See if you can spot the connection between these events:
- With scarcely a twinge of regret, Nazi troops and staff hunt down, abuse and eventually kill perhaps 6 million of their fellow countrymen (mostly Jews, with some Christians, gypsies, homosexuals and handicapped).
- Women by the millions snap up overpriced shoes that sharply limit their mobility and cause back problems.
- Big-city dailies proudly print news articles damaging to the national interest if not downright treasonous, and the courts smile on them.
- Congress continues to pass ill-designed, disruptive and expensive laws with deliberately deceptive titles like, “Peace and Freedom Act,” “Fairness and Non-Discrimination Resolution,” “National Security Initiative,” “Referendum on Prosperity,” or “Emergency Anti-Terror Bill.”
- Devout, intelligent Muslims blow themselves up by the dozens.
Today I humbly offer a contribution to the English language that pinpoints the common error in all these events: stid.
That stands for “Semantically Transmogrified Identity.” Or if you’re not a fan of Calvin & Hobbes, just “Semantically Transformed Identity.”
The stid phenomenon doesn’t explain all the stupidities of life, but it could go a long way toward clearing up the fog in our heads. Basically, a stid is a mislabeling that radically changes our perception of something.
Using the above as examples:
- How can civilized people in a “Christian” nation be persuaded to cheerfully kill and torture innocent people – even little children? Or for that matter, how can kindly, cultured people anywhere abuse or torture others? Here’s the secret: Before the torture starts, there has to be a semantic shift, redefining the objects of your hostility as “vermin.” Or parasites. Or Christ-killers. Or anything so hideous that it automatically justifies treating them as bugs. That way, they’re no longer viewed as real human beings with feelings, friends, dreams and a divinely appointed purpose like the rest of us. After that, violence is easy. When a stid clouds our vision, we can no longer see the person, just the label.
- With women and shoes, the operative value is “stylish” or “trendy.” Not sensible. When a woman has aged to the point where she buys sensible shoes, she is over the hill, style-wise. You don’t have to attend very many fashion shows before you acquire ample evidence that style is a profoundly blinding value. By putting on tall spikes, a woman’s stid is upgraded – about five inches.
- When you hurt a friend by betraying a confidence, you’re a treacherous, disloyal gossip. When the New York Times betrays the whole country, they’re exercising freedom of the press.
- The labeling of omnibus bills today is an exercise in advanced hypocrisy. Any day now, I expect to see the evening news showing the president signing the “Apple Pie and Motherhood” bill amalgamating the U.S. with Mexico.
- Few religions are so blinding as Islam. The evidence is regularly splattered all over the streets of Israel and Iraq by “martyrs.” Once a young Muslim acquires a stid self-image as a martyr for Allah, he can no longer see himself as a maniac.
How can a pedophile look at himself in a mirror? By thinking of his victims as “mischievous Lolitas” who actually welcome perverted sex.
How could whites in the Old South hold their heads up proudly while enforcing slavery or Jim Crow laws? Easily. They focused their ire on “niggers,” not human beings made in the very image of God.
Are stids always evil? No. I sometimes refer to radical environmentalists as tree huggers. Of course, nobody ever went out and hugged a tree, and we all realize that. We instinctively recognize that the term is fanciful, even playful, like “paleoconservative.” That’s what makes it so different from “dago,” “wop” and other terms of opprobrium.
The antidote for being pushed around by the hundreds of stids that assail us daily and threaten our sanity:
First, learn to see and recognize the stid-making process. It’s not hard to understand. Even I, in my day job as an advertising copywriter, manufacture lots of stids for my distinguished clients, polishing apples that are already shiny. Reading ad copy is not a life-threatening activity, but neither is reading a lot of trash novels. Just be aware of the dangers.
Second, broaden your focus. Don’t base your attitude toward a complex subject on a small aspect of it. Don’t major in minors. Learn to look at all of life.
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