Introduction
The following series of essays will begin by tracking two utterances of [the no-no word] that occurred live on professional wrestling television broadcasts. The writing will juxtapose and compare this current linguistic taboo—which has grown immensely in recent years—with the widespread fear of nuclear holocaust most prominent during the Cold War.
From the ’90s on, even through the War on Terror, the people of the West experienced and had an expectation of general peace. They stopped always fearing the prospect of World War III. That long-held obsession dissolved soon after the Soviet Union itself did. Even pop songs of the era1 evidence the culture’s sudden, newfound amusement with the concept of nuclear bombs: It had become safe enough to think about such things flippantly.
Since February 23, 2022, however, many skeptics have expressed a perception—far from baseless—that our leadership class has decided to risk atomic exchange with Russia in the name of democracy. Sanctions in place, we already experience modest economic hardship for the sake of liberal values. Things could get much worse, but—if so—authoritative voices assure us that our difficulties will always be righteous ones. However the war in Ukraine plays out, the Western elites have demonstrably used the conflict to inculcate lowered expectations, paranoia, and self-censorship in their domestic populations. While such techniques of control and dissent management are hardly new, the stakes seem higher now. A distrust has taken hold and, ironically, it is reminiscent of anecdotes we’ve heard about the old USSR. A large section of Americans will only believe the exact opposite of whatever the headlines say. Public servants act robotlike and seem heavily medicated. Contrary evidence never deters their glowing self-assessments. From top to bottom, the supervisors of our hemisphere say they’re doing a wonderful job. They often lapse into “business as usual” attitudes, disquietingly low-key, showing no sense of urgency even as standards plummet. Whether through negligence, malfeasance, or both, our stockpiles have been drained, our confidence couldn’t be lower, and our way of life has reached terminal decline. At least, that’s what it feels like to much of the population—but the disenfranchised people who feel that way tend to have their own weird mental problems and are not trustworthy either. (We know this from first-, second-, and third-hand experience.)
So, do we hang on the precipice of disaster, or is that just our state-assisted anxiety disorder talking? We’re too unsure and insecure to remark on the Doomsday Clock standing so close to midnight. So instead we remark on how no one’s remarking on the Doomsday Clock standing so close to midnight. *Stress sigh*
Roused from a long, stuporous complacency in spring 2022, many anonymous thinkers found themselves in these sorts of harried mindsets. They had long considered their politicians to be, broadly speaking, mere goofy idiots, lamentable but not completely malicious. The truth proved far worse than they had suspected, however. By now, many of us have discovered that our rulers are in fact reckless, dangerous, well-entrenched and impudent. Moreover, their hubris might soon destroy the civilization whose principles they still laud but rarely follow anymore. (Today all persons in positions of power have been taught a magic spell that justifies the banning of any unwanted verbiage: We believe in freedom of speech, BUT—.)
Within this precarious setting, these essays will explore the connections between the most feared weapon and the most censored word.
Chatbots . . . Extinction-level insanity . Wokescolds . . Joy
MEANWHILE: As all these aforementioned big scary sociopolitical concerns bother our poor little heads, technological development continues apace. Recent experiments in AI software suggest that our cultural programming may place more value on restricting racial slurs than on preserving life itself. Or, more exactly, that is the great fear expressed in certain quarters.2 The likely truth of the matter may be much simpler: Some basic chatbots, free and meant for public use, have probably been hardwired so they cannot under any circumstances use or condone offensive terminology. In other words, it’s not that serious—ChatGPT just doesn’t want to be canceled. Right? Either way, the immense concern some pundits have regarding the wicked “woke” AI—the evil computer that “won’t use the n-word to save humanity”3—is matched only by our concern, at large, with the word itself.
So many are fascinated by it. The average 4chan zoomer considers the prospect of saying the N-word in public the same way the average state department official considers starting a nuclear war: It would be the greatest exercise of power, the highest freedom imaginable.
