The Destructiveness of Words

In the last two days, we have heard two people use words that say more than they, and even we, want to acknowledge. First, President Obama, in his speech yesterday, referred to people in Louisiana and Alabama as “our neighbors.” I do not believe that anyone, even those criticizing the speech for partisan reasons, has picked up on this “mistake.” If the President were queried on the matter, I am certain that he would say that he meant that all Americans who did not live in those two states were neighbors of those who have suffered misfortune, etc., etc. In fact, however, Louisianans and Alabamans are full citizens of the United States; they are not “neighbors”; they are part of the nation, just as equal as any other members of the union. “Our neighbors” are Mexico and Canada. In a previous blog, I said that American ethnocentrism was not just a national siege mentality against a hostile outer world but was reflective of a strong regional disparity in the U. S., where even various parts of the U. S. A. were like foreign and strange territory to those who do not live in them. So much for democratic national solidarity. Poor Louisiana; poor Alabama. It is Katrina redux.

Today, Carl-Henric Svanberg, the president of British Petroleum (they would like to be known as BP in order to take on a greater world-wide glamour, and in order to attract more stockholders) said that he wanted to help the “small people” of the Louisiana and Alabama coast. The Huffington Post (huffing as usual) and other media latched on to this mistake. Tonight, on the PBS Newshour, Mr. Dudley, a clever spokesperson for BP, excused the Swedish president of BP, claiming that his president speaks English as a second language, and that he meant “small business people” not lesser people. Carl-Henric Svanberg almost certainly learned English as a young boy. He likely knows how to speak and write the English language better than most Americans. So, you may be assured, you can keep the “small people” reference in your mind for what was meant – people poorer, weaker, and more impotent than Mr. Svanberg and his capitalist executive colleagues.

Language means something. Who among us has not said something truly destructive to those we love, and we know that what we said had some kind of truth to it even though we immediately want to disown that truth. The President of the U. S. (who almost certainly has not even thought of “neighbors” as a mistake) has just made one of those irretrievable mistakes. Mr. Svanberg has more graphically made the mistake. And, what are the messages? First, it is still a world of “them” and “us.” In the U. S., it is a matter of “I’m all right, Jack.” In the larger capitalist world, it is a matter of large capital versus, well, everyone else, and everyone else, in the end, loses. In both cases, the real substance of “democracy” loses.

There is a tragedy beyond this. As everyone speaks the language of human-being superiority, animals throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico are in truly mortal danger. A new genocide, of sorts, is being played out. We will not lament, and shed our false tears, until someone like David Attenborough comes along ten years from now and documents the whole thing. By then, it will just be sentimentality. And, while you are at it, you might shed a false tear for democracy as well.