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Science Says You Can Split Infinitives and Use the Passive Voice

by StarLujannsuakf Posted on October 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Leave it to a scientist to finally explain how to kill off bad writing.

In his new book, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Steven Pinker basically outdoes Strunk and White. The celebrated Harvard cognitive scientist and psycholinguist explains how to write in clear, “classic” prose that shares valuable information with clarity but never condescension. And he tells us why so many of the tut-tutting grammar “rules” that we all think we’re supposed to follow—don’t split infinitives, don’t use the passive voice, don’t end a sentence with a preposition—are just nonsense.

“There are so many bogus rules in circulation that kind of serve as a tactic for one-upmanship,” explains Pinker on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. “They’re a way in which one person can prove that they’re more sophisticated or literate than someone else, and so they brandish these pseudo-rules.”

Unlike past sages of style, Pinker approaches grammar from a scientific perspective, as a linguist. And that’s what leads him to the unavoidable conclusion that language is never set in stone; rather, it is a tool that is constantly evolving and changing, continually adding new words and undoing old rules and assumptions. “When it comes to correct English, there’s no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum,” writes Pinker in The Sense of Style.

Steven Pinker. Rebecca Goldstein.

Indeed, Pinker notes with amusement in the book that in every era, there is always somebody complaining about how all the uncouth speakers of the day are wrecking the Queen’s English. It’s basically the linguistic equivalent of telling the kids to get off your lawn. Why does this happen? “As a language changes from beneath our feet, we feel the sands shifting and always think that it’s a deterioration,” explains Pinker on the podcast. “Whereas, everything that’s in the language was an innovation at some point in the history of English. If you’re living through the transition, it feels like a deterioration even though it’s just a change.”

Thus, Pinker notes that in their classic book, The Elements of Style, published in the mid-20th century, Strunk and White instructed writers not to use the verb “to contact.” Look how that turned out for them.

The same framework allows Pinker to explain why so many grammatical “rules” that we all think we have to follow are, in fact, bogus. His outlook is refreshingly anti-authoritarian: You don’t have to follow supposed grammar rules, he says, unless there is actually a good reason for following them.

Here, then, is a brief but highly liberating list of glorious rule-breaking activities that Pinker says you should feel free to engage in:

Do split infinitives. For Pinker, the idea that you cannot split infinitives—for example, the classic complaint that Star Trek was wrong to describe the Starship Enterprise’s mission as “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly” or “boldly to go”—is “the quintessential bogus rule.”

“No good writer in English has ever followed it consistently, if you do follow it it makes your prose much worse,” Pinker explained on Inquiring Minds.

Indeed, according to Pinker, this is a rather striking case in which the alleged prohibition seems to be mostly perpetuated by urban legend or word of mouth. It doesn’t even seem to be seriously asserted as a rule by any supposed style experts. “This rule kind of levitates in mid-air, there’s actually no support even from the style manuals,” adds Pinker.

Do use the passive voice (at the right times). We are constantly told that we need to make our verbs active, rather than relying on passive constructions. The passive, Pinker emphasizes, is a voice and not a tense: “It’s the difference between ‘the man bit the dog’ and ‘the dog was bitten by the man,'” he explains. (The latter example is passive.) In this particular example, you really don’t want to use the passive voice; but according to Pinker, there are other contexts in which you very well might. “Linguistic research has shown that the passive construction has a number of indispensable functions because of the way it engages a reader’s attention and memory,” he writes.

One of the uses defended by Pinker involves employing the passive voice to “direct the reader’s gaze.” For instance, sometimes you don’t need to know the name of the person who committed an action, because what really matters—what you, the writer, want to emphasize—is the action. Do we really need to know that “the cook cooked a perfect steak,” or can we leave out the actor here since all we really hope to communicate is that “the steak was perfectly cooked”? Pinker has no problem with the latter construction, assuming that you’re trying to focus attention on the steak rather than who cooked it.

Do begin sentences with conjunctions. Pinker also says there’s absolutely nothing wrong with starting a sentence with “and,” “but,” “or,” “also,” “so,” or even “because.” The idea that this is an offense gets taught early on to kids, Pinker observes, as a way of preventing them from using sentence fragments.

But “whatever the pedagogical merits may be of feeding children misinformation, it is inappropriate for adults,” writes Pinker. These conjunctions (Pinker calls them “coordinators”) “are among the commonest coherence markers, and they may be used to begin a sentence whenever the clauses being connected are too long or complicated to fit comfortably into a single megasentence.” Fragments can be an art. Run-ons a headache. And once again, you don’t have to follow grammar “rules” when those rules have no actual justification.

