The term “knee-jerk liberal” seems to have gone out of fashion, maybe because its targets just started calling themselves democratic socialists. But lately I’m starting to see behavior that’s making me think of the term, “knee-jerk conservatives,” who, like their liberal forbears, “react predictably and emotionally to certain events.”

I’ve spent some time trying to figure out where they’re coming from, at least in and around my own little world.

Next week at the World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association, one of the issues we’re going to discuss is the deep discontent expressed by some conservative speechwriters in response to a Speechwriters’ Census 2021 survey we conducted last month, which one expressed this way:

In the private conversations I’ve had with many over the past two years, it seems clear that just about everyone from the center-left on over has been plunged into deep, crippling, and depressing levels of anxiety and paranoia. They live in constant fear of seeing their lives or the lives of those they care about ruined for saying or doing “the wrong thing” — yet have no way to actually know what that is given that the standards are arbitrary and constantly moving. Some cope with this by parroting what they think they “should” be saying or doing even though they do not believe it, in an attempt to save themselves. Others just try to keep a low profile and pray they won’t do anything to offend those with systemic power. What a depressing time to be alive, especially for those of us in a profession that is supposed to be about exploring new ideas, connecting with people different than oneself, and just bringing a bit of joy to others by making them smile or laugh. We’re losing everything that made our profession so colorful, and joyful, and amazing because we seem to be losing the humanity, compassion, and empathy in ourselves. What else can you do but cry? I didn’t want to take this survey. I don’t want to express my opinions anymore. But I suppose I am holding onto the thinnest reed of hope that maybe someone will read this and “do something” (and hoping desperately that this is actually anonymous!)

I’m going to read that out loud to the (virtually) assembled conference participants, because I think it’s important that they know that some of their colleagues feel this way.

I mentioned this plan to a conservative friend yesterday, to let him know his people were about to be heard. The response I got was a quickly returned complaint that “a football coach got fired after somebody went through his private correspondence and outed him for thoughtcrime. Welcome to the occupation, here’s your accordion.”

How about some perspective?

Here’s mine: I think that the cathedral of cultural absurdities that led to “a football coach” having a 10-year contract for $100 million in the first place—I think that cathedral towers colossally over the dubious repression of that coach being asked to resign when it came to light that he frequently and freely expresses casual, blanket contempt for Black people, gay people and women.

You don’t have to be a democratic socialist—just a stakeholder capitalist—to recognize that those populations represent well over half the American publics whose devotion to pro football pays his asinine salary. And that’s leaving the players and staff out of it.

Societies have norms, and society’s darlings are obligated to live within shouting range of them. As for the term “thoughtcrime”: Think whatever you like, but yes, it’s a social crime in this society to say out loud that black people and women and gay people are shitty.

At the conference, I’m going to tell speechwriters that I think they ought to be defenders of a society of free and open speech. Referring to the conservative speechwriter quoted at length, above, I’m going to say (and here I quote my prepared remarks): “I don’t relate to that feeling myself, because I’m not a conservative—but I have many conservative friends who do. I’ve had many dialogues with them about it—enough to know that their feeling is deep and their anguish is real and if I have a chance to help them get their voices heard—or defend them when I think they’re being unfairly dismissed, I will take that chance. And whatever your own political beliefs—I think you should, too.”

But when I think people are fondling a fatuous fantasy of a society where ill-chosen heroes might be grossly compensated based on the most dubious social contribution, but then never punished when the truth of their shrunken souls comes out, I’ll say that, too.

Am I advocating cancel culture?

The oldest joke I know, about a Greek villager, complaining bitterly to a tourist:

You see all the boats in de harbor? I build all de boats. But do they call me Dmitri the boat-builder? No.
You see all the roads in de town? I build all de roads. But do they call me Dmitri the road-builder? No.
You see all the houses on de hill? I build all de houses! But do they call me Dmitri the house-builder? No.
But you fuck one goat …..

Alas, it was ever thus. Yes, long before cancel culture.

And if we’e going to root out what’s new and harmful about cancel culture, we must do so discerningly. Conservatives and liberals, alike.

I think I have a peculiar set of personal ethics when it comes to communication that I haven’t fully articulated (somehow, at this late stage).

For instance: Sometimes after an argument with my wife or a friend, I’ll think of some easy devastating point I might have made. But I don’t regret not having said it. I realize I didn’t fire not because I was slow on the draw, but because my hand wasn’t even on my weapon. For I wasn’t trying to destroy the other person by delegitimizing their point of view … I was trying to win the argument or at least come to peace by making them understand mine. (This doesn’t mean I’m a wholly virtuous arguer; I exaggerate a lot in oral arguments. And I am less restrained in written arguments in general, for the same reason everyone else is.)

