Thread by @JuliusGoat

Perhaps a quick primer on the difference between "cursing" and "obscenity" is in order.

“Cursing” is language that breaks agreed social rules of propriety.

“Obscenity” is something that violates fundamental standards of decent human behavior.

There’s enough adjacency to cause confusion. Curse words are often called “obscenities.”

George Carlin’s 7 words you can’t say on television are hilarious and cathartic curses.

A deprogramming camp that drives gay teens to suicide is an obscenity.

You see?

Cursing can become obscene, and obscenity can involve cursing. Don’t tell that joke at grandma’s funeral. Don’t scream curse words at a 3 year old.

But in neither case is the actual curse word the actual obscenity.

What’s obscene is violating the memory of a woman everyone has gathered to mourn, just as the wound of loss is sharpest, with grotesquerie.

What’s obscene is attacking a still-forming psyche with violence of screams.

The cursing serves to underline the obscenity.

But then again … what if grandma was a bit of a card, and that joke was her favorite?

What if the 3 year old is wandering into the path of an oncoming farm combine?

It’s never the words used. It’s what you use them for.

It’s why you’re using them.

Joe Biden said the ACA was “a big fucking deal.”

Dick Cheney told Patrick Leahy to “fuck yourself.”

Donald Trump said “I move on them like a bitch” and “I just grab them by the pussy.”

Rashida Tlaib said “impeach the motherfucker.”

Now you might ask, isn’t it hypocritical for somebody to fail to find offense with Biden’s curse, while at the same time find offense with Cheney’s? Or Trump’s but not Tlaib's?

Answer: No.

It’s not. It’s really not.

In this culture we all understand this, really. We’re not really offended by curse words just as curse words. None of us are, really, regardless of political persuasion.

Some pretend otherwise to gain advantage.

We know by now they’re just pretending.

When George W. Bush was caught on a hot mic calling a reporter a major asshole, he had the broad support of certain groups of people who treated any use of any curse as obscenity. We expected him to lose at least some support for it.

He didn’t. He gained.

They’re pretending.

Later, when Dick Cheney told Leahy to go fuck himself, it was because Leahy was questioned the Bush Admin's close ties with Halliburton, Cheney’s company.

Cheney broke propriety to show his impunity.
Halliburton made billions off the Iraq War
Cheney lied us into Iraq.
Obscenity.

Later still, when Biden said “a big fucking deal,” he was celebrating a bill that would save thousands of lives.

He broke propriety to show his exuberance.

We’re fine with it. Cursing doesn’t offend us just for cursing’s sake.

Unlike others, we weren’t ever pretending it did.

Trump bragged about being a sexual predator.

Later he mocked his accusers in front of a cheering crowd.

Later he nominated a sexual predator to the Supreme Court, and mocked that man’s accusers in front of a cheering crowd.

Obscenity.

He’s spent his entire political life attacking journalists, our democracy, and the very notion of truth, and the rule of law, and all our finest principals, while promoting every kind of bigotry.

He’s done so to cheering throngs who think this makes us great again.

Obscenity.

He’s stolen children and caged them, specifically to make us a fearful place for the most vulnerable to come, rather than a hopeful one.

Obscenity.

He’s worked in broad daylight with foreign powers to subvert our electoral process, moved in broad daylight to obstruct the investigation into it.

Obscenity.

He’s slashed regulations and dismantled infrastructure designed to protect human beings from corruption and pollution and abuse, sometimes for the sake of profit, other times seemingly just for pure malice.

Obscenity.

He called African countries shitholes. He treated Puerto Rico as if they weren’t part of us and left them to die. He defended the Nazis who occupied Charlottesville. He pushed a travel ban based on religion.

Obscenity, obscenity, obscenity, obscenity.

As our time runs out, he’s actively working to prevent any response to what science agrees is an existential peril.

Obscenity.

The list goes on and on.

He’s a motherfucker, and fuck him. Investigate, indict, prosecute, impeach, imprison.

Rashida Tlaib breaks propriety to speak for all of us.

She uses a curse word to tell a deep truth.

It’s never been cursing that offended us, but obscenity.

Trump’s supporters can pretend it offends them to hear that word, but we’ve seen these motherfuckers cheering in his crowds and we know what they cheer for.

We know they're pretending.

We knew exactly how comfortable they are with cursing.

And we know they love obscenity.

We’re sick of it, we’re sick at heart, we’re pissed off, we’ve been frightened every day for years, and we’re perfectly happy to break propriety while fighting back, as a way of demonstrating exactly how pissed off we are.

And we’re not pretending.

Should she have called Trump a motherfucker?

Motherfucker, that’s what she was elected to do.

Me returning to a thread a day later to make one last point.

I'd like to just quickly add on to this with a explanation of why it's so important we make this distinction.

It's because our culture is defined by abuse and enablement of abuse.

Abuse relies on enablement.

And powerful abusers know this.

Those who desire obscenity also engage in cursing. They do so to muddy the difference between fractious language and deliberate harm and abuse.

They'd like you to confuse the one for the other.

Because victims engage in fracutous language, too.

And powerful abusers know this.

If your response to the cursing of somebody who lives under the menace of deliberate empowered harm and abuse, is to castigate that person as just as bad as the abuser, you take up for the abuser.

Also for yourself.

That's how enablement works.

And powerful abusers know this.

"If we talk like they do, we're just as bad as them."

Nope.

Not even if it's an f-bomb every single other word.

The curse is not the obscenity.

The abuse is the obscenity.

Don't take up for powerful abuser by agreeing to their false terms.

Is polite language bad? No.

If polite language is important to you, my recommendation is this: engage in polite language yourself.

Yourself.

Scolding those who don't use polite language is just your way of laundering your own reputation.

Which creates distance between yourself and those fighting abuse.

That distance is what powerful abusers, who could care less about polite language, count on.

They usually get it.

Don't get confused. Don't agree to false framing presented in bad faith.

Fight the obscenity; fight the abuse.