Y’all are using those words again... And you still don’t know what they mean

Well, now. Y’all are back out on the social media flinging around $3 words like they’re free samples at Costco, and once again it falls to me to gently point out that a good number of you have no earthly idea what those words mean.

I don’t say that to sound smart. Being the man who corrects vocabulary at the supper table is not a talent — it’s an affliction, and Honey Doodle has borne it with the patience of a saint for years now. But words are my business, and a fella ought to be good at something. So pull up a chair and let me hold class a minute. Lord knows I’ve butchered a few of these myself, so take this less as a lecture from on high and more as one sinner telling another where the ditch is.

Elitist. Let’s start with the big one, because y’all have been swinging it like a Wiffle bat lately. Somebody even had the nerve to call my dear wife, Honey Doodle, an elitist. Honey Doodle. The woman runs a children’s charity and helps folks for a living. If she’s the elite, the elite need to renegotiate their benefits package.

Here’s the trouble: some of you say “elite” when the word you’re reaching for is “educated.” Those aren’t the same animal.

Am I an elitist? No, sir. I was raised in Lilburn, and my first job was slinging nachos at a little league concession stand starting at the ripe old age of 13. I went to Meadowcreek High School, an institution nobody has ever called elite. Am I educated? Yes. I went to Oglethorpe University. I earned it, I paid for it, I worked my tail off for it, and I’ll not apologize for a degree. But I regret to report I am not elite. I’m over here eating Slim Jims, drinking a Coke, and watching grown men in tights pretend to hit each other, minding my own business until somebody on the Internet says something that burns my britches.

About 35% of Georgians have a college degree. That’s an awful lot of folks to be calling “the chosen few.”

Because that’s what the word means. It comes from the French for “the chosen” — the select few. A real elitist is somebody who believes a small, special class of people ought to run everything while the rest of us sit down, hush up, and be grateful for the privilege. Historically that meant kings and lords, men who figured the Almighty personally appointed them to be in charge and appointed you to plow their field.

So if you’re hunting a genuine elitist, don’t squint at the schoolteacher grading papers at her kitchen table at 9 o’clock at night. Look at the fella with more money than a midsize country who swears he’s just a regular guy like you — right before he climbs aboard his private jet. Look at who actually holds the power and treats working people like they’re too dumb to run their own lives. Nine times out of ten, the person screaming “elitist” at a small-town reporter is toting water for the real elite and doesn’t even know his arms are tired.

Communist. (That’s com-mu-nist, not “commernist.”) Now, I’m not here to defend communism. It is not my favorite economic system, on account of its nasty habit of starving and shooting its own people by the millions. But it is an economic system, same family as feudalism and capitalism, and an old philosophy about class warfare besides. What it is not is a polite Southern way of saying “any idea that gives me indigestion.” Lately y’all have used it on every Democrat, every opinion you don’t share, and the fella at the Piggly Wiggly who short-changed you a nickel last Tuesday.

Republic. I am getting plumb worn out hearing folks yell “we’re a republic, not a democracy!” like they just checkmated Socrates. I know you like to file everything under red team and blue team, but the name stamped on a political party does not tell you its philosophy — which must make it downright bewildering to crack a history book and run smack into the Democratic-Republicans. So is America a republic or a democracy? It’s both. A republic is a kind of democracy. Arguing about it is like going to the McDonald’s line insisting they sell Big Macs and not McNuggets. Friend, they sell both, and you’re holding up the drive-thru.

Treason. Whew, boy. Y’all reach for this one like it’s iced tea in July. Somebody in Washington so much as parts his hair wrong, and here comes the treason talk. Let me help, because this is the one word in the whole lesson the Founders bothered to define for us themselves. It’s right there in Article III of the Constitution: treason is levying war against the United States, or giving their enemies aid and comfort. That’s the list. That’s the whole list. A leaker probably isn’t committing treason. A senator who votes wrong isn’t committing treason. And the fella who wrote a mean editorial about your candidate is surely not committing treason — I’d know, because I’ve gotten the emails.

The Founders wrote that definition skinny on purpose. They’d just wriggled out from under a passel of English kings who liked to holler “treason!” at anybody who sassed them. So when you sling it around that way, you’re not sounding patriotic. You’re doing the exact king thing those men bled to get away from.

Entitlement. Entitlement is a budget word, which is likely the whole problem, seeing as the last few generations of us dozed off during math class (present company not entirely excluded). We do love to sneer about “those people and their entitlements.” But like I said — budget word. It means money the government is legally obligated to pay out because the law says so. Care to guess the two biggest entitlement programs we’ve got? Social Security and Medicare. That’s right — your checks. They’re called entitlements because you paid into them every working day of your life, which means you are, in fact, entitled to get your money back. It’s layaway down at the Georgia Gun Store in Gainesville. You put your money down for 40 years, and now you’re entitled to walk out with what you paid for. So the next time you spit the word “entitlement” like a sunflower seed, understand you’re spitting at your own mailbox.

So there you have it. Class dismissed.

Now, I didn’t drag you through all this to make anybody feel stupid — all right, maybe a smidge, but mostly not. I did it because I’m as guilty as the next fella. I have grabbed the wrong word plenty of times and gone strutting off proud as a peacock, only to get home and learn I’d been holding it upside down the whole while.

Words are the tools we think with. Swing them around without knowing which one’s the hammer, and you’re going to mash your own thumb every single time. Call an educated woman “elitist,” a Democrat a “communist,” or your own Social Security check a handout, and you haven’t won the argument. You’ve just told everybody in earshot that you skipped the reading and showed up for the quiz.

Here’s my free advice, worth every penny: before you fling a $3 word at a stranger on the Internet, spend a nickel and look it up first. Or — and hear me out — skip the word altogether and ask the fella how his day’s going and whether he needs a hand with anything. You two aren’t going to agree anyhow. But we could all use a few more lessons in loving our neighbor.

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B.T. Clark

Publisher at The Georgia Sun – btclark@thegeorgiasun.com

B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.

B.T. Clark

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