Thread by @dcpetterson

I'm a writer. I know very well, words have power.

Some words are so damn powerful, one must be careful in using them.

Words can harm or heal. Words can sway armies and move mountains.

It is possible to rob words of their power, but it often is useful not to.

1/12

The comedian Lenny Bruce and the social commentator George Orwell both understood the arcane power of words.

Orwell taught us how limiting vocabulary and altering meanings controls how we think.

Bruce taught us the force of using or avoiding words.

2/12

One of Bruce's most hilarious and obscene stand-up routines involved not saying a single dirty word. He merely implied. He said "blank" whenever he meant anything suggestive. We all knew what he meant.

He also went to the other extreme.

3/12

Saturating a speech with offensive words makes those sounds almost meaningless. They become no more than percussion, just rimshots, a punctuation mark devoid of effect.

Watch "Blazing Saddles" or "Django Unchained" and you'll see what I mean.

4/12

There are certain words in today's culture which remain intensely taboo. Their use is offensive. Anyone using them means to offend.

We can those words into mere unnoticeable noise if we wanted to. Lenny Bruce and Mel Brooks and Quentin Tarantino taught us how.

5/12

But it is useful to keep them as powerful spells, magical curses. There's a line about that in the play "Inherit the Wind."

Henry Drummond is asked why he uses so many offensive words. His answer is informative:

6/12

"I don’t swear for the hell of it. Language is a poor enough means of communication. We’ve got to use all the words we’ve got. Besides, there are damn few words anybody understands."

The power to curse with a word is also the power remind others of the force of a curse.

7/12

Some words evoke hate. Hate exists whether there are words to express it or not. The power of a hate-word is not only to express hate, but also to remind us, to warn us, that hate exists, and that we must resist it.

That's why we avoid saying, for instance, the "N-word."

8/12

Hate will not be banished if we extinguish one expression of it. Hate will simply find a new outlet.

The horror isn't the words, but what the words conjure. If we lose the expression, the horror will become unseen, hiding behind our eyelids. But it will remain.

9/12

So I have mixed feelings about powerful words. I use them in my writing, and in my tweets--and I use them with intent, when I want to invoke strong emotion.

All the words you're offended by--their power can be eradicated if the words are overused.

10/12

All the words you're offended by--they can become meaningless, just inoffensive sounds, by the simple technique of overuse.

Do any of us really want that?

Or do we want them to remind us of the offense that lurks behind them?

And what horrors would replace them?

11/12

I'm a writer. I love words.

I know something about the dark magic of words.

I write some horror fiction. I love horror too.

But we're living in a horror novel these days.

I have mixed feelings about all this.

12/12

PS If a tweet enrages you, or saddens you, or moves you, or changes you--try the exercise of examining which particular words did that. Then decide if you wanted that to happen, or if the writer did that against your will, and against your common sense.