Do end a sentence with a preposition. And there’s another activity that writers are often told not to engage in. And that is ending a sentence with a preposition (see last sentence). Pinker couldn’t be more scornful: “The prohibition against clause-final prepositions is considered a superstition even by the language mavens, and it persists only among know-it-alls who have never opened a dictionary or style manual to check.”

Seriously: If rigidly followed, Pinker notes, this rule would have you doing silly things like turning “What are you looking at?” into “At what are you looking?” Obviously, the former is highly preferable. There are certainly times when you don’t want a preposition at the end of a sentence—usually when you are discussing something serious, and ending with a preposition would make your tone seem too light—but you’ve got to figure this out on a case-by-case basis.

And yes, you can even use the singular “they/their/them.” Pinker even argues that you can use the following construction: “No American should be discriminated against because of the color of their skin.” Language Nazis would argue here that since “American” is singular, using the plural “their” is a big faux pas. But Pinker counters that Shakespeare used these “singular they” type constructions on multiple occasions, as did Jane Austen. (Merriam Webster cites the following example from Austen: “I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly.”) “It’s been in the language for a long time, and one can even argue that it isn’t really a clash of number agreement,” says Pinker. He continues:

The ‘they’ in those constructions—”everyone return to their seats”—is actually not really a pronoun. It’s more like what a logician would call a variable. What does “everyone return to their seats” mean? It means, “for all X, X return to X’s seat.” And the “they” is just basically “X.” And so it’s not surprising that that construction is so tempting.

And there are many, many other pseudo-rules exploded in Pinker’s new book. So many that we decided to ask our own Mother Jones copy editor, Ian Gordon, to comment on this article. Pinker remarks on the podcast that an overactive copy editor is what finally pushed him into writing this book, but we’re proud to say Gordon was more enlightened, commenting:

I think Pinker is totally right. Many rules are stupid, especially the ones he highlights. We should understand the language deeply, not follow dumb rules blindly. That said, there’s something to be said about linguistic continuity across a publication, which is part of the reason why crotchety copy editors (hi!) have jobs.

The basic outlook on language and writing from all this? You don’t have to follow grammar “rules” if they don’t make any sense. Some of them just don’t stand up at all; others, meanwhile, are better understood as general guidelines, admitting of many important exceptions.

“It’s very easy to overstate rules,” says Pinker. “And if you don’t explain what the basis is behind the rule, you’re going to botch the statement of the rule—and give bad advice.”

To listen to the full Inquiring Minds interview with Steven Pinker, you can stream below:

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Science Says You Can Split Infinitives and Use the Passive Voice

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This Author’s Juicy YA Novels Would Be Banned in Her Parents’ Homeland

by CamilleN93 Posted on October 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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When Sara Farizan presented early drafts of her young-adult novels at writing workshops, her fellow graduate students at Lesley University often responded with a stunned “Huh.” The YA genre tends to be dominated by wizards and trolls, but here was Farizan writing about gay teenage sexual angst. Her 2013 debut novel, If You Could Be Mine, centers on Sahar, an Iranian teenager who considers desperate measures—including sex reassignment surgery—to try to stop her true love’s arranged marriage. Farizan, born in the United States to Iranian parents, figured the book would sell on the fringes. Instead, it quickly landed on several “best YA reading” lists and snagged a Lambda Literary Award.

Her new novel, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, takes place closer to home. Out October 7, it is set in a waspy prep school, not unlike the one Farizan attended as a closeted teen in Massachusetts (“pre-Ellen,” she notes). “I had this outgoing personality, and I was class president, but inside, I was going to my car to cry.”

Farizan’s stories, as full of gossip as any school cafeteria, are nonetheless funny and frank. They deal with uncomfortable issues—and not just for “girls named Emily or Annie.” For that matter, Farizan thinks her fellow YA authors could do better at appealing to kids of all stripes. “Not that Harry isn’t great,” she says. “But if Ron and Hermione had been some other identity—black, Latina, gay—I think that would have made a huge difference.”

Mother Jones: You’ve said: “I write books I wish I had as a teenager.” Can you elaborate?

