By Ken Marks[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, April 13, 2015. Republished here by permission of the author.]
The kerfuffles late last month in Indiana and Arkansas confused a great many. There was broad agreement that the issue was intolerance, but what kind of intolerance? The Bible thumpers and the Republicans who curry their favor – pretty much the entire party – told us they were addressing religious intolerance. Of course, they were instead legitimizing sexual intolerance, and any other intolerance that could be tied to scripture.
In retrospect, I’ve realized that the RSA (Red States of America) had done it again! Uncannily, they made us blue-state dwellers feel like broad-minded, accepting people. I found myself basking in my superior moral vision. I had fallen into the trap! I was on the road to the kingdom of Holier Than Thou. There was only one thing to do: remind myself of the many ways in which I’m an intolerant person. I made a little list of my intolerances, which I’d like to share with you. In repayment for these confessions, perhaps you could comment on this post with your own list.
I am intolerant of:
The gun culture. This is the culture that comes to mind when the rest of the world thinks of “American culture.” We’re a nation of cowboys, all too eager to deliver justice out of a gun barrel. In truth, many of us abhor guns, but we’re in the minority. It’s those in the absurd majority who have created the American caricature. You know who you are. You believe an ambiguous anachronism in the Bill of Rights is the ultimate source of your freedom. The impulse to possess shiny, portable tools that go bang is irresistible to you. The fantasy of the armed nebbish who neutralizes strong and menacing bad guys is thrilling. Guns confer real power, and you don’t even have to fire them to feel powerful. Carry one on your hip, and you project power. Carry one in your pocket, and you have a delightful secret! Well, enjoy your illusion of power, but please stay away from me.
People who are guided by scripture. Religious scripture has an important place in the cultures of the world, as an anthropological record, as a historical curiosity, and sometimes as great literature. But certainly not as a model of the cosmos or as an unfailing guide to right conduct. If you think it is, you’ve adopted one of the infantile worldviews of bygone millennia, when superstition was the first line of defense against fear and suffering. So long as this sort of thinking holds the world in its grip, ugly divisiveness will plague us.
This might be comical but for the fact that by Election Day, 2016, the Democrats will have controlled the White House for nearly 8 years. Voters like to rotate parties, the issues be damned. Sooner or later, the Republicans will sweep everything and a Dark Generation will commence in America. I know of no way to stop it. I can only hold these bringers of darkness in contempt.
Hollywood studios and ad agencies. These are the people who tell us, on the big and small screens, what the words “attractive” and “likable” mean, and what it’s like to be truly alive and engaged in the moment. That is, “hip.” They have an easy task because most people, having only the slightest clue, are thankful for any information they can get. In fact, Hollywood and Madison Avenue don’t have much of a clue either, so they go for easy formulas. Young and sexy is attractive, fun-loving is likable, uninhibited is hip. So we have a society that’s divided between the inauthentic – people whose personas are the product of the commercial and entertainment media – and the alienated – people who are onto the manipulation but suffer from a social disconnection. One can easily imagine the destructive consequences of this cleavage but, in the last analysis, it’s OK. In America, taking responsibility is beside the point. If you’re making good money, it’s all good.
Those are my big ones, buy why stop there? I’ve got lots of petty intolerances, too. They are made of disapproval and bewilderment, pretty much in equal parts. For example:
People with annoying speech habits. I don’t go around clucking my tongue whenever I hear mispronunciations or bad grammar, but there are some errors that set my teeth on edge. For example, when people pronounce “niche” as NEESH. How did the pronunciation revert to French? Have all the pretentious people in the country entered into a conspiracy? Another one is “often,” with the T spoken. I can’t recall anyone pronouncing the T when I was younger. Even worse are the people who leave out the T but lengthen the word to “oftentimes.” I can’t take anyone seriously who says that.
The grammatical error I hate most is confusing “lay” with “lie.” Somehow “lay” became intransitive as well as transitive, a dual-purpose verb. It’s not as though I hear this error now and then; I hear it constantly, and in contexts where it should never come up. In physical therapy, for example. I’ve had three physical therapists in the past six years, covering more than two dozen therapy sessions, and in every instance I’ve heard “please lay down on the exercise table.”
