By the way – you can read your 2011 Annual Horoscope Here.
What a week. I’ve seldom seen the press so tongue-tied about who should say what or how much. I note how far we’ve fallen from a rational, thinking populace that had the wit to quickly assess a problem, find its cause and remedy its effect. This nation was once confident in its checks and balances, able finally to shame McCarthy into obscurity and Nixon into powerlessness, able to agree that yelling fire in a crowded theater could only produce disaster and chaos. We once achieved such rational behavior, even if only for a handful of decades when middle class sensibilities prevailed. Perhaps that was too brief a period to count as a national marker, a period that never actually defined us. But I was young then, and I remember feeling something more solid than myth and only slightly less than constant. I felt it and I was proud of who we were.
We could use some of that skill, confidence and pride today, facing so bold an assault on our emotions as the tragedy in Tucson. And tragedy it is, robbing us of some fine and largely innocent souls, along with a sense of control. The nation had a moment of stunned silence last weekend before the talking heads began to chatter, but we couldn’t reasonably have been shocked. I haven’t been shocked since a man many never accepted as our legitimate president told the nation we had to choose between standing with him or with the nation’s enemies, that with or without us he was putting the full weight of the union behind the consequences. In such a political climate, how could we possibly control our Becks, our Palins or our Limbaughs?
Given the increasingly violent rhetoric of this period, few of us on the left were surprised at a massacre in a Safeway parking lot, nor should those on the political right be shocked who claim they have been victimized and targeted all the way back to Civil War Reconstruction and beyond. Their feud with liberals is old, cherished and served cold whenever possible. Tribal wounds and grievances that hold possibilities of violence go back to Cain and Abel, festering most successfully in minds unable to sort facts from fantasy, and therefore unable to proceed with reason.
This is not the first time our nation has divided itself unto death. We have a long history of political assassination in this country, and — make no mistake — if the one doing the bleeding or dying is a politician, then no legal defense of mental illness or social maladjustment can render that act less than politically motivated. In recent years we’ve become so polarized by what Krugman calls our ‘two moralities’ that it’s difficult to have a genuine dialogue, so most of us just tuck our heads and move along. Yet even back when the “land of the free and the home of the brave” was more than a recruiting slogan, a steady progression of outrageous incidents brought us to moments previously considered “unthinkable.” Something unexpected, shocking enough to catapult us into stunned silence. Something like Tucson.
Or Oklahoma City. For a few brief seasons, the Turner Broadcasting Network produced an edgy, sexually-explicit series, Saving Grace, starring award-winner Holly Hunter. Focused on quirky detectives in Oklahoma City, it gave us a compelling picture of the way the bombing affected lives and imprinted a community and a country, forever changed by homegrown violence. We seldom discuss this incident, marking a period when we still had the courage to call Tim McVeigh’s actions what they were: a politically motivated, anti-government act of domestic terrorism. Yet the right, railing against unjust attack by liberals, has never forgiven Bill Clinton for his stern speech against the radical movement that provoked that dreadful day in Oklahoma. Still, it was a time when a wing-nut of either political ilk could be called dangerously extreme without censure, a time when being ‘politically correct’ hadn’t hamstrung us with its chilling effect.
That’s not the worst of today’s post-Bush double-speak crisis. For me, the inability to agree on basic meanings raises the frightening possibility that fully half the nation isn’t capable of setting aside ideology for logic. Truth is a powerful antidote for such delusion, but even truth cannot overcome an almost pathological reluctance to challenge our belief systems. Language itself is working against us, which is ironic since the Tucson shooter has obscure issues about language as well. And in an enlightening article titled, What is “violent rhetoric”, we learn that intent to persuade is the critical component in encouraging violence.
Glenn Beck said on the air, “I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it …” A rational listener might well wonder whether Beck’s alleged joke was in the tradition of Henry II’s wail, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” — signaling his followers to kill his beloved adversary, Thomas Beckett. And in a reasonable world, anyone reading the definition of dangerous rhetoric would instantly understand that Obama talking about bringing a gun to a knife fight is not a call for violence but a way to explain the dynamics of a given situation. In such semantic differences lie the road ahead of us and our ability, or lack thereof, to understand them. All rhetoric is NOT created equal, nor is all opinion worthy of our attention. If he were still around, I’m pretty sure Mark Twain would agree.
Samuel Langhorne Clemons, a man so disgusted with the sensibilities of his own time that he prohibited publication of his final work until a hundred years after his death, might be dismayed but not surprised at the muddle we’re in today. I suspect he would fight, tooth and nail, the movement to remove the words “nigger” and “injun” from his seminal work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Various schools refuse to study this classic because of those words. The word I can’t resist using, in reference to this academic flap, is: vapid. While “nigger” and “injun” obviously represent hurtful stereotypes typical of their time, they can only continue to wound or insult if we continue to believe them true. Read that sentence again! Such words become archaic, unless we keep them alive. There is sting in them only so long as they’re credible.
If ever a word perfectly described both the legal status and the social condition of a human being in Twain’s epic tale of human awakening, the “n-word” did. It is not a word we are any longer comfortable hearing, but the word is not the enemy. The enemy is the sentiment, still fresh in this nation, that finds no problem publishing a picture of our President with a bone in his nose. The enemy is the notion that Obama, no matter how outwardly qualified, can never be a legitimate leader of this nation because he is not white. The word nigger pales compared to that sentiment. Removing the word from a historical classic means its use cannot be discussed in the historical context so vital to our understanding of prejudice and slavery.
Yes, Twain would fight for his choice of language, and he’d have no problem recognizing the kind of people like those on the Texas Board of Education, who wish to change all references to slavery and slave-holding to the less egregious phrase, “participating in the Atlantic Triangular Trade.” Eliminating any moral responsibility for the enslavement of fellow humans, these historical euphemisms make fellow humans the equivalent of items like molasses and rum. African-American descendants of slavery are then, I suppose, remnants of the ultimate commodity.
Twain himself minced no words in describing his times; why, then should we? I keep hearing, during this fractious period, that we must watch our words. The thought police would approve, and there’s the conundrum. Who will take exception to the words I use today, I wonder? Would Sarah Palin’s people finger-point at a liberal using such offensive words while tacitly approving her recent mention of “blood libel,” a basic corruption of archaic meaning which can only offend Jews, inflame fundamentalists and confuse the average citizen? Which of us, I wonder, is utilizing “intent to persuade?”
Ultimately, this is about free speech, but it’s also about taking responsibility. In the end, saying what we mean and meaning what we say is the only safety. Those of us who do so publicly will bear the price, if there is one. Each of us must learn not to squander words, but rather carefully spend them. Let’s make sure our words are, if not politically correct, then intelligent, reasoned and civil. Let’s make sure they encourage no harm. In this new year, this new decade, let’s decide to do the right thing, as Huck did when he saw Jim on to freedom, because there is no other choice in consciousness but what heart, and truth, demand.
Standing ovation here!!!
Well-spoken, Judith. Thank you.