Since receiving comments in my inbox whose subject line automatically begins with an obscenity is getting a bit old now, I thought I might take the liberty of posting a brief new remark.
The people who have hijacked and nearly destroyed the political process in America take kindness, generosity and civility for weakness and are, therefore, both STUPID and EVIL. These people aren't simply misguided and in need of a little TLC and education – I've never fully bought the old Platonic saw that people never do what they themselves consider wrong but instead are just misguided in their thinking about what's right. Too many members of the American Right loathe multicultural, modern America intensely and obviously want to replace it with a perverted, primitive theocracy or a demented fascist nightmare, or both if possible. "Ignorance, Irrationality, Cruelty and Hate" are their watchwords, and there's no need to be delicate in denouncing this noisy faction or the depraved inhumanity it promotes. The chilly, blasted heath where King Lear rages in madness is a holiday resort compared to the world these morons want us all to live in. We owe them nothing but honest scorn. Foul language is another matter and isn't necessary, in my view.
On the occasions when I have become the target of offensive onsloughts I like to return the quote: "Never argue with an idiot, they will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
ReplyDeleteFoul language is another matter and isn't necessary, in my view
ReplyDeleteMy only argument with your post lies right there. Foul language, by itself, isn't necessary. However, it is a useful tool, with a certain weight and emotional heft to each word.
Admittedly, not every job calls for a hammer. But those that do? They don't go well if you content yourself with a Nerf sword.
Nameless,
ReplyDeleteI am not entirely averse to rough satire, and that almost always involves profanity. When it's well done I would agree that it can be very effective. Some of your own salty posts, for example, have been hilarious and right on target. I think I've learned a number of fine words from you, most of them ending in -nozzle.
But my own style is different, and I think there's more than nerf-weight to it. I don't call someone "evil" lightly – it is probably the worst thing you can say about anybody. But when I say it, I mean it and an entire herd of enraged conservasauruses (or conservasauruses feigning hurt feelings, insincerely deploring the incivility of democratic dinos, etc. -- troll moves, of course) couldn't make me take it back.
As for what President Obama can or can't say from his exalted place, you mentioned the judgment of history. I suspect that history is still getting itself written mostly by white folk who like their black folk thoroughly non-"uppity," and Obama knows it. And with present voters, his range of attitude-motion is somewhat limited -- if he went around talking like Chris Christie and telling individual voters, "this or that is none of your business," he would probably be drummed from office or at least lose big-time in 2012 just because a lot of latent racists would go into the voting booth and "put the black man in his place."
I think his theme will increasingly be something like "the GOP isn't putting the country first" -- that might work, but calling them names would do him in altogether with everyone but us "libs."
The F-Bomb must one of those human colloquialisms beyond the comprehension of your humble cephalopod. Among my kind, it means the urge to merge and propagate the species. How could anyone think of me as wishing ill of anyone!
ReplyDeleteThousands of years in the future, my kind will be farm-raising genetically modified Republicans (which are far more suitable for domestication than Liberals). I want them to be fruitful and multiply.
Drag Amerikan Engrish into the gutter? Me? Never!
Think of plump Republicans over drawn butter.
Drawn butter?
ReplyDeleteThink Republicans drawn and quartered and dragged through the streets, their bloody entrails dragging behind them in the dust like regurgitated spaghetti marinara. Nature is cruel, but cruelest to the kind. There's nothing the redneck, the night rider, the Klansman likes better than to victimize the rational, educated and articulate. If you try to take the mythical high road, they see it as grovelling and to see their betters grovelling is just what gives them orgasms.
Respect? Measured response, respectful tones? Worry, I'd rather go down like Masada than as some goddamed bleating and pleading lamb.
"now, now, Mr. Hitler, sir. With all respect, we're more than willing to compromise and talk this out like the reasonable gentlemen we are." Yeah, right. Respect this, motherfucker.
Haven't watched much TV over the weekend, I was helping my 88 year old father who dislocated his shoulder a few days ago and was having trouble cooking for himself, but I did catch a moment of that slick, slippery pile of slimy weasel shit Mitt, raging about how he knew all along that Obama wasn't fit for public service since his entire previous career had been in public service; flatulating about jobsjobsjobs after his godforsaken trashmob party has been telling us since my youth that government can't create jobs but unemployment is still Obama's fault and never once mentioning that not one single godfucking private sector job was added during the 8 year misrule of Bushcheneyrove while the brats and the billionaires played with the spoils and booty like stinking yellow-toothed Jackals around a kill.
But no, since Social Security has destroyed the American Family, as these vampires insist, I guess I'm an exception and most of us wimpy-ass, parasite Liberals wouldn't lift a finger for their loved ones and would rather sponge off those hard working, hollow-fanged corporations who owe nothing to us: the underclass, the serfs, the silent, cringing, repectful lambs, yearning for debate.
