Dad Update

My parents will be meeting with the surgeon on Friday. If he's told them anything about the MRI, I don't know it. If the MRI was also inconclusive, the alternative will be exploratory surgery. Nobody's thrilled with that idea.

The Power of Words

By now, probably most people on my f-list have seen, had an opinion about, and posted about the woman who got a visit from the Secret Service due to her LJ post

The progression seems to have gone this way: She posted a rant about what she'd like God to do to GWBush on her LJ. That post is gone now, but it's been archived. Someone called the police on it as a threat to the President, and the Secret Service knocked on her door to discuss the issue. This was, of course, absolutely terrifying, but now that she's had a chance to calm down a little, she has posted a clarification of what happened and what she thinks about it vis a vis her own future and the current political climate.

My prediction is that it's going to have no impact on her future at all. There are a lot of FBI files out there, and the general attitude in any gov't official I've ever met is closer to "Is that a threat? No? Fine, I'm going to forget about it while I deal with the 4,778,392 known problems and the 11,579,358 suspicious flags that got raised before lunch today." (I work in DC, where the largest employer is the US Gov't. It totally redefines the nature of "company town." It also makes watching movies like Hunt for Red October very interesting, because you can tell who works where just by their reactions.)

The original poster says, and I believe her, that she got turned in by someone who had a personal grudge and wanted to make trouble for her. She says, and it's the truth, that the Secret Service must investigate any claim, no matter how tenuous or how ludicrious.

But what I really want to talk about is the power of words. Most of the people who reported this were horrified that a post was taken so seriously. She didn't mean it! It was just blowing off steam! It was just a joke! It was just words, she didn't actually incite anything!

Just words.

Words that it was very easy to discount because every poll shows that roughly half the country desperately wants this whole administration out of office. So when someone writes that "I wish something terrible would happen to him," everyone is supposed to know that it's just venting. Just a joke. Free speech. Not an actual advocation of violence.

Just words.

But...

"What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing, someone already told her twice." Just a joke.

"There is an abortion doctor (picture) in your neighborhood at this address. Their children (pictures) go to this school. His wife (picture) works at..." Free speech.

"You're stupid! Stupid! You can't do anything right! Useless! I don't know why I put up with you! You'll never be worth anything!" Not an actual advocation of violence.

Just words. Which take on a whole new horror when you don't agree with them.

Words are personal. Anyone who has thrilled to hear "I love you," snarled at "You're wrong," or fretted over a review knows the power of words.

Words shape nations. "We hold these truths to be self-evident." "We, the people." "Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth." "I have a dream." "Hell no, we won't go!"

The written word shapes history. The Magna Carta. The Constitution. Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The phosphorescent word is well on its way to reshaping society. We all know what bloggers are doing to the news media. But look at LJ itself! A woman muses on the way people view rape victims, coming up with the slogan "No pity. No shame. No silence." Within hours her slogan has exploded across LJ, making people break their silence, spawning hundreds of offers to do something, anything to help and spread the message. A soldier wishes she could help the people in the nation where she serves, and her friends list organizes into a grassroots movement. And a woman says "I wish something terrible would happen" to the President and gets a knock at the door.

Internet words are twice as powerful as spoken words. They flash around the world faster than regular writing, they never disappear - even after her post went down, how long was it until a screencapture showed up? Not long. There is no denying what gets written.

The Moving pixel writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

We vent and we gossip and we chat and we whine; we amuse and we bore. But we are none of us exempt from the indelibility of the internet or the responsibility of our words.

They're never "just" words.

A real horror story for halloween

I just overheard someone at the other end of the cube farm telling how he's inadvertently disenfranchised himself. He's filing a change of address, and since he's moving to a swing state, he wanted to vote there. But only *after* they sent in the computerized paperwork did they tell him that he'd missed the registration deadline there and since they had just wiped him out of the records for this state (and it was past our registration) he was going to have to sit this election out.

He's taking it up with the Board of Elections. Good luck to him!