Being "Sensitive"

I've heard a lot of people say, lately, that if the Muslims in New York were as "sensitive" as they should be, they wouldn't build a "mosque" that close to Ground Zero. Not long ago, a white bureaucrat was fired, briefly, for saying that a certain Washington D. C. budget was "niggardly." Some of the people who protested were engaging in what is called "folk etymology." That means, in this case, that you can tell where that word comes from just by looking at it. Others knew what it meant, but thought that someone that willing to risk offending blacks, shouldn't have a job in the District. He was restored to his job by the black leadership, who said, eventually, "Look, we know what the word means. We aren't offended and he's right."

It seems to me that it wasn't that long ago, you had to do something wrong to get attacked that way. Or you had to do something that actually offended a constituency with the clout to make you pay for offending them. Now, you don't have to actually offend anyone. If you said or did something that could have offended someone, it is the prerogative of anyone to complain that you are "insensitive." Puh-leese!

The quest for victimhood is a good deal more aggressive these days. You can, if you put your mind to it, learn to be offended by most political events or by the absence of those events. I've been reading Renegade recently, a very good account of the Obama campaign of 2008. He said at one point that Sen. McCain's attempts to make a very ugly economy look good were no more effective than putting lipstick on a pig. Funny. Trite, but funny. The Republican operatives spent days trying to persuade people that "lipstick" was a reference to Sarah Palin and that women everywhere should be offended. No one thought it was worth pursuing the idea that this attempt required McCain to be the pig.

I've been hearing more and more that the men and women of our armed forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere else "to protect our freedoms." What freedoms are we talking about? It used to be enough to say that they were where they were "to protect American interests." And it was understood that "American interests" included the interests of American corporations. Access to cheap copper and cheap oil and cheap bananas, for instance, are of very great interest to the businesses who would otherwise have to pay more for them and charge more for them. It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether the interests of these corporations are so important to the government of the United States that they should be supported by every American who pays taxes.

Who will say that it is too much to identify the function of the armed forces in general as being in the business of "protecting our freedoms?" Is the clarification that moves this function from "protecting our freedoms" to "protecting American interests" going to offend anyone? Is it insensitive to risk offending the families of men and women who are now in danger from America's enemies? Does it really matter that we have inflated "American interests" to "our freedoms?"

This is territory already well trodden by "Support Our Troops." The political strategist who first figured out that we could skip over where the troops were and what they were doing and go straight to whether we should "support" them, was a public relations genius. I have never seen a bumper sticker that raises the question of whether some uses of military force should be supported but that others should be opposed. Or, more exactly, the ones I have seen are too long to chant effectively. Who will say that we, as the people of a democratic government, must skip over the uses to which our armies are put? Who will say that "Support Our Militarism" is a bumper sticker worth having a conversation about? Is it insensitive to wonder aloud whether killing as many suspected foes a year as we kill might strengthen the movements we are trying to weaken.

And while we're at it, who is going to say that it took great courage for the terrorists of 9/11 to fly their planes into buildings and get themselves killed (along with a lot of other people)? I've never heard it said. And I, myself, have said only in American government courses where the point is that here is something everyone knows is true and no one is allowed to say. I say it bears on American civil liberties, and it does, but it bears on the language of politics, too. Shall we keep the meaning of "courage," or shall we apply it to acts that are done by the good guys only. When these acts are done by the bad guys--the same acts--they are not "courage," but...oh...what? Vindictiveness?

It seems to me that the bad guys are going to survive our lack of appreciation. I am not so sure we are. I wonder if we will survive the degradation of the language we use to negotiate our public attitudes. Look up "courage" in a good dictionary. Try to find a caveat that this applies only to us and not to our enemies.

These are instances in which we have muddled our political discourse because so few people have the courage to insist on clarity where "sensitivity" is felt to be a higher value. So we "support" our troops because we don't want to oppose them and don't have the wit to insist on a better question. We celebrate our military's function in "protecting our freedoms" because we are reluctant to say that so many of our own people have died protecting only "our interests." We allow a word as important as "courage" to be blurred beyond certain recognition or divided so that it's meaning depends on who it was who was courageous. And we do this because we don't want to run the risk of being called "insensitive."

Perfectly sensible people refuse to say these things because the costs will be swift and personal and the benefits will be slow and societal. But we will do them or suffer the consequences of their not being done.