Death Is Bad

George Carlin

Why can’t you slur a straight, white male?

From what I’ve been told (and what I remember of my childhood, though that’s probably very skewed) words like “fuck” and “shit” used to be a big deal. You couldn’t say them, and you couldn’t print them. Nowadays, unless children are around, no one really cares. They just mean you want a bit more emphasis in a particular sentence. You use ‘em on Facebook and no one blinks.

There are still some words that will elicit strong reactions. It’s difficult to use them in fiction without a lot of forethought. They will upset people on Facebook. There are only three I’m aware of, and they are:

Nigger

Cunt

Faggot

What’s interesting about them is that they are slurs against a specific group. You’d think you could extend the pattern, and find equally bad slurs for the counter groups, right? But you can’t.

Honkey or Cracker? Those have no punch at all. They’re so silly that they’re often used as jokes.

Prick has some insult behind it, but not much. It isn’t directly sexual (at least, not to anyone I know), and is basically just a variant of asshole. It’s mild enough that it gets used in PG-13 movies.

Breeder isn’t even that well known, and it again sounds more like a pun than a slur. You can kinda see the intent, but it’s hard to feel it.

What the first three words have that Honkey/Prick/Breeder don’t have is a history of violence. And not just any violence, but state-approved violence. When one is subjected to violence, there is a general threat of reprisal – there are laws against this. If the offending party is caught, they will be stopped. The victim can press charges afterwards. The Leviathan is fallible, but at least in theory the perpetrator of the violence is doing something wrong.

The three slurs listed come with the promise that the victim has no recourse. Society won’t just look away, society actively approves of their victimization. In fact, if the victim tries to defend him/herself, s/he will be punished for it by the Leviathan. The victim is powerless, a piece of refuse that is only allowed to exist because most people can’t be bothered to stomp it themselves. And this promise was loaded into the word by decades of exactly that – violence against those called such names, approved of by the state. They carry a meaning far deeper than mere words can lend them, they carry the weight of physical acts and lost lives.

I’m glad those words are considered as awful as they are. It means that we, as a society, now understand how horrific that legacy is. What words a society decides are too vile to be commonly used reflects upon what that society values. It’s a good sign that we value human dignity for all.

It’s weird that governments enforce contracts. I’ve been reading some upcoming changes to a few details of a subset of contract law, and that fact just struck me in the face again.

Say I’m a representative of the government. Two people come up to me, hand me a piece of paper they both signed some time in the past, and complain to me that one of them isn’t sticking to their agreement. Why the hell does that concern me? You are two private individuals that made a private agreement. Don’t try to get me mixed up in your private affair! What kind of egomaniac thinks “Well, obviously this is something I should stick my nose into! I’m glad they came to me!”

My first instinct would be to tell them to bugger off. I was never any part of this, they can resolve their dispute on their own. I suppose if they want my advice as a disinterested third party, and they feel I have expertise in the area, I can offer advice for a fee. But I’m not going to get involved and enforce anything with violence.

If they wanted me, as the government, to act as an arbitrator and give them Violence Vouchers – which is a legitimate request IMHO – they should bring the contract to me beforehand so I can look it over and agree that I’m willing to give Violence Voucher for this. They don’t get to come to me after the fact and request that they be granted retroactively!

And yet the government does this all the time. Hell, it’s one of the core functions of government – enforcing contracts people entered into privately without any prior knowledge from the enforcing party!

I do see why this is better than all the alternatives. You don’t want people resorting to private violence for enforcement. Preserving the government as the only legitimate user of violence is the single most important function of government. And you don’t want to require that every proposed contract come before a magistrate for review first, as this would slow economic activity to a crawl. Reviewing those private agreements that have become contested for reasonableness, and then siding with one party or the other after the fact, just seems like the most rational and efficient way to deal with this problem in the real world.

But damn, the basic premise is just so freakin’ bizarre.

I have a suspension-of-disbelief problem whenever I see DHS (Department of Homeland Security) mentioned in fiction. I snicker. Usually when they are mentioned it’s to invoke the fear of a powerful government agency, meant either to protect or terrorize us, depending on the story. They’re charging in to save the day, or they’re menacing us with excess force. But in either case, they’re meant to be taken seriously.