Sara Farizan: My first crush, as early as age 5, was Gadget the Mouse from Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers. It didn’t bother me that she was animated, or a mouse; it bothered me that she was female. I had these inclinations, and was really terrified by them. This was pre-Ellen of course, and given the culture my parents are from—where a husband and wife is very important, and kids, and then those kids grow up to be doctors hopefully—I spent a lot of years in this silent fear and anger. As a teenager, I had this outgoing personality, and I was class president and doing all kinds of things; but inside was going to my car to cry. I had no problems explaining to people what my Iranian heritage meant, and trying to be a good representative. What did worry me was that I was secretly gay.

MJ: What were you reading at the time?

SF: There were LGBT-oriented books for teens by Julie Anne Peters, and Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind. I normally got those from my town library rather than my school. But there wasn’t anything about someone of a different background, you know. They were all girls named Emily and Annie. While those books were really helpful to me, there was a disconnect in that the only LGBT books that I had read about in school were concerning very of-European-descent people.

MJ: You started your books as graduate school projects. Did you think they’d become more than that?

SF: I really didn’t see them ever being published, based on what they’re about. Everyone in the “Writing for Young People” track was writing trolls and wizards, and, um, not LGBT people of color, certainly. I thought perhaps they were too niche. I didn’t anticipate that all of this would have happened—that I’d be speaking to you, for one.

MJ: There are a lot of doctors in your books, and I see that your father was a surgeon. Did you feel pressure to go that route?

SF: No, but I think it was a profession that was understood. It’s one that’s really lofty and prestigious. I think for a lot of Persian parents in the States, being a doctor was the gold standard. There’s this comedian, Amir K, who does an impression of his dad, who’s like, “What do you mean you want to be a comedian? You can be a lawyer, you can be a doctor, you can open up a bank.” And Amir’s like, “Dad, you can’t just go around opening up banks.” See video below. My sister and I have gone very media-related routes. My parents are really wonderful about it, but it’s not something they knew anything about. It’s all very new territory for them.

MJ: Is your book, If You Could Be Mine, banned in Iran?

SF: I don’t know that they know about it. I don’t Google myself. I don’t look myself up. One, because I’m a fragile flower. And two, it’s going to mess up anything I want to write in the future.

MJ: You paint a very believable portrait of life in Iran. Did you live there for a time?

SF: I’ve been there. I have the passport stamps. I worry about being exploitative because I’m a Westerner. But for me it was very important, being a member of the LGBT community and dealing with that kind if frustration and isolation, to imagine what it would be like growing up in the country my parents are from.

MJ: The idea of transexualism plays a big role in the new book—though it seems pretty evident that Sahar is not trans. But I was surprised to learn that transgender Iranians can get subsidies for gender reassignment surgeries, and that they have more government protections than homosexuals.

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This Author’s Juicy YA Novels Would Be Banned in Her Parents’ Homeland

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No, There Is No “Troubling Persistence” of Eugenicist Thought in America

by Julie9987s Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

Andrew Sullivan points me to a piece by Michael Brendan Dougherty bemoaning the “troubling persistence” of eugenic thought in America. But Dougherty’s evidence for this is tissue-paper thin, especially in his credulous treatment of the high abortion rate among women with Down syndrome babies:

In an article that explores this sympathetically, Alison Piepmeier writes:

Repeatedly women told me that they ended the pregnancy not because they wanted a “perfect child” (as one woman said, “I don’t know what ‘perfect child’ even means”) but because they recognized that the world is a difficult place for people with intellectual disabilities.

If the numbers on abortion and Down syndrome are even remotely accurate, the birth of a Down baby is something already against the norm. As medical costs are more and more socialized, it is hard to see how the stigma attached to “choosing” to carry a Down syndrome child to term will not increase. Why choose to burden the health system this way? Instead of neighbors straightforwardly admiring parents for the burden they bear with a disabled child, society is made up of taxpayers who will roll their eyes at the irresponsible breeder, who is costing them a mint in “unnecessary” medical treatment and learning specialists at school. Why condemn a child to a “life like that,” they will wonder.

Oh please. These women were lying. The reason they had abortions is because raising a Down syndrome child is a tremendous amount of work and, for many people, not very rewarding. But that sounds shallow and selfish, so they resorted instead to an excuse that sounds a little more caring. Far from being afraid of eye-rolling neighbors who disapprove of carrying the baby to term because it might lead to higher tax rates, they’re explicitly trying to avoid the ostracism of neighbors who would think poorly of them for aborting a child just because it’s a lot of work to raise.

This has nothing to do with eugenic thought one way or the other. The more prosaic truth is simpler: Most of us aren’t saints, and given a choice, we’d rather have a child without Down syndrome. You can approve or disapprove of this as you will, but that’s all that’s going on here.

