Ep 16 - "A Pandemic of Words‪"‬ Brick and Block Podcast

Team:
Coach Gary here. This is Episode 16 of the Brick and Block Podcast, “A Pandemic of Words” This is an audio version of my July 2021 Full Contact Project Manager column in Masonry Magazine.
There’s a harshness to life and living these days, isn’t there? Part of it might be due to the corona virus, but much of it seems to come from every day living. With that in mind, I offer a perspective that might help explain things, because it is tough out there.
There’s some meat here, so dig in!
 
We begin immediately,     and by immediately,   I mean once I remind you that you can find our website at BRICK AND BLOCK PODCAST DOT COM (repeat). I’m making a point this episode about websites that support your business, and I’ve got an excellent example of one: Masonry Contractor Special Website. You’ll see it there. That’s what you’re looking for. It’s bullet proof, BEAUTIFUL, cutting edge, DONE FOR YOU, and practically free! You’ll love this one. Check it out.
OKAY, TEAM.    HANG ON, BUCKLE UP… LISTEN UP,  AND PREPARE TO MOVE UP.
And now…Episode 16,  “A Pandemic of Words"
By Coach Gary Micheloni

Title: “A Pandemic of Words”
…Why Benjamin Franklin was Right"
by “Coach Gary” Micheloni
 
Note from ‘Coach Gary’: As we celebrate Independence Day of 2021, we rejoice over many things, yet are saddened by others. Let me begin with the ‘sad’ so that we can end with the joyful, which is where most people of our country choose to live. God bless the USA!
There’s a throw-away phrase that many commentators often use when discussing an article written by a reporter: “Talk about burying the lead!” Generally what’s meant is that instead of a writer including as a headline the main idea of a story, he begins with info of secondary importance, bringing it up later so that it just kind of ‘pops up’ unexpectedly and smacks the reader. It would be like a sportswriter fully describing yesterday’s game and then, about the next to last paragraph, finally saying who won and the score. You get the idea.
So, I will begin at the beginning and disclose that my title was not created by me. Instead, it inserted itself into a simple conversation I was having. As my wife, Karen, and I were discussing the sordid events, the coarseness of dialogue, the verbal assassinations and over-the-top insults and accusations which seem to predominate public discourse these days, she came to a startling conclusion. She said something like, there is such “a pandemic of words” these days!
Her comment staggered me. I asked her to repeat it, to make sure I heard it correctly, so she laid it out again. Perfectly joining the main search term of the past year, ‘pandemic’, with the current effort to hurt and discredit people and ideas—not by discussing them—but by shouting them down with vile words which now seem to have lost or changed their original meaning. ‘A pandemic of words’. Simultaneously both perfect, yet tragic.
My mission today is simple: helping all of us regain and retain our sanity as I attempt to explain what is going on. Hang in there!
In the media these days we are often reminded of the quote from Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. A woman asked him what kind of a government we were getting. He uttered his famous reply, “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” Franklin was prophetic. He foresaw the difficulty of maintaining a republic, that it could break down over time. We have been witnessing just that. People clamoring for democracy, yet secretly working for mob rule. Their mob!
If you’ve never read George Orwell’s ‘1984’, this is the time to do so. Written in 1949, a fear of ‘Big Brother’ seemed almost over-the-top. Hard to imagine. In 1945 we were given by him in ‘Animal Farm’ the fictitious political viewpoint that, while all animals are equal, ‘…some animals are more equal than other animals.’ Couldn’t happen, r