Alternate Facts

I believe that's a relatively new term, coined by one of the Trumpists on a TV talk show. It has become somewhat of a joke, but I don't think the guy who originally said it was kidding. In one manner of speaking, there are no such things as alternate facts but, in another manner of speaking, one man's fact is another man's fiction. Evolution is only a theory, but it's a theory that has been generally accepted by the scientific community. Creationism is also a theory that is accepted as fact by many religious people. Then there's intelligent design, which is kind of a compromise between the two that is believed by some religious people. Ask anybody who really believes any one of these three theories, and he will likely tell you that it's a fact, and that the other two are only theories. I'm partial to intelligent design myself, but I don't claim it to be a fact, just a theory that appeals to me. So which one should they teach in the public schools? What's wrong with teaching all three as the unproven theories that they really are? That's what that teacher told us about FDR. The textbook painted him as a national hero who was loved by all. What the teacher did was explain that, while FDR was certainly popular, he was not universally admired by all Americans in his own time. By the way, if that teacher could hear herself described as any kind of liberal, she would turn over in her grave, but she never had the chance to read the Beaglesonian Institute.

Okay, I was wrong about the Nazis. I thought it was one of those names that's formed by the initials of several other words like US, UN, UK, or USSR. I figured that the "N" stood for "National" and the "Z" stood for "Zocialist", which I thought was the way the Germans spelled "Socialist". I didn't know what the other two letters stood for. According to my dictionary, "Nazi" is actually derived from an abbreviation of one German word: "Nationalsozialist". Only the "N" is capitalized if you are referring to a real Nazi from World War II era Germany. If you are referring to a guy who just acts like a Nazi, but is not a card carrying party member, the "n" is usually not capitalized.

We carried a magazine with five rounds of live ammo on guard duty in Berlin. We carried it in our pouches and were not supposed to load it into our weapon unless there was an imminent need to do so. If we saw somebody strange lurking around, we were supposed to holler "Halt!" three times and, if he didn't halt, fire a warning shot into the ground before aiming one at him. This changed after a German teenager was shot dead by one of our guards in an ammo dump. The Germans I talked to didn't blame our guy, since the teenager had no business in there, and he must have known it because there were big signs on the fence that said so in four languages. Nevertheless, we were told that, henceforth, we were only to shoot in self defense. If the lurker was trying to run away like that teenager was, we should just let him go and, of course, report it immediately.