I am on a private email list of a person who sent out missive warning folks to watch what they say and who they trust when the President was in town. After all, several of us got an email prompting us to be on the lookout for anything slightly racist at the Tea Parties and take lots of pictures. The former comments were mailed to, among many others, local luminaries. Replies included the following exchange:
Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell: Indeed, all of you who have decided to abandon civil discourse and rational discussion of the issues in favor of name-calling and trash-talk should curb your tongues forthwith!
Former City Councilman Dr. Carl Mumpower: Cecil – having you lecture these good folks on this particular subject is like having Daisy Duke teaching a course on formal wear.
Bothwell: Carl, I’ve held off on this, but since you responded to me I’m ready to unload.
You told the AC-T that I had “again” violated my oath of office. Tell me the first time and explain the second. You are a liar and a self-serving egotist and the exact definition of patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Mumpower: Thank you for illuminating my point. Please feel free to unload on me at any time and in any way that serves.
Bothwell: Note that Mr. Mumpower has failed to address my question.
Bothwell: Please also note: I sent a private e-mail to Mr. Mumpower and he was the one who chose to take this discussion public. Unlike others, I do not engage in public name-calling. Describing someone accurately to their face is simply unvarnished discourse. If he wants to take his dirty laundry public, so be it.
First of all, I intend to practice my free speech until somebody cuts my tongue out. Second of all, I’m as mad as everybody else about the modern concept of civil discourse, which is a reflection of the modern concept of formal wear. My modicum of college education did not train me to be conversant in a context where is isn’t is, except when it isn’t. We were limited to the use of fact and logic in our presentations.
Today, we are not allowed to use negative words to explain negative things, and people advocating negative things give them glorious names. They suppose since we were born yesterday, we have never heard of seduction. I recently had an epiphany when I realized the same things advertisers refer to as “marketing strategies,” are referred to by logicians as “fallacies.”
While carbon-footprinting for climate change today, I pulled behind a truck with an interesting license plate. It was no vanity plate, but the letters were a texting acronym for an obscene phrase that starts with W. Had the tag office issued me a plate with the obscenity that starts with O, I would have had to refuse it, but this one – I was tempted to see if I could exchange plates, because I find myself thinking that about every four seconds these days.
Third but not last of all, I construe any public official’s support for legislation that transfers rights, powers, and resources to government, in a manner that doesn’t increase citizens’ free exercise of conscience, to be a violation of his oath of office. I highly suspect when people define social justice as making the working class work twice as hard to support a class on questionable disability, they know full well they’re engaging in doublespeak. People have a way of betraying how uncomfortable the truth makes them.
