All Pharmacists Cannot Be Nancy Reagan

Not quite an explosion onto mainstream media, more like a dribble over the affiliates, it has recently made national news that the Indiana General Assembly is trying again to pass an old bill that would create/ease a pharmacist’s “right to refuse” service, in this case based upon religious belief (among other factors). While there are already several states that support this practice by law, there’s no time like the present to address the situation either with national interest or in all remaining states.

This is not a new issue. “Right to refuse” clauses or “conscience” clauses, specifically as they relate to abortion drugs, have been around since Roe v. Wade. Clicking here gives a great breakdown of all the states pushing legislation in one direction or the other over this topic. Clicking here shows the verbiage in the formerly proposed Indiana bills.

Okay, so we all know where the argument goes. On one side it’ll aim to say that if any pharmacists are allowed to do this, then what’s stopping them from exercising a “right to refuse” over any other drug beyond morning after pills or any other customers beyond pregnant or possibly pregnant women? After all, a law cannot name a specific product or group. The other side will claim that these pharmacists are providing a Samaritan human service by “refusing,” similar to a firefighter that rescues a baby from certain doom or a conscientious objector soldier who refuses to fire in war. I’d like to take the discussion out a little wider than abortion drugs, though.

Even if a “right to refuse” sounds new to you, toward your likes or dislikes, it is, in fact, a concept we deal with everyday. Most of us have seen the sign in the convenience store reading “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” We all know that any clerk, customer service rep., sales person, or manager is permitted to simply withhold service if you are belligerent, cussing, threatening, physical, lewd, or generally being a pain in the ass. I can refuse you service if you’ve broken a contract or failed to pay. Libraries can kick you out for talking, cinemas for the same, museums for touching works of art, airports for being on a list, former employers for claiming you were disgruntled, some hospitals for having the wrong insurance, lending bureaus for having poor credit, restaurants for bringing in food from competitors, bars for drunken behavior, amusements parks for not sitting correctly in the rides, government buildings for failing to produce proper I.D., or even beaches for not swimming inside the ropes. All of these exercised “rights to refuse” seem reasonable to most of us. They are so commonplace, in fact, that we might consider them a required component of running a business.

Additionally, there is the more top-down notion that an employer or corporation should not be able to FORCE you, as an employee, to do anything that is against your moral beliefs or religion. Banco Popular cannot force tellers not to worship on Easter Sunday. Blimpies cannot insist that Muslim counter workers eat bacon on their lunch hour during Ramadan. Circuit City cannot add “stab that Commodore 64 moron in the neck” to a salesperson’s job description, even if that employee is a once violent ex-con. Yes, if employers ask you and you refuse them, you won’t be long for that job, but that is also why we have the fallback of wrongful termination suits.

Given this dual tier, common sense familiarity with “rights of refusal” in the conscious mainstream, it’s a surprising wonder that when applied to pharmacists it would get such a rise out of people. Sure, the focus on that one set of drugs brings with it all the ire of the medical abortion debate, but people who’ve never cared one way or the other about the legality of non-spontaneous abortions have thrown a great many hats into this “conscience” clauses ring. And, it is a dangerous, morally relativistic ring.

Assume for the moment that I am against conscience clauses, that I want them eliminated either from pharmacies in particular, or from all businesses as they relate to the customer. Perhaps the strongest argument to rid the world of the “right to refuse” is that the practice is a form of prejudice or discrimination. Refusing to sell a person a product is reasonably similar to a cabby refusing to pick up a pregnant woman. Refusing to fill a prescription is oddly comparative to not giving African-Americans a homeowner’s application at an open house. Even if the practice itself is not intrinsically biased, it is a very easy practice to abuse for the sake of bias. So, in order to counter the idea that “right to refuse” is similar to prejudice, my opponents will claim the act is based upon the pill, not upon the customer. They’ll make the counter-argument akin to the particular product, not the consumer. That’s a rough road for them to take, given that these pills, like others, will overwhelmingly be purchased by women, and that they will ALL be purchased FOR women like pre-natal vitamins, estrogen pills, medications to ease menopause, vaginal healthcare products, and anything bombastically pink.

While the counter-argument might not be completely convincing, I, as the presumed opponent of conscience clauses have to account for and deal with it anyway. This generally ropes me down from my “discrimination” high horse and lands me on a platform of “domino effect.” That’s to say that I would need to change angles, take the next most obvious route, and instead argue that if a pharmacist is allowed to refuse any customer one set of pills, what’s to keep her/him and all pharmacists from refusing all kinds of services based upon all kinds of belief systems. Pharmacist Edgar might refuse my anti-HIV cocktail because he believes my impending disease to be a gay curse and further proclaims that homosexuality is a superlative sin. Pharmacist Tallulah might fill 400 milligrams of my 2600 milligram prescription because she believes doctors over medicate. Pharmacist Deepak might refuse to give me any service whatsoever because I mentioned, three conversations ago, that I was a divorcé. Well, this is a great argument. It makes sense to so many people. Granted, opponents will claim such things will never happen and then we wind up in this junior high school debate spiral.

“Yes they will!

“No they won’t!”

“Yes they will, poopy head!

The spiral aside, domino effect is an understandable platform. I was vey careful NOT to discuss my political affiliations and points of view with the dentist right before he gave me a root canal. Sure, he picks up CNN on the same monitor with my dental x-rays, a monitor that during my exquisite torture only he could see and watch, but the last thing I needed was him taking out his election primaries dismay on my exposed, raw nerve. Duh! None of us like to imagine how that situation might turn out if we were forced to agree with all dentists’ political leanings before getting extra Novocain. We fear domino effect. We perceive it, acknowledge it, and prevent it. Recessions and depressions are domino effect. Nations falling to Communism was a domino effect. Why not pharmacists’ “right to refuse?” It’s a great argument. Don’t let any pharmacist refuse to give out any drug and we’ll never have to worry about all of them doing it with all drugs. Oh wait, where have we heard that argument before? Ah yes, gun control!

Here comes the dangerous moral relativism I spoke of. If I make the supposition that many of the people who’d oppose a pharmacist’s right to refuse skew to the political left by nurture, well then they are the same people that have been trying to convince right wingers there would be NO domino effect if we take away certain firearms. One cannot make the anti-domino effect argument for conscience clauses without opening up the door on overblown NRA assertions. By arguing this way that Donna should get her pill after she was raped, is to also argue that Manny the American ex-con gets his pick of AK-47 arsenals. Damn! So near, and yet so far.

Now, let’s go the other way. Let’s presume for the next moment that I am pro “right to refuse,” if even because I am simply pro anything with the word rights in it. Perhaps the easiest way to start this argument is with a future tense.

“So, one day, American doctors and psychologists and legislators decide that suicide is not a form of murder, but a patient’s choice. I, as a pharmacist, in good conscience am supposed to give them a big death pill? Am I as a pharmacist supposed to trust more in my nation’s ability to promote the common good than I am my own ability to spare a life standing right in front of me?”
There’s something basically human about the idea that doing one’s job well is defined by the limits to which we’d take it. We don’t think that a professional football player is any better if he keeps running to Montana after scoring the touchdown. In fact, we’d think he’s nuts. No reasonable person would claim that self-inflicted 17 hour workdays are anything but highly negative workaholism. Heck, we even give the most powerful job in the world, the U.S. Presidency, all kinds of limits, parameters, checks and balances and thereafter define a President’s “job-well-done” by how precisely s/he stayed within those strictures. Is it at all odd, then, that some doctors under the same Hippocratic Oath refuse to perform abortions or that some pharmacists under the Oath of a Pharmacist, an oath that includes a passage on ethical conduct, exercise their right to refuse? Isn’t setting limits part of a job-well-done? Are they really supposed to become a doctor or a pharmacist one year and then dole out every drug and every procedure that crops up in years to come no matter how radical or controversial? Do we not simply think they are better at their own jobs if they take the mental moment to say, “Stop, wait a second, let’s examine if this is really in congruence with my patient, my oath, and my knowledge?”

Opponents to this view on conscience clauses often go right for the frequented point of view, “What about the rights of the patients?” The law said they could have the prescription. The doctor who examined them lent all the professional weight of making out the prescription. The insurance company was even willing to pay for the prescription. Who is a pharmacist at the tail end of the service provider chain to say that a particular person should not be sold that particular prescription? Even more so, who is a pharmacist to countermand a medical doctor? The argument is the basic, tell-tale wisdom our parents taught us about rights. We were never to let the exercising of our own rights extend to the tip of somebody else’s nose. That is the historical difference between “rights” and “equal rights.”

So, this time, as the presumed pro “right to refuse” junkie, in accounting for the most frequented counter-argument, I dial my stance down a few notches from the lofty oaths and good job defense to now land these shoes on a platform of endless examples.

“What if women, once again, no longer had the right to refuse any random guy for sex?”

“What if Nancy Reagan never taught children to just say no to illegal drugs?”

“What if unions had never strengthened employees’ rights, many of which were based on the refusal to be abjectly abused?”

“What if the Boston Tea Party never took place?”

Insert your own pre-1964 examples here. There are a million of them. The new argument becomes the simplified idea that there is a lot of good demonstrated throughout history by both the practice of granting legally covered rights to refuse and, by extent, in listening to the very words that make up the phrase. Refusal empowers, it protects rights, it prevents catastrophe; it draws a line in the sand defining character, change, and perspicacity.

New opponents then jump in on this litany of examples with their contrasting case that states “none of those examples have anything to do with the sale of products and services.” They wish to assert that in order for equal rights to prevail through their infancy in a system of free enterprise, then at the very least we must make all products available to all consumers. We must collectively decide that the historic examples of “right to refuse” cannot apply to a product line or supply chain, to a service driven industry or person to person transaction. This leads again to the now familiar gambit,

“Sure we can.”

“No we can’t!”

“Of course we can, poopy head!”

