Hold on, now. Set BK aside. When confronting a crying little boy in trouble, who sees his tears and thinks the most apt metaphor for them is “weapon”?https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1048181649295462400 …
1. Writer, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/authors/jeet-heer/ … 2. email: jeetheer1967 at gmail dot com 3. Twitter essayist 4. Drawn by Joe Ollmann
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Conor Friedersdorf Retweeted The New Yorker
Hold on, now. Set BK aside. When confronting a crying little boy in trouble, who sees his tears and thinks the most apt metaphor for them is “weapon”?https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1048181649295462400 …
Conor Friedersdorf added,
oh I totally used tears as a weapon when I was a little boy.
I can imagine little boys in trouble using years as a distraction, or a ploy, but you’re going to have to explain “weapon” to me.
Nope. But I definitely was one.
I think some kids are canny enough to figure out that wailing loudly is upsetting/embarrassing/migraine-inducing & that they can cry to cause pain without being punished.
I agree. I also think weaponize means “marshal a tool for violence,” not “avoid punishment by raising annoyance costs.” If we adopt the latter sense I’ll be a lot less automatically concerned when I hear about new weaponization efforts in North Korea.
Which is why I mentioned that some kids cry to cause pain instead of simply avoid punishment. Cry around a babysitter who's been strict to make their parents fire the babysitter, for example. I once lost a job that way. Might have deserved it, but the kid knew what he was doing.
He manipulated. He harmed. He did not “weaponize.” No violence was involved. Among the biggest misuses of language in our era is smuggling conflations with violence into nonviolent things to exploit the widespread consensus against initiating force
Sure, weaponized is an overused, hyperbolic cliche (and sad to see in New Yorker)
No, it isn't. It's a perfectly fine and reasonable word to use when something is used to mount non-violent attacks. This literalism is also what's leading to so many people misunderstanding & dismiss political/social concepts,thinking dictionary definitions aren't be-all-end-all.
Are*** the be-all-end-all
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