Cruelty is not the point. Removal is. Eugenics is. Which is why this is much more serious than simply a chance to trigger the libs. And that's why it has got to stop.
Thank you all for your comments. I know this essay was not easy to read and I questioned myself seriously for my own use of the word that I find so offensive. In the end I decided that I needed to demonstrate the raw shock value of such dehumanizing language But I do apologize for offending. Sometimes being deliberately offensive can backfire. But those are the risks artists take. Robert Mapplethorpe’s art was considered offensive by many. He felt it to be necessary to make a moral point. Without judging his work, I do agree with his premise: He said, “When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God.”
I did not find that essay hard to read. It may have been stark, but was also beautifully written. Thank you for writing so clearly, with no attempt to do anything other than illuminate truth. I sometimes have to have these hard conversations with students and it both affirmed and inspired that part of my own work educating our children.
Rabbi—a very necessary piece. Hideous, cruel people have always used language to dehumanize others, to suggest they don’t deserve to live in a world of beauty, love, and social justice. They suggest that these people started out less than human, consciously dehumanizing, othering, oppressing them, as if these pejorative identities/labels they give fellow human beings justifies the crimes they then further perpetrate. Aren’t we taught to love the stranger? And isn’t it always the stranger they hate?
One of my brother is learning disabled. We used to call them “brain damaged.” I shudder at that. There was no damage there at all. From what I learned from him, I learned to spend years working with young people like him. Even as I began to teach in academia and alternative sites, I kept up that work.
The current abusive corrupt oligarchic crowd has no trouble coming after any and all who are strangers to them. My brother, your brother, you, me. Include the other strangers, all the others they want to be rid of? You know what? We are a very large army. And we have something they don’t. They will destroy each other eventually because their ideology is one of hatred and destruction. We love, they can’t. Which is a not so secret arm and inexhaustible armor. They have no chance.
Over reacting is what I was told by my Trump loving son when I said that I strongly objected to a registry for autistic people. He claimed that it would be no big deal as all the data would just be numbers and the information not attached to names. I told my son what RFK,jr said about autistic children and pointed out that his daughter, my grand daughter did not fit that description at all!
Further, that the gov't had no business collecting this data without the permission of the parents or the guardians or the persons themselves.
So far as eugenics goes as bad as the Nazi were they learned it from Americans.
"As the concept of eugenics took hold, prominent citizens, scientists and socialists championed the cause and established the Eugenics Record Office. The office tracked families and their genetic traits, claiming most people considered unfit were immigrants, minorities or poor.
The Eugenics Record Office also maintained there was clear evidence that supposed negative family traits were caused by bad genes, not racism, economics or the social views of the time."
Many years ago I read 120 pages of THE NAZI DOCTORS by Robert Lifton. I quit reading at that point as I was so disgusted and disturbed about what was done to those who were unable to care for themselves.
How can we trust that something similar might not be tried when we know that women were sterilized against their will in Puerto Rico and Blacks were given syphilis and never treated. Our track record in that regard isn't great.
My younger half brother had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. He was the gentlest, funniest little boy you would ever meet. He couldn't read; but, he could fix cars. Just amazing. When I was older and visiting my dad he drove by a grocery store very slowly. My brother was in the parking lot collecting carts. Dad was so proud of him. Apparently my dad knew the store's owner and arranged for my brother to work there. :-) He said that the owner told him that my brother was a very good worker.
I never saw my brother again after that; but, the look on your brother's face reminded me of the calm, sweet look that my brother had. Thank you for sharing.
What I don’t get - and I mean I REALLY don’t get it - is the Right’s glee with using terms that they know make some people feel bad, or targeted.
I could never understand why anyone would WANT to call their team the “Redskins” once they learned what an ugly word it is.
Oh boy. We ”get” to say those things now. Why? It’s like a 12-year-old getting a kick out of defying authority. Aren’t these people a little old for that?
Or, “I don’t find that word offensive.” Well, no, obviously you don’t, but as my mother used to say about such people, since the word isn’t applied to you, IT’S NOT YOUR CHOICE.
Yes, it is not a good sign that so many are rebelling in this at this particular political moment. Hopefully we can move past it.
I would have been reluctant to read this essay if someone else had written it. And it turned out to be so very interesting because it was you. Thank you. All the best to you and your brother, who are both better off for having each other.
You wrote, “The cruelty is not the point, in the end … Removal is.” I was wrong when I thought they were reverting to early adolescence. Your observation is too true, and much more frightening.
