On page 73 of Christopher Buckley's 2008 comic novel, Supreme Courtship, I came across a definition that Ambrose Bierce might have included in his Devil's Dictionary:Pollsters, n pl. Overcompensated and usually self-regarding political functionaries who instruct leaders what to do, based on the biases of a largely uninformed electorate.
To try to get away from the depressing spectacle of the "health care debate" (including, alas, President Obama's unexpected weakness in attempting to achieve a political compromise by trying to appease people who won't be appeased—like Senator Charles E. Grassley, “who feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will 'pull the plug on grandma'”1), I'm reading an entertaining book, John Allen Paulos's 2008 Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up, which in passing quotes Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary (1911):Pray, v. To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.Mention of Bierce immediately follows Paulos's own statement:
Subjective arguments for God's existence generally claim to establish even more than a connection between God and a particular religion. They claim to establish the existence of a personal God [emphasis mine] who cares about us individually, listens to our prayers, and occasionally intervenes with a miracle on our behalf. An understandable wish perhaps, but absurd nonetheless. [pp. 80-81]
Absurd as it is, I have once or twice caught myself beginning to pray for health care reform to become a concerted, rational undertaking.
_______________
