Legi, Intellexi, et Condemnavi

Another day of napping intermittently. I got a fairly decent night's rest last night, and I've opted for a regular afternoon snooze. Let's see if that helps with my sleep deficit.  The heat and humidity are definitely having a negative effect on my breathing. It's harder to take a full breath, and I have moments when I feel like I'm a fish on land! Thankfully, it's short-lived, and I'm much more sympathetic to asthmatics and those living with breathing problems. My nurse asked if I thought that I needed oxygen-I declined, because I'm fairly sure that this is a temporary condition, but if it lasts into the winter...

So I was trying to wean off the news cycle. Then someone got my dad started on a rant about rights, and I got pulled in... Here's my view. You are free to disagree, but since this is my space, I'll use it! LOL. YPeople seem to enjoy complaining about "PC culture" and how it's "ruining everything." In general, I disagree. I'm old enough to remember when we started using euphemisms and changing the terms we used. So instead of using racial slurs, we began using other words. Now, it is vanishingly rare that we use those slurs in conversation. Since we started doing that, there's at least one generation that has never used those terms to refer to others and are fully aware that they are nor part of normal discourse. We've also got to a point where we realize that there are some terms that really don't belong. Like many people, I get irritated at what seems to be needless nitpicking. Things like changing a character's name from "FANNY" to "FRAN" Or from "JILL "to"JANIE." Those changes are cosmetic and IMO, useless. Then there are changes to words to modernize the story. Updating words like "CHARABANCS" to" BUS," are acceptable changes.

But asking to have books banned or cancelled is unacceptable under any conditions. If you don't want to read it, don't, but don't try to deny others the chance to experience the book! It is preferable to have a conversation with children (the "won't somebody think of the children”' a la Helen Lovejoy of Simpsons fame is the rallying any of many book-banners!) about why certain language is inappropriate is far preferable!

So the PC language choices  helped us make some steps towards addressing racism in society by making it wrong to use certain terms. It has not, though, eliminated the urge to be casual about it. There are ways to ensure it or the enge to do or say racist things, but they require how we. remain aware of our tendency to do that. So is easy to avoid saying inappropriate things by staying aware of our tendency to say things that are unheard. So we remove our temptation, and therefore cannot do or say the thing we know was wrong.  

However there are people who weaponize language and use it to create divisions. So they will develop a scenario to pit one group against another. They've found very fertile ground with COVID, because there is a lot of anger about the virus.  There are so many divisions already extant that it’s easy to add several more without any real effort!  So there was this article that someone showed my father that seemed to suggest that one religious group would be granted exemptions that nobody else was allowed, and it was and my dad was getting quite annoyed!  It took me over an hour to calm him down and get him to realize that it was just allowing a court challenge to go ahead to request permission to do the rituals.  But the people who promoted this, and those who go through the effort to generate a lot of rubbish about anti-science are doing it deliberately to create conflict and splinter society.  They are intentionally working to foster groups that will cause and create harm to individuals and they do it to profit from the unrest.  Sadly, they are also affiliated with political groups who seek to get elected (or re-elected) so they can profit from the unrest.  It’s important to keep that in mind when assessing candidates in an election.  As my friend J.K. said, “ My mama said, in deciding whom to vote for, consider the people they surround themselves with.”.   It’s not too difficult to see the affiliations!