I don’t truly see, given the eventual degradation into poopy head byplay, how anyone can firmly stand on any of the common arguments for or against conscience clauses. Sure I don’t want to have to go to seven pharmacists to find one who’ll fill my anti-anal leakage prescription. But, you know what? I also don’t want my daughter to be forced to sell a house to a customer who’s cupped her ass in the real estate office. I don’t want to be coerced to do every damn thing my yutz employer might insist I try, yet I also do not want do any damn thing the customer thinks I should do whilst calling me a fuckwad and insisting that the customer is always right.

My take is two-fold. First, we have laws, with regard to equal rights, that provide we cannot disallow anyone from entering our businesses based on race, ethnicity, creed, etc. There are still African-Americans alive who remember not being able to go into certain lunch counters or play on certain baseball teams. This is not some figment of revisionist history. They sat at the back of the bus, drank from separate fountains, used different bathrooms, went to different schools, and altogether were treated as less than. Those laws provided a necessary component to a truer America, one that did something to rectify its own atrocities. I find it interesting that pursuant to the interpretation of these equal rights laws and the simultaneous interpretations of “right to refuse” legislation, that any customer might now be allowed, by law, into the neighborhood, via the front of the bus, through the front doors of an establishment, up and down the aisles, only to still be refused service at checkout. By “interesting” I mean, how is that different than 1942?

I think there is some through line to a logic which would imply that if a customer is allowed into your business, that same customer must be provided your service within that business. Would this not be a self-evident truth? So long as a customer is not tampering with product, disturbing the peace, or doing something else worthy of getting them thrown out (acts that are covered by other laws and therefore not needing “right to refuse” clauses), then that’s it. Your personal feelings about their choice of product are irrelevant.

Secondly, let’s remember, with regard to pharmacists, that prescription drugs are controlled substances. They are legal controlled substances, but nationally controlled nonetheless. All of the legislators, companies, lobbyists, scientists, doctors, researchers, voters, officers, and associations involved with deciding how a substance is controlled are far too vast for any one crusader to veto solo. They’ve determined the exact process a person must go through to obtain said substances and when a person does so IN GOOD CONSCIENCE only to be turned away, it completely undermines the masses it took to make such a grand decision structure in the first place. Pharmacists are not the leaders of their own little nation. They didn’t go to school to become Ivan the Terrible. I understand that part of the job is something that goes against the grain of your ethical make-up. Then why do you have that job? Is it true with every job? Can we “refuse” to do any work based on the notion that all jobs go against our religion?

If it’s going to be right against right, right to refuse verses consumer rights, then I believe they stack like this. The person in the role of the pharmacist can go anywhere, anywhere at all to practice their right to refuse. Simply sitting on the couch NOT giving out pills is an exercise of that right. It’s a non-act by nature. You can go NOT do anything, anywhere. On the other hand, your establishment is the only place that rape victim can go to exercise her rights, rights that were already violated at least once. Taking away her one place to practice her right in order to maintain ALL your many places doesn’t seem equal with regard to rights at all. For Americans, rights without equality mean nothing. Don’t take my word for it. Here are some other entries:

Druggists Refuse to Give Out Pill

Pharmacists Rights at Front of New Debate

The Right To Refuse Service


Should Pharmacists Be Allowed to Refuse Service



It seems to me that nobody can force a store to carry a particular product, distasteful or no. I can't make Target carry Super Juggs 2008: The Sleeze Expo Edition. I can't make Dillard's carry unitards for men studying ballet or Japanese import Music CDs. Each business decides upon its custom consist to maximize profit and to evoke an atmosphere attractive toward targeted clientele. In the case of controlled substances, however, targeted clientele is EVERYONE. We control controlled substances in a manner that impacts everyone. Everyone needs to go through the same process to get these products. Everyone is subject to the same punishments if they get these products any other way. Everyone is still liable after getting these products for subsequent abuse of said products. It's a web of necessities used as both control and deterrent. One doesn't need to jump through any hoops to order off of Overstock.com. However, if one does choose to navigate the web or jump through the hoops to get the proper medications, webs and hoops that we all set up for society's benefit, then we cannot opt to penalize righteous care seekers for doing so in the end. We cannot make the act of obtaining something illegally, wrong, AND the act of obtaining something legally, wrong. Pharmaceuticals distribution is a business that has no particularly targeted clientele. Everyone gets sick and hurt and therefore everybody needs care. This indicates that business owners who opt-in to an industry that serves all people have opted out of the choice of what products to carry or to sell.

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Bobby Fischer

I don’t know what the blogging equivalent of a moment of silence would be, but I’d like to make one for Bobby Fischer. Having passed yesterday,1/18/2008, the famed Fischer was a never-ending inspiration to logicians and chess enthusiasts like me. Where “inspiration” would fail to articulate what he meant to the world, “paragon” might better scratch the surface. He was enigmatic, dauntlessly passionate, and an icon of fragile, human Americana even beyond his time as an American citizen. Yes, the very notion of his passing ripples through the chess world like an earthquake of sadness and loss. To whatever degree he was the living embodiment of the art of chess, his death is all the more palpable, an unbeatable king laid down in resignation.

Yet, limiting Fischer’s 64 years to the mere 64 squares on a chess board is to rob the meaning that this particular life provided our sometimes forgetful and frequently fickle lot. To say that only chess masters, strategists, gamers, or mathematicians mourn his absence would unjustly frame his death as bleakly more untouchable than his life. Bobby Fischer was the proof, the PROOF that a mind ever set on perfecting even a particular aspect of conscious choice is one that functionally reaches distant, distant realms of human capacity. If any of us put half the mental energy into our marriages as Fischer did into chess, dysfunction would be eliminated from psychology’s bag of couplehood labels. If anyone put the certainty of concept to execution into their career the same way Fischer planned out not only his next game, but his next fifty games, all rewards of the American dream wouldn’t be far behind. Fischer was a master of refining infinite possibilities into a manageable, beneficial series of choices foreseen before such choices had even presented themselves. He wasn’t a psychic, a soothsayer, a magician, or an angel. Rather, the multitudes of future things to come were genuinely interesting enough to him in his present to study, to anticipate, and to be wholly involved with as if they were physically realities in the now. He made things happen, a simple person outrightly attacking the complex. He took much joy in the doing. Winning was to be like him and our plain, old losses made us marvel and wonder as to how Fischer did it.

It’s almost as if the reclusion Fischer experienced through much of life was aptly meant to prepare us for his absence in his death, to leave us with the feeling that somewhere, somewhere out there is a hidden champion we can aspire to equaling, to surpassing. Fischer may not have defined the win, but he unquestionably redefined the winner. With a game, perhaps one of the most trivial aspects of humanity, Fischer carved out an exemplary path from obscurity to titan, and then just as easily showed us that there was no difference between the two. It was as if to say, “Here America, this is how you do it.”

Now, it’s our move.

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Bar None

While I’m not up enough on the early release of AP affiliate news around the globe to bring you information you probably haven’t already heard, I did think this article about the proposal to ban swearing in St. Louis bars deserved some further debate.

The article contends that police officers in the area need greater leeway in promoting the public peace, specifically in rowdy, night-crowd bars. The proposal is said to lump in the act of cussing with a short list of other “questionable” practices which, if outlawed, would give police the exceptional berth they’d need for better crowd control.

Um, am I allowed to say “screw debate” or “this is fucking ridiculous?” Perhaps “pish-tosh” would be more appropriate. Our illustrious Bullet of My Pants once put it very succinctly. “You cannot make being an asshole against the law!”

I suppose, however, that my mere swearing in an obscure blog entry does little to show these life-o-phobes for the mental nonparticipants that they are. I am absolutely certain that the St. Louis meeting scheduled to discuss the topic will be all but laughed out of existence. Nonetheless, if I trust only in the skimped human gathering of a far off Metropolis to learn from this proposed, obtuse doctrine, I’d be failing my readers. Okay, reader.

Why? Why bars? Well, let’s first handle the “why not” of the tale. This is NOT to give law enforcement officers more leeway for crowd control. That’s a lie. I am well aware that the tenants of freedom as observed in our nation leave a great many law enforcement officers with the feeling of having their hands tied. It is the observance of that feeling that actually makes a great many heroes, their awareness of their limitations, their need to supplement allowable force with immense doses of simple human appeal. An officer who refuses to overstep bounds or who acknowledges the privileges awarded her/him in enforcement is usually a fine example for the rest of the force. More often it is the staunch, black-and-white philosophy of law enforcement that sees hypocrisies and even law breaking on the part of officers and legislators.

I guarantee this “outlaw swearing” idea is not coming from an officer(s) who feels her/his hands are tied. Those officers already know that there is far and away enough existing legislation to do what they need to do in a bar crowd or any other crowd. “Disorderly conduct” ring any bells? Do “noise ordinances” sound familiar to anyone? A heavier handed “inciting to riot” might even come into play here. “Public intoxication” laws have a million incarnations across the country. “Failure to comply” is another funny derivative of “resisting arrest” that, dare I say, might take place in a St. Louis bar from time to time. “Indecent exposure” continues the list while “disturbing the peace” sees countless applications and “reckless endangerment” pretty much knocks the point home. By almost any of these existing laws, the law enforcement officer is provided the authority to exercise good, common sense between arriving on the scene and determining if an arrest is necessary. With any of these laws, it is up to the officer to determine whether somebody just advised him to go fuck himself or if the patron uttered “fuck” when his quarterback’s pass was intercepted in the third quarter. The simple fact is that sometimes swearing constitutes disorderly conduct, and sometimes it does not. Sometimes swearing is part of inciting to riot, sometimes it is not. Sometimes swearing is a direct failure to comply, and sometime it is not. The determination is now up to the officer on the scene. Legislate anti-swearing law, and the officer will have no choice. Any cuss would represent a failure to comply. Any drinking game would be tantamount to disorder by definition. No reasonable police officer wants this. They do not want what little authority they DO have, even with “tied hands,” to be taken away, therefore further tying their hands. It’s a no-brainer.

