Originally posted by Wonder Man
Electric chair comes from the term of congress sitting around all day doing nothing then touching something and getting a static shock.
It kinda makes sense, though, albeit not on a level the average person would appreciate: If "pro" and "con" are polar opposites, and progress is "moving forward toward a destination", then what in the world should a word like "congress" MEAN anyway? It's practically in the definition.
Moreover, on examination, though it sounds facetious, that might not be accidental. I remember having a conversation with a friend where I said something like, "You're joking, but sometimes places really do seem to form committees for their own sake, or to avoid getting things done".
My friend responded (paraphrased), "No, that's exactly it. You're thinking it's only a mistake when that happens, or evidence that the system is being misused.
I'm telling you flatly that ensuring change doesn't happen or only happens slowly, is the whole POINT of most corporate businesses and many other institutions forming "committees". It's as deliberate as can be."
The genius of this, of course, is that the language thoroughly convinces many that things will get done. Are not goals met most effectively by people coming together and working with each other? The idea has been practically bred into many, if not most people, from 3 years of age. Language is a powerful thing.
Speaking of the power of language, I fairly recently read some excerpts that nearly astonished me for how well they describe the welfare state versus more vibrant communities. Astonishing to me because I did much of my growing up in the 80s, an era dominated by talk of Ronald Reagan, and welfare, and "trickle-down" economics. And the talk generally framed welfare as a problem that really took root in the 1960s and 1970s, presumably in contrast to yesteryear.
So I tend to think of welfare as a modern problem, one which perhaps preceded me as a widespread issue by only a few decades. Of course, that's nonsense, my personal feelings aside. If it's true that the 1950s, say, were an era of prosperity greater than what followed, the 1930s sure weren't . That was the era of the Great Depression. Not easy to find a time in America too much worse for most people in America than that.
Anyway ...
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Hayakawa's Tale of Two Cities, Part 1
(Language in Action, 1940)
City "A"
' ... [T]he solution they finally hit upon, after much debate and
soul-searching, was this. They decided to give the unemployed
families "relief" of fifty dollars a month, but to insure against
the "pauperization" of the recipients, they decided that this
fifty dollars was to be accompanied by a moral lesson, to wit:
the obtaining of the assistance would be made so difficult,
humiliating, and disagreeable that there would be no temp-
tation for anyone to go through the process unless it was
absolutely necessary; the moral disapproval of the community
would be turned upon the recipients of the money at all times
in such a way that they would try hard to get "off relief" and
regain their "self-respect." Some even proposed that people
"on relief" be denied the vote, so that the moral lesson would
be more deeply impressed upon them. Others suggested that
their names be published at regular intervals in the news-
papers, so that there would be a strong incentive to get "off
relief." The city fathers had enough faith in the goodness of
human nature to expect that the recipients would be "grate-
ful," since they were "getting something for nothing," some-
thing which they "hadn't worked for."
When the plan was put into operation, however, the recipi-
ents of the "relief" checks proved to be an ungrateful, ugly
bunch. They seemed to resent the cross-examinations and in-
spections at the hands of the "relief investigators," who, they
said, "took advantage of a man's misery to snoop into every
detail of his private life." In spite of uphfting editorials in
A-town Tribune telling them how grateful they ought to be,
the recipients of the "relief" stubbornly refused to learn any
moral lessons, declaring that they were "just as good as any-
body else." When, for example, they permitted themselves the
rare luxury of a movie or an evening of bingo, their neighbors
looked at them sourly as if to say, "I work hard and pay my
taxes just in order to support bums like you in idleness and
pleasure." This attitude, which was fairly characteristic of
those members of the community who still had jobs, further
embittered the "relief" recipients, so that they showed even
less gratitude as time went on and were constantly on the
lookout for insults, real or imaginary, from people who might
think that they weren't "as good as anybody else." A number
of them took to moping all day long, to thinking that their
lives had been "failures," and finally to committing suicide.
Others found that it was "hard to look their wives and
kiddies in the face," because they had "failed to provide."
They all found it difficult to maintain their club and fra-
ternal relationships, since they could not help feeling that their
fellow citizens despised them for having "sunk so low." Their
wives, too, were unhappy for the same reasons and gave up
their social activities. Children whose parents were "on relief"
felt inferior to classmates whose parents were not "public
charges." Some of these children developed inferiority com-
plexes which affected not only their grades at school, but their
careers after graduation. A couple of other relief recipients,
finally, felt they could stand their "loss of self-respect" no
longer and decided, after many efforts to gain honest jobs, to
earn money "by their own efforts," even if they had to go in
for robbery. They did so and were caught and sent to the
state penitentiary.