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No, There Is No “Troubling Persistence” of Eugenicist Thought in America

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Hooray! This Young Billionaire Actually Invented Something Useful

by YvetteSepulveda Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

Elizabeth Holmes is the third-youngest billionaire on the Forbes 400 list (behind Facebook tycoons Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz). And hooray for her! Her business model doesn’t depend on getting drunk teenagers to eventually regret that they ever heard of the internet. It depends instead on a genuinely useful invention: a new type of blood test that requires only a tiny pinprick and a single drop of blood. Slate’s Kevin Loria tells us about it:

Traditional blood testing is shockingly difficult and expensive for a tool that’s used so frequently. It also hasn’t changed since the 1960s. It’s done in hospitals and doctors’ offices. Vials of blood have to be sent out and tested, which can take weeks using traditional methods and is prone to human error. And, of course, sticking a needle in someone’s arm scares some people enough that they avoid getting blood drawn, even when it could reveal lifesaving information.

Holmes recognized that process was ripe for disruption….The new tests can be done without going to the doctor, which saves both money and time. Most results are available in about four hours….Blood samples have traditionally been used for one test, but if a follow-up was needed, another sample had to be drawn and sent out—making it less likely that someone would get care. The Theranos approach means the same drop can be used for dozens of different tests.

It’s cheap, too. One common criticism of the healthcare system is that the pricing structure is a confusing labyrinth that makes it impossible to know how much anything costs. Theranos lists its prices online, and they’re impressive.

It so happens that I’ve been getting more than the usual amount of blood drawn lately, and it also so happens that I’m one of those people who really hates this. My angst is for completely irrational reasons. I know it doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t take long; and it poses no danger. As it happens, my own particular phobia is so bizarre and unaccountable that I’m reluctant to even fess up to it. But it’s this: The scarless incision wigs me out. For the rest of the day after a blood test, I’m convinced that any second it’s going to pop open like an oil gusher. I used to keep that little cotton ball taped on for a full 24 hours, until the next day’s shower finally forced me to take it off. I have recently, through sheer force of will, started taking it off after only a few hours.

This makes no sense. But then, phobias rarely do. And mine isn’t even that bad. When I need to get blood drawn, I do it. Still, I often put it off, and I refuse to get it done more than once every two weeks or so. I also refuse to ever have it done in my right arm.

By now, you’re either laughing at me or else wondering if I’ve lost my marbles. But I agree with Holmes: traditional blood testing is barbaric and medieval and it’s long past time to bring it into the 21st century. So hooray for Elizabeth Holmes. My only question now is this: When is she going to sign a contract with Kaiser so that I’ll be able to benefit from her marvelous invention?

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Hooray! This Young Billionaire Actually Invented Something Useful

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Why Is There No Code Name for the ISIS Bombing Campaign?

by DamienCorser Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

I learned something new today: code names for military operations only became a public thing after World War II, and it was only around 1980 that the names of major operations got turned into serious PR exercises. Paul Waldman runs down all the recent hits:

Operation Urgent Fury (invasion of Grenada, 1983)
Operation Just Cause (invasion of Panama, 1989)
Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm (Kuwait/Iraq, 1989)

Operation Restore Hope (Somalia, 1993)
Operation Uphold Democracy (Haiti, 1994)
Operation Deliberate Force (NATO bombing of Bosnia, 1995)
Operation Desert Fox (bombing of Iraq, 1998)
Operation Noble Anvil (the American component of NATO bombing in Kosovo, which was itself called Operation Allied Force, 1999)
Operation Infinite Justice (first name for Afghanistan war, 2001)
Operation Enduring Freedom (second name for Afghanistan war, 2001)
Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq, 2003)
Operation Odyssey Dawn (bombing of Libya, 2011)

Aside from the fact that we have twelve of these things in just the past 30 years, Waldman points out that Republican names (in bold) are considerably more martial than Democratic names:

Even though it’s the military that chooses these names, you might notice that the ones during Republican administrations have a particularly testosterone-fueled feel to them, while most of the Democratic ones are a little more tentative. Something like Operation Uphold Democracy just doesn’t have the same oomph as, say, Operation Urgent Fury. If the Obama administration had really wanted to get people excited about fighting ISIS, they should have called it Operation Turgid Thrusting or Operation Boundless Glory.

Oddly, though, it turns out that the ISIS campaign doesn’t even have any name at all. I guess that’s a good sign.

