“The foolish and
wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing,” declared George Washington, “is
a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and
despises it.” Theodore Roosevelt concurred: “Profanity is the parlance of the
fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to
discourse?” The answer is that profanity is a useful substitute for discourse
when one is losing a debate and needs to trump reason with passionate intensity
in order to win. That is what is happening in the current degraded state of our
national political conversation.
I’m not talking
about the cursing that the average American citizen may do in private, which is
common enough on both sides of the political fence. I’m not talking about a
careless slip of the tongue during a radio interview, or being caught on an
open mic letting loose with a profanity. I’m talking about an entire political
party which gleefully embraces swearing in speeches and protests, on social
media and clothing slogans, in news media and entertainment. I’m talking about public
figures from entertainers to talk show hosts to politicians intentionally and
unapologetically hurling obscenities.
It should come as
no surprise that that political party is the Democratic Party, which is in the
grip of the far left, and that those public figures are invariably so-called Progressives.
Needless to say, the
following examples come with a maximum-level language alert.
By contrast,
Democrats have made public cursing such a kneejerk habit that it’s as if the
entire party is afflicted with Tourette’s. Democratic National Committee
Chairman Tom Perez told one audience, for example, that Trump “doesn't give a
shit about health care.” Rather than disapprove of Perez’s phrasing, the DNC decided
to make it a hip slogan and began selling a t-shirt which read, “Democrats give
a shit about people.”
The left is fond
of such scatological outbursts. Muslim Brotherhood shill and juvenile egotist
Reza Aslan tweeted that President Trump is “a piece of shit” so often that CNN
was forced to cut him loose.
But the left is
really enamored of the F-word. The radical Salon reported that New York Senator
Kristen Gillibrand recently dropped multiple F-bombs while discussing Trump during
a speech at NYU’s Personal Democracy Forum. “Has he kept his
promises?” she
asked rhetorically. “No. Fuck no.” As for her party, Gillibrand declared that “if
we’re not helping people, we should go the fuck home.” “Good for her,” was Salon’s supportive
response to this indecorous outburst. Gizmodo writer Hamilton Nolan agreed:
“It’s encouraging to hear more Democrats say ‘fuck.’”
Really? It’s not
like Democrats weren’t already reveling in the F-word. In the wake of the
shooting of Republican congressman Steve Scalise last Wednesday, HuffPost
writer Jesse Benn tweeted this get-well message: “Fuck #SteveScalise.” Since
Trump’s election to the presidency, chants of “Fuck Donald Trump!” have rung
out from protesters in major urban centers and on campuses across America. The
Woman’s March earlier this year was teeming with obscene placards, “pussy”
hats, and cries of “Fuck the patriarchy!” Now try to imagine Tea Party
protesters leading each other in chants of ‘Fuck Hillary Clinton!” and “Fuck
cultural Marxism!” It’s literally unthinkable.
The unhinged
former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, now reduced to delivering comically
histrionic rants from what looks like the basement of the GQ magazine
offices, recently tweeted at the President,
“TO HELL WITH YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKING TRAITOR.” Olbermann’s Twitter profile pic
shows the bespectacled loon draped in a flag and hunched beneath the words,
“TRUMP IS F*CKING CRAZY,” which appears to be the title of his upcoming book.
Try to imagine any conservative commentator, even the button-pushing Ann
Coulter, prominently featuring a profanity in a book title.
And then there’s
showbiz. Late night leftist propagandists masquerading as comedians such as Bill
Maher, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Samantha Bee regularly spew
obscenities on their shows. Host Seth Myers, the unfunniest Saturday Night
Live alumnus in its four-decade history, gave Trump the middle finger on
the air twice in one episode last week. Celebrated stage actress Patti Lupone said in an
interview at the Tony Awards that if President Trump came to her show War
Paint she wouldn’t perform. “Why is that?” the interviewer asked. “Because
I hate the motherfucker,” she said through a tight, mirthless smile. Try to
imagine the dignified, openly conservative actor Jon Voight saying the same
thing about Barack Obama. Nerdy Joss Whedon, the perpetually apoplectic
director of big-budget comic book movies, hinted at a bestiality fetish when he
tweeted that he wanted a “rhino to fuck Paul Ryan to death.” No one on the
right – not even Greg Gutfeld – could have come up with that.
There is no end to
the examples I could list. The evidence is abundantly clear: the left loves
vulgarity. What’s that all about?
Some would argue
that this is a generational thing, that contemporary culture is simply cruder
than in the past, and that swearing comes as naturally as breathing to youth
now. Sadly, our culture is indeed cruder, but only because the left has spent
the last 50 years pushing the envelope of moral standards in pop culture. But that’s
not all there is to it.
Swearing sends a
thrill up the left’s collective leg because Marxists and their inheritors, Progressives,
consider decency to be a contemptable bourgeois value. Even though leftists
control the culture, they still think of themselves as counterculture revolutionaries
bucking the Establishment, like teenagers rebelling against their parents.
But there is yet
another explanation. The left-leaning UK Guardian noted a University of
London study which showed that liberals curse more than conservatives on Twitter;
“shit” and “fuck” were among the top ten words used by tweeters on the left
(the right, by contrast, featured such words as “God” and “psalm” among
its top ten).
A linguist who led the study declared that “What we think is going on is
that the liberal side are expressing themselves with more emotion.”
And that is the
crux of the phenomenon: emotion. Leftists cannot win against the right on the playing
field of reasoned debate, because they are animated not by logic and evidence
but by feelings. They don’t let facts get in the way of their passionate
conviction that they are right and the other side is not merely wrong but evil.
And nothing displays passionate conviction quite like cursing. The right believes
that public profanity is not just uncivil but unprofessional, and that it delegitimizes
one’s argument, whereas Progressives feel that it legitimizes their
passion.
After the recent
attempted assassination of Republican congressmen, the cry has gone up among
decent people across the country for greater civility and mutual respect in our
political discourse. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen because, as their
obsession with obscenity demonstrates, leftists don’t value decency, civility
or respectful dialogue; their aim is to derail the conversation altogether. And
that’s a damned shame.
From FrontPage Mag, 6/18/17
