this sentence, while syntactically correct, appears to me to be semantically empty:
I’m sure if we had bombs and flaming rockets soaring above our heads to relinquish anything but peace and love to our neighbors and family, we’d be a bit more optimistic.
that is, i do not understand what is intended to be communicated, which, i suppose, the author believes to be a cogent thought.
The sentences leading up to that one are no picnic, either:
"However, unless you’re a mentally unstable carbon copy of Lee Harvey Oswald or even Charles Manson, he’ll remain our president for the next four, perhaps eight years. It’s disheartening to listen and read of American citizens denouncing the man in highest power of our country."
The term of the presidency is not in any way modulated or otherwise changed by the mental state of Crimson White readers, so the first sentence is charitably regarded as puzzling and realistically regarded as stupid.
The second sentence displays a lack of proper preposition use often seen in the writing of non-native speakers. This ignorance is evident in two places: in the first part of the sentence, "it's disheartening to listen and read of American citizens," we find an accidentally created, Frankenstein's monster of a phrasal verb: "to listen of," formed from "to read of." Unhappily for Ms. Russell, we listen to things, perhaps even things we've read of in books, or the newspaper. These two
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Captain Planet isn't real?
TED TURNER LIED TO ME!
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I’m sure if we had bombs and flaming rockets soaring above our heads to relinquish anything but peace and love to our neighbors and family, we’d be a bit more optimistic.
that is, i do not understand what is intended to be communicated, which, i suppose, the author believes to be a cogent thought.
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"However, unless you’re a mentally unstable carbon copy of Lee Harvey Oswald or even Charles Manson, he’ll remain our president for the next four, perhaps eight years. It’s disheartening to listen and read of American citizens denouncing the man in highest power of our country."
The term of the presidency is not in any way modulated or otherwise changed by the mental state of Crimson White readers, so the first sentence is charitably regarded as puzzling and realistically regarded as stupid.
The second sentence displays a lack of proper preposition use often seen in the writing of non-native speakers. This ignorance is evident in two places: in the first part of the sentence, "it's disheartening to listen and read of American citizens," we find an accidentally created, Frankenstein's monster of a phrasal verb: "to listen of," formed from "to read of." Unhappily for Ms. Russell, we listen to things, perhaps even things we've read of in books, or the newspaper. These two ( ... )
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