Adjective Inflation

When I say, "Life is good" - something I say at least once a day, if only to remind myself - I want you to understand, I mean that my life is excellent. It's as "good" as the Creation.

I've been thinking about this the last few nights. I saw a poster for "The Good Wife" and it got me thinking about one of those arcane bits of knowledge I happen to possess, retained from high school: Goodwife was once basically the way of saying Mrs. (Thank you, XJ Kennedy Reader and Nathaniel Hawthorne.) The vernacular was "Goody" or "Goodie" - spelling wasn't so particular back in ye olde days. It was the kind of surface courtesy endemic to the early days of the Colonies, when communities were small and frequently beset with challenges. Unity, kindness, courtesy, fellowship: all were less virtues than they were survival mechanisms.

Now, follow me, 'cause I'm going back and then I'm going to come forward; we'll see if I've made my point. The New King James Version of the Bible, the one from which my childhood church services and bible studies flowed, was commissioned in 1604 and completed in 1611. I always wondered, as a child, why God would look upon his first creations and proclaim them "good." I mean, He's God, right - if they're just good, shouldn't he go back to the drawing board and shoot for great? Or was it that God, possessor of the ultimate power and the ultimate perspective, had no need of superlatives, so it didn't need to be any more than "good" for Him in order to be "wondrous" and "awesome" to us? (I'll be coming back to "awesome.")

You be the judge: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."

As I now understand it, this is as close to a literal Aramaic-to-English translation you're going to get, unless you're intimately familiar with ancient Hebraic sentence structure - which, despite my high school demographics and the studies of many close friends past and present, I am not.

So, each of God's creations, as set down in this ancient and sacred text - which, divinely inspired or not, was carted around by the wandering tribes and paid homage to and held as sacrosanct for many (well-counted) generations and held them to common spiritual purpose in the face of many (well-counted) trials and tribulations - were good. How 'bout them apples?

(Sorry, sorry, the urge to pun overtakes me sometimes. I'd blame the comedic sins of my father, but that sort of meta-humor is uncouth and digressive.) (He said, digressing.) (How many meta-s is that?)

Well, here's my point: what "good" was in the days of the Old Testament, what "good" was in Early Colonial times, and what "good" is now seem to me to be three fairly evenly-spaced points on a scale depicting one thing: adjective inflation.

Here's another example ripped from my early religious indoctrination: Awesome. The etymology of this word brings it to us from the Greek for pain; the word angst has the same root. A certain orange-masked Ninja Turtle might be seriously surprised to learn that his word for moments of pleasure has such an origin, or that Webster defines awe as "an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime." (Not that Mikey wouldn't still apply the term to a New York Style pepperoni pie.)

Or, how about excellent? A term that has seen slightly less abuse than "awesome" and far less than "good," excellent has - in my estimation - only devalued from "first-class, eminently good" to "good". Only devalued, in other words, from top-of-the-line to middle-of-the-road; as opposed to good, which has dropped so mightily in its use that in most cases, to speak the word is actually to imply "less than good".

(These observations only apply to American English; I can only evaluate what I can see and hear on a regular basis.)

Here's the sort of dynamic I think causes this phenomenon: while Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan used the word in its originally intended sense, those of us who were exposed to their first-class, eminently good adventure at young ages - especially, I'm sure, those of you who didn't grow up close enough to San Dimas to know that not everyone talks that way - adopted the word into our daily speech. As the adolescent vernacular subsumed the word excellent, its overuse devalued its original superlative purpose; most excellent, a term that should be unnecessarily redundant (heh), takes over the superlative spot.

The devaluing of once-superlative adjectives creates a vacuum at the top that must be filled by ever-increasingly grandiose, bombastic terminology. In my childhood, the use of the phrase "long bomb" to describe a forward pass in football was restricted to passing plays that were just short of Hail Mary status*; now, it's used to describe any pass longer than ten yards, under any situation. So, into the vacuum steps "aerial assault," then "ballistic launch" - I'm fairly certain that "weapon of mass destruction" has actually been used, at this point.

And the very nature of human communication requires us all to follow the trend; otherwise, we run the risk of being misunderstood. Well, given the scarcity of understanding in the world today, perhaps I should say we run an even greater risk of being much much more easily misunderstood. I see this much the same way I see the stock market - a near-tangible manifestation of the collective consciousness, that both rises and falls according to our whim and directs without room for negotiation our responses to its whims. Just another item on the list of Paradoxes of Human Nature.

