America 2019, among its other unique challenges, seems to be bigly afflicted with a malicious malady that has a deceptively impish, almost playful nickname.
Potty mouth.
For those who enjoy knowing where things that come out of your mouth come from, the term is obviously a slang version of a more formal. much less impish "toilet mouth". "Potty", itself, being a slang term for "pot" or, more accurately, "chamber pot" which was, in the barbaric days before indoor plumbing, simply a bowl kept in the bedroom to be used as a urinal during those nighttime moments when sweet dreams were interrupted by the need, the need for pee.
The delightfully simple invention was also known as a piss pot (for, one, again, assumes obvious reasons)...a thunder pot (not really sure we want to know exactly why)....and....a potty.
Doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar or a linguistics expert, then, to explain the evolution of toilet to potty to potty mouth as a way of describing people whose language, at any given moment, takes a turn for the tasteless.
Put simply for those without access to a thesaurus, you start pissin and moanin and talk some shit and people gonna call you a potty mouth.
Most of the words that would qualify one as an authentic PM are of the four letter variety. There are a few multi-lettered exceptions to that rule, in fact, two very prolific profanities made the cut in George Carlin's classic 1972 monologue, "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television."
Of course, this was 1972. Long before the less eloquent amongst us found outstretched arms and open ears for their vile vocabulary, be they graduates of Marriage Boot Camp, clownish caricatures going from not to hot or once and momentary occupants of the Oval Office who charmed throngs of patriotic followers with inspiring orations on the "bullshit" nature of felony investigations into possible malfeasance, corruption and/or treason.
But, fuck all that. Let's cut the shit and get back to the four letter utterances.
Here's a thing.
Not all derisive, destructive, damaging four letter words are as immediately derisive, destructive and damaging as you might think.
One, in particular, is alive and well in the American mainstream. And, by "alive and well", we're not talking healthy and flourishing. We're talking dangerous, even deadly. Like a virus or bacteria that is alive...and well....and capable of putting an end to lives.
A four letter word that does, in fact, have the potential to end the life of a nation.
Now...that's some scary shit.
Four letters coming up.
Pete Buttigeig is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is an American war veteran, currently a lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve. He is an Oxford Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Harvard University.
He is also gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
And, at the moment, he is an announced candidate for the Democratic Party nomination to be President of the United States.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, either.
Regardless of what you will, bet the farm, baby, hear in the coming days, weeks and months from The Kardashians of Comic Corruption.....Trump, McConnell, Hannity and Voldemort.
Redundancy duly noted.
Surprisingly, the loudest gloom and doomers objection to Buttigeig is less, even not at all, about his sexuality as it is about his pro-choice stand.
But, this piece isn't about the yays or nays of the candidacy of Pete Buttigeig.
It's about his articulate, insightful, even delightfully refreshing understanding of that seemingly
innocuous four letter word.
It's both disingenuous and condescending to point out that Buttigeig's powerful P.O.V. is even more refreshing, and impacting, given his youth.
He is, at this writng, 37 years old.
Yes, traditionalists, purists and patriots who still don't have a clue how to get that DVD player to stop blinking 12:00, Pete Buttigeig is a Millennial.
(and, now, a short break while we wait out the inevitable gasps........)
(and....back to our show...)
Time will tell whether this candidacy soars, sinks, explodes, implodes or charms and inspires its way all the way to the inauguration of the first gay president in American history.
Actually, that's unintentionally misleading. Conventional, if merely whispered, wisdom estimates that approximately 10% of the population is gay....there have been, to date, 44 presidents (Grover Cleveland was two of them, Mr and Miss Helpers)....so, the math would suggest that at least four of America's past heads of state would have been just as happy with "It's Raining Men" in place of "Hail To The Chief".
Not that there would have been anything wrong with that.
But, from the get-go and from here on out, come what may, or may not, it's clear that the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana has a laser lock on the damage being done, and the potential damage still possible, to the land of the free, home of the brave by that not so profane but unimaginably powerful four letter word.
Fear.
Franklin Roosevelt was spot on, dead center, right on target in 1933.
In his first inaugural address, he zeroed right in on the real "enemy" in America's midst in the midst of the Great Depression.
"The only thing we have to fear", FDR insisted, "is fear itself."
While over eighty years later, that catchphrase is, to many, if not most, currently living Americans, simply the stuff of scratchy History Channel video, those words ring just as truthfully, insightfully and accurately today as they did then.
With the proviso that what's called for is a smidge of updating,
The only things we have to fear....are fear....and those who would exploit that, even create more, fear in people, lying and making false, empty promises to them for no other purpose than to reap financial rewards.
And futilely attempt to fill a bottomless pit of the need for ego gratification.
Demagogue spelled D-O-N-A-L-D, notwithstanding, practical political perspective suddenly comes to mind from the comic mind of Jerry Seinfeld,
Just as there is good naked...and bad naked....there is bad fear....and good fear.
Charles Kaiser, writing for The Guardian, describes a plausible scenario in which this 37 year old gay Millennial might, in fact, find himself solemnly swearing a year from this January.
Is it too much to imagine that America could elect a gay president? I don’t think so. If the disaster of George Bush’s administration was sufficient to elect the first black president, I believe the catastrophe of Donald Trump could be just enough to put the first openly gay man in the White House. Especially a man like this.
Can't be sure whether "especially a man like this" is meant to be complimentary or a not so thinly veiled shot of bigotry, but, either way, one thing is certain.
Like Donald Trump, Pete Buttigeig has an absolute understanding of the fear living and breathing in so many people.
The people whose level of fear makes them vulnerable to any medicine offered up that promises to ease those fears.
Whether that medicine is proven safe and effective by years of research and experience....or is nothing more than snake oil in a bright orange bottle.
Unlike Donald Trump, though, Pete Buttigeig clearly has a handle on who he is, what part he can play in alleviating many of those fears and in no need, whatsoever, of making false promises to vulnerable people for no other reason than to reap financial rewards.
And futilely attempt to fill a bottomless pit of the need for ego gratification.
2016 was about the cynical, and ultimately heartless, exploitation of people's fear.
The non-profane four letter word.
Come 2020 and the emergence of young, fresh, positive, and, legitimately, brave advocates like Pete Buttigeig, the four letter word, as concept, becomes both ironic and poetic.
Because it's a sure bet that, in the House of Trump, McConnell, Hannity and Voldemort, Pete Buttigeig has already had a profound, four letter word effect.
He scares the living shit out of them.
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