"What is racism? But what is race? What is prejudice? What is ill intent? What is bad about being afraid of a bad thing? What is a bad thing? What is thing?"

Language is a handle we use to manipulate concepts. The definition of the thing is the thing so if you can challenge what the word means, you can challenge what the thing it describes is. Language also evolves, where as "things" do not. As a society we change who we are by changing how we talk about stuff. And that, in my opinion, is where the conflict comes. By the old standards of racism, angry MAGAmen weren't racist. By the new standards of racism, angry MAGAmen are racist. The battle must be about how we define racism.

I saw an amusing tweet yesterday:

You think it’s hot now, @NRA@ wait until an entire generation of kids traumatized with active shooter drills since they were TODDLERS turn 18 and get decide what to do about Daddy’s gun humping.

I grew up while Reagan was calling the USSR the Evil Empire and TV was full of Red Dawn and The Day After but we never did any missile drills. We all knew that we'd die in a fireball as soon as Ronnie lost his patience but we also knew there was fuckall we could do about it. I did four quarters of community college and three active shooter drills, one in which we had professors play-acting as homicidal maniacs. And I mean, I hid in a machine shop where other students were actively making gun parts. For now? "gun control" means "libs gonna take all my toys." But as soon as someone cracks through to "we're going to let you earn your machine gun instead of letting every dumb fuck have one" that shit's gonna turn on a dime. The definition of "gun control" is currently nebulous. As soon as it ceases to be it's all gonna change.

LIkewise, the definition of "domestic terrorism" is experiencing a revision this weekend, and a long overdue one. And here we are, arguing about the definition of "racism" because it's abundantly clear that the old definition is now harmful.

I'm not calling Roseanna and Amy racists to change their mind; they're a sunk cost. I'm calling them racist to reinforce a very useful societal norm, and to make sure that racism stays unacceptable, and that successive generations don't forget what everybody has already been through, and to fight the troubling resurgence of white nationalism.

Roseanna and Amy didn't used to be racists. That's the core problem. Used to be it was known to Roseanna, Amy and all their friends that camel drivers were subhuman but a gracious citizen would extend them the rights of humanity as if they'd earned it because we're a compassionate people. Now? Now there's a gay Persian hairdresser with seven vowels in his name running for city council (and you're goddamn right I voted for him in the primary). Growing up? The popular bumper sticker around town was an angry Arab caricature with a fuel gage for a mouth and the slogan "send the Marines for more oil NOW". It appears, however, that it never even made it onto the internet. Thirty years ago, this clip was in a major summer blockbuster that made $330m worldwide:

Theaters full of people laughing uproariously over the public shaming of a (damn hot) transgender woman. Seven years later we all kinda agreed that AIDS wasn't gay cancer as we watched Philadelphia. Five years after that we all kinda agreed that beating gay kids to death wasn't funny anymore as we all learned about Matthew Shepard. But every step of the way we had to redefine hatred and prejudice and if you were in high school when it was okay to laugh at Crocodile Dundee? You aren't yet 50.

I'd rather avoid it. But "racist grandma" is a trope. On the plus side we're changing fast enough that "racist grandma" is probably still in the workforce. On the minus side "racist grandma" votes a hell of a lot more often than the grandkids.