So, if it is not officers who feel they have tied hands bringing the topic up for proposal, then who…and more importantly why?

The first possibility is the staunch black-and-white legislators and enforcement officers mentioned above. Look for the hypocrisies people! If good cops would never bring it up, then bad cops have an ulterior motive in doing so. Don’t fall for it, whatever it is!

The next possibility is the Disneyfiers of the world. These are the corporations that think all reasonable people want to live in a Magic Kingdom and wear purple pants with great big buttons. Not too long ago, New York City’s Times Square and its surrounding areas were home to an urban nightlife which included a huge real estate swath of cheap, overtly disgusting, adult-only entertainment services. During the day, Times Square was a tourist attraction like none other, drawing in families and theatre-goers, PG-13 seekers and photophiles. Late night Times Square was a completely different place, a place that would sell double-sided dildos on the street, third hand, and home to a clientele who would buy them. Several conservative mayoralties later, for better or for worse, Times Square now looks like the Lion King threw up on it. Candy shops, Mickey merchandising, authentic Bugs Bunny tie-tack outlets and retro’ themed cafes have all obliterated any trace of a single glow-in-the-dark condom within walking distance of the Marriot Marquis. While I was no fan of 25 cent peep shows or those who’d freelance the same outside at 8th and 42nd, I can’t say that I’m all that enthralled with New York City being a big Betty Boop cartoon either. Sex slave DVD knock-offs disgusted me, but near zero variance in the available, touristy, consumer wares, none of which I would ever buy, doesn’t seem quite like Times Square either.

Growing up in the suburbs, we used to have a chain of franchised stores called Times Square Stores. It was a department store, of sorts, following on the heels of Grant’s and their competitors, with the exception of the fact that in each TSS department, some different franchise was making the profit. The only reason anyone ever went to Times Square Stores in the suburbs was the selection. It was the nincompoop, working class dream that one could get a new set of Good Year tires just paces from tiny, pink, Easter shoes that made it attractive. You could get a full set of earthtone, stoneware dishes in the department right next to the sale on imported newts and newt tank accessories. Before Wal*Mart and Kmart, before Target and Caldor, Times Square Stores made selection diversity synonymous with convenience. I knew about Times Square Stores before I ever knew about Times Square. Once I learned about the place the store was named after, I couldn’t wait to grow old enough to go there. I mean, if the price and selection at the store that BORROWED the name was so colossal, then the real Times Square was going to have products I’d never even imagined on the shelf. Sure, I was dismayed to eventually discover that the “products I’d never even imagined” were nipple clamps and assless chaps, but a guy’s got to learn somehow. Though I never made these impulse buys either, still, they were in fact things I’d never imagined, just as I’d suspected. Besides, lewd toys weren’t the only items available in Times Square, just the majority of them. Today, I can get the same Minnie Mouse pom-pom socks in Times Square that I can get in the Disney Store in Boise, Idaho. Figuratively, that’s about all I can get. Granted, I have to acknowledge the place is much better and that there is more to Times Square than shopping. However, homogenizing Times Square, in the end, gives me absolutely no reason to go there. Their money now comes from some one else and goes someplace else, eventually reaching old Walt in his hyperbolic chamber.

That’s the rub with the theory of Disneyfiers promoting anti-swearing law in St. Louis. If there is any truth to it, one must follow who’d be making the money. The city? The superstores? Special interest groups? Who would profit from a master plan to Disneyfy the area. Step one, make grown men say fiddlesticks. Step two, bring back floor length house frocks and put saltpeter in the food. Step three, build a rat in pants that can be seen from space. St. Louis, I ache for you.

In the end, however, I think it is neither of these groups that would try to suggest such legislation. I think, in our gut, when we look at both the absurdity of the law and the fact that it would only apply to bars and not St. Louis as a whole, we’d have to put our finger-pointing money on FAMILIES WITH SMALL CHILDREN! Ahhhhhhhhh!

This is my generation’s fault, yes FAULT! Oh sure, they lump us all into this Gen X category straining to find any one pan-spawn factor that unites us. That’s because they are looking for something positive. In practice, it’s much easier to find lists of similarities when we look directly at our own faults. We Gen Xers think that since the first step of a process is the hardest, we don’t have to take any of the other steps. We think that if we haven’t heard of something before, it must not be true. We think that part of the determination of whether an act is right or wrong is whether or not we get caught. We think that a two page email is way too long to read as books collect dust on our shelves. We think that everything old is useless and that everything new needs to be user friendly to be worthwhile. Convenience and comfort are actually priorities. And, and, and we think that every place we might ever set foot, even by accident, has to be completely innocuous to our children!

To quote George Carlin, “Fuck the children!” Listen, I write as a brand new father of an absolutely perfect 14 week old daughter. I hold her and feed her and change her diapers every day. I joke about her becoming U.S. President in 2042. I speak both baby talk and educational lingo to her on the regular while always making time for play. She is my light, my heart, and my hope. We waited and tried for a very long time just to have her and I relish what will be our time together. I fear for her safety, plan and wish for her future, pray for her happiness, and even wonder at her simple presence with my own child-like eyes.

Even I, however, realize that there is a difference between a child and an adult, the adult being the first tier. It’s not as vast as say, the difference between another animal and a human, but it is an enormous difference nonetheless. For me to expect that every single threshold I might cross, that each and every doorway I might darken, has somehow keenly brought itself up to the benign specs that would fascinate, but not negatively impact a six year old is the epitome of self-centered drek. Overwrite that MP3! Wear bulkier pants! Picket HBO! Give that guy a ticket for spitting! The color of that blouse is way to close to fleshtone! It’s like we want to raise a nation of Eloi.

As long as there are both adults and children in a free enterprise society, there will be businesses that target every niche. There are going to be some businesses that cater directly to children: Gymboree, Fruit Roll-Ups, rated G films. There will be others that cater to adults with a particularly naughty feel: Hooters, strip clubs, casinos. There will be still others that cater to adults with no such naughty feel: sports bars, cigar bars, red carpet affairs, wine tastings, gaming tournaments. Lastly, there will always be businesses that cater to the whole family: Red Robin, parades, zoos, Friendly’s, amusement parks, museums, etc.

To attempt to make EVERY place “family friendly” only serves to put other family friendly businesses out to pasture. Claiming and asserting that everything or that almost everything is supposed to fit into a single, American, child-proof niche, makes a shitload of competition within that niche and puts people out of work while dumbing down the consumer. Yet, you do not need demographics and economic mumbo jumbo to convince you. What you need is to swallow a much more jagged pill!

Starbucks is not responsible for raising your children! You are! Oh sure, it’s easy to agree with when stated like that, but have you examined where you’ve failed this test? In truth, the very existence of “family friendly” restaurants and their kind is because YOU are too much of a baby to make a sacrifice for your child. In American decades past, families took children to visit other family members and that was about it. The rest of the time, babies and kids were at home and at least one adult was too, parenting. Babies and kids, for the most part, were completely unseen in hotels, in restaurants, on planes, or wandering the exquisitely safe aisles of the local hardware store. Just the outside chance your child might cry was considered embarrassing, even rude. You’d catch a child or two at the movies or in a shopping cart, but they were frequently the exception…and if they so much as spoke too loudly they were immediately removed by the parent. Somewhere along the line, you, you who wanted to be a rock star and have the world on a platter, you decided that you weren’t willing to give up your daily mocha frappuchino. You weren’t willing to miss the limited time only bacon cheeseburger burrito at Taco Bell. You felt that just because you had a kid, that was no reason you had to give up going out on Saturday or had to put the last place bowling league on hold for a while. You didn’t want to learn how to cook for your child so you decided that the grillman at the local T.G.I. Fridays was going to do it for you, along with all the unyielding nutrition that the occasional cockroach and rat tail have to offer. You couldn’t miss the Joe Namath look-alike contest at Stumpy’s so you insisted that Stumpy add curly fries and clean peanuts to the toaster-oven menu. You decided that the seven dollars that was supposed to go into your child’s college fund was better spent on a Happy Meal because you just had to get out of the house. You were not okay putting your child first and your friends second so you dragged your little toe-headed pumpkin to every booze cruise, antique show, monster truck rally, spa day, tech expo, whites sale, treadmill workout, police auction, and quilting bee on three continents. Sure, you claimed to have ultra-modern parenting skills by virtue of the fact that your kids were exposed to so much, but we know you. More importantly, you know you. You filled the child’s days with all your personal, trivial pleasures because you, yourself had so little to expose them to at home. When it came to raising a child, you were a void, a vacuum of anything remotely relevant and you chose instead to distract your offspring from that with breads and circuses for as long as possible. If you truly wanted to infuse diversity of exposure into your child’s life you’d be taking them to poetry readings and religious studies, to live theatre and on camping trips, to political campaign headquarters and national monuments, to volunteer in assisted living facilities and to charity bike rides, to fireworks displays and to county fairs. Instead you took the child to Pizza Hut and came out the cool parent when you sprang for an extra topping.

Of course, anyone would have to acknowledge two more recent points of order to this trend. First, no one wishes to downplay the sheer torture it is to hold down a job or two and raise a child as a single parent. I doff my hat to those who do. You are heroes. Second, it is true that the very decades I speak of when explaining that kids spent much time at home were decades where a family could get by on a single income. Today, almost all similarly classed families require two incomes to make the same headway. It is not your hardship or schedule at which I target my venom.

