Another downloaded file from the calamus venenum PDA. 05.19.07
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Dav* H*nry once again presents us with a classic monumental analysis, this time of the Titanic disaster and why so many in First Class, including the captain and officers, managed to survive while Third Class and Steerage happened to drown in such disproportionate numbers.
We discover that the affluent, due to rank and privilege, were naturally assumed to have first access to the lifeboats, and therefore took their seats in greater number. The lower classes, due to indifference and apathy, disenfranchised themselves.
Of course the lower classes might have survived, but not being inherently good swimmers or floaters, they perished. Still, according to H*nry, had more of them turned out they could have turned the tide. One might ask how this could be done when there clearly is some advantage to be had by a wealthy passenger in her fur coat sitting on a bag of money in a dry boat over twenty poor people in their cotton skivvies treading freezing water.
The answer, according to H*nry logic, is that with enough poor, standing on one another’s shoulders, they can reach the bottom of the ocean and thus allow some few of them a little time above the chilling waves to head to the polls -- and get clobbered by an oar.
Thus we come to Dav*’s Dictum. Dav*, being the dictatorial type, is wont to show off his Dictum in public quite often. Even though many of us naturally think of Dav* in terms of a Big Dictum, even an Enormous Dictum, his actual Dictum is quite small. In fact, part of it is actually an idiom, so we have Dav*’s Dictum wrapped around an idiom, no mean trick, even for Dav* who is used to sticking his Dictum in other people’s idioms.
So for all you disenfranchised voters out there who Mr. Dav* H*nry has told to get off your butts and vote, remember who made it into the boat, whose hands are pulling on the oars, and are sculling off into the night:
“Telling others to sink or swim is best done from the deck of your yacht.”
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