Context, context, context

I encourage you to put this question to your friends, relatives, and acquaintances: Are there any words that one should never speak or write? My answer is no, there are no such words. There is always a context in which even the most shunned words are unobjectionable. I expect most of those you ask will agree, assuming you don’t confine your survey to a Southern Baptist convention. However, you’ll find the yea-sayers will constitute a respectable minority. I’ve done some web hopping and discovered a few sites that are unequivocally opposed to taboo speech and a slew that are dedicated to helping cursers overcome their irreverent habit.

The anti-cursing sites usually don’t offer reasons for their absolutist line, but when they do, the reasons are generally shallow or simply silly. For example, “real men don’t cuss.” Real manhood apparently is a state of piety, character, and virtue that disappears at the utterance of curse words. I learned that George Washington, the American apotheosis of virtue, despaired that foul talk among his men would deprive them of “the Blessings of Heaven on our Arms.” I read that “foul language drags us down” — to the gutter, probably — “and undermines mutual respect, as when a college professor curses in front of the class.”

This last example shows how oblivious anti-cursers are to context. Suppose we assume most of the students are in their late teens or twenties. Reasonable, I think. The studies I’ve seen say young people are more comfortable about hearing and using curse words than any other age group, so long as the words aren’t used excessively. Perhaps a teacher at a night school for older adults is what anti-cursers have in mind.

Let’s go further and suppose that the class is about the etymology of taboo words. In this case, the words are like specimens pinned to a board. They’re studied in the objective context of historical linguistics. In this frame, who could object to speaking the words fuck or nigger? Or are we to forgo such studies and resign ourselves to ignorance?

We don’t even have to resort to an academic context to remove the stain from fuck and nigger. If our context is dramatic verisimilitude, our use of these and other taboo words is blameless — and, what’s more, necessary. Think of the movies The Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, and The Big Lebowski, all considered classics, and imagine that fuck was struck from the scripts of all three. That would amount to 569 deletions, 300 deletions, and 281 deletions, respectively. Would the movies be more credible for it? Of course not. The realism of the characters and dramatic ambience would be destroyed.

The same is true of the novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, and their use of nigger. In Huck Finn, Pap rants about a free nigger in Ohio who has the right to vote. He vows he’ll never vote again if there’s a nigger anywhere who’s permitted to vote. In Mockingbird, Scout’s father, Atticus, is disparaged as a nigger-lover because he commits himself to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. By choosing nigger, Mark Twain and Harper Lee show us an America where it was common for Whites to regard Blacks as subhuman, but not as a dog or a cat is subhuman. A nigger was more like a draft horse, to be whipped and abused if its work is poorly done. So naturally, Pap won’t vote if a draft horse can. Why participate in a farce? And why would Atticus go out of his way to save a draft horse accused of bestiality? Atticus must also be depraved.

What about people who aren’t creating credible drama or literature, or teaching about taboo words? That is, what about the rest of us? What’s our justification for cursing? The answer, again, is contextual. If the context is a confrontation, calling the other guy a fucking moron is a poor justification. One or both of you will regret it. But suppose you stub your toe, spill coffee on yourself, or get a bill for something you already paid for? These are examples of the maddening mishaps of everyday life, and in such instances, I say that cursing is not only justified but called for.

There’s actually a word for cursing at moments of stress or frustration — lalochezia. It’s from the Greek lalia (speech) and chezo (to get relief). Studies have found that relief by cursing improves endurance. Try cursing when you work out at the gym, and you’ll do more reps than ever before. Or try putting a bare arm into a bucket of ice water. Letting fly with a long string of curses will raise your heart rate and help you bear the pain. One study actually found that cursing can make you a safer driver! If someone cuts you off on the highway, a healthy string of lalochezia will moderate your frustration. Better that than following the bastard to his destination with mayhem on your mind.

Even cursing on the job has its rewards. It helps you bond with your coworkers, and can lighten the day if you’re a longshoreman, baggage handler, or construction worker. Just don’t curse in front of your boss, unless they curse first.

If you’re still squeamish about cursing in front of others, you need to find curse substitutes. No one is capable of avoiding both. (If there are such people, may I never meet them.) The problem with most substitutes, is that they’re humiliating. I watched one video where the host’s substitute for shit was sugar shack! What a pussy! And who could bear to say fiddlesticks or fudge? What’s worse, what do you do about the adjective fucking, as in, “She’s just a fucking cunt.” I suppose you could say, “She’s just a fudgy vagina,” but I don’t recommend it.

A solution to the substitutes dilemma is to borrow substitutes from British English or from foreign languages.” It can be a treat to say “Merde!” or “Scheisse!” or, better, “Scheissdreck!“¹ Also good are, “Bugger off!” or “Sod off, you bloody bugger!” And that’s just the top of a long list. It’s worth the effort to do a little research.

My favorite source of substitutes is Yiddish. It offers a smorgasbord of phonically lovely choices. Suppose you want to call someone a dick or a prick. You have shmuck, putz, or shlong at your disposal. Shmuck also means a detestable person. Putz also means a fool. Shlong also means a snake. Pick whichever has the ring and connotations you favor.

Or maybe you want to label someone as a fuck up. Your choices are legion. Try shlemiel if your target is an inept or incompetent person. Sadly, the condition is a life sentence. This is also the case if your’e a shlimazel. You’re as pitiful as a shlemiel, but you’re the victim of the shlemiels of the world; their mess-ups become your misfortunes. Then there’s the shnook, a person who’s easily fooled, a dupe. He’s the person who donates $10,000 to a charity scam. Last, there’s the shmendrik. Like the shnook, he’s a fool, but with a twist. He devises schemes to succeed in life based on absurd premises and inevitably faces disaster.² I’ve known many schmendriks and was once perilously close to becoming one.³

The virtue of substitutes is that they add variety to your vocabulary and save you from the fate of overcursing. Overcursers don’t care about context. They’ll force curse words into any context because of the force such words inject into their speech. They thereby project more power and sucker others into adopting the habit. Overcursers and their mimics are themselves a curse.

But please don’t conclude that it’s best to always use substitutes, if only as a guard against overcursing. To do that is to live without enjoying one of life’s greatest visceral pleasures. For example, you’ll never be able to experience the rapture of bellowing, “Trump is just a motherfucking criminal!”

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¹If you’re willing to watch this brief German lesson, you’ll triple your knowledge of German substitutes.

²These Yiddish words are also dear to me: gonif, khazer, mashugana, momzer, nudnik, oysshteler, pisher, shlump, shmegegge, shnorrer (certainly not Captain Spaulding!), and vantz.

³Those were the days when I thought I could make a fortune by betting on the ponies.