I speak only of the parents of my generation that think the money they make is 100% their own to spend. I speak of the thick skulls who honestly believe they cannot leave the house without make-up, the lonely masses that have actually developed an addiction to shopping, the fence post geniuses who cannot “make it through the week” without a Krispy Kreme, the intricate thinkers that claim it will cost more to buy school supplies than it will to shut off the cable for a month, the consumer hoarders who claim that a cluttered house is still a clean house because clutter is not dirt. It is you. You with all your flimsy, flighty, whimsical personal wants, not a one sacrificed at the sudden alter of parenthood, you who still think you can have it all if you try and that dying by trying is somehow admirable, you have paved the way for the outcry, “Give us family friendly!” It is you, the enabler. You need someplace to go, go, go. Your condescending, uncompromising, unwillingness to stay at home and read a book aloud or just take a walk in the woods with your kid has sprinkled fast food chains and tabloid magazine racks over the blemished face of a once great country. Now, having expanded your kid-friendly options to McDonald’s and drug stores and Ikea, fashion outlets and racquetball clubs and virtual reality kiosks, travel and concerts and dance clubs, now you want to go further and take the bars too. Sure you could drag the entire family on an Amtrak excursion to the Mall of America, but you miss having a beer with the boys and watching the instant replay of the Chargers’ shoddy defense. You know Dr. Phil will hate you if you do it by yourself, so the only way to accomplish it is to drag Buffy and Jody into happy hour. That means unplugging the juke. That means you’ll demand pork nuggets and crayons at the table. That means the seat at the end of the bar is now the homework seat that makes your bartender no money. These are things you’ll demand to make yourself look like a good parent after having failed miserably at it. Not being a bar-goer myself, I’m almost apt to let you have them. After all, it’s no skin off my nose. You do all the work and that’s all the many more places I’ll be able to take my daughter to pee at the drop of a hat. However, when you are willing to rescind the basic tenants of freedom of speech by FORCING Big Tom and Stinky to say, “Fudge that coach in the patooty,” BY LAW, that’s where I draw the line. Every establishment will not be molded into a haven, bar none, that prevents me from calling Child Protective Services on you. If there is nothing good at home, then you are a crappy parent anyway and I am not going to reward you with cheesy fries and malt liquor.

There are plenty of words that offend me. There are even more words that I just do not want to hear. However, I am not indigent enough to think that people need to be ticketed or to go to jail for their use, even around my daughter. Has no one in the St. Louis legislature seen Demolition Man? Exactly what you are proposing was one of the biggest running gags in the film. Are you trying to be the laughing stock of the U.S.? Is there not one city representative who’d ever watched Footloose? Is Kevin Bacon coming to dance at your meeting? St. Louis, I love your zoo. I marveled at your basilica. The steamboats, the arch, every fiber of visitor in me found plenty to satisfy in your fine city. Again, I don’t even go to bars. Yet, if you see fit, under any cockamamie excuse, to pass a law against parts of speech; slang, cuss, or otherwise; you’ll pretty much be off my destinations list for good. Legislators are not lexicographers and passing the bar does not give literal dominion over them.

To conclude, I am probably wrong on all counts. Perhaps there are no bad cops, Disneyfiers, or marginal parents screaming for this St. Louis meeting to take place, for this law to become a reality. But you are having the meeting and you are then stretching for a way to explain it. Somebody out there has their underwear in a knot or is salivating at the prospect of making money at the expense of others. Somebody out there is hankerin’ for a Beverly Hills Cop style take-down technique or the chance to overtly redeem himself from being a crappy father. Whatever the source of the idea, you are not truly saying. You’ve refrained from stating a viable reason and in the doing are basically calling your own St. Louis citizens too stupid to notice. I don’t believe the people of St. Louis are that dumb for a second! St. Louis, you’ve got your work cut out for you and I hope the meeting is severely baptized in what will prove history’s greatest morphology of creative and everlasting profanity. Good luck pig fuckers!

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When will it END? STOP House Resolution 888!

Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now, controls the past.
Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now?
-RATM "Testify"

H. RES. 888 Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as `American Religious History Week' for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith.

Thanks to vjack over at Atheist Revolution for the heads up on this. He's got a good template for a letter to your Representative and a number of links debunking the assertions of the Resolution.

This is not just a religious issue. This is a group trying to permanently insinuate its myths into American History. What's next on the Christian Revisionism Agenda? American Atheists has an Action Alert up to facilitate writing to your Representative here. If you're uncomfortable using the Atheist site, you can also go here. Please contact your Representative and ask him or her to oppose H. Res. 888. For all the good it will do.

Remember guys, this doesn't end until one group wins. Just because they're not coming for you now doesn't mean they won't.

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Is this guy just stupid?Anti-Military Lawyer Damages Marine's Car on Eve of Deployment - via blackfive.net

I got this in my weekly Snopes update, but the meat of it is from blackfive.net, blog of a former soldier.

The Chicago Tribune has a column on it, as well.

The gist is this:
Lawyer sees guy backing down a one way street. Lawyer sees military plates on car and becomes enraged. Lawyer keys Marine's car. Hilarity ensues.

Seriously, does this guy have absolutely no understanding of how things work these days? Attack an American soldier in an American city for the simple reason that he's a SOLDIER? The Internet is ripping this guy APART. His personal information has been posted. His website is down. His office phone numbers have been disconnected. His picture is everywhere so he probably can't even go outside.

I've fucked with cars for taking up too many parking spaces, blocking driveways and general asshat behavior, but I only move their mirrors. This guy caused substantial damage. Do his actions warrant this kind of response? Probably.

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Shoppers' Delight

A Christocentric moment, if you please.

I’d like to take this post-holiday moment to thank all the retailers and service providers out there at the winding down of your busy season. I know the lot of you get unfairly stuck with the bum rap that is the commercialization of Christmas and I feel that so few shoppers truly reach out to thank you for all the richness and splendor you add to our holiday.

I’d like to start by thanking all the showroom and floor designers who not only disallow space enough for a mother with a stroller to pass between racks and shelves, but who’ve thoroughly negated the ability of any two people to pass even abreast, making it easier for me to keep my fellow man at bay. How did you know I didn’t want to say Merry Christmas to just any old stranger? How did you know I was getting tired of my preferred method of birth control? And, thank you for allowing me to momentarily revel in the beautiful, almost poetic irony of the less-than-stroller-width aisles in stores that sell strollers. I never knew big business could be so artistically oxymoronic.

I’d like to thank all the planners, purchasers, and cashiers out there, who’ve never heard of an opaque bag (sack), as you’ve taught me that surprises around the holiday are just simply overrated. While, on an equal note, you’ve further taught me I should never have deigned to shop in your store without first taking Company training that would infuse ninja-like stealth techniques into my joyous shopping experience. It is these very forward-thinking translucent baggers that have revealed to me that the idea of a family holiday is a farce, instead prompting the need for me to leave alone, to shop alone, and to schedule my return around an empty house just after globally warming the planet by making a second trip to the overpriced, opaque bag store.

I’d like to thank all the vendors of big ticket items who’ve battled recessions and corporate competition to arrive safely in 2007 without the ability to print a gift receipt. I admire your sticktoittiveness, your old school ideals, and raise my fist alongside, these, my brothers, in proclaiming “Stupid Power!” Nothing says “the joy of giving” like the sensation of plain and simple purchaser’s risk. As I sit and wonder how you’ve been so masterful in staying afloat on the modern market without caving to the wants and desires of the consumer, I can only unravel the tapestry of how you did it just so far, concluding that to counter this gift receipt fad, your plan must have started way back when some one decided it took a full and unavailable manager to change out the register’s print paper for regular receipts. You are boldly pushing forth into a singular future, unafraid. Kudos! You’ve realized that my truer shopping need is to feel superior to your cashiers around Christmas-time and thusly you’ve seen fit to hire only those who are confused when I hand them a twenty and a penny on a purchase that rang up at $18.01. I feel alive!

I’d like to thank all the manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers who’ve displayed the wisdom of Solomon by putting their price tags on the INSIDE of the shrink wrap where I could never attempt removal. I appreciate the way you’ve scoffed at convention that claims “it is the thought that counts,” and how you’ve alternatively enabled me to sum up my love for my wife in much clearer and logical dollars and cents. “Honey, this year I love you $776.35!” You’ve given me the gift of exactitude, a gift that every husband and father wants.

I’d additionally like to thank all the glue manufacturers and price tag wholesalers who’ve somehow missed the fact that even stamps now come in the self-adhesive variety. As I gently scrape price tags off for gift wrapping, taking with them huge swaths of my gifts’ original packaging, I can’t help but feel the warm and fuzzy holiday fulfillment that I will experience giving something that looks damaged or used at brand new prices. It’s an unexpected reversal of fortune that speaks to the heart by instilling hope.

I’d like to thank the good people of Fortunoff and of Sears and similar places that understand I wish to go to two places to buy one item. We are, after all, fighting an obesity epidemic.

I’d like to thank the good people of GameStop for sharing an elongated and audible laugh with the other customers on my line as to my choice of PC game for my wife. Laughter gets us in the spirit.

I’d like to thank the good people of Coach for never, ever approaching a guy in camo-shorts and a Jack Daniels T-Shirt to ask if he needed help. In true holiday fashion, you saved him the embarrassment of giving you money in exchange for one of your products. Oh, how his bulldozing brethren would have talked!

I’d like to thank all the malls in the Midwest for imparting to me the truth about my intelligence, not a one of them carrying any adult chess set in any store. Whereas I once thought I might be intelligent enough to play chess, I have now been schooled in the truth, the fact that I am one of the masses and that the masses are not smart enough to play chess. Nothing says Christmas like mass!

I’d like to thank the good people of the fiber-optic Christmas tree outlet for creating a dark and ominous atmosphere that draws out my baby’s seventh cry for the day when the clerk approaches unseen from the side and startles us with his overzealous, yet invisible elf joy. Only three more cries to go before bed now. You are a wizard!

I’d like to thank Billy, the aspiring restaurateur, who took it upon himself, paper hat and all, as I pulled into the Steak ‘n’ Shake under the huge “Open Christmas Eve until 4 PM” sign, to come out to the icy parking lot and let me know they’d closed. It was 2:30. Not only was Billy providing me with vital information, the likes of which you just don’t hear, save for around the holidays, but he also offered up those rare, between-the-lines inferences that let me know if I’d insisted, I’d get a holiday loogey in my steakburger. Billy, you are a God among men!

