An idle mind, it is said, is the devil’s workshop, and stretching that premise further to the Covid19 pandemic situation, an idle state of being is that on steroids. Everyone is WFH (working from home). Everyone is overwhelmed by everyone else being at home. Everyone escapes by gluing themselves to their gadgetry arsenal of cellphone, laptop, iPad… whatever have you. And everyone has an opinion that everyone else needs to listen carefully. Nothing wrong with that per se, except when expressing that opinion is a chance to show some warped sense of superiority by being unkind and offensive. I partly attribute that to the (now ex-)President’s 4 years that normalized bullying, tough talking, rough-speak which utterly disregards everyone else’s rights, thoughts or feelings. About a month ago, in a social media group of female attorneys (a private group where we can refer or consult on our questions), I posed a question where I used the word “alien” while narrating in bullet points the background or fact pattern of my question. To lay the background “alien” is the word that is used in the law and regulations. I did not use the word out of legal context and I had no bad or misplaced intent. I was merely drawing the background to my query. I got a couple of answers, but one young fairly fresh-out-of-law-school lawyer posted this response in all caps, to the effect of — “CAN WE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop referring to our clients as “aliens”? I KNOW THE LAW USES THAT TERM BUT THE LAW IS RACIST AND DO WE NEED TO SUPPORT THAT?” Woh, calm down, girl. First of all, the foreign national I was asking about was not even my client, contrary to your assumptions. My client is the institution that is the other party in a collaborative contract with a foreign element and therefore may have a legal repercussion that I was exploring. I used the word “alien” once, and it was clear that I had not used that term in any racist or divisive way by ANY stretch. I merely asked about someone whose status was referred to in the law and statutes as being an “alien”. It was bland, impartial, and neutral. I shrugged that person’s all-caps rant off although, being a law practitioner for over 20 years…. it really shocked (appalled) me how the courtesy people in the profession has evolved — almost totally gone. In these times, every chance someone gets to call others out, to be rude, to be woke, to grand-stand, to outrightly attribute moral values on words — will be used on the pretext of justifications like “speaking truth to power”, “using your voice”, and every other woke reason you have to cancel and judge people outright. Did that reaction look, or even so much as glance, into the context of my question? Was that kind of response even proportionate to the perceived wrong? Is alien a word that has now become the unspeakable “A-word”? And more strikingly, does not the rudeness and disrespect in your reaction underscore the moral hypocrisy of your woke-ness? I wonder. Just because you can say something does not mean you should. And if you do choose to speak, it doesn’t mean you should shout and scream. If you demand kindness and respect, show that yourself in your dealings. Give people a chance. In law, it’s called due process, and is a very basic hurdle before you render any kind judgment. Strike — but hear me first. With that incident, I remind myself that the feeling I get now and then of being bothered by disproportionate overkill reactions is not real. People get hypersensitive especially in this weird past year that get us all cooped up and with almost no real face-to-face social interactions. But while my feelings may not be real, the bandwagon of the Cancel Culture and its many little variants are galloping forwards fast. And one day, it may be the norm that no one will be able to say anything other than safe, politically correct things. No one will express their true opinions. We will be imprisoning people for their thoughts and conscience. By then, what a bland, homogenous, unoriginal and dangerous world this would be.
“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
― George Orwell
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