Epithets

Most people defy labeling because their lives are unremarkable. Search your history books and you’ll fail to find a Melvin “The Mundane” Moskowitz or a Conny “The Cipher” Simpson. Epithets are reserved for people famous for some vice or virtue, or occasionally, for a physical oddity. As it happens, recent history has blessed us with a crop of remarkable people who deserved to be remembered with befitting epithets — and I want to be the first to propose them.

These extraordinary people are of three kinds …

Heroes

Jack “The Saint” Smith, the Special Counsel of the U.S. Justice Department who is prosecuting Donald Trump for myriad felonies, especially his efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Fani “The Fumigator” Willis, the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia. She’s celebrated for her skills in vermin removal and her ingenious use of Georgia’s RICO¹ Act. Her work to jail Trump and his cronies perfectly complements The Saint’s.

Tanya “No Crap” Chutkan, the U.S. District Court judge who will hear the January 6 case. She’s already shown an intolerance for Trump’s habitual dilatory tactics and intimidation of judges, prosecutors, jurors, and witnesses.

Alvin “Brass Cajones” Bragg, the Manhattan DA who indicted Trump for falsifying business records to conceal adultery in the run up to the 2016 election. This concealment likely enabled Trump to win the election and begin his reign of misrule.

Nancy “Pit Bull” Pelosi, who opened Pandora’s box in her closing days as House Majority Leader. Despite the opposition of the House Minority Leader, she established the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. As a consequence, Merrick Garland finally got off his pusillanimous butt.

Weaklings

Kevin “The Pussy” McCarthy, the most woeful hypocrite in a high office in American history and a frequent volunteer for the self-mortification needed to reach that office. Because of his malfeasance, the Republican party may well be on its way to oblivion.

Mitch “Lost in Space” McConnell, a sometimes critic of Trump who carefully avoided confrontations. He orchestrated both of Trump’s disgraceful impeachment trials, yet he said this² after Trump’ second acquittal. Thanks for nothing, Mitch.

Mike “The Shlemiel” Pence, Trump’s weak-willed and weak-minded VP. Never mind that he allowed the 2020 electoral votes to be counted.³ He defended every one of Trump’s vile policies. He even shrugged off Trump’s remark that he deserved to be hanged!

Merrick “The Mouse” Garland, our Attorney General. Afraid of his own shadow, he temporized for nearly 2 years before calling on The Saint! He did so only after the January 6 Special Committee formally petitioned him to act.

Mark “Yes Man” Meadows, the doting chief of staff during the disputed 2020 election. He facilitated communications for the conspiracy. He sat in on the call that solicited 11,780 illegal votes from Georgia. His defense: “I was just following orders.”

Vermin

Donald “The Lyin’ King” Trump, who’s qualified for every circle of Dante’s hell and the only U.S. President to have dictatorial aspirations. There is no lie too monstrous for him to tell, continually and emphatically. There is no person he wouldn’t abuse nor any mask he wouldn’t wear for personal gain.²

Rudy “The Drip” Giuliani, once known as “America’s Mayor.” He has cascaded into an abyss of deceit and become the living equivalent of Dorian Gray’s picture. His efforts to sell the Big Lie are visibly corrosive.

Ron “Dishwater” DeSantis, who dreams of leading the MAGA maggots in a post-Trump America. He panders to them by censoring school books, banning abortion, and busing immigrants out of Florida. If only he weren’t dull as dishwater. Whatever the opposite of charisma is, he’s got it in abundance.

John “The Shyster” Eastman, the villain behind the plan to use The Shlemiel to block the count of electoral votes. Early on January 6, he aroused the rioters with an account of how election workers had concealed ballots marked for Biden and fed them into voting machines after the polls had closed.

Sidney “Myth Maker” Powell, an unhinged lawyer who threw herself into the battle to discredit the 2020 presidential election. With no evidence, she claimed the suppliers of voting machines had rigged the election and accused Venezuela, Cuba, and China of election interference. She threatened to reveal all and “release the Kraken.”

Ted “The Misanthrope” Cruz, a cynical Texas Senator who has opposed every enlightened social idea in the last 25 years. He’s against gun control, abortion, legalized marijuana, same-sex marriage, immigration reform, and government-run health insurance. He denies climate change, favors the death penalty, and supports Trump unconditionally, even though Trump maligned his wife and linked his father to JFK’s assassination!

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¹Refuse Infected by Corrupt Offal

²Be prepared for 15-seconds of commercials in front of McConnell’s speech.

³Remember that Pence asked Dan Quayle whether a VP could block the vote count. Imagine the result if Quayle had said, “Hell yes! Go for it!”

⁴Robert Reich accurately said of Trump, “He exists as a symbol for the anger, discontent, bigotry, and vindictiveness he has unleashed in America. He is as close to America has come to a fascist leader who doesn’t want his followers to think or analyze. He wants them only to feel.”

⁵Cruz is the high priest of the Republican misanthropy that flourishes in the Senate and House. In his congregation are the likes of Rand Paul, Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, John Kennedy, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Tommy Tuberville, Devin Nunes, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik, Louie Gohmert, and Lauren Boebert.

Bilge on parade

Language, culture, and politics continually buffet one another. Sometimes their interaction produces an eruption of linguistic and political bilge. We are living in one of those times. I’ll elaborate, but first I need to go over a couple of elementary concepts. Please bear with me.

When we talk of sex as a biological classification, we refer to two categories, male and female, into which living things are divided according to anatomical characteristics. In humans, both males and females have primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Primary characteristics are apparent at birth; secondary characteristics, during puberty. Males have the primary characteristics of a penis, a scrotum, and the ability to produce sperm. Their secondary characteristics are facial hair, pubic hair, and often a noticeable Adam’s apple. Females have the primary characteristics of a uterus, vagina, fallopian tubes, clitoris, cervix, and the ability to bear a child. Their secondary characteristics are enlarged breasts, widened hips, and pubic hair.

When we talk of gender in its nongrammatical sense, we refer to the characteristics of human males and females that are socially determined. These are the norms, behaviors, and roles associated with being a male or female, as well as their relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.

Sex and gender were synonymous for centuries. Then, about 70 years ago, the words were differentiated as I’ve just explained.¹ At the same time, the term gender identity was introduced. This neologism was needed when we recognized that a small percentage of males and females, due to a rare psychological anomaly, think they belong to the gender that is incompatible with their sex. Thus males in this minority “identify” themselves as females. Likewise, females in this minority “identify” themselves as males. This is an extremely stressful conflict that sometimes leads to suicide. Clinical professionals call it gender dysphoria.