Meanwhile, I try and sometimes fail to practice what I call “rhetorical nonviolence.” I’ve come to believe we can always do more social good by doing less rhetorical harm, and I don’t believe it’s any less criminal to use words to hurt people than to use bats. It might look like I violate this principle a lot, but 20 years ago, the term wouldn’t have even meant anything to me.

One thing that you will never hear me do, however, is to wholly reframe an argument by telling you what an issue is or is not “about.” That strikes me as heavy-handed to the point of domineering.

If you bring up an issue, I must tell you my thoughts on it, if I have any. I must not tell the issue you brought up is not actually “about” the issue you brought up, but rather “about” another issue I prefer to discuss.

The gall of that!

I hear talking heads and politicians and activists do that a lot, and it always offends me.

“This isn’t about domestic abuse, Honey, it’s about your vow to obey your husband.”

“This isn’t about my affair, it’s about your low libido.”

“This isn’t about four centuries of racist policy, it’s about maintaining American meritocracy.”

“This isn’t about cancel culture, it’s about social accountability.”

“This isn’t about rights, it’s about responsibility.”

You hear it all the time. It’s bullshit every time.

Because anyone arrogant, desperate, sociopathic, domineering or slick enough to tell me that the thing I think is irrelevant because the conversation I’m trying to have is actually “about” something else altogether—and this really does seem to include a lot of people these days—this is a communication crime that ought to be punished with loss of argument, and a $100 fine.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then communication ethics are at least as important as the law.

Usually, we have to make an effort to understand. But sometimes a flicker of understanding comes unbidden.

To wit:

My sister-in-law and I have a happy tradition. Every Christmas when we’re with our family in Des Moines, we bust out of the holiday scrum and storm around for 18 holes on a frozen golf course north of town. We’re the only ones out there—not even sure we’re supposed to be there, sometimes parked by a No Trespassing Sign—and it’s pure freezing joy. Can you tell?

And afterwards, we always repair to this plain little country roadhouse for a beer and a shot of Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey!

Five or six years ago when this tradition started—just before Trump—Jeni and I knew we were in a country bar, and surely sensed that, yeah, the regulars there are probably not Obama voters. And maybe they would have somehow guessed we were city people? But who cared—it was a warm bar, and the bartender called us “hon” as she smiled and poured us another.

Couple years later, we sensed a little shift in the mood of the place. We felt more self-conscious as strangers in there—and thus, as, Possible Democrats. Or was it our own hyper-political paranoia?

Then, a couple years ago, we saw a shift, in the form of a life-size smiling, thumbs-up-giving Donald Trump cutout propped up in the corner. We thought about posing next to it for a selfie—tee-hee—but we didn’t, not wanting to make trouble, our judgment plenty sound even in the Fireball glow.

Well, Jeni drove past the bar a little while ago.

“It’s official,” Jeni said. “We can no longer frequent this place.”

Now we’re going to have to go to some upscale bar, where, though they have Fireball, it’s not already sitting on top of the bar when you sit down. It’s down below, and part of the price for it is the ever-so-slight disapproval the bartender expresses by taking one or two beats longer to “find” it. The same look you get when you order A-1, at Morton’s. Also at this upscale place, people won’t “have” drinks, they’ll “do” drinks, as in, “I’ll do a mojito.” And the bartender will squeal, “Perfect!” It will be terrible.

But the roadhouse is off-limits now, because based on the contents of our heads or our voting records, we aren’t welcome, any more than a Black person was welcome at the lunch counter of a Woolworth’s in the Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960—any more than a Black person is welcome in some bars in Chicago, today. Sure, the color of our skin would allow us to “pass” at the Trump 2024 National Headquarters Bar. But even aside from the idea of financially supporting these truculent bunker-dwellers, how much Fireball would it take to give you the glow in such a sinister situation?

I can’t speak for Jeni, but for a straight white guy like me, this sense of unwelcomeness is a very unfamiliar feeling indeed—but one I’ve felt more frequently and vividly over the last few years of motorcycling through rural backroads around my country. Feeling eyes on you, in bars and greasy spoons. Wanting to avoid conversation, to drink your beer and get out of there. The feeling of being in hostile territory.

Now, I’ve been the rare white guy in a Black Baptist church, at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH headquarters, in West Side political meetings, at many of my wife’s school functions. I haven’t always felt comfortable, I’ve sometimes been looked at strangely, but in the end I always felt, essentially, welcome.

And now I’m welcome in another way, as some of my Black and gay friends might say: Welcome to the club.

***

Postscript: And lest Writing Boots readers assume my reporting is infallible, I sent the above piece for Jeni to approve, and she texted back this picture, reminding me that we in fact did pose quickly with the Trump cutout, in our Fireball glow, on the way out of our favorite roadhouse for the last time.