Saturday, February 20, 2010

Some more thoughts on the word "retarded"


N
ow that Sarah Palin's tried very feebly--as is her wont in all endeavors--to control our language when she can't even control her own, it's time to pull our collective-heads out of our collective-asses and realize that this is just a word and that the context it's used in and the intent behind it are what's important. The word itself is unimportant, and mature adults know this and accept it for what it is. People say hurtful things, get over it, grow-up.

But we's a reactionary people--bawss--and we go off half-cocked all the time since many of us "natives" (Eurotrash) are descended from lynch mobs, though that's another fairy tale for another time. Does it have to be said that this is just a word? Yes, apparently, it does: it's just a word, folks. You can't shield yourself or your kids from everything, and sometimes, sometimes, we have be tolerant and take our licks like everyone else. That's life, and part of being a real adult. You accept that there are things that are never going to go away and that you cannot get rid of them.

When you stampede like a wild herd of mindless buffaloes (OK, that's unfair to the bison), as many of us did in the immediate aftermath of the events of September 11th, 2001, you start fucking-up all over the place. We all blew it, myself included, for various reasons. In my own case, I should have been far more defiant and opposed to the Bush II administration even in the aftermath of that event. I was not, and I was not alone, not by a long-shot. And wasn't the manipulation of language at the core of their misrule for eight very long years that the Tea Baggers (Tea Tards) seem to have missed entirely? Words like "terrorism," "weapons of mass destruction," "mushroom clouds," "attacks," "suspects," "terror alerts," and so many others, were injected with and took on new and very hollow meaning to whip-up fear in an already reactionary society and culture.

The bastards knew their marks well, and they not only rifled-through our wallets, but convinced many of us to hand over our hard won rights as Americans. This was not only stupid, it was, and still is, pathetic, and stinks of a people who probably don't deserve their liberties, if they ever did. That's not to say we can't fix what happened, but we have our work cut out for us, and that means endlessly demanding of the current administration, and probably the one after it, that there are real investigations into the crimes known or suspected of being committed by the administration of George W. Bush. We're either a nation of laws, or merely one of words, and now we seem to even want to hand over one of the last things that makes us truly unique as a nation: a historically rare and wide-ranging freedom of speech and press.

So, for an obviously corrupt and moronic woman and former politician like Sarah Palin to tell anyone what they can and cannot say is absurd and should be met with horselaughs from all corners of American society. The upside of this is that she's actually accelerating the demise of the GOP and causing incredible division in the ranks of the Tea Party (bowel) movement, a group comprised mostly of reactionary small business owners who, until very recently, were either apolitical lumps who flunked civics class, or outright ignoramuses. Instead of the Boston Tea Party, these misguided morons invoke the memory of the same kinds of idiots that gave us the Teapot Dome scandal, courtesy of the gift that keeps on giving, the GOP, a party that makes no bones about being for the big-shots and conglomerates.

Yet many of these same turds that gave us some of the mess we're in think they have the answers when they clearly don't at all. To say that these petty bourgeois fools shit where they eat would be redundant and their reactions are just that: the dysfunctional flailing of retarded children. Put that in your meth-pipe and smoke it tonight, Bubba.

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