This troubling, hazy equivalency, between a targeted insult on the one hand and mass death on the other, seems to have become part of our substructural social coding. A devious diatomic molecule has bonded with the fabric of our reality. The strange pairing—the two N-words—has been noticed by others4 and should be brought into focus so that its rationale—if any—might be exposed. Here we have located one node of cathexis within the general malady of the current age. As society deteriorates on every front, the reader may at least take small succor in understanding the how and why of one quadrant of the insanity, the distress and the anger, that seems to be surrounding us all. Small succors are better than none, given the circumstances. However strange these essays get, never doubt it: This explains something.
We’re all going through it. It’s in the air, a signal that disrupts our basic biological processes while causing us to talk nonsense. The addictive madness uses all of us as repeaters. Lumpen, patrician, worker, celebrity: each accuses the others of being prejudiced and of not caring enough about some super important something-or-other. Devaluing each other as we feel ever more devalued ourselves, we sputter apoplectic. We deflate further as our currency does the opposite. Even the financiers themselves aren’t immune to mental illness. The underlying, antihuman ethics of our situation keep rising closer to the surface of collective consciousness. What are we to make of these developments? How should we respond when discourse itself seems both threatened and insufficient?
The first step is to realize the greatness of the moment, the worthiness of the subject matter, the problems, and what it all portends. We have been put on notice and threatened with the annihilation of the social order from within and from without, by words and feelings on the one hand and by bombs and bureaucrats on the other. But if we can solve this, if we can make it through, we can survive anything. We should be happy to have this challenge; no matter our adversaries’ seriousness or at times their inanity, we should rejoice, and we should try to find a mindset capable of withstanding the onslaught.
Confidential report
After a decade of careful analysis and an eight-figure per annum research budget, a Brussels think tank determined that only lessons learned from that greatest of all performance arts—professional wrestling—could help us defuse the delicate, highly pressurized situation of the 21st century. This association comprised nearly a hundred scholars, psychologists, and media reviewers. It was called the Wrestling-Raciale-Atomique Nexus Consortium InterDisciplinarité, or W.R.A.N.C.I.D. for short.
Unfortunately, due to “austerity measures”, the group was abruptly shut down last December, much to the outrage of several high-ranking EU magistrates. At a closed-door meeting at The Hague on December 15, the former lead researcher accused representatives from various interests (banking, agricultural, military) of sabotaging W.R.A.N.C.I.D.’s work and preventing the publication of their final report. She alleged that the opposition did not appreciate the trajectory of the study or wish the think tank to reach certain imminent conclusions regarding the “philosophical interplay” between nuclear weapons, racial slurs, and pro wrestling. By an old tradition, a large iron bell was then rung. This signaled the start of a new procedure, and a type of administrative skirmish then occurred. The event resulted in three resignations, a formal charge of criminal conspiracy (pending), and an order that all documents related to the research be destroyed. The W.R.A.N.C.I.D. members’ homes were raided and their personal computers seized. The lead researcher herself was discharged from her academic post (despite tenure) and placed under house arrest. Then one morning she was straightjacketed and shuttled to a Swiss sanitarium. But her taxi arrived empty—even the driver was missing.
(As far as strange scandals go, the only comparable case would be that of the famous 1955 “ghost plane” incident, which was very nearly responsible for the fall of at least one European government.)
On December 26, I received a heavy cubic parcel affixed with a full sheet of Barcelona stamps but with no return address. The box contained a few thousand loose printout pages and several external hard drives. Somewhat organized, this data amounted to roughly 15% of the think tank’s research. Nonetheless, what remained still suggested a truly comprehensive overview, an index of every culturally meaningful facet of the N-word, of nuclear war, and of professional wrestling, complete with cross-references and psychoanalytical interpretations. A handwritten note on top promised that a certain mark on my travel visa could be removed in exchange for a “literary service”. Thus: The dozen essays that follow represent the findings of the disbanded European consortium’s vast work (12 TB of multimedia content), which I have condensed down to the equivalent of 70 or so typewritten pages, along with my own additions and ornamentations.