Fortunately, there is another phenomenon I notice, that tends to prevent the fairly horrifying implications of this trend (unabated, we'd need whole lungfuls of air to describe quotidian experiences): complete swaps in vernacular. You've seen this trend too, if you're of my generation or one more recent, and have watched West Side Story or The Outsiders or Stand by Me - the slang just changes, enough so that we're not forced to find increasingly grandiose ways of saying "boss". I think of it as something akin to the sudden genetic mutation that speeds up speciation in the Darwinian process; after years and years of using the same terms to describe the same things, some seminal cultural shift happens (I've already named two in our time, if you've been paying attention) and a term is born into common speech, or dropped forever. (Example of the latter: for whatever reason, today's kids have no visible response to "Who You Gonna Call?" or "Knowing Is Half the Battle")

We have a word for it, now, a word that describes its own existence: meme. Linguistic memes that don't fade are the pressure-release valve that keeps us from having to say "Man, that was absolute zero!" or "Dude, that was frosty like the icy tundra of the Antarctic!"

Perhaps that's both a bad and a good example, as no slang word in a hundred years has had the longevity and versatility of "cool." We really might need to say those things someday, in order to convey some of the same meanings we do now.

I fear that the age of constant interconnectedness heralded by Twitter and Facebook Mobile - crimes of which I am guilty - may accelerate this phenomenon. Today's tweens, as they grow into 20-somethings - for which there'll be some new cutesy term - won't know what the hell their younger siblings are talking about. But that's another blog for another time.

This phenomenon has been explored in books like "Ender's Shadow," in which the kids' short-hand speech to one another devolves until "neh" and "eh" take the place of complete phrases; and Nora Roberts's Eve Dallas series of books, set in the 2060s and in which the main character's sidekick uses phrases like "mag," "iced," and "frosty".**

I don't really think anything can be - or should be - done about these phenomena; it's just something weird about human behavior I've been thinking about. And if you've managed to get this far, you're thinking about it too. Mission Accomplished.

Admittedly, this has all been mad conjecture, wild speculation; but, as always, I calls 'em like I sees 'em - and the title of this blog is not a rhetorical question. I would love if someone would post a comment taking my observations apart. What Do You Think? Am I on to something, or am I getting, by proxy of your computer screen, a "WTF are you talking about, Four-Eyes" look right now?

*for those of you not in the know, a Hail Mary play: when the team in possession of the ball is in a desperate situation, the field is flooded with eligible pass receivers and the quarterback "throws up the ball and prays".

**For those who would slight my taste in 'literature' due to my familiarity with the oeuvre of Nora Roberts, I have this to say: I'll be damned if I try to read A Widow for One Year on morphine, but I tend to need distractions from the plight of hospitalization at times in my life. Nora's been there for me, courtesy of my mother, and - hey, at least I stopped watching General Hospital.

Ooh Eeh Ooh Ah-Ah, Ching, Chang, Walla-Walla Bing-Bang...

MMkayy, what's not racist about this? Where is the statement on policy, in the image to my left? Is it the hammer-and-sickle cuteness?

I am no longer as sickened by this as I was in the months following inauguration. I'm getting used to it. And, in the words of Krishnamurti, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." I find the statement particularly useful in this instance, for the wonderful irony - this...image...was propagated about the Internet by a doctor and representative of the American Medical Association.

I want to degenerate, here, into a curse-fest that would put a blush on Dice Clay's face. But I won't. Let me, instead, let Dr. David McKalip speak for himself:

"I am not a racist. I am simply a person speaking up to make sure patients don't get hurt by the government and by insurance companies.''

"Because I've been so effective in pointing out how the government plans are going to hurt patients in very serious ways ... the only way they can neutralize my message is to discredit me personally."

Read on: he's not a racist, he's helped Black kids! Of course, they were Boy Scouts, so they'd been previously vetted on the most important subject (whether or not they were future Sodomites), but let's not steal the good doctor's thunder. His point is well taken: he isn't racist because he did one good thing for some Black people.

Observe: Birth of a Nation warned Southern Blacks about the Klan and gave the fledgling NAACP something to raise a platform against. Bull Connor gave out free showers at summer protest marches. Gerrymandering and de facto segregation were responsible for the Harlem Renaissance. That is how you take "racist" and turn it into "beneficial to Blacks."

I have said to many of my friends that we need a close, careful definition of racism. This is exactly why: this man is defending himself against an allegation of character by calling upon a single action, taken years in the past. Racism is a doctrine, a system of values and beliefs that fits into the mental schema according to which one lives one's life. It doesn't require conscious thought to be formed. Nobody's accusing this guy - well, I'm not accusing him - of proselytizing young Floridian youth, or advocating the assassination of the President and the re-subjugation of Black America. But I do believe that to find it appropriate to circulate these images of the President of the United States, the office so often said to belong to "The Most Powerful Man in the World," requires a certain defect of character that I can only describe as racism. Do you really see this picture going around with a picture of a White American president? I don't. The joke, as with the previous Watermelons-in-the-Rose-Garden image, is predicated upon a stereotype of Black People. "So what? Comedians use stereotypes as jokes all the time," you might contend, and you'd be right; but I have never seen stereotyping used to campaign against a public official.

