There’s a person I know from far away and days gone by who’s fond — overly fond, I would say — of Donald Trump’s “Schoolyard Bully Speak.” That style of speaking has, of course, been around a long time. We had it way back in the fifties and sixties, when I was but a wee sprite. Yeah, it could get rough. Everything I need to know I learned on the playground. But name calling was not on the regular menu where I grew up. It was not quite off limits, but not yet normalized, either.
Bully Speak is a way of saying things that’d get you fired if you said them to your boss. It mocks the bureaucrats. And scientists. And the politicians you can’t stand. It mocks anyone perceived to have power over you. It’s a permission slip for hate.
I Am Your Retribution
In the past few years — 2016 was a demarcation point — my far away acquaintance has adopted the full-on version of bully speak. You don’t say “democrats,” you say “donks.” You don’t say “republicans,” you say “RINOs.” Those are the milder ones, the common ones. Hillary Clinton is “Dithery.” Joe Biden is “Bidet.” Kamala Harris is “Spread Eagle.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom is called “New’scum.” But if you really want to know where this person’s coming from, there’s the bully name for Pete Buttigieg. He’s called, “Sec. of Trans Buttplugg.”
In this world, there are only two sexes, both defined by their genitals. Racism doesn’t exist. Taxes are such anathema that these folks would rather take a tax cut than get a raise. All the world’s problems can be pinned on a single source. Usually Always it’s the “other guy.” There is always someone to blame. Not them, of course. Never them.
And now it’s payback time.
To read their posts is to imagine someone typing at full speed, drooling with their eyes bugged out. Expelling their rage is so important that typos and grammar are afterthoughts. ALL CAPS is a religion.
I Am Your Bully Justice
If there is a central goal of Bully Speak, it’s to raise fear by demeaning “the other” in the name of a loosely imagined “justice.” “Favored things” — and prejudices — become treasured universals. Free speech, for example, is an absolute good (unless your enemies are practicing it). Bodily autonomy is good if it means forgoing vaccinations. Not so much when it applies to women’s reproductive care. (Not that consistency is hallmark of the human race, but I digress.) Racism is simmering, cloaked in raging posts about crime, crime, crime and the border, the border, the border.
Vermin is the new watchword. You’re bound to see the following wherever they post.
This desired world leans heavily toward black and white. As in, there is “right” and there is “wrong.” No, excuse me. RIGHT and WRONG. This worldview leaves out anything resembling ambiguity (the other half of reality). In its place comes an absolutism disguising itself as righteousness. This is Old Testament, Ten Commandments right and wrong. You know, TRUTH. Yes and they will smite thee.
What galls here is that the arbiters, the final judge and jury of this “right” and “wrong,” are a clan of (mostly) men in blue suits. Laden with red ties that scrape their knees. These are men who speak in hushed, reverential tones when they aren’t yelling, men who seem to have long reflected on a nonexistent past. They want to go back. This is where justice morphs. They cannot get there without force. It’s no longer bully speak, it’s bully wrong. They will truly smite thee. In the name of the absolute, they will smite thee. The whole lot of them are slouching toward Bethlehem.
Call me crazy, but this whole circus bears more than a faint resemblance to fascism. What a bonus. God, religion and Nazis all at the same buffet.
Copyright Leland E. Hale (2024). All rights reserved.
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