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Why Is There No Code Name for the ISIS Bombing Campaign?

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Take Two: Are Americans Really in Love With War?

by XLBAntoine Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

Yesterday I wrote that the American public is “in love with war.” This was obviously a bit of a rant, born of frustration with our seemingly bottomless tolerance for addressing foreign policy problems in suitably small countries with military force. Greg Sargent pushed back with some polling evidence, and Daniel Larison takes things a step further:

Far from being “in love” with war, a better way to think of the public’s reaction is that they have been whipped into a panic about a vastly exaggerated threat by irresponsible fear-mongers. Most Americans support the current intervention because they wrongly think it is necessary for U.S. security, and they have been encouraged in that wrong view by their sorry excuse for political leaders.

I got this same kind of pushback from several people, but I really think this is a distinction without a difference. As it happens, my primary point was actually the same as Larison’s: that the American public is very easily whipped into a war frenzy. In the case of ISIS, all it took was a couple of atrocities on YouTube; a bit of foaming at the mouth from the usual TV permahawks; and a presidential decision to take action. Obama didn’t even need to wave the bloody shirt. In fact, he’s been relatively restrained about the whole thing. Still, he did commit us to military action, and that was enough. Public support for bombing ISIS went from 39 percent to 60 percent in a mere twelve weeks.

Does this mean the American public is in love with war? Or merely that when a war is proposed, they can be persuaded to support it pretty easily? I submit that there’s not really a very big difference between the two.

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Take Two: Are Americans Really in Love With War?

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You Insult Henry Kissinger At Your Peril

by gt67dx1 Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Newly declassified documents show that Fidel Castro pissed off Henry Kissinger so badly that he drew up plans to “clobber the pipsqueak”:

Mr. Kissinger, who was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, had previously planned an underground effort to improve relations with Havana. But in late 1975, Mr. Castro sent troops to Angola to help the newly independent nation fend off attacks from South Africa and right-wing guerrillas.

That move infuriated Mr. Kissinger, who was incensed that Mr. Castro had passed up a chance to normalize relations with the United States in favor of pursuing his own foreign policy agenda, Mr. Kornbluh said.

“Nobody has known that at the very end of a really remarkable effort to normalize relations, Kissinger, the global chessboard player, was insulted that a small country would ruin his plans for Africa and was essentially prepared to bring the imperial force of the United States on Fidel Castro’s head,” Mr. Kornbluh said.

“You can see in the conversation with Gerald Ford that he is extremely apoplectic,” Mr. Kornbluh said, adding that Mr. Kissinger used “language about doing harm to Cuba that is pretty quintessentially aggressive.”

Yep, that’s everyone’s favorite geopolitical strategic master at work. Kissinger considered Castro’s actions to be a personal insult, so he began drawing up plans for the US military to blockade Cuba, mine its harbors, and potentially touch off a war with the Soviet Union. Because that’s what you do when a small country irritates Henry Kissinger. Amirite?

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You Insult Henry Kissinger At Your Peril

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Mitt Romney Takes Another Crack at Explaining the 47 Percent

by Carmell8860 Posted on September 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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In a recent interview with Mark Leibovich, Mitt Romney offered up a new excuse for foolishly venting to a supporter during the 2012 campaign about the perfidy of the “47 percent” (i.e., the folks who take no personal responsibility for their lives and just want lots of free bennies from the government). Here it is:

Romney told me that the statement came out wrong, because it was an attempt to placate a rambling supporter who was saying that Obama voters were essentially deadbeats. “My mistake was that I was speaking in a way that reflected back to the man,” Romney said. “If I had been able to see the camera, I would have remembered that I was talking to the whole world, not just the man.” I had never heard Romney say that he was prompted into the “47 percent” line by a ranting supporter. It was also impossible to ignore the phrase “If I had to do this again.”

David Corn calls bullshit:

That supporter was not rambling. Here’s what he asked: “For the last three years, all everybody’s been told is, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.’ How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?” That was a straightforward query, succinctly put, not rambling at all. It was Romney who took the point to the next level and proclaimed that a specific number of Americans were lazy freeloaders who could not and would not fend for themselves.

But I don’t think this is fair. “Rambling” and “ranting” are Leibovich’s words, not Romney’s. All Romney says is that he was “speaking in a way that reflected back to the man.” And that’s true. In fact, this was pretty much my guess about what really happened that night, and I suggested at the time that it revealed a lot about Romney’s execrable people skills. After all, every candidate has to interact with true believers, many of whom are also rich donors.