Fuck the Republicans. Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em again, fuck 'em all and fuck 'em hard and I can't wait until they finally do bring down the country and smoking chaos rules so I can shoot them down like shit-eating rats at the town dump. Filibuster this, you Bible quoting rodents.
Sure, believe there's a high road when there's a knife at your throat. It's delusional, it's self-destructive, it's pathetic. We're not engaged in a debate, we're rationalizing and legitimizing and lubricating a vicious revolution by deranged and implacable criminals and revolution, as the Chairman said, is not a Tea Party, so say hello to my leetle frien, pendejo. Want' some 7.62X39 tracer with that?
I remember Daniel Pearl. I think he thought he could use his wit and articulate charm to convince his captors he was worthy of respect. I remember what happened to him and I know what's happening to us and if I go into that same good night, it's not going to be gentle.
Fuck the Republicans. Fuck'em again. Let the buzzards feast on their foul entrails while their foetid, eyeless, worm-eaten corpses turn purple in the sun. Fuck 'em.
Robert, I tend to agree with the quotation you reference. When idiocy is the quality most needed in the ring, idiots usually win in the first round by a whopping knockout. Because they're idiots, of course. And of course that doesn't preclude denouncing them in the strongest terms.
ReplyDeleteCapt. Fogg, it seems to me you're conjuring up a Chamberlainesque strawman who thinks "the Nazis" are honorable men, not really responding to anything I wrote. Some of the rhetoric you employed just now is too extreme. I don't think we need to be advocating Elizabethan-style torture or ancient-Greek-worthy dishonoring of corpses here, right?
Dino,
ReplyDeleteThe anger within our ranks is palpable and deeply felt, and I can hardly blame anyone for wanting to throw an F-Bomb at the Republicans. More than just good for the soul - an escape hatch for pent up aggression and frustration - anger motivates people to vote.
The Tea Party won huge margins in Election Year 2010 because a disaffected base of liberal voters stayed away from the polls, thus allowing a fringe group to control the national agenda. As a consequence, we are paying a terrible price and will likely pay a heavier price if the same lunatic fringe prevails in 2011.
Medicare, Social Security, FEMA, NOAA, environmental protection, and food safety ... 100 years of progress down the drain! If the lunatic fringe wins again, there will be massive human hardship (as if there hasn't been enough already) ... measured in loss of life.
I do not see how the Republican agenda can end peacefully, and I am not speaking in hyperbole.
Octo,
ReplyDeleteNo apology is necessary. As I see things, here's the real problem: stupid ideas ineffectively countered by any sort of words whatsoever. The article linked to below suggests that nearly half of adults even in relatively liberal California suppose cutting government spending during a recession is the right thing to do. If the people are that ignorant, no amount of swearing at Sister Sarah or Herman Cain is going to make a dent.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-poll-economy-20110906,0,7074574.story
Once upon a time, there was something like tacit acceptance of certain basic and quite sound tenets of liberal thought. That time is now gone -- everything has to be re-argued, apparently, for the benefit of a population so stupid it needs a post-it note to remind it to breathe.
But that public at least knows when it's in pain. So if the president wants to win in 2012, I'd say he needs to embrace the fact that we have NOT come out of the Great Recession at all. The fact that Wall Street almost always figures out a way to make money even when things are bad is no indication that anything else is going well. If there's a need for mockery, there's the direction: mockery and strong denunciation of the idiotic right-wing notion that belt-tightening during a time of great distress is going to do anything but put even more people out of work and kick eventual fiscal health (debt issues included) several years down the road. If the president can't get that point into people's heads, there's really no point in worrying about who wins the election because we're all toast. If he continues the "purple state" strategy of going on about how our dear brothers and sisters the wingnuts have some mighty fine ideas, I don't think he has the slightest chance of getting Congress to implement measures that might do some good; after all, it's hardly in their interest to help a struggling Democratic administration a year before an election. They'll only do that if they're cowed into thinking inaction will cost them any chance of retaining control in 2012.
Dino, not that you need my approval but you certainly have it, especially in your assessment regarding the parameters within which Obama has to function. I think that this passage sums it up quite well:
ReplyDeleteAs for what President Obama can or can't say from his exalted place, you mentioned the judgment of history. I suspect that history is still getting itself written mostly by white folk who like their black folk thoroughly non-"uppity," and Obama knows it. And with present voters, his range of attitude-motion is somewhat limited -- if he went around talking like Chris Christie and telling individual voters, "this or that is none of your business," he would probably be drummed from office or at least lose big-time in 2012 just because a lot of latent racists would go into the voting booth and "put the black man in his place."
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteI and all the dinosaurs are always glad to have your support. It will be interesting to see what the president comes up with by way of a re-election strategy -- he's in a tight spot right now. But we all know the saying: "a year is a lifetime in politics."