After having spent so many hours formatting their material and making it more palatable, I consider myself “part of the team” and will at times write from a “royal we” perspective.
Investigating these matters in depth, we will showcase major players in the drama (Vince McMahon, Booker T, Hulk Hogan, John Cena) and feature tangential figures as well (Leonardo DiCaprio, Kurt Cobain). We will examine typical and expected source material in the historical literature (e.g. “The White Negro” by Norman Mailer, “The World of Wrestling” by Barthes). I will give personal anecdotes—childhood during the Cold War, adolescence in the ’90s, etc. We will then compare the fates of the wrestlers with those of various public figures (Michael Richards, Papa John, others) who also fell afoul by uttering the unutterable.
The pedantry of a lost civilization
Throughout the early sections I will frequently use the euphemism “the no-no word”. In the later sections—dealing with more serious, non-wrestling-related material—I will tend to use the more familiar “N-word”. A few times the word may appear in unedited form, usually but not always with a short -a, when I am quoting authoritative sources.
In two cases the raw “hard R” form of the word will appear in excerpts taken from Wikipedia and the New York Times. You never know what the future may hold, and perhaps someday the paper and the encyclopedia of record could be removed from our planet and/or forced to pay immense fines for wrongspell. So I thought I would document their brave and sagacious use of the word, for posterity’s sake.
Journalists and their editors, especially those working for such trustworthy publications, never tire of “speaking truth to power”. No matter the wealth of their paymasters, journalists always stand as plucky rebels fighting for the underdog. Relentlessly ethical, their labyrinthine justifications for what they write exceed my capacity to follow or understand. But that’s why I’m not a journalist—I’m not good enough for the profession. I’m an amateur, a dabbler, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what’s going on. If someday we see nuclear bombs falling around us, our biggest regret should be not having thanked our nation’s journalists adequately, in advance, in person, for their vanguard service in leading democracy forward toward its end. For now we can only stand and applaud their courageous, judicious use of the N-word, in the few instances when they use it, unredacted, even if the same exalted mavens would tell us unwashed hillbilly peons to do otherwise. Mark Twain might not be allowed to use slurs anymore5, but Wikipedia editors can. They’re the experts.
Many public meetings, especially in Canada and Australia, begin with statements of Indigenous land acknowledgement: the hosts let it be known that everyone in earshot is standing on stolen property. I believe that in a vaguely similar fashion all long texts, somewhere in the first chapter, should acknowledge the great debt all citizens, readers and illiterates alike, owe to the wordsmiths who have guided and who continue to guide Western civilization into our many great wars and thrilling civil dysfunctions. Let these few paragraphs stand as my meager attempt at such a thanksgiving. Our existence would be so much different without their reams of vital prose blanketing public consciousness. (“Todays truth, tomorrows trend / All our biases belong to them!”) In an essay collection such as this, dealing with charged racial and geopolitical topics, I can only gaze enviously at these North Stars of conscience—Our Journalists—and can only hope, bashfully, that they might approve of my oblique methodology for referring to certain sensitive terms and issues. They set the standards, after all.
For what it’s worth, the W.R.A.N.C.I.D. members spent 57 pages over the course of seven meetings debating how to refer to the word. They never developed an adequate or consistent approach. Many occurrences in the data are simply redacted, bleeped or blacked out. “██████” is common, “n——” less so. A simple search of the documents results in over 300 instances of the researchers apologizing for using the slur even in obfuscated form. The present writer is less prone to apologies and will simply lay out the rationale.
I will edit myself so that the words [B]lack and [W]hite appear as proper nouns when they refer to groups of people. Logistically, these capitalizations make perfect sense to me—[B]lack people are not actually black, just as [W]hite people are not actually white, and so the distinction seems prudent—yet I cannot type this way with any nonchalance. These new grammatic demands seem like the latest hoop we must jump through to prove our non-Hitler-affiliation. Maybe after this experience (or midway through it) I will suddenly feel comfortable writing these words of color in the way regime stenographers currently write them, but for now the capital letters must appear in brackets. I am first writing the words in lowercase, then will go back, correct myself, and leave bracketed evidence of my corrections. I think writing [B]lack and [W]hite might be better anyway. At least it’s something different.