At this point, medical terminology took a horrible turn. The people with gender dysphoria didn’t label themselves as gender dysphoric. Instead, they called themselves transgender, and the medical community indulged them in this nonsense. The term stuck, and today gender dysphoric people (GDPs) can choose to reject puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery and still say they are transgender males and females. Even though they aren’t trans-ing anywhere. What’s worse, the GDPs who do get these treatments also aren’t transitioning. To do that, their primary sexual characteristics would have to change to those of the opposite sex, a medical impossibility. The best that GDPs can do is copy the secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex. That isn’t a transition; that’s mimicry.

The linguistic bilge didn’t stop there. The package of treatments available to GDPs became known as gender-affirmimg care.² If you saw this term for the first time out of context, you might think, So, that’s what they call it now when a woman gets her breasts enlarged. That’s a hell of a euphemism for plastic surgery! But no, the care isn’t for people whose gender matches their primary sexual characteristics. It’s for the gender that lacks those characteristics! At best the term is ambiguous. At worst it’s a case of doctors signaling their virtue. If we respected clear thinking, we would have replaced the term with something like gender dysphoria mitigation.

Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association thought that both homosexuality and gender dysphoria were mental disorders. Then they decoupled them, leaving that stigma only on gender dysphoria. We might have expected this decoupling to weaken the decades-old gay-GD alliance, a coalition of the victims of hate, discrimination, and brutality. But nothing of the sort occurred. If anything, the alliance grew stronger, largely due to the invention of the LGBTQIA2S+ monstrosity. It’s an incoherent fusion of homosexual labels with gender dysphoric labels and “I,” which stands for “intersex.” This term has nothing to do with sexual preferences or gender dysphoria. It identifies a group of people who are born with male and female genitalia. Their difficulty lies not in their minds but in a manifest genetic error.

Despite its incoherence, LGBTQIA2S+ does project a message: You, the sexually conventional, have treated us cruelly, and even though we are sexually unconventional, we are proud, we have dignity, and we are entitled to happiness. This message has resounded in progressive and conservative households throughout America. The values of most progressive households are guided by compassion. They are receptive to the message and want to propagate it in elementary schools. The values of most conservative households are guided by tradition. They fear that departures from tradition are gateways to social chaos. They prefer the status quo ante of the last century, when gay marriage didn’t exist, “transgender” wasn’t a word, and sex-gender conflicts weren’t discussed in elementary schools.

In today’s politics, conservative talking points on global warming, abortion, and social welfare programs are unpersuasive. But conservative politicians struck gold in criticizing the changes to sex ed programs in elementary schools, and I can’t dismiss their complaints. I too am distressed about the effect a “transgender” discussion has on the innocent brains of 7-year-olds. Studies have shown there is already a clear uptick in the number of children showing signs of gender confusion. Is the increase genuine, or are we seeing an instance of mass psychogenic illness?³ In any case, I recently saw a Republican presidential candidate railing about “wokism, transgenderism, climatism, and COVIDism,” a signal we’re in for unprecedented levels of bilge in the next 16 months.

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¹Some languages, French and German for example, use the same word to mean sex and gender. I have no idea how they make the distinctions we make in English.

²Gender-affirming care is accepted and practiced in America, but this isn’t always the case in other medically advanced countries. See this article in the British Medical Journal.

³Perhaps a misguided sex ed program could create enough anxiety in young children to make them question their gender. See this entry in Wikipedia to learn more.

The Great Hurdle

Humans, being social animals, have a dread that surpasses all others, including death. It’s the dread of becoming an outsider. Getting over this hurdle is the foremost task of our lives.

Outsiders despair of finding a social niche. They’re not like prison convicts in this regard. Convicts find acceptance, albeit dubious, in their own populations. Nor are outsiders like those we ostracize. An ostracized person has been deliberately excluded from the company of others. Outsiders are people who simply drift away from social norms, like an unmoored boat that gradually moves into the open sea. The most common word for them is loner. The cruelest among us prefer to say loser.

Sadly, many do not clear the hurdle. Their fate is suicide, the second leading cause of death in America for 10- to 14-year-olds and 25- to 34-year-olds. Those who do clear the hurdle owe their lives to strong psychological defenses, perhaps complemented by some just-in-time therapy.

For both groups, the challenge to their selfhood presents itself in the same way. As preschoolers, the value of conformity and popularity become disturbingly clear. Adults coach us on the rewards of “going along,” but they needn’t take the trouble. Then comes the terrible realization that social acceptance is far from certain. Some kids reject you because of something “off” about you. Some are just plain mean. Sometimes neighbors are too, like the old man who curses at you when your ball rolls into his yard. Even teachers can be openly unfriendly. They’re doing “hard time,” and therefore so should you. That’s when our defenses kick in. Most of us see we’re not the only ones who are hurting, and alliances form. These are what I call affiliations of the wounded.

Along with the affiliations comes a nascent identity, an assemblage of descriptors we sort into “that’s me” and “that’s not me.” The sorting requires a painful self-assessment. To soothe the pain, we attach our identity to palliatives. They are calming, habit-forming behaviors that are introduced to us by our affiliations. Their effects can be constructive or destructive, or they can be harmless quirks. They take hold of us for a lifetime.

To make these ideas more concrete, let’s look at a couple of lives that are open books. The photos below show Joan Rivers and Bobby Fischer as adults and as children.

Joan was a pretty, bright little girl who no doubt delighted her family. I imagine that she loved to entertain them, and they rejoiced in her efforts. She was intensely competitive and troubled that some girls were prettier and more talented. Comparisons only grew worse when Joan began to gain weight.

She developed a neurosis known as body dysmorphia, distress from imagined flaws in one’s appearance. She dealt with it by using a couple of behavioral palliatives. One was self-deprecation, a way to entertain and gain sympathy at the same time. The other was a biting wit, a way to bring down the beautiful and pretentious. Sadly, she gave in to a destructive palliative, plastic surgery. She traded a perfectly formed nose for one that became Michael Jacksonesque. Then she acquired pixie eyes and a grotesque smile. Her natural face was gone.

Bobby was also precocious, but was raised only by his mother, who scraped by with a nursing job. His older sister occasionally played games with him, but for the most part, he spent his days alone in their apartment, at the edge of a crime-ridden neighborhood. He had only chess books for company and entered adolescence with a pittance of social skills. School bored him, he ignored his studies, and he made no friends.

Chess was his palliative, his monomania. He joined the Brooklyn Chess Club when he was 8 and began his formal training. In a matter of years he was playing with Grand Masters, and he became World Champion at the age of 29. One might say he was a successful adult, but his isolation and woeful education left him alarmingly ignorant.

