All or Nothing

   It's my humble opinion that in general nobody cares for know-it-alls, those people who can out-talk and out-shine virtually any conversation no matter the topic; which isn't to say that they're that such characters are more knowledgeable but often that they're just a bit more of a bully and perhaps a bit more insecure and seem to need that spotlight to always be on them, even if they have to just make up stories to keep it there.  A good friend of mine once held this spot, boisterous and known to all as a person who could talk his way out of any predicament, that is until he was caught.  This happened while he did his blah-blah-blah about some Biblical event among some of our dinner guests, a conversation always started with the challenging phrase, "Well if you knew your Bible" (something that few of us did, or at least well enough to correct whatever he was saying); but one of our guests did know the Bible and knew it quite well and had had enough of these altered and incorrect stories and stood up in front of all of us to markedly tell our yakety-yak friend, "That's because you've never read the Bible!" (which turned out to be true).  This caused a bit of embarrassment and a chuckle from our blow-hard friend but only for a few minutes; yet it also made the rest of us realize that we had been duped all these years.  It took courage for our Biblical friend to do this, as it would for any of us, especially if the person being so corrected is a family member or a person you respect, or perhaps a person above you such as a boss or a president.  And in reality, most of us would rather sit back meekly and just let the BS pass, its overall importance in the night of such little importance that it isn't worth the stress of an argument or an angry rebuttal (something else that know-it-alls are often waiting for).

   This isn't as true for journalists or printed authors where teams of fact checkers do there best to find several sources to back up each statement, knowing that whatever the fact checkers may miss the readers will often catch.  Just one quick peek at the letters-to-the-editor section can reveal the corrections that arrive (in magazines such as New York Review of Books and London Review of Books, the people writing in are often former professors or high-end government officials, to which the author generally has an additional and equally strong rebuttal to show that his/her piece was accurate).  That takes guts and persistence by a writer or published author for deep research is often a slow process.  And as yet another gentle reminder, this is a blog and an opinionated one at that; and while I do try to provide information only from recognized and published pieces (and give the links to those pieces for further exploration on your part, if desired), I do not have that team of fact checkers...so please, take all of these posts as just that, brief pieces of reading to engage or stimulate you, or anger you or bring a smile or a spark of curiosity.  That said, a recent article in the Washington Post revealed that President Trump is nearing his 10,000th (actually closing in on 9500) false or incorrect "factual" statements to the public...and for the most part, everyone is still just sitting down meekly and quietly.  It would seem that we have come a long ways from our first President George Washington who was famously quoted as, "I cannot tell a lie."

   At times I tend to feel that I can be portrayed as that know-it-all but in truth am more the know-nothing, for in reality I can cite many tidbits of information on many subjects but in a strong debate I would be ill prepared to engage further.  There is simply so much to absorb and it all changes so quickly that by the time a subject is thoroughly covered and from several perspectives, it has become old news.  Some of this came to light as I read The Ravenmaster, a tale of one of the "guards" or yeomen at the Tower of London.  For some unknown reason (perhaps an old telling of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven in a Boris Karloff-like voice imprinted itself upon my

Tower's Yeoman Warder -- Wikipedia image

youthful brain) I have always been partial to ravens and crows (okay the magpies as well, all members of the amazingly intelligent corvid family).  But ask me the differences and well, I'd pretty much be blank.  Bigger, yes (ravens are about 3x the size of crows and average about 0.6 of a meter in size), and solid black feathers that seem to turn purple or that strange shade of iridescent ebony when it hits the sun at a certain angle.  But crows "caw" and ravens "croak," says the book, along with the interesting legend and myth of why that came to be.  As to those yeomen (no women, so far), they were essential to guarding the Tower (which has served as a royal residence, a prison for over 800 years, a mint for the treasury, holder of the Crown Jewels, and even a zoo of sorts, and all since its initial construction dating back to the Norman Conquest); one story has the yeomen being given the royal decree that they could eat as much palace meat as they desired, thus the term (and moniker on a famous brand of gin), Beefeater.  Hmm, just one of the stories so told...