It was recently suggested to me that I not give Orly Taitz any airtime on my Facebook profile. As far as the political discourse in America is concerned - if we're talking about the President's agenda, the current problematic health care reform process - I completely agree. But I'm not the one giving these people airtime on (ahem) cable news networks. I don't intend to legitimize the challenge to Barack Obama's United States citizenship by engaging in debate over these people's claims. What I want is for everyone to see the kind of ugliness that is still paraded about in the public eye without a thought. Orly Taitz, in other words, is not newsworthy because her claims have any purchase in reality; she is newsworthy because she is a racist woman who, along with many others in the conservative media establishment, has been given a podium and is using it to spread her unique brand of venom.

The dialogue on race in America is never going to get any further than it's come, unless we root out each individual case - each David McKalip, each Orly Taitz - and hold them up to the light and say, "This is an example of racism today." There is no racial slur in evidence. There is no specific expression of racist doctrine, no advocating the discrimination against or subjugation of Blacks in America; there are none of the hallmarks of what constituted racism in the public eye for the last hundred years. What there is, is a very clear notion that by his very nature, Obama has opened the door to this sort of attack; that it's okay to spread these images and videos, and these ludicrous challenges, specifically because the President is Black.

Racism has become insidious. The evil has become Arendtian in nature, the danger more covert. While I absolutely believe that other kind of racism exists, and remains problematic, I find this the much more dangerous incarnation. This idea that being Black is a point in the "minus" column of the character debate, an appropriate target for critics of the President, is a symptom of a viral ideology that can and will spread throughout the general population without their awareness or permission - and that is how the other kind of racism can thrive.

Californication

I'll be brief, because this is simple. California is nothing like what anyone thinks it is. I'm not sure it's anything like I think it is, politically. One interesting point this article begins to make, but misses the many-faceted nature of, is that Californians are typically wont to vote against their own interests in state matters. On the whole, this is because of the large immigrant and Black American populations being swayed to vote their religious hearts and not their political minds. So you have untold numbers of registered Republicans running amok, then complaining when that for which they vote passes, those for whom they vote get elected; Ohmigod that's SO not what we had in mind! Someone has to do something!

Uh huh. Let's have another recall, another ballot initiative, another budget crisis. Ladies and gentlemen, California is indicative of what's happening to the American Dream all over the country: it's getting real. See, dreams (in the sense to which we refer when calling upon the American Dream) differ from reality in one simple way: there are consequences in reality. That means we cannot all have opportunities to better ourselves without someone paying for it. Otherwise, those opportunities are being selectively extended by those with the means to offer them. If everyone is to have a fair shake, in this real world where discrimination continues to exist and people continue to express preference towards those who are "the same," then either some magnanimous bajillionaire is going to have to take up the slack for all of those self-absorbed jillionaires, or the government has to step in.

Now follow me: if the government is going to step in (and I'm being deliberately vague here), the government needs funding. Otherwise, f'rinstance, children will always get left behind. But from whence this funding? Now we have a parade of ideas that pass the consequences on - literally passing the buck - to someone else, some other class, some other group, those who hold some other ideology.

Many Californians believe that, in order for everyone to have a shot at living the Dream, those who have succeeded in doing so need to absorb some or most of the cost for providing that shot to those who haven't. Many of these Californians conveniently forget that they're in the former class, not the latter, when it comes time to pony up.

So yes, we're a state full of people who think globally, and act contrarily locally. I got news for ya: look at America's international policies versus her domestic policies, and tell me I'm not describing the exact same phenomenon. So while I did find the article insightful, I also find it disingenuous for singling out California. We're just a prime example. It's happening in your backyard, too.

Unless you've got a different idea. I'm here to listen.

Born in the U.S.A. ...Really, We Swear

I miss wis.dm, my friends. I'd find it much easier to carry on our little portion of the debate on race in America, if we were wis.dming instead of Facebooking. When a man can tell me that the above nonsense "has nothing to do with race," and sincerely believe this, I know we're still, as AG Holder has said, "a nation of cowards" in this respect.