Excellent and articulate article! You are absolutely on target with the use of language to dehumanize people. I thank you for your thoughtful explanation of just what is happening.
So much to read and listen to, thank you so much first of all for sharing your love for your dear brother Mark Hammerman. I look forward to your new book, and have learned so much from your book "Embracing Auschwitz" and - as always - from your Notebook! You are a great teacher. What being a Rabbi is all about 😉!
Your essays are always so thought-provoking, nuanced, and compassionate. I am very grateful that I happened across your work and I share it often. Thank you for these excellent analyses of our troubled times, and thank you for your moral clarity and consistency 💙💯🏆
Elizabeth Brennan, the subject matter is very, very sad indeed, but by the time I finished this essay and got to gaze at the photos, I felt very happy. I’m so appreciative of Rabbi Hammerman for writing down in words and sentences all the good things that rise up to smother the bad. He’s a jewel. Thank you Rabbi for your one good fist fight. Claudia Allred.
These people are terrified! Thus they act like ignorant thugs with no skills except thuggery and name calling. Maybe autistic people are the most intelligent of all. Maybe RFK is scared cuz he knows he a feckless dick, lacking any intelligence cuz he sold it off to his insecure ego a long time ago. Same for the others. They know they are becoming obsolete. This is their last grasp on taking back the narrative.
Please let us know what terms Hamas uses that are so much worse, so much more dehumanizing. Even if grim, we need to know the facts of this, I think, not just read a general statement.
I have often regretted using words to belittle others. I try to avoid that but when I think of Dump, my blood boils and sometimes I can’t help myself. Por ejemplo, Donnie Diaperstain, Von Shitzenpants, and so on.
I have to confess that I experienced physical chest pain while reading this. This country is in a very dark place right now. I am also continually shocked by the obliviousness of so many of our fellow citizens.
So sorry for being the catalyst of those pains, even if not the cause. We need to face the shock head-on but also leave time for self-care in the midst of all this.
Thank you all for your comments. I know this essay was not easy to read and I questioned myself seriously for my own use of the word that I find so offensive. In the end I decided that I needed to demonstrate the raw shock value of such dehumanizing language But I do apologize for offending. Sometimes being deliberately offensive can backfire. But those are the risks artists take. Robert Mapplethorpe’s art was considered offensive by many. He felt it to be necessary to make a moral point. Without judging his work, I do agree with his premise: He said, “When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God.”
I did not find that essay hard to read. It may have been stark, but was also beautifully written. Thank you for writing so clearly, with no attempt to do anything other than illuminate truth. I sometimes have to have these hard conversations with students and it both affirmed and inspired that part of my own work educating our children.
Thank you, Robin. I’ve had them with many children as well.
Rabbi—a very necessary piece. Hideous, cruel people have always used language to dehumanize others, to suggest they don’t deserve to live in a world of beauty, love, and social justice. They suggest that these people started out less than human, consciously dehumanizing, othering, oppressing them, as if these pejorative identities/labels they give fellow human beings justifies the crimes they then further perpetrate. Aren’t we taught to love the stranger? And isn’t it always the stranger they hate?
One of my brother is learning disabled. We used to call them “brain damaged.” I shudder at that. There was no damage there at all. From what I learned from him, I learned to spend years working with young people like him. Even as I began to teach in academia and alternative sites, I kept up that work.
The current abusive corrupt oligarchic crowd has no trouble coming after any and all who are strangers to them. My brother, your brother, you, me. Include the other strangers, all the others they want to be rid of? You know what? We are a very large army. And we have something they don’t. They will destroy each other eventually because their ideology is one of hatred and destruction. We love, they can’t. Which is a not so secret arm and inexhaustible armor. They have no chance.
Over reacting is what I was told by my Trump loving son when I said that I strongly objected to a registry for autistic people. He claimed that it would be no big deal as all the data would just be numbers and the information not attached to names. I told my son what RFK,jr said about autistic children and pointed out that his daughter, my grand daughter did not fit that description at all!
Further, that the gov't had no business collecting this data without the permission of the parents or the guardians or the persons themselves.
So far as eugenics goes as bad as the Nazi were they learned it from Americans.
"As the concept of eugenics took hold, prominent citizens, scientists and socialists championed the cause and established the Eugenics Record Office. The office tracked families and their genetic traits, claiming most people considered unfit were immigrants, minorities or poor.
