I had a weird dream last night. This German mathematician I knew in Australia was performing a one-man stage show and I was in attendance. He began to wild cheers, but then half the audience turned on him because he did something that wasn’t woke, and then the other half was defending him saying that art doesn’t have to conform to social justice rules.
I felt caught in the middle, and then he came up to me and said he was so glad I was here and that he and his girlfriend were going out to drinks with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar after the show, and S and I should come along. Kareem has long been a hero of mine (in the dream and in real life), so I was elated, and I figured that if he was okay with the show then I should be too.
Then my alarm went off.
It’s probably no coincidence that I randomly saw a picture of the German mathematician before I went to sleep, nor is it a coincidence that I’ve been thinking about language a lot lately. I recently read an interview with James Carville on Democratic messaging, and I also regularly read some crossword puzzle blogs that are really into using woke terms for everything, so I hear it there also.
As I’ve mentioned before, I find myself siding more and more with the Carville’s of the world. I don’t think this "faculty lounge" way of speaking actually advances any concrete social justice goals. If anything, it works against the coalition building needed to advance them, because it alienates common people who don’t speak that way (which is Carville’s point). Also, different people like different terms, even within the same group, so it’s impossible to appease everybody. (See Latinx, e.g.)
The latest thing I saw making the rounds is the term “Mother’s Day” as being problematic, because it excludes trans men who had children. Some people suggested “Birthgiver’s Day,” but then mothers of adopted children complained (which goes to the point about not being able to please everybody). My feeling on it: Why not just expand your definition of mother in that context to include birth-giving trans men? Done. No change necessary.
But the reason, I suspect, that’s not satisfactory to a lot of the people who use Birthgiver's Day is that a new term is a big part of the appeal. It's a way to signal to others that you’re part of the in-group.
And now for an obligatory disclaimer: I’m well aware that the types of arguments I make are similar to those right-wingers use to discredit the "woke libertards" or whatever. But there are many big differences between them and me, the biggest of which is they are making bad faith arguments to whip up sentiment in favor of exclusionary policies, like the infamous bathroom bills. I’m not doing that. On the contrary, I support transgender rights on nearly every front. I’m in favor of laws that protect transgender people’s right to employment and access to healthcare. I’m against the bathroom bills -- really any laws that force people to conform to a gender they do not identify as. I’m in favor of making transgender people a federally protected class. I just don’t see how this attempt to cleanse language of its impurities advances the cause.
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Speaking of politics and purity, Liz Cheney has been demoted in the Republican party for telling the truth about Trump's big election lie. I'm here for Cheney on this. I know she has a horrible voting record, and she supported her father who lied us into the biggest foreign policy debacle of my life (to put it mildly), but those things already happened and can't be undone by hating on her now. She is one of the only Republicans who openly opposes Trump and his Big Lie, and she should be commended for that, full stop. As Frederick Douglass once said, "I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong." The older I get, the more that's my attitude in politics.
Cheney almost certainly can't win a short-term intra-party fight against Trumpism. But what she can hopefully do is injury it in general elections in the medium-to-long term. You can make a strong case that it was non-Trump conservatives who swung the election to Biden -- the "future former Republicans" as Pete Buttigieg calls them. One of the weirdest things about the election is that Biden did worse than Clinton in Democratic strongholds, like big cities, but he did a little better in rural areas, and cleaned up in swing-y suburban districts.
Liberals who are hung up over supporting people like Cheney and Romney and Steele need to get over that ASAP. We need people like them, even though we disagree on so much.---------------------------------------------------------------------
Lil' S1 got into some sort of scuffle at the playground the other day. When I came home from the office, Lil' S2 said to me, "Daddy, guess what... Lil' S1 got beat up today." So I asked Lil' S1 what happened.
Apparently, he was goofing off with a group of kids, and he made one of them mad somehow, so the kid charged after him. Lil' S1 ran away but the kid eventually caught him and started roughing him up. He was almost in tears telling me this, and he said, "I might have gotten really badly hurt, but W and A [his friends] were there to pull him off of me."
It was after school, and S was at the playground, but she only saw the aftermath. She didn't seem to think it was that big a deal, and she's usually more protective than I am, so I think it was just some little kid bullshit. The boy who did it probably does have some legit behavioral issues though. Last year he brought a pocketknife to school, and then another time he got into a fight with a different kid at recess, and when the teacher called security to handle it, he climbed the fence and ran home.
I thought about talking to the kid's dad, who apparently was at the park also when this happened, but I don't want to make a big deal out of a little schoolyard scuffle. Also, Lil' S1 seemed to think he had things under control. In every school there are kids like this kid, and part of growing up is learning how to navigate them. Also, I think he and Lil' S1 are kinda friends (frenemies?). I remember being that age. You'd be fighting one minute and playing the next.
I also thought about trying to teach Lil' S1 some self-defense, but I don't know if it would do any good. He might not like it, and even if he did, he just doesn't have that little-kid aggression in him.* He's a sweet, friendly boy, and that's fine. Being sweet and friendly can work in life. Sometimes I worry about him being too naive (he once told me he's friends with everybody in his class, which can't possibly be true), but some things he has to learn on his own. All you can do as a parent sometimes is hope for the best, right?
*It's very telling that he ran from the kid. I never would have run from a fight against a classmate. I would have fought with tears streaming down my face. And I also would have been too prideful to ever admit to anybody, especially my parents, that I got the worst of it, even if I did.
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You might have noticed above that I said I came home from the office. I've been trying to go in at least once a week. Things are maybe, hopefully, kinda opening up again -- for realsies this time. Fingers crossed.
Until next time...
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