In his heart, he must have accused his Jewish mother and invisible Jewish father of desertion. His mother was a politically active communist. It’s no coincidence that he developed a loathing for communism and Judaism. He also had contempt for doctors and medicine, possibly a reaction to his mother’s medical career. His contempt cost him his life. When he developed a urinary tract blockage in 2007, he refused medication, dialysis, and surgery. He died of degenerative kidney failure the following year.¹

Now let’s turn to a couple of adults we don’t know. Their childhoods are a mystery, and I have only adult photos of them, but I think we can still make some accurate inferences about the kinds of hurdles they faced.

I’ll refer to the person on the left as Anomalous and the person on the right as Animalus.

I’m guessing that Anomalous was assigned a female at birth, so I’ll hesitantly go with she/her pronouns. Her gender dysphoria determined her destiny — the name of her hurdle would be What sex am I?

She’s fortunate to have been born into Gen Z, likely the first generation in which people with gender dysphoria were spared the burden of declaring to be a trans man or a trans woman. They could identify themselves as both or neither or some other exotic category. I think Anomalous chose to be questioning or nonbinary. So the answer to What sex are you? was pretty much Fuck you!

Her palliatives are piercings and tattoos. They project the message, I do not conform. This is beautifully ironic. So many people have them now that their message has become, I’m trying to be hip (conforming).² Somehow they suit Anomalous quite well. While rejecting gender labels — very nonconforming — she embraces body decorating — very hip. Anomalous is confused but completely indifferent about it.

In his adolescence, Animalus chose a way forward in which identity and a palliative have effectively merged — bodybuilding. It’s an ingenious way to escape the stress of body dysmorphia, maintain good health, become confident and self-disciplined, and improve attractiveness. All this plus entry into a ready-made support group, the worldwide society of gym rats!

Of course, there are always problems if palliatives are used to excess. Animalus seems to be unaware of this. After his youth is gone, he’ll face tendinitis, back pains, shoulder pains, and other joint problems. These injuries will likely worsen with time and can even become crippling. The trick seems to be extending self-discipline to include moderation.

My thoughts about the Great Hurdle lead me to a number of recommendations:

• Many cultures have recognized it as a critical passage and formalized ways to cross it. Anthropologists call these “rites of passage.” The Jews have Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, the Amish have Rumspringa, and Hispanics have Quincenera, for girls only.³ None of the these is capable of dealing with the crises adolescents face in a modern, multicultural society. We have to adopt a body of rites-of-passage knowledge based on the best research that psychologists have to offer. So far, the American Psychological Association has failed in its mission to become a resource to the American public.
  
  
• The proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” is a societal truth. All adults should see themselves as child advocates informed by the rites-of passage knowledge base.
  
  
• Every county should have a child abuse and neglect hotline. It should have a web presence and be advertised in televised community messages.
  
  
• People who teach preteens and adolescents have always tried to minimize their roles of socializer and disciplinarian. I have little sympathy for them. They are avoiding their “it takes a village” responsibilities. Teacher training and evaluations must change in recognition of these responsibilities.
  
  
• The FCC has been irresponsible in overseeing the activities of social media. It hasn’t offered a uniform standard for monitoring content or a uniform process for removing content. Nor has it required social platforms to disclose their monitoring methods, if any, or data about the volume or kind of content they’ve removed. In no sense are social media regulated. This must end.

But alas, my recommendations all share a fatal flaw. None of them is politically feasible! Parents would argue they have complete autonomy in raising their children … “No society of pinheaded ninnies is going to give me guidelines for doing what is intuitive and natural. Neighbors better not come knocking with advice about raising my kids. It’s none of their goddam business. And if they report me to a hotline, they’d better run for the hills. The same goes for teachers. They don’t dare interfere with my parenting. I’ll get the bastards fired.”

The FCC would be defended by a different political argument … “In America, we try to use a light hand in matters of regulation. Otherwise we acquire bureaucratic fiefdoms that drain initiative and efficiency out of our capitalist system.”

So what do we do to help our kids navigate the most consequential time in their lives? For now, we can only recognize our challenge and their distress, and let them know they are not alone.

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¹Fischer has many biographers. Some say he was paranoid or schizophrenic or both. I’m skeptical of these claims. The facts of his upbringing seem sufficient to explain his behavior.

²Some readers will surely disagree with this assertion. They’ll say tattoos are often expressions of love or fundamental beliefs or artistic impulses. But I see that practically no one with a tattoo (or a piercing) has just one. Therefore, I have to classify tattooing and piercing as palliative habits.

³A tribe in the Brazilian Amazon forces its adolescent boys to suffer the stings of biting ants. Extraordinary, but a small price to pay when the adults say, “You’re in!”

Unanchored minds

If you’re a regular viewer of “Real Time,” Bill Maher’s weekly HBO series, you know the last segment is always a barbed commentary on something in the news that’s been gnawing at him. (A damn good theme for a personal blog, if you ask me.)

In a recent show, Maher’s closing speech asked how a country [America] could solve any of its problems when “its people are so intractably, astoundingly, mind-numbingly stupid.” To illustrate his assertion, he showed excerpts from man-on-the-street interviews, most notably from “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and Jay Leno’s old “Tonight Show.”

Spry for her age

The interviews are surreal. One woman, when asked where Queen Elizabeth was from, said, “Egypt?” Another was asked, “What is the largest city in the world?” She answered, “Europe.” In a clip from a TikTok show, a collage-age couple was asked, “Who was the first person to land on the Sun?” They didn’t know. A shopper was asked, “If you were born in 2021, how old would you be?” She answered, “21.” OK, maybe she was flustered, but what about the woman who was training to be a teacher? She was offered $100 if she could name the country where Venice, Italy, is located. She said, “Gee, I should know this … Paris?” I have no doubt these interviews are genuine. If you need convincing, go to YouTube and search for “dumb Americans.” Here’s a link I picked at random.

Only a few years ago, I would have found all this hilarious and would have agreed fully with Maher’s opinion of the hapless people in the videos. But gradually, I began to see things differently. I made a distinction. Stupid is now a word I reserve for people with a learning disability. Their cognitive apparatus has a congenital flaw, or they’re suffering from some trauma to their brains. It would be accurate, though unkind, to call such a person a dummy, a fool, a simpleton, a halfwit, a dolt, a dullard, a moron, or a cretin. They’re all more or less interchangeable. But maybe stupidity isn’t their handicap; maybe it’s ignorance. Maybe they are uninformed — in a state of ignorance. A person may be uninformed but not stupid. (However, a stupid person is surely uninformed as well.)

Does my distinction really hold water? Can people reach adulthood and be that uninformed? What would it actually take for that to happen? Well, they’d have to go through half of elementary school, all of middle school, and all of high school in a state of continual distraction. Is that possible? I don’t see why not. Many kids have handheld game consoles. (I fancy the Nintendo Switch Lite.) Students in the higher grades have smart phones that offer texting and access to game apps — just don’t forget to mute the sound, and never burst out laughing when a rude remark is passed around.