The depression, therefore, hit A-town very hard. The relief
policy had averted starvation, no doubt, but suicide, personal
quarrels, unhappy homes, the weakening of social organiza-
tions, the maladjustment of children, and, finally, crime, had
resulted during the hard times. The town was divided in two,
the "haves" and the "have-nots," so that there was "class
hatred." People shook their heads sadly and declared that it
all went to prove over again what they had known from the
beginning, that "giving people something for nothing" in-
evitably "demoralizes their character." The citizens of A-town
gloomily waited for "prosperity" to return, with less and less
hope as time went on ... '
Hayakawa's Tale of Two Cities, Part 2
(Language in Action, 1940)
City B
' ... [T]he story of the other community, B-ville, was entirely
different. B-ville was a relatively isolated town, too far out of
the way to be reached by Rotary Club speakers and university
extension services. One of the aldermen, however, who was
something of an economist, explained to his fellow aldermen
that unemployment, like sickness, accident, fire, tornado, or
death, hits unexpectedly in modern society, irrespective of the
victim's merits or deserts. He went on to say that B-ville's
homes, parks, streets, industries, and everything else B-ville
was proud of had been built in part by the work of these
same people who were now unemployed. He then proposed
to apply a principle of insurance: that if the work these un-
employed people had previously done for the community
could be regarded as a form of "premium" paid to the com-
munity against a time of misfortune, payments now made to
them to prevent their starvation could be regarded as "in-
surance claims." He therefore proposed that all men of good
repute who had worked in the community in whatever line
of useful endeavor, whether as machinists, clerks, or bank
managers, be regarded as "citizen policyholders," having
"claims" against the city in the case of unemployment for
fifty dollars a month until such time as they might again be
employed. Naturally, he had to talk very slowly and patiently,
since the idea was entirely new to his fellow aldermen. But
he described his plan as a "straight business proposition," and
finally they were persuaded. They worked out the details as
to the conditions under which citizens should be regarded as
"policyholders" in the city's "social insurance plan" to every-
body's satisfaction and decided to give checks for fifty dollars
a month to the heads of each of B-ville's indigent families.
B-ville's "claim adjusters," whose duty it was to investigate
the "claims" of the "citizen policyholders," had a much better
time than A-town's "relief investigators." While the latter had
been resentfully regarded as "snoopers," the former, having
no moral lesson to teach but simply a business transaction to
carry out, treated their "policyholders" with businesslike cour-
tesy and got the same amount of information as the "relief
investigators" with considerably less difficulty. There were no
hard feelings. It further happened, fortunately, that news of
B-ville's plans reached a liberal newspaper editor in the big
city at the other end of the state. This writer described the
plan in a leading feature story headed "b-ville looks ahead.
Great Adventure in Social Pioneering Launched by Upper
Valley Community." As a result of this publicity, inquiries
about the plan began to come to the city hall even before the
first checks were mailed out. This led, naturally, to a con-
siderable feeling of pride on the part of the aldermen, who,
being "boosters," felt that this was a wonderful opportunity
to "put B-ville on the map."
Accordingly, the aldermen decided that instead of simply
mailing out the checks as they had originally intended, they
would publicly present the first checks at a monster civic
ceremony. They invited the governor of the state, who was
glad to come to bolster his none-too-enthusiastic support in
that locality, the president of the state university, the senator
from their district, and other functionaries. They decorated
the National Guard armory with flags and got out the Ameri-
can Legion Fife and Drum Corps, the Boy Scouts, and other
civic organizations. At the big celebration, each family to re-
ceive a "social insurance check" was marched up to the plat-
form to receive it, and the governor and the mayor shook
hands with each of them as they came trooping up in their
best clothes. Fine speeches were made; there was much cheer-
ing and shouting; pictures of the event showing the recipients
of the checks shaking hands with the mayor, and the gover-
nor patting the heads of the children, were published not only
in the local papers but also in several metropolitan rotogravure
sections.
Every recipient of these "insurance checks" had a feeling,
therefore, that he had been personally honored, that he lived
in a "wonderful little town," and that he could face his un-
employment with greater courage and assurance, since his
community was "back of him." The men and women found
themselves being kidded in a friendly way by their acquaint-
ances for having been "up there with the big shots," shaking
hands with the governor, etc. The children at school found
themselves envied for having had their pictures in the papers.
Altogether, B-ville's unemployed did not commit suicide,
were not haunted by a sense of failure, did not turn to crime,
did not get personal maladjustments, did not develop "class
hatred," as the result of their fifty dollars a month. . . . '
Pretty sure almost no one knew what the word "rotogravure" meant in Hayakawa's excerpt. Certainly before posting that I didn't.
So ... (from Oxford dictionary online)
noun: rotogravure
a printing system using a rotary press with intaglio cylinders, typically running at high speed and used for long print runs of magazines and stamps.
"we would love to find a sheet suitable for rotogravure that is not exorbitantly priced"
NORTH AMERICAN
a sheet or magazine printed by rotogravure, especially the color magazine of a Sunday newspaper.
plural noun: rotogravures
"you could go to the races in it and get your picture in the rotogravure"