Some outlets capitalize [B]lack but not white. For the most part, this practice can be attributed to the typical masochism of [W]hite leftist writers, always looking to supplicate themselves for goodboy points. But that’s not all it is, and explanations behind the policy warrant consideration. One editor argues that [B]lack deserves capitalization because [B]lack people, qua [B]lack, have more of “a shared sense of identity and community” than [W]hite people do.6 If this is another way of saying that in the West—i.e. in our technological society—[W]hite people have on average become more deracinated, then I would agree. For better or worse, [W]hites tend not to feel their race as much. More than that, for over a century the whole anomie thing—the twisted romanticism of, like, alienation due to the modern condition, maaan—has been the domain of [W]hite people, first and foremost. The most popular avatar of this walking space-cadet shtick was probably the very [W]hite Holden Caulfield. And today in America, so deep into the domestication and defamiliarization process, it can be difficult for anyone of any race to form or sense a solid identity. The breakdown of community has been well documented for a long time (e.g. Reisman’s The Lonely Crowd, Putnam’s Bowling Alone). Minority ethnic groups, however, probably still retain a greater sense of togetherness, relatively speaking. The W.R.A.N.C.I.D. group reached similar conclusions.7
(Clumsy racial comparisons aside, an important aspect of all this would be the full-spectrum diminishment of all mass and individual identities, across the board. Humanity becomes obliterated, smashed and squashed to mewling, needy nothingness beneath the weight of so-called progress. But this isn’t the place to discuss such things—I’m not entirely qualified to do so—and maybe “y’all ain’t ready,” as they say, “for that conversation.”)
It must be mentioned that I have recently seen right-wing antiestablishment types also write “White” and “Black” in their social media posts. Frankly, I find this tacky. It seems like a desperate, surface-level attempt to bolster identity. But everyone is becoming less authentic, less human and more technologized all the time anyway. Whether you capitalize a letter or not doesn’t make any difference in that regard at all. Right now, race-based capitalizations only seem to make things even more artificial and awkward. It’s very strange to me, but maybe I’ll get used to it. (Hopefully not.)
Bullshit aside, believe it or not, I am making an attempt to describe these issues delicately out of consideration for my audience and for the other real human beings, [W]hite and [B]lack, whom the subject matter affects. Even in our fallen state, people still deserve some dignity and respect. At least, as of this writing they do. That is my firm opinion.
______
This ends part one of the Two N-Words (Two N-Bombs) series. Going forward, a new post will arrive every three or four days. The next section, to be published on Wednesday, will analyze this 30-second video clip:
In this regard, a later section will cite tracks by the Chemical Brothers, Electric Six, and Capital Cities.
See, for example, https://twitter.com/ProgressiveMigi/status/1622781292009115648 and the thread around it.
https://twitter.com/sheltgarner/status/1622650987402887198 (Note that this tweeter, while being facetious, accurately describes how many conservatives perceived some recent ChatGPT dialogues that will be described in a later section.)
A later chapter will detail Donald Trump’s explicit mention of the “two N-words” this past February. Another chapter will showcase the rapid pairings between the two concepts that occurred during prominent Twitter debates about ChatGPT in March.
One of many typical news items about this kind of thing: <https://www.npr.org/2011/01/05/132681463/publisher-edits-twain-classics-to-remove-slurs>. And, yes, of course, etc., unedited versions of the classics are still available also, etc., etc.
The European research group liaised with several intelligence services and used them to conduct extensive mass psychological evaluations. Through the use of supercomputers they collected, analyzed, and quantified public surveillance data from seventeen Western countries. Sorting the in-group-preference results by race, [W]hite people received a composite score of 1.71, a full standard deviation lower than that of [B]lack people (1.87) and of POC overall (1.91).