Then there are the relentless distractions of puberty. I used to stare at girls and let my imagination run amok. Now a horny teen can save raunchy pics in an online album and take a peek when a classroom discussion gets tedious.

The worst distraction is every student’s nightmare, a sudden loud noise or a thump against the classroom door. Maybe it’s a madman who’s come to take young lives! This thought can never be far away. When it slips below the surface, there’s always the “active shooter” drill to call it back.

Teachers can’t be expected to thwart gun violence, but they should be able to cope with the other distractors that come their way, whether it’s a noisy kid with a hall pass or subject matter that induces boredom. How many teachers are aware of this challenge, and of those who are, how many are ready with effective countermeasures? I’ll bet most teachers get a failing grade, especially when it comes to recognizing their own tedium.

But let’s imagine a classroom where the teacher skillfully swats distractions aside whenever they arise. What is the default state of the students’ minds? What does “going to school” mean to the average classroom captive? At first, it means leaving mommy and daddy behind; it means separation anxiety. Eventually, though, kids figure out that the play and laughter they knew before they started school are still possible in school. They think, I’ll tune out the bad teachers, avoid the bullies, and find the nice kids who are looking for me. I’ll be fine; school is OK. That’s the game plan. Unfortunately, that’s too often the entire game plan.

Students need to experience discovery, the moment when learning, surprise, and joy intersect. It’s the biochemical thrill of “I didn’t know but now I do.” This is no less than a cerebral change of state. If it’s experienced often enough as a child, it becomes addictive. It may be the most positive craving that a child can succumb to. Yet it is not enough to make education successful. It needs a complementary skill, critical thinking. Without this pairing, much of what we call learning would be garbage.

To properly value discovery and critical thinking as the cornerstones of quality education, we have to ask an ugly question: What are the consequences of failing to teach both? Guessing the answer isn’t hard. Society would bring forth a stream of unanchored minds. Quickly, perhaps in as little as two generations, the populous would be incapable of making informed, well-considered decisions. The image in my head is one of people floating past each other like untethered hot air balloons. No one would be sad, though. They would all be wearing virtual reality visors, drifting in blissful distraction.

Courage

The subject of courage baffles me. I hear people use the word, I see it in news stories, but I fail to grasp its essence. Maybe it has no essence. I’m told it has a relationship with fear and virtue, but I can’t find a felicitous connection. I’ve sought help in collections of quotations, and … well, I’ll just show you what happens.

I’ll start with the view of courage held by Joe Sixpack, as expressed by John Wayne, The Duke of Hollywood legend. With cowboy brevity, he said:

Courage is being scared to death … and saddling up anyway.

So many problems there. Wayne is offering only the warrior’s notion of courage, the kind that would probably be the death of me. I imagine my sergeant ordering me and a few others to charge up Pork Chop Hill and take out a machine gun nest. That sounds pretty reckless to me; I’ve got a family back home, and, oh yeah … I don’t want to die. And damn that sergeant for the conflict he’s laid on me — either being labeled a coward and court-martialed or being riddled with bullets.

OK, say I and one other soldier survive. We make it home, and we’re decorated for valor. Years pass, we age. My war buddy starts losing his hair. He can’t stand the thought of being called “Baldy.” His courage deserts him and he buys a toupee. What would The Duke say?

It’s also doubtful that being “scared to death” is obligatory. It fact, maybe a simple “Oh, God no!” and an involuntary spritz of adrenaline are enough to trigger an act considered courageous. We’ve all seen interviews of people hailed as heroes who say, in essence, “I didn’t think about the risk to myself. I didn’t think at all. I just acted.” Can an involuntary action be rightly called virtuous?

I chastised myself for taking The Duke seriously and swung from the pole of zero gravitas to its opposite, the ancient Greeks. This quotation from Plato caught my eye:

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

This aphorism needs unpacking. By implication, it also means knowing the contrary, what to fear. And “knowing,” of course, means having knowledge — in this case, knowledge of what is fearful. Further, by knowledge Plato must mean ideas gained from experience, instruction, or both. Therefore, Plato believed that courage is a virtue that is learned. This conclusion is clearly established in the dialogue Laches, in which two Greek noblemen prevail on Socrates to guide them in putting their sons on a virtuous path.

Plato would never assert that a child could be courageous, that a courageous act could be reflexive, or that courage could be seen in someone without earlier moral guidance. Chief among his guiding concepts is a hierarchy of fears. The most fearful thing, surprisingly, is not death; it’s shame. A warrior, raised properly, would know that death is preferable to fleeing and facing the contempt of his countrymen.

Aristotle echoed Plato’s notion of courage. He claimed a courageous act was one of moderation. It was the middle ground between cowardice and foolhardiness. In fact, all of Aristotle’s virtues lie between extremes. So Greek!

In Laches, Socrates gets to the verge of declaring that all the virtues are derivatives of courage. Plato seems to lack the … what? courage? … to put the words in his mouth. Aristotle takes up the idea, sort of. He asserts that other virtues — honesty, for instance — will be present if courage is present. It seems that Aristotle never met a brave man who inflated his war stories or cheated on his wife.

What disturbs me most about the ancient Greeks is this progression: honor is fidelity to one’s ideals and one’s polis; shows of courage may be necessary to demonstrate one’s honor; if this means violence and death, so be it. Perhaps their thinking would have taken a different turn had they known of Buddha or could have imagined a future in which large populations are annihilated. They had no experience of Christ, the Quaker movement, conscientious objectors, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King. Hence they had no exemplars of passive resistance. Would they judge such people to be cowards for not meeting violence with violence? I’m inclined to think they’d have only contempt for nonviolence.

Would the ancient Greeks also respect a life sacrificed for the sake of a non-Greek culture? For example, would they say that the 9-11 terrorists were courageous? I can’t imagine they would. In fact, most of the world today, including many Islamic nations, believe suicide terrorists are cowards. After all, the people they kill are usually civilians, innocent and defenseless. Yet, their plea might be compelling:

In the eyes of the West, we are subhuman. You spit on us and mock our beliefs. You take our land and disrespect our leaders. You perpetuate inequality and leave us with no respectable way to win our rights. You say we are contemptible cowards. We say that we fight with the only tools left to us.

It would be a revelation to discover a dialogue in which Socrates made this case. A revelation and an impossibility. Such thoughts would never enter his mind.

I have one more quote to share. It comes from Jim Hightower, author of The Hightower Lowdown and “America’s most popular populist”:

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

I know where breaking with conformity would go in Plato’s hierarchy of fears. He told us — at the top. The scorn of one’s neighbors is more terrible than violent death. This is the first sentence of a warrior’s creed. I can draw a straight line between its acceptance and a world in the shadow of supersonic missiles with nuclear payloads. If we were ever in need of nonconformity, it’s now.

