Let's Nix the Shibboleths

Then they said unto him, "Say now Shibboleth," and he said "Sibboleth," and they took him and slew him.

— Judges 12:6

The Miami Herald last month called on progressives to stop using the word Latinx.

"Stop trying to make the term 'Latinx' a thing," the editors wrote. "The so-called 'Latinx community' doesn’t even want to be called Latinx."

It turns out 98% of Latinos don't like the word.

I don't care for it either.

It sounds like a brand of laxative. (I can see the tagline now: Latinx. Pity the stool.)

I don't care for shibboleths in general.

Shibboleths often begin life as genteelisms meant to foster goodwill; but they just as often devolve—quickly—into political passwords.

The word shibboleth (Hebrew for "corncob") comes to us from the Old Testament, where we're told that sentries in Gilead used shibboleth as a watchword, knowing their enemies couldn't pronounce the "h."

I pity the fool who couldn't say shibboleth. He was executed on the spot.

I remember recoiling in horror the first time I heard a speaker say Latinx—not because I had no toilet paper, but because I thought, "Oh, no, here's another angry group to worry about offending."

But enough already!

With the real threats to democracy posed by the right, it's time we speak plainly and candidly—without fear of causing offense.

All this precious progressive "rebranding" has gotten way-too Orwellian.

"Some people love to feel offended because it makes them feel important," novelist Oliver Markus Malloy said. 

"When your only tool is a hammer, suddenly every problem starts to look like a nail. And when the only time you feel relevant is when you claim to be offended, suddenly everything looks offensive.”

He's right.

Let's be blunt and to the point.

Let's nix the shibboleths.

Happy January 6th!

We’re an illiberal state because we’ve marginalized the liberals.

— Victor Orbán

 

How January 6th will be commemorated in the future depends on the outcome of the 2024 election.

If Trump or his clone wins the presidency, January 6th will replace July 4th.

Sadly, Trump's base, too stupid (yes, that's the word) to grasp European politics, will take no note of their savior's endorsement yesterday of Hungary's prime minister Victor Orbán.

Trump called Orbán a "strong leader" who's "done a powerful and wonderful job in protecting Hungary."

Orbán's record is a blueprint for the next Trump presidency. 

Orbán has:

• Replaced Hungary's Constitution with his own
• Rigged elections so his party wins every time
• Cut the number of Members of Parliament by half
• Packed the courts
• Fired thousands of "disloyal" government employees
• Taken control of all radio and TV stations
• Blacklisted citizens who criticize the government
• Created a secret police to fight "Muslim terrorists"
• Broken up protests using violence
• Sheltered billions of stolen dollars in phony foundations
• Rewarded government contracts to family and friends
• Siphoned EU funds to political cronies
• Nationalized universities, utilities, and parks
• Nationalized all Hungarians' pensions
• Eliminated welfare and unemployment insurance 
• Doubled the limit on paying workers for overtime
• Targeted immigrants by criminalizing immigrant assistance
• Targeted LGBTQ people through bans on depicting them 
• Muzzled academics who criticize the government
• Rewritten school textbooks
• Endorsed the supporters of Nazi Germany
• Pocketed untold billions of dollars of government money 

"The new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state," Orbán said in his 2014 state-of-the-union address.

That means only one thing: a "state that puts money in my pocket."

Happy January 6th!

Supply Chain Problem

The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be.

— Louis de Bernieres

Novelist Louis de Bernieres' marvelous notion of civility as "surplus kindness" arrived in my inbox today thanks to photographer Peter Ralston. 

The word kind, meaning "doing good for another," derives from the Old English word kynn, meaning "family." 

Kynn was borrowed from kunją the ancient German word for "kinfolk." (Kunją survives today in the German words Kind, meaning "child," and Kinder, meaning "children.") 

Just as telling, the word kindness in Old English (kyndnes) also meant "surplus."
 

So "surplus kindness" is a redundancy. 

Except that there's a shortage of kindness in our nation today. 

We need to fix our supply chain problem. 

Quickly.

Inquisitor in Chief

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

— Monty Python

Governor Ron DeSantis is bucking for Inquisitor in Chief. His target: wokeism.

Labeled an "oppressive mind-virus" by right-wingers, wokeism threatens to infect more Floridians than Omicron, DeSantis believes.

And so he has proposed a new state law, "the strongest legislation of its kind in the nation."

It's called the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act.

The WOKE Act will let citizens sue schools and companies for promoting critical race theory.

"We won't allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country," DeSantis said in a news release.

Eyeing the White House in 2024, DeSantis is clearly exploiting Whites' fears of wokeism, a tactic that put Republican Glenn Youngkin into the governor's seat in Virginia in November.

Were DeSantis of Irish descent, I'd say this is just warmed-over McCarthyism, and no one need worry: it's pure booze-fed Blarney.

But DeSantis is Italian and that's spells big trouble. 

He's a right-wing Catholic without an alcohol problem.

That means, when it comes to purging wokeism, he'll be zealous, ruthless, and cruel.

His closest historical forebear is Tomás de Torquemada, also known as "The Grand Inquisitor," who for Catholicism's sake murdered 2,000 Spaniards in the 15th century.

Torquemada didn't just murder the unorthodox.

He spied on them in their homes; traced them through informants; had them arrested by his secret police; humiliated them; and put them on trial before judges just as fanatical he was. He waterboarded, garroted, and racked those found guilty, before burning them at the stake.

What will DeSantis do to rid America of wokeism?

It's anyone's guess, but I predict it will be brutal.

Nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Above: Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor by Jean-Paul Laurens

Pronoun Police

The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.

― John Fowles

Goodly readers on occasion complain that my old-school use of pronouns and impatience with pronouns of choice reveal insensitivity and bias.

Under the hot lights of these pronoun police, I'll admit, I'd probably cop a plea.

But for the moment suffice it to say my one true bias is a bias for brevity.

Brevity speeds communication; and life's too short to stuff a mushroom.

But, incisive as it is, brevity almost always ruffles feathers. 

By fostering favoritism, brevity can't help but trigger the aggrieved.

• Men at work. 
• Boys will be boys. 
• Drama queen.
• All men are created equal.

We could easily enough scrub favoritism from these phrases, but what value would we really add?

• Proletariats laboring up ahead.
• Youths will behave as they frequently do.
• Histrionic person.
• All human beings either are created equal or turn out that way due to randomized instances of syngamy.

I wish I could be as cheery about our current obsession with wokish circumlocution as the linguist John McWhorter, who recently applauded this sentence:

• The boy wants to see a picture of herself.

"There are times when the language firmament shifts under people’s feet," he wrote in The New York Times. "They get through it."

And if they don't, the pronoun police will be there to assist.