People who send text messages. It’s wonderful that we can communicate so easily with others who are far away. We can send email to practically anyone in the civilized world. If we want real-time intimacy, we can call them on our mobile phones or use Skype. We can share thoughts within a circle of friends through social networking. Our lives are interlinked as never before. Tell me then, what need is there for sending real-time text messages? What does it add to the smorgasbord of communication services we already have? People who do it with regularity aren’t merely staying in touch. They are bonding in a way that submerges their individuality and reduces their power to think for themselves. What’s more, they can be a danger to themselves and to others, as when a texter hypnotically walks in front of a car or drives through a red light. Frequent texting is a scary neurosis.
People who tweet. I know celebrities tweet and politicians tweet. They want to be out there, accessible, down with the hoi polloi. Twitter is made for them. But why on earth do John and Jane Doe tweet? Their opinions count for nothing in this medium. All they do is move a “reaction” needle, and that means – what? Perhaps you think that tweets are informative or make entertaining reading. Nope. No important insight or news item has ever depended on Twitter to enter the stream of human discourse. In fact, the content of Twitter is pretty much a sewer. And who are John and Jane Doe, besides being ordinary folks? I think they’re people who just want to pop off, and then text their friends with “Hey, I tweeted. Yeah, the dress was definitely gold and white.”
Sports fans. I have to clarify immediately. I don’t mean people who participate in sports or have kids in sports leagues. Nor do I mean those who watch a half-hour of a sports event on TV, or an entire Super Bowl, or a couple of World Series games, or even several hours of the Olympics; they are merely curious spectators. I mean someone who is sports-obsessed. Certainly this includes body painters; people who dress as vikings, pirates, cowboys, cheese heads, etc.; and people who come out for games in freezing weather. It further includes anyone who holds season tickets for any sports team or belongs to a sports fantasy league. And I want to throw in all those who routinely bore their co-workers with day-after-the-game small talk and their friends with emails in the same vein. Not to mention those who daily read the Sports section, subscribe to Sports Illustrated, watch Sports Jeopardy, listen to sports talk on the radio, or ever watch a pregame, halftime, or postgame show.
Sports fans are in dire need of heroes. How did their obsession with heroes come to be? I wondered about this for quite a while, and then one day it dawned on me: sports fans have never achieved the escape velocity needed to leave childhood behind.
Having confessed all this, I’m nevertheless certain that St. Peter will not bar me at the Pearly Gates. If I ran a catering service and a gun-toting, semi-literate goon walked into my shop, wearing a Raiders jacket, a cross, and a “Cruz to Victory with Ted” button, I’d say in a good-natured voice, “Please come back without the gun, sir, and I’ll be happy to serve you.” As long as a person isn’t threatening or obnoxious, I’ll do business with him.
| Copyright © 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr. |
Ken, I just realized that no one (including me) has taken advantage of the prompt this inventive column provides to introspect and identify their own intolerances. I challenge anyone who reads my comment to come forth!
ReplyDeleteAnd I’ll be back with my own list after I come back from picking up a book from the library for my wife.
Well, okay, then, I'm back. And I see that no one has beaten me to baring my own intolerances. On the way TO the library I was able to identify only spam as something of which I felt (and guess I am) intolerant. But, on the way home, I thought of several more, and had the feeling that I might come up with a long list if I spent much time at this. On the drive home, I thought of these items of which I am intolerant:
ReplyDelete* Cruelty toward animals.
* Cruelty toward children.
* Indifference.
Hmm, I think that there were a couple more, but I can't think of them at the moment. I re-read Ken's essay as a refresher, and I can identify with him as being intolerant of:
* Gun culture.
* People who insist on being guided by scripture.
But of people who send text messages? Come on, texting is a serious, effective, quick way to communicate...IF YOU RESPECT IT. (I am perhaps intolerant of people who disrespect it and are slovenly in their sentence construction, using lots of abbreviations and even emoticons.)
Sports fans? Well, I long ago ceased being a sports fan myself, but I'm willing to let anyone who persists have at it. Not so much in my presence, but still....
Oh, my comment on texting reminded me of another item (or two) that I thought of on the drive home from the library:
* Telephone calls from unidentified callers. (I am thankful to Apple for the ability to silence all such calls on my iPhone.)
* Door-to-door solicitors. I do tolerate them long enough to crack a joke at them and let them know they need to "git along now."