Tyranny

In 2017, as America was beginning its obsession with a tyrant, a short book titled On Tyranny was published. Its author, Timothy Snyder, writes brilliantly about political tyranny, but I wish he had explored other forms of tyranny. As I studied it, my mind drifted to the Jefferson Memorial and the words inscribed there: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Every form of tyranny. Was Jefferson’s conception of tyranny larger than Snyder’s? I’m inclined to think so. I understand tyranny as Jefferson did: a cruel, oppressive power that denies life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of human experience.

In its simplest manifestation, in the family and the neighborhood, tyranny is a leech, sucking the joy from our conscious hours and leaving despair behind. I think of child abuse, spousal abuse, elder abuse, and bullying on the play ground. I think of gangs on inner city streets using swagger, contempt, and intimidation to hold their egos together. In their ambit, there is suffocating unease.

Across communities, fear and ignorance propagate tyranny. “Well well,” thinks the patrol cop. “A lane change, no signal, and a spook behind the wheel! Let’s have a look.” “See that lady, looking all holy in her mask?” a bigot says to his girl friend. “Look at those sneaky Chink eyes. Someone should mess her up.” “Fuck that,” mutters a Proud Boy when he sees two gays walking arm in arm and laughing. “Laugh it up, faggots, while you can.” The black driver, the Asian woman, and the gay men can’t be unaware of the ambient hostility. Their unwelcome companion is tyranny, ready to do harm.

Tyranny metastasizes in the job market, where wage slaves exhaust the best part of their lives. Many of them don’t earn enough to avoid poverty. Many others do but with little hope of owning a home, paying for emergency needs, or sending children to college. They simply limp along from month to month. Both groups are dogged by debt or crushed by unemployment. Why is such misery allowed to exist? Isn’t there enough wealth in the economy to put a roof over everyone’s head, set a wage floor under everyone’s feet, teach new skills, and provide for essential needs? I think there is. Lack of means isn’t the problem; it’s lack of will. Where ownership by a few exists, whether privately or through stock shares, the idea of paying well, sharing profits, and subsidizing employee growth is exceedingly rare. There are better uses for profits, like manufacturing propaganda about the “American dream,” paying lobbyists to buy the votes of politicians, and contributing billions to political advertising. In this manner, an oligarchic tyranny fattens as it oppresses.

The workplace is notable for more than its economic tyranny. It’s an aggregation of power structures that range from the single-boss variety to labyrinthine monsters with a hierarchical chain of command. Every node of the latter variety amplifies and elaborates a top-down strategy for maximizing profits. Ultimately, concrete orders and expectations reach the workers, the people who create a product or render a service. Thus their motivation is external. It comes from the enterprise, not from themselves. Almost always, work is evaluated against standards, also provided by the enterprise. The evaluators are people with delegated authority, whose skill set often has little in common with that of the workers.

The result is an unnatural and disagreeable experience, tainted with tyranny. The closest analogy I can draw is that of the horse and farmer. The horse can carry the farmer down the road to the next farm in short order. That’s what the farmer wants, and he can make the horse do it on command. In today’s industrialized economies, those with delegated power similarly make us do their will on command. They usually do so in a cordial way. Their “requests” don’t have hard edges, but we still feel their force. There’s no avoiding the truth that our minds and bodies are rented.

At the worst of times, a superior’s request may strike us as absurd, misguided, or demeaning. It may even have nothing to do with our “rental agreement”; it may be personally invasive and repugnant. It’s not easy to push back, and even if we do so successfully, we know our self-respect is under siege. Tyranny will always challenge our self image.

In the classroom, tyranny makes its stealthiest inroads. Young minds must be molded and trained for the sake of perpetuating the culture. That is received truth. After all, what sense is there in procreation if we allow our progeny to revert to barbarism? The need to replicate what we know and believe is so insistent that we frequently lose sight of who children are. Some of us, in fact, never acquire that knowledge.

Children have innate behaviors that drive learning. Playing, investigating, and imagining are the most potent of these. Through these behaviors, children discover and adapt to the world. When teachers stimulate these behaviors, they grow learning organically. When teachers supplant them with memory drills, bare assertions of fact, and lessons without context, children experience schooling as tyranny. The result is ennui and rebellion, as Calvin shows us:

What if children thought of school as a place where they would be surprised, fascinated, or delighted? What if they came to school expecting a revelation because revelations happened so often? Childhood would be an altogether different experience. No more Calvins slumping over their desks or running for the exits. No more thinking of teachers as hired oppressors.

We’d do well to discard the image of an autocrat when we hear the word “tyrant.” Better to imagine a hydra, the many-headed water monster of mythology. Its scent is foul, its breath poisonous, its blood diseased. Cut off a head and it regenerates two. Hold on to that image in your roles as parent, concerned citizen, worker, and voter. It will guide you well.

The past

Can you feel it — the stupefying weight that’s bending your back and forcing your nose to the ground? I have to ask because — you won’t believe this — most people have no idea that they’re carrying the past on their shoulders, much as Atlas was said to have carried the world. Don’t ask me how people can be that unconscious! I go slack-jawed whenever I see the viciousness and idiocy of the past given an honored place in the present. Religion and superstition, for example. Patriotic bullshit, for example. Racial and tribal superiority, for example.

One of my life’s memorable moments came on an evening when my father and I watched “Fiddler on the Roof.” Tevye told us about “Tradition!” and my father was overcome with pride. I’m sorry, Dad, but the real subject of the song is oblivious existence and the bliss of living without reflection or imagination.

Perhaps the worst justification for any action is the argumentum ad antiquitatum, the appeal to antiquity. In law, this is called “arguing from precedence.” Such and such is right because we’ve always done it that way. It’s an exemplary way to escape the bothersome act of thinking. “Am I a Methodist, Mom?” “Yes, Jimmy, the Beaverhausens have always been Methodists.” “I’m joining the Army, Dad.” “Like hell! We Schmeckpeppers are Navy men!”

The past not only controls the underpinnings of our lives, it dictates the details as well. Take the months of the year. Please, someone tell me how the month of February got its name. Why do we have months named after Julius Caesar and Augustus? Haven’t they been dead for quite a while? Why are our last four months named after Latin numbers? And none of them is in the correct numeric sequence! It’s simply idiotic, but we don’t give it a thought.

It’s no better when we consider the days of the week. The order of the days boggles me. The first is Sunday and the last is Saturday. Shouldn’t the weekend come at the end of the week?

