Thursday, July 4, 2019

Double Negative Morass

So wrote Philip Nolan, The Man Without A Country:
 
"He loved his country as no other  man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands."
    Did he, full of self-loathing, feel he deserved the draconian punishment rendered throughout his life, or did he feel his sentence was too harsh?
   No man deserved less would serve as  the opposite of no man deserved more.  Less punishment?  More punishment?  Any other man could deserve more or less punishment. But if no man deserves less, does he feel he had committed the ultimate offense? 
    I guess since he used the word "but" as a contrast, he thought he deserved what he got. 
Then again,  since this was his posthumous message, he could be thinking "more" would be an even stricter sentence, so no man, nobody, deserved less. 
    Between the Mueller Report and this tale, I've gotten a headache. Nobody deserves that more than I do. Nobody deserves that less than I do.

No comments: