Herrington: Shoved Down Our Throats?

     It takes many hours to figure out what we need to understand but only a few seconds to figure out that we do not understand enough; then again, it may take years or decades in the future to actually understand what we have previously only subconsciously figured out. In the case of learned social patterns, it may take generations, and in the case of social traditions, it may take many generations.

     Let’s take the case of the use of language when we make certain comments. We all use common expressions that may send mixed signals. One such expression is, “This is being shoved down my throat.” The basic meaning of the expression is that we feel that we are being forced against our wills to do something that we would not otherwise do. Others are torturing us into submission. This is seen as criminal, unacceptable, unreasonable, inhumane, and not to be allowed under any circumstances. Think of something like waterboarding. If we are being tortured, and it includes our being forced to shove something down our throats, it is not acceptable to us. We do, however, allow that under certain circumstances, we might entertain the thought that it is perfectly necessary and reasonable to apply this same technique to others. “I don’t want anything shoved down my throat, but if the circumstance is just right, I can rationalize doing this very thing to you.”

     The healthcare bill was shoved down our throats undemocratically. Not that we want to be a democracy, since that is the first step towards becoming a totalitarian dictatorship, as under socialism. It is much better if a few self-serving aristocrats decide for me, right? There will not be any conflict of interest in that, will there?

     The budget is being shoved down our throats, although there has been ample time during the year to actually prepare for this annual ordeal. I wonder if we can actually vote in a line item veto finally. Each team has been screaming about this for decades. Let’s put the budget to the national vote and use a one vote hand print to verify the choice. Schools, bridges, military, and safe food: Good?

     What does this expression actually mean, “shoved down our throats?” If it is not torture, then maybe it is an act of feminization, sodomy, and so men in power will complain of having something, whatever it is, shoved down their throats. Maybe this is where the additional threat is used to complete the cycle of abusiveness, “This is something I just can’t swallow.”

     If this is not a sexual reference, how do we account for its proximity to such expressions as, “Bite me!” or “Don’t just blow me off!” Which may or may not have anything to do with, “You said a mouth full!” or “That’s just more than I can take.” Who knows how, “You don’t know Jack,” fits in. It has become common place for people to use such endearing terms as, “I just got screwed by that salesman.” And the ever popular, “I am not doing my friggin’ homework.” Some people use the term “fricken,” as if this simple transformation so easily camouflages the “F word.” “Oh, fudge” is what my mother used to say. Is anyone really fooled by these leaps into polite language?

     The “N-word,” anybody?

     Perhaps we can rest our responses on the craze of “WTF.” I think I have heard this joke from almost everyone I know. Forget the Britney song, “If You Seek Amy.” In polite company, it is absolutely credible to say “drop the F-Bomb.”

     But, I don’t want to stray from my original target, the concept of dominance by having something “shoved down your throat.” It’s the sexualization of everything that is my real target here. We use sex to sell everything under the sun, including ideas and ideologies. We are long past the concept of the glamorization of alcohol, food, and cigarettes by showing nearly naked identical female twins frolicking with suggestive gestures of intimate behavior imitating self-satisfaction and preludes of incest. If anything, let’s get straight who is shoving what down whose throat.

     According to the camera men, we can hardly wait, it seems, to see Ann Coulter pull a Sharon Stone, again.

     Along with the free market, we have the thought that if people will buy it, then it must be good to make it and sell it. The areas where we are really working on this idea are in the arenas of pollution and pornography. If a company is allowed to make whatever it wants, regardless of the “pollution” it makes as a part of the process of the free market, free speech, then we are buying the product they sell and the pollution they produce as a consequence of that process. This is very difficult to account for since it interferes with the concept of job creation. If we produce jobs, it must be worth the pollution, right? If the very job that is created kills the worker and/or others, then the money made seems to be of little value to the common good, really. Who is the winner then? If cigarettes have finally been seen as public health hazards, how long will it take to see entire industries as major killers?