I’d like to thank the cashier at the gaming store who allowed me to open the box on the last floor model of a specialty game I wished to purchase. I felt like the customer was finally “always right” as she understood that I’d want to look over the quality of the floor model and to count the game’s pieces. I gently pulled back the taped corners and released the folds of the box. I carefully lifted the single piece of Styrofoam that had been form-fitted to house each individual piece in its proper place against the board that was attached to the box interior. Then I watched as the cashier, with one heavy wave of her arm, purposely knocked down and mixed up all the pieces in preparation for closing the box again. Wow! That half hour she and I spent together trying to figure out which of all 45 specialty, puzzle-like pieces fit where in the form-fitted Styrofoam was quality time for us. I feel closer to my fellow man.

I’d like to thank all our online retailers, the ones who guarantee delivery by Christmas during the checkout webpage and then list the delivery date as December 27th on the digital receipt I get via email later. You pranksters, you. Ah, good times.

I’d like to thank all the gift wrapping stations peppered over the holiday consumerscape, specifically for both your unparalleled oragamic prowess and your unwavering memory that lets not one package go through without affixing a tag with your store’s logo on it. Amazing! You are operating at 100% capacity. I now share with ALL my fellow shoppers the special knowledge that our spouses will know we didn’t wrap the thing ourselves. I gave the gift the consideration of seeking it out and buying it. I gave the gift the sacrifice of my time as I waited on a second line to have it wrapped. But there’s nothing like your wife complaining that your gifts count less because you didn’t take the time to wrap them yourself. Brilliant! In the end, I now understand that the sweat and strain that is put into gift giving is perceived as part of the gift itself and that on Christmas I could never ask the stores to lie just a little. Could I? I mean, the wrapping stations are there to help you, but to truly help you is to get you to realize that you should not have been offered a single convenience in the gift giving process. If you falter, if you take that one, time-saving convenience, you are a bad gift giver, end scene. I’ve never felt such a brotherhood of guilt! Rock on! I go out into the world, wiser.

We all could use a break from the frenzy of holiday shopping. It’s true. A little escapism never hurts. And that is why I’d like to thank our local, super-duper, triple giant, multiplex just for being there. From it I can choose Academy Award nominees or holiday themed special viewings. I could sink myself into a drama or just let loose with a good comedy. I can pre-screen what my daughter will be watching or just take in a guilty pleasure or two of my own. The possibilities are endless. Here’s a big shout out to our friends at the cinema, especially to those who’ve unilaterally decided that an advertised 12:01 a.m. on the 20th is actually 12:01 a.m. on the theatre schedule for the 19th. Not only have you single-handedly negated the need for a 12:01 movie start time, a minute on the clock originally decided upon to waylay confusion involved with a midnight show, but you’ve successfully condensed my escapism from a two hour cinematic experience into a three second “It ended yesterday, sir.” Thank you. Thank you for refocusing my time management skill to the holiday tasks at hand.

In the end, there was only one holiday destination that was everything I’d expected it to be, both the things I hate about it and the things I love about it…church.

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The Aftermath...

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A Sentiment I Can Get Behind

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Ramadan good, Christmas bad

I don't know what it is about the season celebrating the wondrous event of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that makes everybody so goddamned hostile and paranoid.

I bring your attention to an article at The New York Times.

Apparently Representative Steve King (R-Iowa)is upset that more people didn't support House Resolution 847 which he sponsored. It barely passed by a vote of 372-9, with 50 members not voting or voting "present" (neutral). How could such a thing happen? In a statement, Rep. King says,

"I would like to know how they could vote Yes on Islam, Yes on the Indian Religions and No on Christianity when the foundation of this nation and our American culture is Christianity…I think there’s an assault on Christianity in America.”

Of course there is. How could anyone vote NO to Christmas and Christians? Maybe they had a little problem with the language.

Whereas there are approximately 225,000,000 Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population;

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;
...
Resolved, That the House of Representatives...

(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

The resolutions for Ramadan and Diwali had no statements proclaiming their importance to this country or, indeed, all of civilization. In the Ramadan resolution we have this piece of condescension:

Whereas some Muslims in the United States and abroad have courageously spoken out in rejection of interpretations of Islam that justify and encourage hatred, violence, and terror, and in support of interpretations of and movements within Islam that justify and encourage democracy, tolerance and full civil and political rights for Muslims and those of all faiths;

and

Resolved, That the House of Representatives...

(5) commends Muslims in the United States and across the globe who have privately and publicly rejected interpretations and movements of Islam that justify and encourage hatred, violence, and terror.

The whole thing reads to me as, "Since some of you guys are being so good and playing ball, you can have your little holiday." The Diwali resolution is just pretentious milquetoast.

One only has to look at the titles to understand how ridiculous this is:

H. Res. 747: Recognizing the religious and historical significance of the festival of Diwali

H. RES. 635: Recognizing the commencement of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and spiritual renewal, and commending Muslims in the United States and throughout the world for their faith

H. Res. 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

(For some real fun, go read what was deleted and added to those resolutions before the votes.)

So how could anyone vote FOR resolutions acknowledging that there are Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains living in this country that may actually BE American Citizens, but regardless, having this holiday and we recognize that it's important to you so go ahead and do it, I guess, but vote AGAINST a resolution proclaiming that Christianity is the most important religion in the United States, if not the world, and Christmas is the best holiday ever, Amen?

Maybe they hate America and God and Christians and just want to drag the whole country into their godless, communist hell. Or maybe they just thought that Christians really shouldn't sponsor and don't need Congressional Resolutions proclaiming how great they are to all the other Christians in the Country.

Do you think this might have ANYTHING to do with the upcoming Iowa Caucus or maybe Rep. King's own re-election next year?

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Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

The ideas expressed herein are written in direct response to Selwyn Duke’s piece in The American Thinker entitled Stereotyping 101. While I tend to disagree with the author’s content outright, my main purpose for this response is to challenge Bullet with Selwyn Duke’s same task here in My Pants. Content aside, I feel that the column did a poor job of laying out its argument, end-to-end, and I very much feel that Bullet might achieve the intended anti-PC result in a far more insightful, logical, and convincing manner. I’m listening. Teach me.

Selwyn Duke’s take on PC speech and text is, by far, not the only such sentiment out there for the public to consume. From Lou Dobbs’ multiple allusions to Orwellian thought to televised, impromptu debates over Don Imus’ shock jock tactics, from complaint blogs by the thousands to the “legitimate” media jumping on every brain fart and every slip of the celebrity tongue; there is no shortage of Americans out there who simply feel painted into a corner when it comes to politically correct speech.

I chose specifically to rebut Duke’s piece in that it is exemplary of the relatively insupportable arguments used to counter PC mores. It is a very typical assertion about the stereotypical. By addressing this one commonplace tack, I hope to address several.

First, I submit that politically correct speech is not, as many might portend, a restriction on speech or an enforcement of one opinion over another. I further submit that it is neither an inherently righteous practice to use terms equated with political correctness by choice or by social coercion. Politically correct speech has seen masses of people dividing into two camps as if it were a yes/no question. In one camp are folks unfairly labeled as bigots, fundamentalists, and the brain-dead simply for questioning PC. In the other camp are very similar people just as unfairly labeled autocrats, elitists, and hypocrites pursuant to them voicing insult or finding merit in PC. Substantively, PC is not as simple as a true/false scenario. It is not a pro-life/pro-choice type issue. Treating it as such close-mindedly ignores all the many and often complex shades of understanding that reside between these two extremes.

Political correctness, among other permutations, is a linguistic movement. It is one of many thousands of otherwise benign movements in language that have added richness and depth to the freedom of speech we hold in such high regard. Language is constantly reshaped and evolving. It is contorted and challenged through slang and cussing. It is enlivened and intensified through new compound words, brand names, and fictional offerings. It is diced up and constructed anew via professional telephone decorum, sales pitches, improvisation, poetic license, correspondence, legislation, contracts negotiation, commercial ads, books, words borrowed from other languages, critiques, science, investigation, humor, and a never-ending stream of expansive usage. Language is a confluence of every communication ever attempted in every form by every person who’d ever existed. Therefore, language carries with it all the strengths and all the flaws of its infinite participants. Metaphorically, language exists as an ocean of ideas shared in countless word combinations and artistic expressions. This ocean is so vast it is without shore, but familiar enough to evoke patterns, like tides and currents. Much as real tides work through the night while we all sleep, so too do immense and powerful linguistic movements usually go unnoticed.

I describe some other linguistic movements for the sake of example, here.

PC is a simple, neutral, linguistic movement like any other. It, like many, represents language’s constant penchant for self-correction and precision. Wherever there is even a modest need for proper grammar and an interest in accuracy, that’s where you’ll find this particular linguistic movement manifesting itself in conversation.

One might ask, then, why we hear about this morphology so often while others remain silent. The answer seems obvious. These are the words we use to describe people. When language drifts around correcting terms for, say, flowers, the flowers can’t answer back.

That stated, I find Duke to be a very forward and rational thinker. The referenced entry, Can We Please Define Racism? made compelling arguments that were both insightful and balanced. Perhaps this is why I was so disappointed in the methodologies used for Stereotyping 101. I took the piece to be a flimsy assertion as opposed to a good argument. Arguments can be divided into parts: premise, inference, and conclusion. These parts did not stack well.

Duke’s premise was essentially “Are the generalizations true?” Well, frankly, no. Generalizations are never true for very elementary reasons.

Firstly, if generalizations were true, the word generalization wouldn’t exist. We already use a wide, almost poetic, vocabulary to nitpick at any idea’s proximity to truth. Take the words truth, fact, accurate, realistic, exact, axiomatic, self-evident, veritable, on-the-nose, correct, right, assuredly, and precise. They are all expressions defined directly by their perceived CLOSENESS to accepted truth. Conversely, words like generalize, approximate, about, relative, estimate, abstraction, almost, and theorize are a family of expressions specifically defined by their DISTANCE from perceived truth. Their very meaning attempts to imply that no matter how closely they might approach a truth, they can never be one.