The names of the days is all about the worship of ancient gods. Sunday derives from pre-Christian Germanic tribes, who worshipped the sun. Monday from the Norse personification of the moon. Tuesday from Tyr, the one-handed Norse god of dueling. (I like my gods ambidextrous.) Wednesday from Wodin (Odin), the Norse supreme deity. (That makes two supreme deities in the week!) Thursday from Thor, the Norse god of thunder. Friday from Frigg, Wodin’s wife. (Some say her name is actually Freya, but I’ll stick with Frigg.) And Saturday from Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and periodic renewal. If a Martian were to visit Earth, he’d conclude that five-sevenths of all English speakers were Norse pagans.

If we’re ever going to escape the yoke of the past, it’s probably wise to begin modestly. I would therefore start by simply renaming the days of the week. The French had a go at this about 230 years ago, but they didn’t do it modestly. In fact, they lost their freaking minds. First, they made their weeks 10 days long. Second, they made all their months 30 days long. Third, they weren’t satisfied to coin 10 new weekday names; they coined a different name for every day of their 360-day year! I have a theory that to every great civilization there comes at least one era of insanity. The French had theirs way back then.

But back to my new weekday names …. I’m a bird lover, and so I’d give the name of a bird to each day of the week. Don’t snicker; it makes a lot of sense, as I’ll explain later. Here are the new names …

“Monday” becomes “Loon”

There he is, with a fuzzy loonlet aboard. Apparently, he’s just taken a dip. Beads of water cover his head.

I chose the name to preserve the day’s association with the moon. It can drive us mad, you know. On the first workday of the week, I think we can benefit from a little lunacy, just to show some contempt for the rat race.

By the way, note that the name isn’t “Loonday.” Everyone will know it’s a reference to a day. Why be tiresome?

“Tuesday” becomes “Toucan”

His disproportionate beak, painted like a child’s toy, makes him look ridiculous, but this is the source of his charm and whimsy. Loon was a nutty kickoff for the week; now Toucan takes the fun further. By now we’re well fortified against the demands of the new week.

“Wednesday” becomes “Wren”

In fact, this is a cactus wren. Life pricks him, but he doesn’t lose sight of the flower.

“Thursday” becomes “Thrush”

This is a white-crested laughing thrush. He can’t help himself. He knows life is absurd and that cracks him up.

“Friday” becomes “Finch”

The finch is small but proud, a fitting symbol for anyone who’s survived the workweek. On this day, the masses will raise a glass and cry out, “Thank Got it’s Finch!”

“Saturday” becomes “Starling”

The starling strikes a mood. There is moonglow on his chest, starlight on his crown and wings. To me, he suggests romance and self-indulgence. He says, “Enjoy — you’ve earned it!”

“Sunday” becomes “Sunbird”

What better way to finish than with a burst of color, a celebratory fireworks show? We lie back, review the week, and pick out the moments of greatest satisfaction.

I have an erstwhile friend — she’s a Trumpist — who likes to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” She’d want to know what’s broken about the weekday names we have now. They’re functional, aren’t they? Yes, they are. But “functional” is faint praise if praise at all. Our civilization is light-years removed from the worship of pagan gods. We’re standing at the doorway of exploiting reusable energy, sealing the cracks in our genome, and deploying quantum computers. We’re dreaming of terraforming Mars and mining the asteroids. Isn’t it time to put our own stamp on our lives? Away with the dreary, witless, and irrelevant; onward to references that are meaningful, alive, and expressive.

Yes, I realize that I’m charging up a hill with no one behind me. But that’s your loss as well as mine. You will never live to hear someone exclaim, “Thank God it’s Finch!”

Meditations on meditation

When I was in high school, I thought “meditation” was a simple word. It meant thinking deeply, pondering. It was mostly what Einstein did to reimagine Newton’s conception of gravity. But when I got to college, I learned that meditation also had a vague, somewhat mystical meaning. It was a process through which one became more self-enlightened, mentally clear, and emotionally calm. But there was no agreement on the process itself. Some practitioners called for focusing on an object or a mental image, on uttering a mantra, or on awareness of one’s breathing. Others favored just the opposite, striving to focus on nothing and dismissing any thought or image that formed in the mind.

I was dismayed to discover that meditation often had religious or cultural trappings. Proponents differed in their advice about when to do it, in what posture, in what ambience, and with which accoutrements. Was it permissible to meditate in the shower or in a concert hall? Apparently not.

I concluded that the whole subject needed to be turned on its head. If self-enlightenment, serenity, and clarity were worthy goals — and they were — why not resolve to do the things that plausibly moved us toward those goals? If we chose to call those things “meditation,” fine. The term could hardly get more muddled than it already was.

That was Step One. Step Two was to brainstorm about activities that usually generated feelings of serenity and clarity. I figured that if my mind were serene and clear more often, then enlightenment might gradually follow. Certainly, one can’t become more enlightened when serenity and clarity are diminished. They are prerequisites.

After I had a list of goal-directed activities, I was ready for Step Three, which is posing a critical question: What, if anything, did the listed activities have in common? Happily, I found that there was a commonality. Every one produced a phenomenon I called “distancing from the self.” That is, I became two people, one doing the activity and another observing the activity with a kind of beguiled bliss.

Here, in order from least to most effective, are activities that I’ve used to distance from myself. They may work for you, too:

Adopt “earworms.” An earworm is a catchy musical theme that gets stuck in your head. It plays over and over in your mind’s ear. Some people fight the monotony, which shows that they’re acting from a position outside their minds. This is a mistake. Accept an earworm as your mantra for the moment. Enjoy the fun of it.

Earworms can come from anywhere. I like this one from pop music and this motif from Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto.

Play a solitary game. The most obvious of which is … Solitaire. Watch yourself exercise the simple strategies for winning. Or step up to Sudoku. It requires a wider palette of techniques. Enjoy the satisfaction of applying them. Or go all the way with computer games. You can marvel as your doppelganger masters higher and higher levels of reflexive competence.

Watch formula movies. Of course, almost all movies are formula movies. The term is practically a redundancy. Two genres, rom-coms and whodunits, are the most formulaic of all. The dramatic stages of a  rom-com are well known: boy meets girls, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl for good. All the rest is context. Find an original one with a good script, like Groundhog Day, and you’ve got something resembling a miracle.

Whodunits have an absurd formula. Someone of questionable character is murdered. There are numerous suspects, each of whom loathed the victim. The police are baffled. Enter the genius sleuth, a lovable pest with no end of idiosyncrasies. A number of suspects emerge in turn as the probable murderer, but each is shown to be innocent, much to the exasperation of the authorities. Finally, the genius sleuth demonstrates conclusively that an obscure character, masquerading as a guileless nebbish, is in fact a fiend with a perverse grudge. You’re denied the pleasure of saying, “I figured it out!” but you delight in the fact that the conclusion is contrived and ridiculous.

