Word

by Cindy Layton

We all knew you could ban books. But words? Can you ban words? Apparently, it’s a thing now.

If you think it’s possible to ban words, which words should you choose? War? Hate? Obvious choices, but would banning them make the compulsion for their use magically go away?

If you’re the word police, then maybe you’d choose non-words, those irritatingly misused mash-ups of real words like irregardless, or the mispronounced nucular, or the frequently invoked literally, like on the Xfinity Wi-Fi ad, where we’re told that we literally cannot live without our wireless connections. Really? How did we exist all these thousands of years prior? Clear evidence that the NYWP are not patrolling Madison Avenue.

For the word police, who believe words should be banned, it becomes not a question of why but of how. How to choose? How many to choose? Where would anyone begin to rank those words in order?

And, acting as the word police, choosing in defense of our democracy, you might carefully select seven of the most threatening, vile, and contemptible words that are the very affront to our system of government and permanently excise them from agency documents such that their elimination would be enough to save the population from their hideous influence. Because, when the government seeks to ban something so elemental, it stands to reason that those words must possess a mortal power from which the populace must be saved. It’s that consequential an act.

And so, for the final time, and in the interest of disclosure, here, in alphabetical order, are those criminal words:

Diversity, Entitlement, Evidence-based, Fetus, Science-based, Transgender, and Vulnerable.

My first thought is, can we still use “science” if we don’t use “based”? Ditto on the “evidence”?

My second thought is, thank goodness my English teachers made me read George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury.

It’s easy to infer why some of these words are threatening if you’re a social conservative. But banning them? That smacks of religious extremism surrounded by science fiction wrapped up in authoritarianism.

In selecting a subject for this blog entry, there were mountains of subjects to pick from, ideas culled from current events, many of which seemed more monumental. But this one act, had it taken place a mere twelve months ago, would have sent shock waves through the country, standing alone in its significance as an act of extremism, debasing the ideals of the constitution. Now, it’s ranked somewhere with fake news, sexual harassment, fat-boy Kim Jong Un, and massive tax cuts for corporations and their wealthy executives. It’s literally impossible to maintain the furor.

And yet, it is so subversive. So undermining of core principles. So threatening in itself and its representations about our democracy.

But now that we know what the seven most threatening words in the English language are we can use them with impunity. So, many thanks to the word police for identifying exactly what gets under their skin.

Repeat daily: Diversity, Entitlement, Evidence-based, Fetus, Science-based, Transgender, and Vulnerable.

My holiday wish for writers, government administrators and citizens – sentences without gaps where words once lived.