Secondly, while generalizations are, by definition, untrue, and therefore frequently false, they additionally fail the litmus test of truism because they are intrinsically subjective. Truth, itself, to whatever degree it does exist is by all means objective. Truth needs to ring true regardless of all perceivers, a practice that generalizing cannot accomplish. Objectivity wins out over subjectivity in every conflict and such is the inequality between truth and generalization.

Duke’s premise is a two-fold disprovable notion, as above, before it even deals with some of the detailed examples meant to illustrate the point. Yet, even as it goes on to cite the case that spawned the blog entry, the common sense purpose of the example in Duke’s text refutes itself further. Referenced are alleged profiling/stereotyping entries in police training documents. The highlighted passages inform about behaviors and weapons of choice particular to ethnic groups. What jumped to my mind outright was the danger this text poses to officers of the law. It was obviously meant to protect our keepers of the peace, when instead it puts them at risk. Police MUST be so skilled and so savvy when sizing up situations in the moment, that even a split second of thought or decision can cost them their lives. An officer need take in every relevant element of her/his surroundings in order to effectuate the best course of action possible. Imagine, if you will, a police officer, during a truly split second decision, expecting a Latino suspect to pull a knife when instead the perpetrator pulls a gun. That finite miscalculation could be a life-ending mental burp. That officer, in all ways, would have been improperly trained to handle the situation, a matter of course that hinges upon a notion as short-lived as the speed of thought. Logically, if the example is meant to assert that officers are better equipped to handle calls with profiling in their training, my idea discounts that. If instead one wishes to counter me by saying these deaths never happen or that we trust our officers to be savvy despite the training text, well then the profiling language doesn’t need to be in the documents in the first place. Either way, the example is a defunct note.

I also feel compelled to point out that this particular example’s phraseology is part of Duke’s problem with carrying the argument through convincingly. The verbiage quoted smacks somehow personal. Hispanics generally do this. Hispanics tend to do that. Hispanics prefer these. Hispanics predominantly choose A over B. I didn’t think I could put my finger upon why I was so personally offended by statements of this sort, even though Duke never wrote any such thing. I know I disagree, but an articulated reason had been escaping me. Finally, I figured it out. This is the same type of language styling that hunters and trackers use to pursue wild animals. Think about it.

The Sunderbans tiger prefers to attack from behind, stalking through both water and on land, but opting not to reveal himself in open water if at all possible. This killer tends to go for a throat strike first, but will drag human prey by a limb to an invisible location before finishing them off. Without an alpha male structure Sunderbans tigers are generally rogues seeking out meals singly rather than in groups.

Language like this is used as simultaneous warning and disclaimer to educate hunters, trappers, trackers, and zoologists about the dangers of the breed while also covering one’s liability should the creature instead decide to leap from a tree or attack in a group. It’s a litany of probables profiling lesser life forms on the basis of their instincts. Humans, on the other hand, deserve not to be treated as prey or as lesser life forms, even in language, especially language that dictates, controls, or instills training for authority figures. Humans, by contrast to animals, make choices rather than instinctual judgments, thereby indicating that police profiling language structured similarly to the hunt is completely baseless. We would not use, say, the now very well recognized speech patterns that precede our ride on a roller coaster to welcome us to our MRI.

Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you’re having a great day here in New York City and welcome you to the MRI Room 12! Please keep your hands, arms, and torso completely still at all times! There are no metal objects allowed on this slide! Enjoy your scan and thank you for choosing Six Flags 51st Street Diagnostic!

How then did hunting and tracking language and speech patterns for animals get lumped onto people? While there would be something equally as tactless in both applications, the profiling language is being learned by an individual with a firearm. The insult is clear.


Duke’s premise put in a double spotlight of failure and the originating example also discounted twice over, I now move on to the inferences portion of the argument. This is where Duke normally excels with contributions and insight. As such, I must say that the following quote from Stereotyping 101 is a golden nugget of food for thought:

“While we must judge everyone as an individual, there are differences within groups but also differences among them. Thus, it makes no more sense to paint every group with the same brush than it does to paint every individual with the same brush.”

This is the inference, eloquently stated and thought provoking, that Duke thereafter tries to prove out. The piece enmeshes linkages, points of order, bold statements, and correlations into an entire matrix of support that I think falls far short of doing the job. Duke may have been better off making the statement quoted above and then leaving well enough alone. Why? Again, I can think of two reasons overall.

The first is a lesser ingredient, but an important one nonetheless. Readers should not interpret tactic as argument. An argument is a clear, concise string of related statements that hash out the conclusion in an agreeable manner. A tactic is a practice of mixing words so that the reader/listener is forced to comply either consciously or unconsciously. Everybody who has ever had a door slammed in their face knows about tactic. Everybody in this country is familiar with the number of times Iraq was mentioned in the same breath as 9/11 as a tactic. Duke’s piece, wittingly or no, contains both inference and tactic. It is the reader’s responsibility to sort the tactic out from all the assertions and then intelligently judge if what is left constitutes an argument. The Iraq-9/11 tactic is one that is used here.

In the same set of paragraphs, Duke mentions stereotype, profiling, generalization, leftist agenda, biases, thought police (a menace to civilization), political correctness, diversity, and ideology. Duke interrelates these terms, and masterfully so, in such a way that the reader is meant associate them. I am supposed to conclude that political correctness and thought police are related. I am supposed to conclude that the negativity of bias is somehow similar to the positivism of ideology. I am supposed to conclude that Iraq, first and foremost, is directly responsible for the events of 9/11. This is tactic and nothing more. It is the practice of choosing the ideas one wishes to degrade and sinking them into a pool of otherwise poor associations with language that we know invoke distasteful connotation.

Philosophy 101, to parody Duke’s title, includes an exercise altogether demonstrative of this practice. Students are asked to think back to the beginnings of civilization and list ideas that might have been perceived as basic, universal opposites. Inevitably, through common sense, students list right and wrong, light and dark, on and off, good and evil, man and woman, yes and no, happy and sad, and other appropriate notions. The problem with the structure of supposed universal opposites is the result. Woman is somehow placed on a list with wrong, dark, evil, no, off, and sad. This is the very tender root of association as used, even by accident, for prejudicial effect.

I am certain that there are strong arguments to be made that Iraq’s very outlook under Baathist control had something to do with 9/11. Constantly mentioning Iraq in the same breath as 9/11, however, is not one of those arguments. It is a tactic. It is guilt by verbal association. Similarly, immersing a neutral linguistic movement like political correctness into a bath of stereotypes, generalizations, and agendas is not a supported argument. It is the exact same tactic, meant to be used in place of connectivity. I submit that Duke’s usage of all the listed terms are not connective at all, but disjointed hopes that the reader will fill in the gaps autonomously, or read without questioning. Duke’s subjective opinion of PC clouds the notion in with the very bully language that the PC movement is meant to address, to self-correct over time. It is incumbent upon the reader to sift out this tactic from the argument and decide if what is left still constitutes a valid point. In the case of Stereotyping 101, what is left is a disconnected list of highly separate talking points without any connective tissue. Those points, each standing alone, are my second foray into rebutting Duke’s inferences. Alternately said, each point on the list can be discounted of its own merit, allowing the argument itself to fall apart.

I counter some of those individuated points here.

Duke concludes with a call for people to stand up for truth in all its forms, restating the claim that there is, at least, an element of truth to profiling or stereotyping or generalizing (an element of untruth to PC). Duke seems savvy enough to draw this conclusion without supporting those who’d abuse said truths and for that I applaud. Still, the most important distinction I’d hope readers might draw between Duke’s conclusion and my own is that more than one truth can exist at the same time.

It is entirely possible, to the point of being numerically probable, that part of a whole is coincidentally true, while the whole itself is true, while the linguistic movement meant to explain those truths is factually neutral. I conclude that it is this simultaneity of legitimacies that put PC in an agreeable light, without actually being pro’ or gung ho for PC. I believe it is my allowance for multiple truths in our one reality that quashes Duke’s more singular perspective on stereotyping. While “Oriental” was once used to refer to a group of people, the word “Asian” is ADDITIONALLY TRUE. While some people in our country prefer to be referred to as “black,” those who’ve chosen the moniker “African-American” might note it is ADDITIONALLY TRUE. While many use the word “white,” the terms “Caucasian” and “European-American” are ADDITIONALLY TRUE. PC is not a question of one word verses the other. Both pro-PC and anti-PC camps fail to realize this. The pro’ side would do better not to enforce and the anti’ side would do better not to point fingers. PC, as a linguistic movement, is about language’s constant forward momentum, a momentum that can no sooner be necessitated than it can be stopped. If PC were all positive and not neutral, advocates would not have to fight for its use. The change would evolve naturally. If PC were all negative and not neutral, nobody would elect to use it. Language would jump to the next logical stage of evolution for this family of words with another, similar movement we might as well call PC2. That’s the beauty of language, all parts of language. It self-corrects. To whatever degree PC terms are currently inaccurate or hypocritical or elitist, our language will eventually correct those as well, but not if we don’t start down the road.

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Linguistic Movements: Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

This selection is condensed here and meant to be part of my lengthier blog entry

Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

• There was once a staunch abandon of contractions in what was considered proper speech. Contractions were looked down upon as common. They were viewed as the product of lazy, uneducated tongues. It took an overpowering, linguistic, grass roots movement to see to it that most modern American English is now contracted beyond what can be represented on paper, huge portions of which are today considered proper English.

• Punctuation and text formatting are also parts of language. More recently there was strong opposition to alternatively formatted business language when put to paper. There was one accepted format and all others were deemed inappropriate. It took a movement spurred on by email and the fact that differing email servers handled simple paragraph indents adversely to change this language component. Today, it is okay to send a business to business email without paragraph indents, in many places preferred, so that digital text isn’t interpreted by local machines to belong in all sorts of weird places on the digital page, thereby appearing unprofessional. The change sparked much creativity and many new formats.

