Here’s that f-bomb that just dropped on MSNBC: #iacaucus pic.twitter.com/v4f7dZDPrg
— PolicyMic (@PolicyMic) February 2, 2016
“I haven’t gotten benefits for 3 months.” Forget whatever she said after that. That’s the part we should all be talking about. That’s what should have prompted the gasps of shock and awe. That’s what Brian Williams should have apologized for, live on the air, because that was said by a veteran, in America, and that is far more shocking and appalling than any expletive.
The prudes were falling all over themselves to apologize for her language, though, because what we call a thing is always so much more terrible than the thing itself. It’s why angry busybodies will call up a news org and moan and whine about seeing a dead body on their front page, and forget that BEING ANGRY AND UPSET IS WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL. You should be angry that the world is this way, and you should use whatever language you can to get the most attention you can for the thing that needs fixing, and anybody who concentrates on your words instead of your reality wasn’t ever gonna help you solve the problem no how.
She hasn’t gotten benefits for 3 months, and she signed up to serve this country. If she didn’t say fuck, that would be the fucked-up part. You don’t pay me for doing my not-at-all-dangerous job for 3 months, I’ll say much worse than fuck.
(An aside: I hate the term “F-bomb.” It sounds like something from a bad American version of a Japanese cartoon show about planes. If you are not on a broadcast network, just say what it is. Everybody knows, especially the kids.)
If apologies are called for, let’s apologize to this woman for the situation we’ve put her in. Let’s apologize for giving her a reward like this for serving her country. Let’s apologize for paying more attention to her when she said fuck than when she was waiting for her paycheck. Let’s apologize for not treating her with the respect she deserves. And then when we’re done apologizing let’s get out there and fucking fix it, so that nobody has to fucking say fuck on the fucking air to get someone to fucking notice that things are fucked up.
A.
Well, it’s not like any of the millionaires telling us what we should think about things has to go for three months without benefits or a paycheck. So, you know, they can’t really tell us what to think about that. But boy, oh boy! They sure know about saying “fucked up” or less on the electric teevee machine! That’ll get you a proper dressing down from standards and practices, let me tell you. So, see, the millionaires helpfully tell us what’s really important. To them.
War is, bar none, the most expensive and destructive activity in which mankind engages. Preparing for war runs a close second. In this country, endless war has been normalized, and is–horrible as it sounds–now seen as a cost of doing business. Soldiers are the labor of war, and as is common practice in this country, reducing labor costs is seen as the first and only means of making the enterprise of war efficient.
Hence, the very great need to divert attention from the real costs to the exasperated language encapsulating the frustration over the management of those real costs.
Of course it’s fucked up. The young lady is absolutely right. But the ultimate answer to controlling those costs is to stop endlessly concocting wars to be fought. If the American people won’t do that, then they must be willing to pay the real costs of the wars to which they’ve given their approval, and they must be willing to acknowledge and correct their failure to meet their shared contractual obligations to the labor of war.