithole" countries? If you are of a right mind, who the hell wouldn't want to leave a "shithole" country if they could? If I'm in a "shithole" I like to get out of it. Like the motel my wife booked us into when we visited our daughter in college a lifetime ago in Rochester. Online, the place seemed fine. But a stroll though the parking lot on our arrival revealed a few cars that looked sketchy, and one in particular with the vanity plates 'SILKYONE.'

Without going into great details, needless to say I was kept awake by a four-hour (midnight - 4 am) card game being played in the adjoining room by what I could easily tell was a group of black woman (SILKYONE herself?) who weren't necessarily loud, but who you could not help overhearing raising and checking because they skimped on the sheetrock when they built the place.

If that motel were a country it was certainly a shithole I wanted to leave. And we did.

Why don't we get immigration from Norway? Because enough of their residents obviously feel the place is not so much of a "shithole" that they are willing to pack up, head for a place where Norwegian is not really spoken in many places and start over. Never mind that we don't eat what they eat, which when it comes to a fish dish of theirs, lutefisk, I don't know why there wouldn't be more people who would be willing to take the chance on a diet of our burgers.

Why don't we seem to get people from Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Lichtenstein and some other hard to place countries? Probably because they are not "shitholey" enough for the residents to want to start a mass migration from.

The Donald, ever one to miss the point, does not more proudly exclaim that there is little immigration from this country, despite all the entertainers who tell us they are headed for Canada but keep showing up on 'Saturday Night Live' or performing in Las Vegas.

The corollary is that we must not be enough of "shithole" country to spark mass migration to some place else.

Maybe it is the burgers.

http://www.onofframp.blogsppot.com