   Another tidbit came from an earlier article by Caroline Shenton in the London Review of Books about the famed Westminster Palace (as we call it here in the states) which recently had to be evacuated due to a break in a sewage pipe, perhaps a symbolic indicator of the ongoing back and forth in its House of Commons regarding Brexit which is now less than a week away (and that's after the extension from the earlier deadline which was imposed two years ago).  Here's part of what the author wrote: Today, the Palace of Westminster is in dire condition.  The clock tower is being repaired, despite the outcry over the silencing of Big Ben, but the rest is in trouble.  A number of the services --including the sewers-- have never been renewed.  The 98 ventilation shafts are clotted with decades of decaying wiring and corroded pipework.  Leaks and floods are common; mice, rats and moths are everywhere.  Asbestos riddles the building, complicating investigations into structural problems and slowing down repairs, and seven miles of temperamental steam systems for heating in the basement could blow at any time.  The oldest lift dates from 1893.  The stonework is crumbling and can be pulled away by hand, while the cast iron roof is corroded and the guttering faulty.  Much of this was also built around the time of the Tower, although it's varied versions have led to having to distinguish between the "old" Westminster Palace and the "new" Westminster Palace, none of which should be confused with the neighboring Westminster Abbey (I didn't know any of this but I am currently watching a portion of The Great Tours by Professor Patrick N. Allitt which brings a lot of this history alive in his 36 lectures which is a lot of lectures but then there's a lot of history to cover).  36 also happens to be the current dollar price of admission to see those Crown Jewels...

   As but one example of knowing-not knowing, there was this quick note from The Week (in summarizing an article from the New York Times): At least 30 to 40 percent of Catholic priests in the U.S. are gay, according to multiple estimates by researchers and dozens of interviews with priests.  Some are sexually active, and some are not, but priests said the widespread homosexuality within their ranks is an open, though rarely discussed, secret.  The rebuttals were many and so were the opinion articles from both clergy and local newspapers.  But picture the article as perhaps not saying priests but perhaps gun owners, or politicians, or immigrants, or blacks, or Muslims.  Large issues dwell in each of us and often the media and well-intentioned friends can enflame our impressions.  Discussions may soon swell into arguments because we "know" the issue, or at least we may feel that we know the issue in more detail than the other person.  And that may be the turning point.  We each seem to want to be informed, to be able to add to or maintain a conversation or to feel that we're part of a conversation.  Personally I would be as pleased to talk to a fashion model as I would a nuclear scientist, or a tennis star as much as a resident in a nursing home.  I would "know" little about their field, and in talking with them would know that this was only the viewpoint of one person, but it might be enough.  I would be able to finish a book on ravens and the caring for them in an ancient citadel in an ancient city, and I would have learned a tiny inkling more about a bird I enjoy watching (but rarely see them).  But in the end, would I really "know" that much more about them?  Probably not...placed in a Jeopardy show, I would likely fail miserably on the background or history of ravens or crows or blackbirds, which are an entirely unrelated species.  Yes, I could spew out a few small facts at a party and sound quite like the know-it-all; but if paired with an ornithologist I'd be exposed as a know-nothing.  As the saying goes, Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

   What bothered me a bit about some of this was in watching the film Vice which starred an amazingly heavy Christian Bale* portraying former vice-president, Dick Cheney, his reign now almost a dyslexic deja vu of what is happening today as legal norms are questioned and strategies are redrawn.  It was a taxing time for our country, an almost manipulated time that seems to occur in cycles throughout our history here in the U.S.  And now even the trusted BBC is being called into question, as surveys show that anywhere from 20-35% of the British public feel that the news being presented isn't reality.  Said the piece by Owen Bennett-Jones in the London Review of Books, this shouldn't prove too surprising in today's world: ...others saw this coming a decade before he (referring to Trump) became president.  During the George W. Bush administration, (Dick Cheney was vice) the senior US journalist Ron Suskind encountered a White House official who admonished him for living in what he called the "reality-based community," in which solutions emerged from the study of evidence and discernible reality.  "that's not the way the world really works any more," the official said.  "We create our own reality."  Yakety-yak...


*If you happen to watch the film, be sure to watch the behind the scenes extras which show the enormity of making such a film, from the make up involved to the actors and sets created.