All movies offer something invaluable: we can watch them again and again and know exactly what’s going to happen next. It’s like experiencing an enormous earworm, and eyeworm! You can stand aside and experience it as a director or critic would. If you’ve ever watched Mystery Science Theater 3000, you know this pleasure very well.

Perform a “procedure.” This sounds cryptic, but all it means is enacting a series of steps — sometimes simple, sometimes sophisticated — with such proficiency that they appear to be (and are) second nature. In a sense, all the activities I’ve described so far — “hearing” earworms, playing solitary games, watching movies — are procedures. They’re just simple, straightforward ones.

In Zen Buddhist communities, there is a concept called samu. It’s simple communal work assigned by a nun or monk. It might be cutting vegetables, cleaning toilets, stacking firewood, weeding a garden, or minor carpentry —  simple procedural tasks. The Zen Buddhists perform the tasks attentively and devotedly as a means of achieving serenity. They say, “There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.”

Beyond these elementary procedures are those I classify as craftsmanship. For example, there are the crafts of painting and photography. There is image editing, something I love to do. No muse is involved; they are procedural. Our genetic gifts often play a role, but still these tasks proceed in semi-conscious steps. It’s the same with creative design, woodworking, serious writing, musical composition, sculpture, and innumerable other crafts. Michelangelo famously said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” I can see Michelangelo carving away, bit by bit, always knowing where to put the chisel and how to strike it, while he simultaneously stands aside and appraises his progress.

Perhaps the greatest paradox in life is that in losing ourselves, we find ourselves.

Thinking the unthinkable

The Merriam-Webster website defines paradigm shift as “an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way.” It’s an excellent term for a phenomenon we all experience. It may be thrilling, as when Einstein realized that time and distance were not absolutes.  More often, though, it’s wrenching: you learn that Santa Claus doesn’t exist; you realize your religious beliefs are based on primitive myths; years of studying to become an astrophysicist seem insignificant alongside a chance to do standup comedy; your enthusiasm for spectator sports now seems like childish hero worship; your amiable spouse of 20 years turns out to be a maker of methanfedamines.

Most paradigm shifts are far from inevitable. They struggle against denial, the most potent of our defense mechanisms. Denial often wins; a shift never occurs. An alcoholic may never accept that he is one. A white supremacist may never admit that skin color has no correlation with excellence in anything.

If we were to make a list of beliefs most resistant to shifting, the certainty of national superiority would surely be near the top. In America, the indoctrination is unrelenting. We have “Founding Fathers” who devised a perfect political document. We pledge to be “indivisible.” Our nation is “under God” — the ultimate overseer. Our destiny is “manifest.” Our military is second to none. Our wealth is second to none. At sports events, we sing a standing, hand-over-heart tribute to our flag and to ourselves. Political speeches end with “may God [continue to] bless America.” We are “exceptional.”

Might an extraordinary set of circumstances trigger a paradigm shift and cause us to cry out, “Enough brainwashing! We demand a better homeland!” It’s happened before, to the American colonists of the 18th century. They chose to rebel rather than live with the grievances on Mr. Jefferson’s list. They did so even though being an Englishman was considered a distinct honor, if not a blessing. Today, do some Americans — let’s call them Blue Americans — have grievances that are sufficiently weighty to justify a separation from Red Americans? Well, consider these:

• The dismissal of scientific knowledge that conflicts with religious belief

• The insistence that people acquire medical insurance from for-profit companies

• The absence of sane national gun regulations (the denial of freedom from fear)

• An overfunded defense budget that forces the underfunding of vital programs

• The absence of a scheduled drawdown on the use of fossil fuels

• Inadequate government investment in climate-change solutions

• The lack of a comprehensive national program to end hunger

• The harassment and disenfranchisement of minorities who want to vote

• The harassment of people whose sex lives are outside social norms

• The denial of preschool and higher education to those who can’t afford them

• College loans that condemn young people to lifelong debt

• The denial of abortion, even when the good of society justifies it

• The absence of security criteria that would guarantee valid elections

• Presidential elections that are not determined by a popular vote

• A Senate that hugely over-represents states with low populations

• A Senate willing to exculpate a criminal president

• House elections that are warped by gerrymandering

• Since 1972, the failure of 38 states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment

This bill of grievances is at least as substantial as the one published in the Declaration of Independence. But even so, you probably balk at using it to argue for a separation from Red America. Why? Is it because our separation from England was bloody and because the attempted secession of the Confederacy was even bloodier? That’s an excellent reason for balking, but I’m not proposing a rebellion or a secession. I’m proposing an amicable separation that is favorable to both sides.

It’s obvious what Blue America would stand to gain, but why would a separation be attractive to Red America? Simple — they would be free to be as reactionary as they liked. Though very improbable, they could restore slavery and disenfranchise women. They could outlaw abortion and same-sex marriage (a certainty), invent a host of restrictions on voting (a certainty), enact racist immigration laws (a certainty), enact anti-union laws (a certainty), re-criminalize the recreational use of marijuana (a certainty), decree that a free education and free medical care are “un-Red” (a certainty), endorse all the provisions of the Constitution that thwart representative government (a certainty), pare all regulatory agencies down to nothing (a certainty), make Christianity the national religion (probably), legalize open-carry throughout the nation (probably), and re-examine our current government’s commitment to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (probably). They could even adopt the name “Christian Confederacy of America.” These inducements might well be irresistible.

Both sides would want to avoid economic damage. Declaring the two countries a free trade zone with open borders would achieve that goal. Think of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic as the model. They were once Czechoslovakia, but they wanted to go their separate ways. The agreement they reached is now known as the “Velvet Divorce.” Certainly the two Americas would face more than economic problems, but all of them could be negotiated. I’ll raise some of them in a future post and suggest solutions.

The first step toward separation is changing the political dialogue. Here’s a typical flawed exchange between a journalist and a politician:

Wolf Blitzer: Senator Sanders, our country is badly divided. As president, what would you do to bring Americans together again?

Bernie Sanders: We all have the same fundamental needs, Wolf, and we all want economic and social justice. We’ve never had a government that’s truly for the people. I’ll see to it that we finally have one.

First, Blitzer’s question assumes that a genuine reconciliation is achievable. That is a fantasy. As matters stand, only a sham reconciliation is possible, like the one we have with North Korea. Second, Sanders’ answer has a deceptive premise. Yes, we all want economic and social justice, but what does economic and social justice look like? On that point there is deep disagreement.

Sanders’ answer should be, “I would not try to pave over our divisions, Wolf. I would acknowledge them for what they are, irreparable within our lifetime and our children’s lifetime. The American people cannot be made content together, but they can be made content separately.”

We need a paradigm shift, a shift to Sanders’ second answer.