Dino:
ReplyDelete"I don't think we need to be advocating Elizabethan-style torture or ancient-Greek-worthy dishonoring of corpses here, right? "
Ah, this is perhaps why I never had a career as a comedy writer. You know, that permanent lump in my cheek is from my tongue having been there for a long, long time. If we'd been on Skype, you'd have seen the silly, self-parodying grin that went along with it.
Of course that sort of thing, taken literally, is more like the hystrericaly angry rhetoric of the you-know-whos and is meant to mirror it.
Dino - I really, REALLY appreciate what you are trying to say and accomplish with this post. I am weary of reading, hearing etc. rants laced with venom - yes, we all get angry and justifiably so - I swear to myself under my breath constantly - but if my world heard all of my under-the-breath comments it would have a right to think ill of me for being petty and foul-mouthed - which is why I vent therapeutically under my breath and try - not always successfully admittedly - to reign in my rhetoric when actually publicly giving voice to my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAnd - I don't know about you, Dino - but my students are feelings increasingly comfortable using off-color language at will in their daily lives - and in the classroom!
Squid,
ReplyDeleteThanks -- yes, I've noticed a certain coarsening of behavior at times, though on the whole I find my students very polite and well-intentioned. (It may be that they're just being polite because their teacher is basically a good-sized truck with razor-sharp serrated fangs. It would be very imprudent to cross me....)
There's a strong, if understated, sense of disillusionment in recent years, though, as if the enterprise we're engaged in -- learning itself -- is all but pointless since it seems so devalued and likely to lead nowhere. It's hard to overcome that, though it's possible to do it in flashes.
Always the sense that there's somewhere else one really ought to be -- anywhere but here, reading some old Shakespeare play, or a romantic-era poem by some dead guy.
this blog is full of animals
ReplyDeletereptilian, amphibious, extinct
a strange and riotous profusion
that really makes you think
during these thoughtful musings
one thing is loud and clear
disdain, antipathy and loathing
I hate Republicans more each year
sure they need to be tortured
incarcerated, and scourged
remove this pestilent sickness
our Government needs to be purged
I advocate colorful language
an expletive laced forceful phrase
to counteract the spit flecked lunacy
as Governor Perry kneels and prays
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteYes, I got that you weren't being entirely literal; I suppose I should just say I think satire is most manageable when its target is very specific -- if it's very broad, it's easy to lose control of its effects. I'm sure we know that what's needed here it to crush -- ABSOLUTELY CRUSH -- the Right at the ballot box. Oh, they'll never stop whining and lying and making fallacious, mindless arguments even if they're outvoted ten thousand to one, but if they lose sufficiently, it won't matter what they say for a while. The only thing they really understand is humiliation, and I'm not averse to letting them have a nice strong dose of it now and then. 2012 would be a good year for that.
I actually feel a bit nostalgic for an older time in America, one in which liberal eggheads like us still had the power to make uneducated, unenlightened morons feel like -- well, uneducated, unenlightened morons. Liberal elitism? Sure, why not? It's better than the race for shelter well beneath the lowest common denominator we see all around us now.
Dino - you point to another interesting facet, I think, in how younger generations express themselves - my students too are almost always very polite and respectful when expressing their thoughts about the works of literature we read - politely, even earnestly, words such as "sucks", "skank", "bitch" etc roll off their tongues. And they mean no disrespect. In fact, I am amazed how UNcontroversial they are trying to be. They are just using what are, to them, common, acceptable, every day words.
ReplyDeleteOh what an example our slur-ridden, obsenity laced public rhetoric is modeling for them.
Squid,
ReplyDeleteYes, this lizard opines that it's part of an onslaught against intelligent thought and proper English carried out for the most part unthinkingly by our culture. Still, it would make Orwell's Big Brother proud.
Idiot-speak has long been in vogue -- the best example I can think of is that a disturbing event can no longer be characterized as anything but "scary." The word is painfully infantile and supremely trivializing: "that 9.0 earthquake in Japan was SCARY!" Yes, so "scary" that we managed to forget all about it within a week -- might that mind-numbing little word itself be a factor in such forgetting?
Politicians are among the worst in this regard -- they lap up and spew trivializing phrases from the press like dogs that haven't been fed for a week. There was NO other word, evidently, that could have been used to describe the 2010 elections other than "shellacking." Nope, it was one mighty big scary shellacking. Totally sucked for the Democrats!
I'm gratified to hear such opinions about what's happening to my beloved language. But it's not only about the banality of obscenity, something I prefer to hold in reserve for the right time - like a concealed weapon - it's just that dumbspeak is like melanoma. A day doesn't go by when I'm not irritated. The word 'ingenious' dissapeared sometime last month. "Genius" is the new ersatz adjective: "that's a genious idea."
ReplyDeleteIt's a small thing by itself, but these polite, don't-risk-offending youngsters seem to me to be covering up something -- as if you can't be a racist or sexist or anythingelsist that isn't socially adventageous if you use the approved terms, no matter how clumsy and contrived. But I won't go on. Dr. Syntax left town a long time ago and no longer answers my requests to blog.