A politician with even a tenuous grasp on how to handle this kind of pressure knows what to do: you redirect. You can’t tell these folks they’re crazy, of course….But you can’t really agree with them either….So you soothe. I get where you’re coming from. And then you back away. Maybe you blame it on polling data….Maybe you change the subject….Maybe you appeal to authority.

….But you handle them. Except that apparently Romney can’t. And that’s pretty weird, isn’t it? He has more experience handling the titanic egos of rich people than anyone in politics. If anyone should be able to stroke big-dollar donors without saying anything stupid, it ought to be Mitt Romney.

This is basically what Romney is fessing up to. He wanted to pander to this questioner, but he didn’t have the skills to do that off-the-cuff in a safe way. So, since he thought he was speaking privately, he just went ahead and gave him the full pander instead.

Whether Romney really believed what he was saying is sort of irrelevant. I figure he probably did—sort of—though I suspect that if he’d been in a different mood he would have said something a little different. But what we really learned from this episode is that Romney had neither the guts to stand up to a rich donor nor the people skills to soothe and redirect in a safe way. In other words, he’s not really the kind of guy you want to be president of the United States.

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Mitt Romney Takes Another Crack at Explaining the 47 Percent

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A Very Special Friday Cat Blogging – 26 September 2014

by TraceyNjvfimt Posted on September 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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So. Marian and I paid a visit to our local shelter on Monday. We figured on adopting an adult cat. Maybe a calico, if one was available. So naturally we walked out with two kittens, one gray and white and the other black and white. They’re brother and sister, 10 months old. For the moment, their code names are Miss Flopsy (on the left) and Mr. Mopsy (on the right). Soon they’ll get permanent names, but we haven’t decided yet what they’ll be. Vickie and Bertie? Luke and Leia? Frankie and Ellie?

In any case, life is more exciting around here these days. There is much chasing and pouncing. So far they’ve both fallen off just about everything that’s possible to fall off. My bookcases are a shambles. And eight hours of sleep at night is not really on the agenda.

But I know you all want to reward me for this act of catblogging heroism, don’t you? And you can! If you haven’t done it already, how about contributing a few bucks to the MoJo investigative fund? Please think of the kittens, won’t you?

It only takes a minute to make your tax-deductible contribution, and you can give using your smartphone, tablet, or computer.

To donate via credit card, click here.
To donate via PayPal, click here.

Flopsy and Mopsy thank you!

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A Very Special Friday Cat Blogging – 26 September 2014

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GOP Donor: Elect a Republican Sheriff in Case Obama Seizes Dictatorial Power

by PollyWillshire Posted on September 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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As DeKalb County, Alabama, prepares to elect its next sheriff, one local Republican has taken it on herself to ask voters a tough question: In the likely scenario that President Obama suspends the 2016 elections and seizes dictatorial power, can the local citizens count on a Democratic sheriff to oppose him?

Betty Mason, a Republican donor who is married to a longtime leader of Alabama’s Republican Party, posed the question in a letter she mailed last week to voters in DeKalb County, which covers a rural community in the northeast corner of the state.

“Obama is determined to be a dictator with the executive orders he signs,” she wrote. “He has left the US Constitution in shreds. If Obama decides to run again (against US law) or declares a National Emergency to suspend elections in 2016, what will our Democrat sheriff do? I am concerned he will go along with this lawless president.”

The county’s current sheriff is Jimmy Harris, a Democrat, who is running for reelection. Mason encouraged voters to support his challenger, Republican Rex Leath, who is the assistant police chief of Collinsville. “Leath has pledged to defend our citizens even against a lawless President,” she declared.

Mother Jones asked Leath if he shares Mason’s concerns about the president’s autocratic aspirations. “Oh, I sure do,” he says. “I would hope every American in the country would…I don’t really know what he is capable of doing at this point. If martial law is declared by the president, he can’t be removed from office.”

Here’s a copy of the letter, which was tweeted by a local resident:

Mother Jones couldn’t reach Mason, but her husband, Frank Mason, confirms that she wrote the letter. He added that the couple helped Leath organize the campaign event referred to at the bottom of the letter.

“Based on what Obama has done, I don’t know what he might do,” Frank Mason says. “I just don’t really know.”

Leath didn’t know in advance that Mason was writing to voters—but he says she’s glad he did. “It was a very sweet letter,” Leath says. “Very well written.”

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GOP Donor: Elect a Republican Sheriff in Case Obama Seizes Dictatorial Power

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