Open letter to Biden supporters
We have one thing in common right away: we have some sense of the disaster Trump was and is, to our country and to our democracy. We are glad to know the end is in sight.
But I find it absolutely incredible that so many millions of people voted for him, and are willing to believe, without question, that the election was rigged. What are they, blind? What's going on here?
I will take a stab at it and say they are not blind. They are decent, hard-working folk, all in for Trump and everything he stood for, most notably anti-immigration, anti-"political correctness" culture, and anti-abortion. They are so heavily invested in him that they stopped watching any mainstream media long ago, stopped answering polls, and simply stopped believing many of the things the rest of us can agree upon as facts: that there is climate change, that he was a grifter and a fraud, etc.
Many have chosen to carry this belief out as far as they can, and to now turn on Fox News and others who are basically calling it as it is: the election is over, he lost, it's time for him to move along. Yet
half of the Republican Party believe him. And he's just as likely to divide them as he was to divide us in the first place. He doesn't care what kind of damage he does, to America or to democracy, or even to them. He has bills to pay. He's afraid of the law. Truth is around every corner for him, and it's not pretty.
I'm not worried about what happens to him; I think criminals should be punished, but I recognize clearly that this may take years in the case of an ex-president, so I'm not holding my breath. But I'm worried about his followers, that half of the Republican Party that is so blind and angry that they would believe virtually anything.
What worries me about them is this: These are the working people. These working people used to vote Democrat. They used to see the Democratic Party as watching out for their interests. What happened? Was it that Clinton opened the door and let the jobs all go to Mexico? Was it that Hillary or Obama insulted them? Trump seems to represent the mortally emotionally wounded, the people who can't forget that some demonstrator spit on a returning soldier back in the Vietnam War (did that ever really
happen?). They feel like American society has become more computer-oriented and has left them behind.
And they're so angry about it, they'll believe anything.
My point is this: We need them. Not the outer fringe, but the ordinary working person. We don't need them to vote Democratic - what happens there is what happens. But we need them to be invested in the system and to care about the truth. We need them to trust their neighbors who counted the ballots. We need them to get behind any president who needs national unity. We need to get out of this divided nightmare. Soon enough, it will only include Trump if we want it to. But it's a national problem now, something we as a nation have to address. He wouldn't have divided us so badly, if we hadn't let him.
Open letter to Trump supporters
You have faithfully followed this man right along, so that even now you are waving the Trump flags and standing by him as he undermines the vote, undermines democracy, steals from you in front of your face, and asks for more donations to cover his legal funds. At some point you should recognize that he's taken you too far.
Conservatism used to be respectable: you could argue for lower taxes, less immigration perhaps, less regulation, and you could even argue that it was good for the country or good for everyone. I have no problem with that and I recognize that this is a very conservative country. You don't want socialism, and don't want people getting something for nothing, or whatever you recognize as what's wrong with the Democratic Party's approach.
But this man was a grifter from the first moment. He let you believe he was a good businessman. He used his lawyers to prevent the truth from coming out, not only about his taxes but also about all the women he assaulted or raped; he used your money to keep them quiet. He let the virus come in and ravage the country until now over 230,000 people have died with no end in sight, and he's still not taking it seriously, in spite of the fact that his own wife and son, his entire staff, and scores of people who attend presidential functions have gotten it.
The country threw him out in a large election that was pretty clear. If you continue to follow him now, and believe his lies about "unfair" balloting, you have gone too far. If you want unfair or meaningless elections, go to Russia. If you want someone who can declare themselves victor in spite of an election, go to Belarus. If you are so scared of Biden and Democrats, go to a place that doesn't have a second party and you can revel in the security that a guy like Putin offers you by being dictator for life.
Democracy is messy - sometimes the people make a decision you don't like. I think most of you can live with it - you already did, for eight years. They still haven't taken your guns, and they probably won't. Life will carry on, and you can too. I hope you do, because this country needs you to not give up on it.
folx & Latinx
People in my word group are sharply divided about the innovation in language that brings us
folx and
Latinx, the second of which I don't know how to pronounce. Words such as these are increasingly common in communities where people want to signal their general inclusiveness and openness to non-gender binary people.
As usual, as a language observer, I am more inclined to study the actual change in the language, than to bat around my opinions about what should or shouldn't happen. My general observation is that it will happen anyway, if it's going to, regardless of anything I say or want. And that goes for most of us in the word group too. We can rant and rave all we want about how something doesn't make sense in language terms, or is unnecessary, or whatever, but either people will find it useful or they won't, and that will determine the success of the innovation.
A case in point is the appearance of
Ms., which I clearly remember. I remember objecting on the grounds that it was an abbreviation but it didn't have a corresponding word. How can you have an abbreviation when it doesn't abbreviate a real word? But resistance to
Ms. was futile. It was useful to women to not have the way they were addressed reveal theri marital status, rightly or wrongly. It was useful to me because often I didn't know their marital status or didn't care, and I certainly never felt like I had to reveal it as part of addressing them. I began using it myself and liking it. After a while I forgot the absurdity of an abbreviation that doesn't abbreviate anything. Well, I guess I never forgot it. But who actually cares about that these days?
Now of the
x words, I have singled out these two for a reason. With
folx language purists argue that
folks is already inclusive and just informal enough to refer to everybody no matter what anyway. But you watch. Even though the pronunciation of
folx and
folks is exactly the same, as far as I can tell, there will be good reasons for
folx to catch on and survive in the written world. With
Latinx, there's a better reason for it to catch on: that
Latina and
Latino by nature reveal gender and force the speaker into a binary agreement. And sometimes you don't know the gender, or the gender preference, or what to do when forced into that kind of binary choice. But alas, with
Latinx, as I said, I don't know how to pronounce it. With time, maybe that will get easier too.
My last observation is that what matters really is whether it catches on with the vast majority of relatively non-involved language users. On my word group people are fighting like they are really invested in the outcome, like it's some kind of political movement that they either love or hate. It is political, I'll grant you that. But it's the non-political language users who will decide the outcome in the end. Either it's useful to them, or it isn't, and so, either they'll use it or they won't. In my opinion both will survive in some form or another, though they may not thrive like
Ms. has. Time will tell.
Labels: language, linguistics, vocabulary