• Differing pronunciations of the same words in the same language across the various, fantastic dialects of our free nation all resulted from unseen linguistic movements as language evolved.

• The “Me” Generation more greatly intensified language that centered on the self, in explanation and in literature.

• Einstein inadvertently brought focus to parts of speech that were based in mathematical notions.

• Edgar Allan Poe made up words when he didn’t have one express that which he wished to describe, words that are now in every American English dictionary worldwide.

• Lexicographers find themselves constantly revamping their approaches to proper definitions as science continually serves up new proofs and new discoveries.

• Even efforts like the completely fictional Klingon Dictionary stem from fantasy origins that create linguistic movements, in this case movements so overwhelming that Oxford’s English Dictionary added terms like “Klingon” and “warp drive” to their volumes during the early part of the 21st Century.

• To add, Leet or LeetSpeak is an entire subculture of tech based slang that constitutes an enormous linguistic movement of its own, which in turn impacts other linguistic movements and language. You can read more about "l33t" here and here.

• When looked at from a number of points of view, there is a linguistic movement that seems to state, "If you film an American movie about anything that took place in a language other than English, forcing the actors to use all upper class British accents will lend credibility to the piece." Sure, we English speaking Americans realize that our mother tongue and the pronunciations within it are not the fountainhead of the English form. We are far from the originators of most English words and we look up to even standard British as a form superior to our own in classy usage. However, this does not necessarily mean that a tale from ancient Greece, a ditty about Julius Caesar, and a character study about Gingus Khan must include British accents of any kind. Somehow we grapple onto the idea that anything older than America's Old West is somehow more believable if done in English with a British accent. Yes, Americans generally hate reading subtitles. Yes, some stories actually take place around Brits. Still, American cinema's use of British English to represent any older form of any language highly (and wrongly) expands our existing perception of British enunciation as more chic. Before, such pronunciations were pure, coming from Brits and British actors. Now, most come from American actors attempting and frequently failing to master British pronunciation thereby spurring the populous on to think of these lesser and mistaken sounds as the haut speech. Our minds lend the British speech patterns greater importance in that we are inundated with them through film, while our ears poorly refabricate these patterns into something we turn around and call classy when it is not. Just look at the five year stint that Madonna tried to speak with a sudden British accent in order to make up for her own, stupidity laced, guttural pronunciations. Then, an entire half-step generation of fans began doing the same because it was so neat. Thousands of poor examples of "new" pronunciation and slang got folded into our existing lexicon, just from that one move on Madonna's part.

• What seems like over usage of the word LIKE in today's vernacular drives me personally crazy. However, even I have to acknowledge that it is simply a neutral, linguistic change that language vamps around whilst redefining its structure. Everything below is quoted from an article by Patricia T. O'Conner in The New York Times Magazine showing that lexicographers agree.

On Language

Like

By PATRICIA T. O’CONNER
Published: July 15, 2007

Like is a friendly word. As a verb, it gives off affectionate vibes. In other parts of speech, it’s a mensch as well, emphasizing what things have in common, not what separates them. But there’s another like in the air, a gossipy usage that has grammar purists — and many parents of teenagers — climbing the walls.
This upstart like is the new say, and users (or abusers, depending on which side you take) find it a handy tool for quoting or paraphrasing the speech of others, often with sarcasm or irony. Linguists call it the “quotative like,” but any 16-year-old can show you how it works.
For example, like can introduce an actual quotation (“She’s like, ‘What unusual shoes you’re wearing!’ ”) or paraphrase one (“She’s like, my shoes are weird!”).
Or it can summarize the inner thoughts of either the quoter or the quotee (“She’s like, yeah, as if I’d be caught dead in them! And I’m like, I care what you think?”).
Like even lets a speaker imitate the behavior of the person being quoted (“She’s like . . . ” and the speaker smirks and rolls her eyes).
This like is not to be confused with the one that sticklers see as a meaningless verbal tic (“The band was, like, outrageous!”). Linguists would argue, however, that even that one has its uses — to emphasize something (“I was, like, exhausted!”) or to hedge a statement (“We had, like, six hours of homework!”).
But back to the like that’s used as a marker to introduce quotes (real or approximate) as well as thoughts, attitudes and even gestures. Parents may gnash their teeth, but language scholars like like.
“It’s a shame this poor little usage gets such a bum rap,” says Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain, an associate professor at the University of Alberta in Canada and one of several people interviewed by e-mail for this column. Dailey-O’Cain, who has published an often-cited study on the use of like, says, “It’s innovative, it serves a particular function and it does specific things that you can’t duplicate with other quotatives.”
The other quoting words commonly used in speech are say, of course, along with go (“He goes, ‘Give me your wallet’ ”) and all (“I’m all, ‘Sure, dude, it’s yours’ ”). But like definitely has legs. In just a generation or so it has spread throughout much of the English-speaking world.
O.K., the new like is hot and it’s useful, but is it legit? Aren’t some rules of grammar or usage being broken here?
Linguists and lexicographers say no. It’s natural, they say, for words to take on new roles. In this case, a “content word” (one that means something) has become a “function word” (one that has a grammatical function but little actual meaning). Academics call the process “grammaticalization.” It’s one of the ways language changes.
So is the new like proper English? Well, the latest editions of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary now include it as a usage heard in informal speech. That’s not a ringing endorsement, but it’s not a condemnation either.
As for me, I’m convinced that this is a useful, even ingenious, addition to informal spoken English. But let’s be honest. For now, at least, it smacks of incorrectness to a great many people. In writing my grammar book for kids, I wrestled with this problem. In the end, I suggested that the usage is O.K. in informal conversation but not for situations requiring your best English.
Contrary to popular opinion, like is not exclusively a kid thing. Grown-ups use it too, men and women about equally, according to Dailey-O’Cain.
“Part of what inspired my study was the fact that my mother (who was in her 50s at the time) used to complain about other people using like,” she says. “But once I started pointing it out to her every single time she used it herself, she stopped making those kinds of criticisms!”
The linguist Geoffrey Pullum, an author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, finds the usage “quite logical and reasonable.” And he agrees that it’s not confined to youngsters. “My former student Jessica Maki caught her 65-year-old aunt, who grew up in North Carolina, saying, ‘I’m like, don’t answer the telephone!’ ”
Yet part of the resistance to like may be due to its youthful rep. “People see it as associated with teenagers,” says Arnold Zwicky, a visiting professor of linguistics at Stanford. “In general, variants associated with young people tend to be disdained.”
Another unfounded assumption about like is that it’s used by the less educated among us. “A lot of people are going to say that the variant just ‘sounds uneducated,’ and no amount of factual evidence is likely to counter this judgment,” Zwicky says. “Here we have another factor contributing to people’s disdain for quotative like, especially in their own children: nobody wants their kids to sound uneducated.”
I’ve always believed that young people are capable of knowing when to use formal versus informal, written versus spoken English. Zwicky’s experience with like-mindedness seems to bear this out. “It’s a specifically spoken form,” he says. “I don’t see it in writing, even from my students who are heavy users of it in speech, except when they’re producing writing that they intend to sound like speech.”
A word to parents: Loosen up. You may be using like this way yourselves without even realizing it. I have a confession to make. My husband caught me in the act only the other day. He was like, “Did you hear what you just said?”

-------------------------------------
Patricia T. O’Conner’s most recent book is “Woe Is I Jr.: The Younger Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English.” She is working on a book about language myths and misconceptions. William Safire is on vacation.

RETURN TO: Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

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Disconnected List: Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

The following selections have been condensed here to serve as a part of my lengthier blog entry

Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling


Duke wrote:

Modern dogma holds that diversity is one of the greatest qualities a society can enjoy, that it bestows many advantages. But what does this imply? Well, by definition "diversity" refers to differences among groups. Now, not only is it illogical to assume that every one of these differences will be flattering, the supposition that diversity is beneficial implies otherwise. After all, if diversity is beneficial, it is only because certain groups bring qualities or strengths to the table that others do not. And, if a given group possesses a certain unique strength, then other groups are wanting in that area relative to it.

I respond:

No. Difference is only one definition of diversity. Multiformity is another. Diversity is beneficial not because of the visible strengths one group brings to the table, but the variant IDEAS each individual at the table will be able to offer having been immersed in an entirely unique culture. Diversity is not a matter of measuring intellectual strength verses physical strength verses capable strength verses potential strength verses statistical strengths across ethnic lines. Diversity is the championing of IDEAS that challenge our own, tons of valuable IDEAS that any one individual could not have conjured solo. Diversity is the acknowledgement that the widening of an idea pool is beneficial in all regards, therefore culling new ideas from sources as vast as separate historical cultures. There is no culture, to use Duke’s word, “wanting” in the area of ideas.

Duke wrote:

Stereotypes often arise because they have a basis in reality.

I respond:

No. Stereotypes arise because they have a basis in ignorance. Ignorant to environmental or cultural reasons why any two of the same culture might partake in a practice askew from the perceiver’s culture, the perceiver makes her/his observation in a vacuum. That’s the stereotype. I’ve a friend who’d put the issue quite succinctly. He, of a generally anti-PC stance, still said of stereotypes, “The logical defect is the assumption that one can judge the whole by the part [and call it reality.]” Sadly it’s the ignorance that’s the reality, not the observation that proved the onlooker ignorant.

Duke wrote:

…often it has been remarked that Irishmen liked to drink. Once again, intelligent people know this doesn't mean that every Irishman is a drunkard, but informed people might know something else: Ireland ranks number two in the world in per capita alcohol consumption next to Luxemburg.

I respond:

…which begs the question, what mass mental shortcomings are at work for the stereotype NOT to have been applied to Luxembourgers?

Duke asked:

So then why are the Maryland State Police probably going to have to pay money for saying what these academics got paid money to say.

