Bad American

John Dolan in Alternet

I’ve only been saying this on this blog for how long?

I’d like to suggest a very simple strategy for American liberals: Get mean. Stop policing the language and start using it to hurt our enemies. American liberals are so busy purging their speech of any words that might offend anyone that they have no notion of using language to cause some salutary pain.

Why, for example, not popularize slogans that mock the Bush loyalists as “suckers”? Something like, “There are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires and suckers.” Put that on a few bumper stickers and I guarantee a lot of “South Park Republicans” will quit the GOP. They just smirk when you tsk-tsk at them for being disrespectful. They want to be disrespectful; every normal young male wants to be.

And this, of course, brings up a big issue: At some point liberal writers are going to have to decide if it’s OK to be young and male at all. For better or for worse, millions of American men hold on to playground ethics long after they leave elementary school. For most of them, the 2004 election came down to a classic playground scene: Would John Kerry defend himself when attacked by bullies? Liberals, still stunned by the way a legitimate combat vet like Kerry was beaten by a combat-dodging spoiled brat like Bush, never understood that for millions of voters, the question wasn’t how well Kerry fought in Vietnam but whether he would fight in 2004.

A LOT of Alternet readers got stuck right there. One poster said they read the part about playground ethics and then refused to read the rest of the article. Although I have commented quite a bit on this thread (as kegbot1) I refrained from answering that poster but the problem is: Dolan is right.

Many, many, many American men do NOT evolve from the basic playground bullying stage and it doesn’t prevent them from becoming very prominent players in out society. And they vote AND they also influence the coverage of issues in the media.

So implying they are suckers and not backing down may indeed have a better long term effect than trying to play nice and reason with them.

And if nothing else, making your opinions heard on local politically neutral boards gets your message out rebutting the repugs as I did with the insufferable Joe Amschlinger here.

Silence is no longer an option when everything good and decent about our society and planet is under dire threat.

Now a lot of women readers also stopped and complained about that playground mentality analogy as well. I understand their objections but the vast majority of the shot callers on the right are male both in the media and in the political structure. There are only a few Ann Coulters (thank Goddess) and Laura Ingrahams. We have to deal with the world as it is, not always as we would wish it to be. Yes, testosterone gets us into these messes but it is exactly the testosterone that needs to be confronted.

I’m often reminded of the Woody Allen line in the one movie (I can’t remember it now) where his friends (like many of the posters on Alternet) kept telling Woody that Nazis need to be met with biting sarcasm and ridicule. Woody kept saying: no, no with Nazis you have to give them a punch in the face.

And that is it exactly - at least a rhetorical punch in the face.