Ken, thanks for allowing me to republish selected essays from The Scratching Post! I hope you are well. Today is my 55th wedding anniversary, but I confess it took a "Happy 55th" text (yes, a TEXT) from a beloved niece (in Arkansas) to bring it to my attention.
Morris,
Delete"Gun culture" is a term I see frequently, but what exactly does it mean?
motomynd, the term is subject to many definitions, depending on a writer's purposes, and while Ken didn't literally define it, he did characterize it – well, I think – and I was going along with that. The “cowboy mentality” sort of thing.
DeleteP.S., motomynd, in case you might wish to try to defend “gun culture,” how would you define the term for that purpose?
Delete"Gun culture" strikes me as yet another simplistic term designed to reduce complex people and situations to caricatures, not unlike when Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell label people as "radical socialists" if they dare consider voting for someone like Joe Biden. Instead of defending the term, I would be inclined to abandon it.
DeleteI agree, the term should not be used simplistically. Maybe more along the lines of Wikipedia’s article on “Gun culture in the United States”?
Delete“In the United States, gun culture encompasses the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs about firearms and their usage by civilians. Gun ownership in the United States is the highest in the world, and constitutionally protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Firearms are widely used in the United States for self-defense, hunting, and recreational uses, such as target shooting.
“Gun politics in the United States tends to be polarized between advocates of gun rights, often conservative, and those who support stricter gun control, often liberal. The gun culture of the United States can be considered unique among developed countries in terms of the large number of firearms owned by civilians, generally permissive regulations, and high levels of gun violence.”
Morris, well, Wikipedia certainly tried to put it all under one fairly small roof, didn't they? It strikes me that I can't even remember hearing the term "gun culture" until recent years, so I have a kneejerk suspicion of it. To me it's sort of like car culture, or coffee culture: what do those terms even mean?
DeleteIf someone drinks a cup of coffee every morning before they leave the house, are they in the same "coffee culture" with people who spend three hours a day at Starbucks? If someone drives a Tesla, are they in the same "car culture" with people who illegally drag race 1000-horsepower "muscle cars" on public streets? Of course not. But in the ongoing battle over gun rights - most of it being fought by people with no interest in learning any facts relevant to the discussion - I will bet that if anyone admits to owning even a rare antique firearm, there will be a large group of people trying to lump them in the same "gun culture" with people who are delusional enough to actually believe they need "assault weapons" with 50-round clips.
motomynd, I now agree that a blanket intolerance for America’s “gun culture” is overgeneralizing, perhaps simplistic. I would begin to amend my own statement to specify, for example, that I oppose military weapons in private hands. I have not read any proposed legislative wording to regulate it. I hope that a majority in Congress can be mustered this year to pass something to regulate these weapons. Let Boulder and now Indianapolis finally get through the thick skulls who oppose regulating them.
DeleteAs for the age of the term “gun culture,” I checked Wikipedia’s references, and one goes back to 1970, 50+ years ago: “Hofstadter, Richard (October 1970). ‘America as a Gun Culture’. American Heritage Magazine. American Heritage Publishing. 21 (6). Retrieved January 25, 2014.”
Moristotle,
Delete"Gun culture" as a term goes back more than 50 years? That is amazing. I don't think I personally heard the term until the past decade or so.
I may be wrong on this bit of history as well, but I think all weapons were single shot at the time of the Second Amendment, so to me that is what the argument should be about: should civilians be allowed single-shot weapons? The Second Amendment couldn't possibly have been meant to allow modern "assault weapons" for civilian use, since they hadn't even been created back then.
That said, this country had an "assault weapon" ban from 1994 to 2004, and research shows it had almost no impact on overall crime rates or gun deaths. Gun death statistics show that banning "assault weapons" would save hundreds of lives, while banning handguns would save thousands of lives. The problem is how does a country ban handguns if politicians can't even agree on a ban of military- grade weapons?
Guns aside, the underlying issue seems to be that a shockingly high percentage of Americans apparently like to indulge in cruel and violent behavior. And they always have: slavery and the genocide of Native Americans being vivid examples. Banning guns may seem an easy fix, but explaining why the US violent crime rate is exponentially higher than the UK and other developed countries involves finding an answer that extends far beyond guns.
motomynd, than you (and others) for contributing to a most informative discussion of America’s “gun culture,” occasioned, of course, by my perhaps naively innocent selection of Ken Marks’ “Intolerance” post from The Scratching Post. Among other things, the discussion has reminded me how limited is my own ability to contribute to a solution of “the gun problem” (problems) in our society. I think that you are very much more capable of useful contributions, whether or not you have any openings to make them (into the ears of legislators, for example).