And I just can’t. I remember the years before DHS existed. I recall the frantic hand-waving and flailing after 9/11, and I saw how panicked lawmakers threw together a handful of chimps, slapped an acronym on them, and told us we were safer. To me, DHS will always be a bunch of clowns feeling you up before you get on a plane, to act out a multi-billion-dollar security theater that everyone knows is a joke.

So when they are invoked as anything other than a joke it’s jarring, and I laugh, and the tense mood is ruined. Seriously writers, stick with something that is actually menacing and powerful – CIA, or maybe FBI. Something with a pedigree.

I was horrified when I realized last year that there is an entire generation growing up who DOES NOT KNOW THIS. For them, DHS is a legitimate authority. They don’t know to laugh, because everyone they know has kept a straight face when they’ve been presented with this facade of authority. Within my lifetime, these jokers could turn into something that people take seriously. I despair.

So I’m extremely happy when I hear that congress is having issues passing a bill to fund them. Good. I hope this gets tied up for years, and the agency starves to death and withers away, to be relegated to the bad jokes of history. 100 years from now, every portrayal of the DHS should be accompanied by Yakety Sax.

There was a time not too long ago that whenever any Muslim anywhere did something morally reprehensible, the assholes on Fox News would demand that every Muslim everywhere repudiate those actions and engage in a public repentance ritual. There were some groups that were more than willing to do this, and went on air to publicly repudiate all acts of violence on behalf of all the Muslims in the world.  Then there were those people who said that asking for this sort of thing is kinda… well, I guess the word wouldn’t be racists, but whatever the religious equivalent of racism is. Two murderous psychopaths detonated a home-made bomb in Boston, and you expect all Muslims everywhere to denounce the act? You’re implying that the Muslim plumber in Oklahoma shares in the responsibility for that act somehow. Fuck you.

I side with the latter.

Interestingly, now that an atheist killed several Muslims,  some of those people appear to be flip-flopping. I’m going to ignore the weirdness that this looks to have been over a parking dispute rather than religious reasons. Likely the killer’s strongly negative views of the religious made it emotionally easier to pull the trigger. So let’s say that there was at least some religious motivation mixed in there. A number of prominent atheists have jumped up to publicly denounce these murders.

Now on the one hand, these are the equivalent of church leaders. It’s certainly a good idea, after this sort of thing happens, for a church leader to remind everyone in his church that we do not fucking do this sort of shit. Just so no one gets the wrong damn idea. We don’t want to be like those assholes secretly applauding the women’s-clinic bombings.

On the other hand, if I recall correctly, a lot of the people making these public statements are the same ones who said “Stop demanding that all Muslims repudiate every action of every crazy individual, you’re being racist.” Or as Scott would say, you’re building a Super-Weapon.  And yet, as soon as an equivalent situation crops up in atheist land, they immediately jump up and repudiate the action.

I’m left confused by the inconsistency. If you demand that others “own” every action by everyone in their religion, I’m going to think you’re an asshole, but at least you’re consistent when you then apologize for some psycho in another state killing people. If you protest that it’s bigotry to imply that a huge and diverse group all be tarred by the actions of individual nuts, I understand why you would refuse to accept the guilt-by-association when someone tries that on you. But if you claim that all Muslims shouldn’t be called on the carpet for every extremist’s action, and then also jump up to apologize for an unrelated atheist’s extreme actions, I’m left wondering… were you secretly trying to sabotage the Muslims earlier? Because you are clearly not heeding your own advice. In the realm of “Leading By Example” you are in the camp of judging an entire group by the actions of isolated extremists.

Maybe it’s just a tacit acknowledgement that we all know that people really do stereotype groups by the outliers they see in the news. A realpolitik acceptance that humans are simple, racist creatures, and it’s best to work with that fact when it comes down to brass tacks. We can talk a great, noble game of not judging groups when it is some other group that is being judged. This allows us to paint ourselves as noble. As soon as it’s OUR group that’s being judged, well shit, we all know that people really are racist, and the noble talk is all bullshit, so get the PR machine going and start telling everyone just how much we repudiate that guy.

Bleh. Hanson wins again.

Still, I don’t want anyone getting the idea that I’m not strongly against murder. o.O So let’s strike a balance…

Killing people is an abhorrent thing, and no one should do it. But anyone who wants to imply that I, or any other atheists, need to repudiate the actions of a murderer who is an atheist, is a bigoted asshole.