Listen up. Many people are racist. Many of these people have a podium and the will to use their voice at that podium to spread their ideology. In this specific instance, the debate is supposed to be about health care. And I hate to break it to those who didn't know, but even if that's the debate we were having, there would still be a racial component - encoded in terms of class. But these men (and Malkin) who've been termed "wingnut" over and over again, insist on flat-out ignoring the national debate we're supposed to be having - when the bill we're supposed to be talking about is already way overdue - and bringing us all around to the fact that, yes, the President of the United States is Black American. Or is he? Even if some of these giving voice to the concept don't embrace it, they're still legitimizing the lunatics.

Essentially, the lunatic fringe has spread way off of the fringe and is actually nearly monopolizing the opposition's agenda. And in such a manner that they cannot be ignored. No, the President is not engaging these people, nor is his staff; but neither are they able to press their agenda. Given the supposedly filibuster-proof majority the Senate Democrats have, and the Democrat advantage in the House, that's absolutely ridiculous.

Don't tell me this isn't about race. Yes, if this was Hilary's presidency, it would be about sex - but they'd have a whole lot less room to call her eligibility to serve into question. (Truth be told, I can't imagine what they'd dredge up for her that hasn't already been covered in the last eighteen years or so, but there'd be some corruption of some kind to fish out.) But our President happens to be a man of color, whose father was indeed not born in the United States. Git a rope.

And they're just afraid. They're afraid that Obama's presidency means the death of White Privilege. I could reassure them: White Privilege in America has many generations left in it. Hell, many of those who bestow this privilege (store owners, tax men, census takers, local politicians, voter-registration volunteers) have little-to-no idea that they're showing preference to White Americans. Maybe it's not as obvious as following the Black Man around the store, or clutching their purse in an elevator. Maybe it's not as clear-cut as denying business to one man, or giving preferential treatment to another. Perhaps it's the simple discomfort with a person of color that leads you to look at one man askance and not another.

I believe it's this quiet discomfort with the other that's being exposed on the national stage. Even by those with clearer vision, but who have not experienced the symptoms of this discomfort, the effects can go unnoticed, unnumbered. Let me try to share a few.

1. Not being comfortable anywhere the larger balance of people in the room aren't comfortable with you.
2. Feeling as though you must defend your right to be present in a given space or situation.
3. Wondering, often automatically, if being not White has something to do with "it".

It'll be a while before we're all of us able to look beyond the color of a man's skin into the content of his character. But the least we can do is acknowledge that for some, there is no desire whatsoever to do so. There are those who are currently capitalizing on the discomfort many Americans feel when race is raised as a topic of discussion, manipulating it so that it's taken as discomfort with the Presdient's performance or his eligibility to hold office.

And I have to applaud one tactic: the labeling of President Obama, Justice Sotomayor, and anyone else who acknowledges a racial reality, as "racist." Brilliant! This is how it goes: Judge Sotomayor acknowledges, before the media, that she is in fact Latina. Racist! How dare she admit to being Latina! President Obama acknowledges the reality that racial profiling exists and is stupid. Racist! Racial profiling in America is a "reverse racist" myth! (Whoever said that obviously didn't know that many officers of the LAPD freely admit to racial profiling, claiming it as a valid and useful policing tactic.)

Even Obama's health care policy (hey, way to work it in there somehow) isn't safe: it's all about reparations.

Don't tell me this isn't about race. If anyone but Obama was president, we'd be talking about health care right now, like we should. Instead, we get nonsense about Mombasa, reparations, a sitting President of the United States of America with a "deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture," and on and on ad nauseam - and all of this from people who, it is important to note, are not racist.

Cowboy up, White America. It's time to admit that some of y'all are just dyed-in-the-slave-picked-Confederate-wool racists. It's okay. I won't judge you for that - but for claiming otherwise; for being tricksy and false; for laying some of the most racist of trips I have ever heard upon the man who holds the highest office in the nation, then claiming not just that you aren't racist, but that he is, I have nothing but contempt. And for those of you who don't have a podium, for those of you who watch all of this nonsense and can still tell me that "it" isn't about race?

Well, if by "it" you're referring to Obama's presidency, I agree. If by "it" you're referring to the conservatives' actual problem, I might agree on a case-by-case basis. If by "it" you're referring to what they're saying on the air, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. If by "it" you're referring to this "birther conspiracy" or whatever, sorry. That's nothing but racist. If the man's father was from Dublin, I find it nearly impossible to believe that we'd be having this 'debate'.

And I have gone weeks without hearing a conservative pundit discuss the President's political agenda without making either an encoded, or a completely overt, racist statement (or two). But I'm open to being shown otherwise.

I remain ever yours, Angry Black Militant Guy or not,
Dash