Third Attempt – October 4, 2021

My determination is that I am too judgmental.

Odd. I thought I was making real progress toward being more tolerant, more understanding. Not forgiving, you understand, just tolerant.  Hmm.  If the stew has too much salt, I am judgmental in saying so?  Then, I resign, I am too judgmental.

Twice before this effort this morning, I started decent “observations” I felt would be passable posts.  Humorous, thought-provoking, ripe with social morality, and maybe even interesting. Not even to the point of a full grammar check, I reread parts of both attempts and found someone was going to take offense.  Or someone in this grandly liberal society would take offense on behalf of someone else, someone they felt would not properly see themselves abused or maligned or made fun of because of a particular characteristic they have.

Listing those “characteristics” would seem yet another intolerable slur on my part.  Okay, use your imagination. Maybe I was making light of someone’s shoe size.  Or the time it takes them to complete the Tallahassee Tattler Sudoku. Or the fact their appearance at Jason’s Food Mart¹ scares children, women, and weak-hearted men. Or that their cologne obviously has gone sour. Or that the clown costume they wore out in public was in need of an update.

Geeze.  I should be more tolerant. Flawed people² should not be mentioned so as not to embarrass or upset them. Not mentioning weakness, shortcomings, or other “abnormalities”³ is as good as making it that these characteristics don’t exist.

Ah. But they do.

I’m just not allowed to talk or write about them.

Not if I want to become or be considered “tolerant.”

It is, so far as I know allowed for one to describe a character as having blue eyes.  Or being tall.⁴  How droll that I must write, “There was a being, of a size different from most other beings…”  A certain bit of snap is gone from any narrative working under those constraints. 

Constraints?

Yes. There is a place I frequent where I am not allowed to use, in particular,⁵ the words “dumb” or “stupid.”  Which is to say, there are no dumb or stupid people, activities, or ideas.  Well, there could be. I’m just not allowed to speak of them.  Not using the words that so accurately describe them.

I should say “not benignly unintelligent,” or “not clearly the most astute.” Which might cause an increase in dictionary use, but probably not as we’re all too damned lazy to really worry over understanding what others mean when their lips move.

Soon, proper society will have eliminated all but four or five words from our vocabulary.⁶  We should all become liars.

If it is green, I want the freedom to say so.  If its aroma is unpleasant, I want to be allowed to say it stinks.  Or not being able to say so without, or by someone’s determination seeming to, cast aspersions, I am not allowed to say so. Otherwise, I am judgmental. After all, everyone is equal, all get a trophy for participating in life.

Pardon me, but this strikes me as not benignly intelligent.

Perhaps I am too judgmental.

—

Notes

¹ Jason, if you own a grocery you call the “Food Mart,” that’s tough noogies. I never heard of you just as you never heard of me, so we’re even, neither of us thus aware, nothing is an intentional slur or a theft of your goofy damned name for a grocery.

² Everyone.  You think you’re not flawed in some way, I’d like to meet you.  Never known a for real deity.

³ And what, I ask, is abnormal? When nearly everyone is a Democrat, any Republican is abnormal. When everyone is brown, purple and green are abnormal.  Hey, kiddies, how ‘bout we just consider abnormal a synonym for “different”?

⁴ “Tall” is okay.  The opposite, you know what I mean, you do, I know you do, is not allowed. Let’s play the same game with “skinny.”  Oops.  I meant, “slender.”

⁵ There are others, but already this post has become tedious.

⁶ Approved vocabulary.