Overlong and Pretentious RANT: on not being a stupid asshole

I’ve learned in the past not to put any SERIOUS writing online given my ceaseless self-editing. If everything I’ve ever written is an early draft waiting to not suck [split!], why put myself through the torture of being unable to revise one? Anyway, here’s something serious because I never, ever learn: RANT/


Nothing aside from theoretical and mathematical abstractions, which is to say everything material (which is to say all the shit that matters), is equal. Nothing is equal, especially in that complicated mess of violence and afterthought we call human relations. THAT is why the traditionally and routinely disprivileged are gifted certain privileges, e.g. calling you a whitey, and you’re not allowed to whine about how unjust that is. So shut up already.

I know, I know, I know how badly you want to call someone a nigger. It’s such a thrilling word and just rolls off the tongue. I know you feel like the kid who isn’t invited to play handball. That’s why you learned to play tetherball which developed the inner asshole in you. I know. But it’s okay. Know why? You’re white. I’m not going to quote statistics at you, but suffice it to say you’ve been dealt a better hand. That’s not to say that every white American is dealt a better hand than every black American, obviously. Race isn’t the only social stratification that matters, not when there are class/gender/geographical/spatio-temporal/genetic/education-level/cultural/et al. distinctions that can individually fuck you over in so many ways. But really, you want to argue that Blacks aren’t disadvantaged relatively to Whites? Didn’t think so.

You want to argue that it’s irrelevant, that everyone should be treated equally? Not only are you an idiot, you’re the worst kind, an over-literal idiot. That’s not so different from the ignorance of the ignorami in the opposite camp of the cultural wars who spew illiterate outrage about the 1st Amendment whenever someone’s controversial opinion isn’t coddled or a private company terminates a liability. That kind of idiocy can be treated with a single reading of Mills’ On Liberty. You’re kind of idiocy, I just don’t know. I’m not even going to bother to dispute your understanding of equal treatment if you think Whites are afforded less than equal treatment in a White-dominated (numerically, culturally and politically) society.

I apologize if I condescend here, though the topic merits condescension, but words have value. Even the most radical deconstructionist would agree with an observation this banal – words have value (if not a set value), a value that is either determined or re-enforced by a history of usage and an emotional resonance. Deconstructionists argue that we can undermine this value, other Post-Structuralists believe the value to be variable, Marxists believe this, Chomsky believes that, blah blah blah, but words signify more than their defined import. They have impact.

Thankfully I haven’t heard anyone take this tact in years, but activists with whom I otherwise sympathized used to drivel idiocy along the lines of “Anti-Zionists can’t be anti-semitic: Palestinians are Semites. What bullshit! What an autistic use of language! Deconstruction in action? Or just stupid kids who confuse taking a morally correct stand with having a clue? Whatever, the point is you can’t ignore the history of a word or the culture in which it occurs. The components of language games include both term and setting. Do what you will with a word, break it down into its inoffensive attributes, ignore its commonly understood meaning, consult a dictionary and declare your usage the correct one by the authority of Webster – you still can’t change the setting. You can’t pretend away the fact that the word carries an emotional resonance or an ethical stance or a long-standing ugliness or a shameful past. There’s a lot more to a word than its grouping of letters. The defense “It’s just a word” is beyond moronic: it’s an admission of stupidity. It be simpler to say “Hey everyone, listen at me, I’m a dipshit.”

Now, you can argue whether any of that matters. You can admit an epithet is hateful and still use it, whether for feeble attempts at comedy or because you really don’t give a shit. I’m not going to say a word or its usage is morally wrong; I’m not sure I believe that (Pray I don’t ever write an essay on morality). I’m not going to get into a discussion of what effects racist/homophobic/misogynistic have on society or the self-esteem of kids, because I’m not really sure there is any real effect. I’m even open to the idea that it’s bad for kids to be sheltered from humanity at its less-than-finest. I’m open to a lot of ideas on the subject. But there is something that’s less debatable: You’re an asshole. There may be nothing morally wrong with hateful, bigoted language, but there is an ethical wrong in being openly hateful. Ironically hateful, that’s more complicated, but openly? No admissible defense.

What the brigade of shitheads screaming half-wit shit about “the PC Brigade” need, other than a clue, and other than a reading of On Liberty because really everyone should read that, is to realize that political correctness is just a silly name for the ethics of everyday social interaction. In a simpler age it was known as politeness, propriety, proper human kindness. But now? We’re not kind to each other it appears, we’re just bullied into it by the PC Brigade! Whatever, paranoids can think what they will and it’s increasingly clear that a certain segment of society is ruled by their paranoia. Oh noes, is that paranoia on my part? I don’t know, I just find myself having more and more trouble understanding my fellow Americans.

I’m losing interest in this essay, but let me note that to a lesser degree the same basic idea goes for every form of inequity, though few forms are as stark as American race-relations, what with the whole slavery thing, jim crow, race riots, Chinese exclusion act, internment camps, and all that that jazz leading all the way up to contemporary distortions in social-welfare and geographical distribution. But all divisions engender their own “unfair” distributions of talking-shit-privileges. It’s just the level of asshole-hood that varies. I live in So Cal. I’m not going to talk shit about rural Southerners. I don’t find most hick stereotypes very funny unless there are actual jokes involved. But I can’t complain when Southerners talk shit about So Cal (unless it’s political and they use the phrase “Left Coast” but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation). I can even admit a lot of it is on target: we don’t stay to the end of the Angels games; we are vain and self-obsessed; etc. Now, is this as big a deal as Whites saying nigger? Obviously not. I don’t think I’m all that bad person if I point out that maybe not all Alabamanians (?) and Louisianers (??) might not have all their teeth. (Maybe I am a bad person, though, for getting this far in the analogy without noting the implication that So.Cal is better off than the South. Jeez, me, what are you doing? Oh it’s okay, I have family in Texas (wow, dumb gag, I must be losing interest)). /RANT

The point is, try not to be an asshole. I make an implicit decision everyday to go out there and be the least assholy person I can be. You should too, especially if you’re like me (Half-white? Awesome? Former philosophy student? I dunno what I meant either.)


Addendum: Seeing as how nothing is equal etc., don’t take this to be a vindication of any side in any cultural war, as not all epithets are equal either. I support the idea of an evolving language and if the meanings of “nigger” or “gay” were to evolve as drastically as the meaning of “retarded”, my stance might be different. Context is the word of the day.

Reading List: On Liberty by John Stuart Mills, Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Theory of Communicative Action by Juergen Habermas, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Anonymous