Political life and civic life in America, 21st century: Codes of discourse

The highest elected officials in this country are held to a different code of conduct (and discourse) than you and I are.

Former Vice President Cheney was not barred from entering the United States Capitol after telling a Congressman to go fuck himself.

It's all a matter of who you are, or where someone wants to get you.


I believe in America.
Don't you?

I used to believe in the YMCA.
Do you still?

Now I am of the opinion that the business of the downtown YMCA is to maintain the appearance of integrity while conducting "business as usual," i.e., doing whatever it takes to advance certain private interests and conceal inappropriate conduct that violates the organization's own guidelines.

And they get away with it because no one steps forward and says "This is what happened to me."

Because whistle-blowing is a scary thing to do:  You challenge power, and, by definition, power means that whoever has it can do a lot more to those who don't have it (than those who don't have it can to those who have it).

In other words, there is a built-in inequality or imbalance in the relation that favors those with power.

And yet people do sometimes take the risk and come forward, for various reasons.

"The Insider" (dir:  Michael Mann, year:  2003(?))



The lingua franca in America is "You are a real shit" and not "I think you're a bad person."  (Their response:  So What?).

"You're a real shit" and "You're a difficult, bad, nasty person," although on the surface they mean the same thing, do not have the same impact, obviously.

One is taken as an insult or attack; the other, is still "objectionable" but far less so.

But there are so many varieties of being objectionable; we couldn't find all such cases of objectionable behavior grounds for vociferous complaining.