DeleteI can contribute this link to Hofstadter’s 1970 article in American Heritage Magazine. Its lead line is:
“[America i]s the only industrial nation in which the possession of rifles, shotguns, and handguns is lawfully prevalent among large numbers of its population.”
Already the case 50 years ago, and still the case....
I of course meant to say “THANK you....”
DeleteMorris, I've become less intolerant of texting in the 6 years since I posted this. Young people use it almost to the exclusion of email. They hate writing and look at their phones often, so their preference is understandable. I have also turned to texting when I want to confirm an appointment or an understanding.
ReplyDeleteAs for sports fanatics, I'm not advocating that they be stopped from obsessing. That would be cruel, like taking a toy away from a child. I'm much like you. I don't want to be around when the sports talk starts. It's idolatry in its silliest form.
Ken, Glad to hear you have become more tolerant of texting. I used to look down on texting with contempt, but have come to love it: why waste time mired in a 15-minute conversation when the topic can be covered in 14 well thought out words?
DeleteAs for intolerance: I have come to realize I have become completely intolerant of people who make sweeping statements about their view of the world, but aren't willing to discuss any facts relating to their view of the world. It used to be accepted that "people have a right to their own opinions, but not their own facts," but today many people seem to think their opinion is a fact.
Jumping topics: the other day I saw a spring bloom photo from Carrizo Plain. Didn't you post a story and photos from that area years ago? As I recall, the photos especially were great: Would you consider reposting?
Me, I'm intolerant of anyone who cannot sit back, relax, and have a fair and open discussion on anything, be it religion or politics. I mean three times this last year I was asked to step outside for a Trump statement that I thought was fairly neutral and once because someone walked into the establishment and yelled that because I was talking--just talking, you understand--about Obama that was reason enough to step outside and fight.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Michael! I of course wonder how well you tolerated those invitations to “step outside”: what did you do to express your intolerance for their intolerance? I’m not sure whether I mean that question rhetorically or literally, but of course a literal response to it would be more appreciated!
DeleteIt struck me later that the concept of “intolerance for intolerance” may pose a logical self-contradiction, which may require “types” or “levels of application” for its resolution. For example, there might be a constitutional clause outlawing intolerance throughout the society, with only the constitution itself being intolerant. (In a very permissive society, “tolerance for intolerance” may be the rule, possibly even codified into law. Anything goes, so let it happen, buster!)
DeleteWith apologies for my oversight, I have just added the photo that is referred to by the parenthetical sentence: "(A case in point is the adjacent photo, showing Scott Walker admiring a hard hat with a tattoo of St. Ronald.)"
ReplyDeleteI read the different portions and giggled as I could either identify with it or knew people who epitomised the descriptions!!
ReplyDeletePeople get more entrenched in their own beliefs as they age and just like a huge tankers, are very slow to embrace a different view- if ever!
Gun Culture just says to me that it’s embedded in being American, that it’s part of the “being” American - shoot first ask questions later!
The Cowboy mentality (as has been mentioned by others) and it’s so archaic and to those not American is seen as living in the past but also the underlying make up of the USA - violence!
Outside the USA is deemed dangerous because of the freely availability to anyone, of guns! Yet the majority, including many government members, think it’s perfectly acceptable, indeed ,it’s your God given right! Ergo your gun culture is born and endorsed to be so!!!
Texting is useful but it’s led to very sloppy grammar and spelling and I fear it will never improve! As for emojis - I love them and use them! A picture says a thousand words!!
Penelope, where America is headed is something I think of almost constantly, since I have a seven-year-old son. The American homicide rate - which is higher than Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique, and which is exponentially higher than your native UK and most of Europe - is a sobering statistic for a parent of a young child. Americans seem as steeped in their tradition of violence as much as their guns, and I hope someone finds a way to change the mindset along with the available weaponry.
ReplyDeleteI'm also very intolerant of anyone who does a good deed and then spends all of the time bragging about it. Do the good deed. Move on. A good deed is not supposed to get you tons of credit and make your ego as big as an atomic bomb explosion.
ReplyDelete