     If our children do not learn the values of working for a living at a trade or a skill, other than in a form of the sex trade, then they will be unprepared to meet the demands of retirement, it seems, unless they are allowed to form unions that will stress this. For all I know, this is already the case, and so it might be included like a fair trade emblem on the film to authorize it as one that promotes safe sex and social consciousness. Youth has its privileges and its liabilities, including viability, vitality, longevity, and saturation of emotional stimulation. I’m not sure what the shelf life of a porn star is, but even professional athletes only average about 4 years. A few may go on into their 40’s. But they have a shorter life span. And then there is the saturation of the world market. And not everyone can play on the field, or whatever. In any case, this seems like a field ripe for social workers, LPC’s, and ministers who can remain objective about the past celluloid encounters of their parishioners. I wonder what family values have done to slow down the recruiting of our youth to the service of the Internet? Has anyone studied the total number of our youth who have been sexually photographed? 70% have tried pot; that’s uninhibiting!

     And as far as our being targeted as customers for all of these products, we ourselves have been groomed into submission, and advertising is being shoved down our throats. Chicken is the blond meat, and beef is the brunette, right? If they want to stress the extra special value of the product, we get a two for, both a blond and a brunette. For women, the males need to have super fresh breath, smell like a god, dress like an angel, and have the abs of an Olympian. And this is just the surface stuff! Subliminal messages have been around for years, and it goes without saying that product placement has us chasing our own tails. We can even see shows that have us to pay by text message to choose the best advertisement. They can sell us the idea that we can pay to pick how we want to be targeted!

     When we hear a phrase that seems catchy on TV, we can immediately go and type it into a search engine and see what pops up. Usually, by the time we hear it, it has been copied and pasted on every site across cyberspace. The idea that we have heard it first is such an illusion that we have no real understanding that the entire news cast message was read off of a blog that has been duplicated enumerate times before it was ever even announced. Try this for yourself. Type in an expression that you have heard from some news anchor. Almost always this will be revealed as something closer to a unified press release than real reporting. There is nothing clever about any of it, other than that we have been duped into thinking that we heard it first. Instead, we had it shoved down our throats.

     This is bad, that is good, this is American, this is anti-American, and this is brand new, you need to try it, although the side effects may kill you and your genitals may fall off. Fear. That is being shoved down our throats. It’s the end of the world. You may or may not really believe it, but just to hedge your bets, you believe contradicting ideas. Jesus is coming and only the strong survive. Life is sacred, and so we need to uphold birth, but for those who are born the world is cruel and they need to overcome the odds, fight for a place in the sun, and then hope that pollution does not block it out.

     Okay, I see how it is. We need to set our sights on selling every product to every person in the world. This will increase quality of life for everyone. We will not rest until there is total market penetration. Use up all the trees, all the shrimp, all the oil, all the land, and all of the species. We can fight the Democrats against the Republicans, the conservatives against the liberals, the liberal media against the rich minority, the hedgers against the workers, boys against the skins.

     In the end we will come up against the final solution: the finely toned and super-attractive against the common and unremarkable average. After a nose-job and a tummy tuck, a Brazilian butt lift, fat-farm, rehab, iboga, and an exorcism, it will finally be time for a Nietzschean re-evaluation of all values. We will then sit around our Swiss bank accounts, pass through the portals of our gated community, enter the codes on our personal alarm systems, and realize that in the world of gamesmanship Monopoly, we are only being allowed to exist because we have drunk the Kool-Aid of social acceptance, and that all of this has been a cluster bop of “shove it down your throat.”

     For the purpose of their having a comfortable life, the few have sold out the many by capitalizing on the resources that we all once held in common before the rule of law that secured the rights of the few to corner the market on dominance and possession. The many have remained ignorant having believed the hype that only those who have gets, and, in the end, the last crowd gesturing equivocally with the grand gesture, pointing to their mouths with their heads up turned, repeat the phrase that those who did it to us first taught us all to say so that we would be able to name it when it happened to us……..the claim they made was the fate they created for us. Where was collective bargaining during the time of Patrick Henry? What was the Declaration of Independence all about anyways?

     If you don’t have a job, and you don’t pay taxes, and you have lost your house, and you don’t have an education, and you are not inventive, then you have no incentive to do better other than the fact that no opportunities are being shoved down your throats. Those who have the money are not going to give it to you. They owe you nothing. And you are not going to be able to force the idea that you need them to hire you down their throats. I suggest that you learn to protest effectively, to educate yourself comprehensively, and to choose your leaders and corporations very wisely. And learn how to cover your mouth so you can cough without something flying in while you are trying to clear your throat.

runningturtle87

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     Having completed 33 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests.

     Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com