I answer:

Because academics are not entrusted with the use of deadly physical force. In fact, life and death situations, the likes of which we empower our law enforcement officers to control, are pretty much the opposite extreme from anything remotely academic. Academics is words, ideas, books, debates. Law enforcement is physical, practical, direct, personal, street smart, and life threatening. It deserves to be consistently fine-tooth-combed for potential flaws pursuant to its life-threatening architecture. Some of the only effective censure we have on the life and death power we’ve granted them is financial censure when those potential flaws are revealed.

Duke wrote:

And here is another truth. I have only one thing to say about the idea that Hispanics are reluctant to learn English: I've never been asked if I wanted to press two for German.

I respond with several truths:

A) We and Duke do not live on the border of Germany.

B) We and Duke do not live in a nation where within a few years an estimated 25% of the country’s population will be descended from German speaking nations, but rather we do with regard to Spanish speaking individuals having achieved legal U.S. citizenship. Readers might otherwise know them as Americans.

C) Duke and I are both smart enough to understand that when one is trying to support a family on minimum wage, it doesn’t leave a lot of cash around for English classes and tutors; while the many American Spanish speakers excelling at careers who would otherwise earn solvent wages already have a decent enough handle on English to render classes unnecessary. Excuse me for slacking on the English here, but the nonsense word “DUH” comes to mind.

D) I find it interesting that the very U.S. Census Bureau information cited in Duke’s piece to push the humor about “pressing two for German” is a collection of data that completely excludes almost all Spanish speaking groups. It would have been interesting to see how the two sets of data stack up side by side. Duke’s cited data is here. The groups used to collect that data, just two clicks away, are listed here.

E) Call me silly, but I just have a hard time aching for a person who is pained by pressing a button approximately once every fourteen days. I suppose waiting that extra second before the automated voice continues in English is far too long for Duke.

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Tag, I'm Always It

The following was written in response to Bullet's post, The Only Truth: Perception Is Everything, a great read.

This is one “headspace” upon which Bullet and I agree. That’s to say that I agree that modern, western subjectivity in the everyday thought process (if you can call it thought) has thoroughly overwhelmed objectivity, an objectivity our society once strove for like no other ideal. I further agree that it frustrates me to no end.

Much of the social difference between the two, not long ago, took a particular shape in conversation. When an objective speaker met a subjective rebuttal, the objective speaker, by virtue of being objective, had and used the interpersonal tools necessary to actually explain a point to the second in recognizable, common, and convincing detail. Objectivity brings with it a roadmap to accordance. In and of itself objectivity already contains a structure through which to bring a listener over from her/his original point to the counterpoint, agreeably. Objectivity is a great teacher with the skills to help anyone understand. Subjectivity is a preacher that demands agreement with no such mental journey or bipartisan aid.

Today, instead, while an objective speaker still possesses and practices those very tools that cross the middle ground to reach others, subjectivity has gained a newer foothold in conversation and in argument. Subjective speakers have somehow become convinced that there is no such thing as an objective point. They fail to believe that another person has the skill and the wherewithal to step outside of the self and express a truth or a fact that doesn’t necessarily reflect her/his own opinion. This is a falsehood. Subjective thinkers have inadvertently created a collective atmosphere wherein statements like, “Whatever, “ or, “I don’t think so,” or, “I’ve never heard of that, I think you are making it up,” or, “I don’t want to hear it,” or, “S/he has an agenda,” are treated as the most highly weighted utterances in the conversation, the show stoppers, the winning pitches. We’ve all heard such statements before. They are the ones the embattled know-nots use before turning tail and walking away prematurely. The list is endless.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“I’m not listening anymore.”
“I learned to ignore you a long time ago.”
“I’m not talking to you.”

At least those few years ago these same intentions may have instead been stated as,

“What does this have to do with me?” or “How does this relate to your point?’
“I’m having a hard time listening because I do not understand.”
“I want to give you my full attention, but I am focused on something else right now.”
“Can we revisit this subject at a later time?”

Each of these latter spoken structures at least left the window open for the bridge between points to be crossed. In such a setting, an objective speaker/listener could perform the work to reach concurrence. Apt sentences like these acknowledged the gap between perceived opinions and simultaneously expressed a hope that the opinion closer to fact would reveal itself in the process of open debate. Dare I say, change a mind?

Subjective speakers do not do this anymore. They pick one idea they are comfortable with and stand on it, bar none, absolutely none. They’ve become convinced that repeating the statement more than once is somehow an arguing technique that will make the statement truer. They believe there is nothing to be gained from discussion if the other person doesn’t eventually and fully agree with their original point. They look at disagreement as a win-lose scenario. They enter every conversation willing to learn nothing, blaming conversational discovery on another person’s “bad attitude.” They find fault and insult in disagreement while they do absolutely zero to fervently pursue agreement. They interrupt, belittle, overreact, and even express PRIDE, yes PRIDE, in telling you that they do not need to explain themselves (and therefore their point). Then we put them on T.V.

Subjectivity is devoid of any tool that can ever result in real agreement and that is why it is inferior thought. It takes constructive disagreement to learn, but it takes agreement to move forward. Without agreement, nothing would ever transpire but war, murder, pain, rape, and your basic modicum of hell on Earth.

There are countless dimensions to this fluctuation in civility and endless blog entries yet to be written to lend a broader framework to the subject. It is a deep and complex societal shift to the overly simplified and therein what is falsely “perceived” as more efficient. However, it is this basic move from conversation to versation, and the people who would use it, that can be held almost solely accountable for a great percentage of all unfinished work, bad marriages, poor saving strategies, crime, automobile accidents, poor child rearing, mediocre job performance, and all forms of cheating. At a glance, the problem, though comparatively recent, seems hugely overwhelming and without end. It augments anything negative ever said about a Me Generation to bombastic, national proportions. I am certain that Bullet’s search for an acknowledgement of truth that is outside of the self, or the selfish, must seem undoable. To him, and to other objectivity-seekers like him, I offer below one hope and one piece of advice.

The hope is as follows. In part, I think a great deal of the overly subjective receivers out there have dug-in their heels specifically because they can sense that a regular conversation would eventually prove them “wrong.” They think they know where the conversation is going and rather than trying to be a part of where it is going, steer it a little, they view the destination as bad and instead overtly choose NOT to participate in their own “defeat.” While the thick-headedness of it could make you want to kick a puppy, there is some intelligence in the doing. The subjective points themselves still completely lack any thought to back them up. Their infernal drek is completely beyond rescue. Yet the ability to understand that “I” would be proven “wrong,” the ability to puzzle-out all the possible posits that are yet to be said and interlace them into a foregone conclusion that “I” might be forced to change “my” mind is intelligent in its own way, even insightful. It actually implies that under different circumstances, a subjective thinker would already and quite naturally agree with the objective point of view, sans hand-holding. Sure, the potential richness of this intelligent act is buried under the avalanche of unintelligent perspectives it takes to say “I’m not listening,” I submit, however, that this one act of the lazy mind could be described as an intelligence lying dormant beneath the crust that is a center of self. I believe that an intelligence lying dormant is better than none at all. I truly hope that one day it will explode through and regain the receptiveness that is key to agreement and forward movement. I hope to revisit and renew the path we were once on as a society, a path that saw so much merit in a truth outside the self, in a simple, provable fact, that we spawned arguably the freest nation on the planet. This is my hope and I offer it to you.

The advice I promised is less lofty. They lose! That’s my advice. Realize that they lose! Subjective speakers always lose. Sure, when no one is participating in conversation, if even because only one player has stopped the game, everybody loses out on the learning. Boo hoo! Nonetheless, what subjective speakers do not realize is that in their black or white, win or lose perception of conversation, they always lose. They have created these statements like “whatever,” and, “talk to the hand," and, “I’m not listening” for one express purpose…to end the discussion, to shut you up. Somehow, in shutting you up they feel like the winner. They’ve avoided the “defeat.” They get the last word in and that feels good to them. They actually walk away thinking that you have been put in your place, that you have failed, and that they had the superlative counter-quip. In that horrible human tally we keep in our heads of how many wins and loses we’ve racked up, they check that off as a “W”…every single time. They feel mighty. Still, if the purpose of conversation is to communicate, truly communicate, they’ve lost of their own avail. If the purpose of talking out a disagreement is to reach an agreement, they’ve SINGLE-handedly made that impossible.

Perception-only mongers are actually so bereft of objectivity, that they fail to realize they’ve lost. What’s more, in today’s society, so many blind supporters have come to treat this mental tantrum as a “win,” that even the objective speakers walk away from such intercourse feeling horrible. Objectivists didn’t deserve to be barked at, ignored, and then shut-out.

That is why I give my advice. It is a reminder to all the truly receptive. They lose! You have to know that they lose, definitively. When an incoming my-way-or-the-highway cop-out gags otherwise intelligent chat, you have to walk away at conversation’s end and immediately feel in the right. You just won. They left their king unprotected in the corner. They left the winning lottery ticket on the counter because they didn’t like the clerk’s attitude. You called their bluff, no matter the bet. You must craft the aftershock into the same feeling you’d get from bettering your personal best time in track. Get excited about it. Know it in your heart of hearts, for among other reasons, it is true. Nobody around to see you make the high jump? Still true. No one ever acknowledged your straight A’s in school? Still true. You have to know it so deep down in your blood, every mother-lovin’ time that it happens, that you never actually need to say it. They drop the working-toward-agreement ball and you depart satisfied. There are rules to boxing, two grown people pounding each other. There are rules to war, multiple nations murdering each other’s citizens over ideas and resources. Well, there are also rules to conversation and like boxers, when they break the rules, you just won, quietly, passively, and by default. Take it.

Finally, for those out there who might be left confused; for those who see I’ve now set up a situation whereby the subjectivist still walks away “thinking” s/he’s won with the objectivist walking away “knowing” s/he’s won and it’s accidentally left you wondering how you tell which camp you’re in…well the objective person is the person who reads this entire post.

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