The Eugenics Record Office also maintained there was clear evidence that supposed negative family traits were caused by bad genes, not racism, economics or the social views of the time."
https://www.history.com/articles/eugenics
Many years ago I read 120 pages of THE NAZI DOCTORS by Robert Lifton. I quit reading at that point as I was so disgusted and disturbed about what was done to those who were unable to care for themselves.
How can we trust that something similar might not be tried when we know that women were sterilized against their will in Puerto Rico and Blacks were given syphilis and never treated. Our track record in that regard isn't great.
My younger half brother had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. He was the gentlest, funniest little boy you would ever meet. He couldn't read; but, he could fix cars. Just amazing. When I was older and visiting my dad he drove by a grocery store very slowly. My brother was in the parking lot collecting carts. Dad was so proud of him. Apparently my dad knew the store's owner and arranged for my brother to work there. :-) He said that the owner told him that my brother was a very good worker.
I never saw my brother again after that; but, the look on your brother's face reminded me of the calm, sweet look that my brother had. Thank you for sharing.
What I don’t get - and I mean I REALLY don’t get it - is the Right’s glee with using terms that they know make some people feel bad, or targeted.
I could never understand why anyone would WANT to call their team the “Redskins” once they learned what an ugly word it is.
Oh boy. We ”get” to say those things now. Why? It’s like a 12-year-old getting a kick out of defying authority. Aren’t these people a little old for that?
Or, “I don’t find that word offensive.” Well, no, obviously you don’t, but as my mother used to say about such people, since the word isn’t applied to you, IT’S NOT YOUR CHOICE.
Yes, it is not a good sign that so many are rebelling in this at this particular political moment. Hopefully we can move past it.
I would have been reluctant to read this essay if someone else had written it. And it turned out to be so very interesting because it was you. Thank you. All the best to you and your brother, who are both better off for having each other.
You wrote, “The cruelty is not the point, in the end … Removal is.” I was wrong when I thought they were reverting to early adolescence. Your observation is too true, and much more frightening.
Excellent and articulate article! You are absolutely on target with the use of language to dehumanize people. I thank you for your thoughtful explanation of just what is happening.
This is so sad. God help us, please!
Rabbi - the photo of you and your brother as children holding hands is inexpressibly powerful; it nearly brought me to tears.
So much to read and listen to, thank you so much first of all for sharing your love for your dear brother Mark Hammerman. I look forward to your new book, and have learned so much from your book "Embracing Auschwitz" and - as always - from your Notebook! You are a great teacher. What being a Rabbi is all about 😉!
Your essays are always so thought-provoking, nuanced, and compassionate. I am very grateful that I happened across your work and I share it often. Thank you for these excellent analyses of our troubled times, and thank you for your moral clarity and consistency 💙💯🏆
So appreciative, Diane!
Elizabeth Brennan, the subject matter is very, very sad indeed, but by the time I finished this essay and got to gaze at the photos, I felt very happy. I’m so appreciative of Rabbi Hammerman for writing down in words and sentences all the good things that rise up to smother the bad. He’s a jewel. Thank you Rabbi for your one good fist fight. Claudia Allred.
Thanks so much to both of you!
These people are terrified! Thus they act like ignorant thugs with no skills except thuggery and name calling. Maybe autistic people are the most intelligent of all. Maybe RFK is scared cuz he knows he a feckless dick, lacking any intelligence cuz he sold it off to his insecure ego a long time ago. Same for the others. They know they are becoming obsolete. This is their last grasp on taking back the narrative.
Please let us know what terms Hamas uses that are so much worse, so much more dehumanizing. Even if grim, we need to know the facts of this, I think, not just read a general statement.
Bless your beautiful, loving soul, Rabbi! This was an excellent essay all throughout.
I have often regretted using words to belittle others. I try to avoid that but when I think of Dump, my blood boils and sometimes I can’t help myself. Por ejemplo, Donnie Diaperstain, Von Shitzenpants, and so on.
I’m as guilty as the next guy of doing this, but I think it becomes a diversion, taking away from the seriousness of what they’re really doing.
I have to confess that I experienced physical chest pain while reading this. This country is in a very dark place right now. I am also continually shocked by the obliviousness of so many of our fellow citizens.
So sorry for being the catalyst of those pains, even if not the cause. We need to face the shock head-on but also leave time for self-care in the midst of all this.
🤣😂🤣