A skinny kid calls a pudgy kid, “Booby!” and before you know it, fists are flying. One boy calls another, “Fartknocker!” and, despite anyone knowing what a “fartknocker” is, WWIII ensues. Kids get into fights all the time because of name-calling. And that includes big kids, as these tendencies are not entirely lost in adulthood. Yes, we are supposed to learn restraint and tolerance, but manliness and ego remain at a man’s core.
Let me illustrate. I used to be a boxing fan. One year, I went to the Golden Gloves Championships at Madison Square Garden. Unfortunately, our seats were in the middle of the second level, where you need a Hubbell telescope to see any punches land. To enhance the compromised experience, my buddies and I did what most men do, what all the guys in the Garden were doing – we drank beer.
The thing is, drinking beer while watching men hit one another leads to no good. The crowd gets riled up. The Garden becomes a giant man cave. And as two plastic cups worth of Budweiser contains enough testosterone to make you want to really hit someone, the power of suggestion becomes overpowering. Of course, as nature would have it, two beers demand you first hit the men’s room.
So there I was, standing at the urinal, sure to keep my eyes fixed straight ahead, when a guy, two spots over, starts to pick a fight with someone near the sink. What was surprising was that it came out of nowhere, totally unprompted. All of a sudden I heard, “Hey! You ugly!” (Men tend to drop their verbs when feeling kind of Neanderthal.) My theory is that as soon as his mind was relieved from his bladder, all that built-up potency had to find a target and the first guy to be spotted was the guy near the sink, who, having already been relieved, was like an anxious flame waiting for gasoline. He countered with, “What do you want, Fuckface!” There was a push. Onlookers started to choose sides. And damn, if I didn’t cut my business short and get the hell out of there.
Back in my seat, one of our neighbors was nonplussed – “Yeah , yeah, that happens all the time at these things.” Seriously? Grateful he didn't call me a "Wuss", I concluded it’s way too easy – shamefully easy – to get some guys to abandon whatever civilizing abilities they may have.
I thought about this recently, after hearing the president call people “animals.” I mean, what’s so bad about calling people “animals?” What terrible effect could it possibly have?
Well, the names used in name-calling are not exactly accurate depictions of people. I mean, what exactly is a “Fuckface,” anyway. And as far as Trump’s term goes, biology tells us that there's a difference between human beings and animals. These names are an exaggerated expression of someone’s feelings. They’re insults, weapons. Their only effect could be the “Hell yeah!” that signals the outing of the worst version of a human being.
Look, after “animals” and “Pocahontas” and “shitholes” and “stupid” and “Moonbeam” and “Dumb as a Rock” and a hundred other juvenile names spewed daily across the country, is it any wonder that hate crimes rose the moment Trump took office? (Washington Post, https://wapo.st/2LARweW) Did Guiliani’s trash-talking come out of nowhere? How about Navarro’s foul insult to Canada? Do you think the Ice wranglers have been spurred by the president’s rhetoric? How about the white supremacists in Charleston who called others the N-word?
