decorum is dead
some thoughts from 2020
written sept. 30, 2020
“My masters, are you mad, or what are you? Have you no wit, manners nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?…Is there no respect of persons, place nor time in you?” — Shakespeare, The Twelfth Night
Danny says decorum is dead. I agree. Except, I don’t think it ever existed. Not really. If you watched the first evening of presidential debates on Tuesday night with your guard down then you too were probably sucker punched by the gaucherie. You understand why Danny said what he said.
There are 33 days left until a decorum-less 2020 Election.
The American populous was gutted this year, our thick hide sliced down the middle from chin to tail, our chest cavity laid bare between a broken sternum. What was inside is now out. It is making everyone squeamish, except for those who are emerging from the membrane between skin and nub, where they’ve been hiding all this time, waiting for the Great White Knight to finally “make America great again.”
We were never great. We have never had a democracy.
Debate shit show.
Decorum didn’t die on a Tuesday night in an empty arena with politicians yelling into the void. Something that never lived, can’t die. Decorum has always been our little white lie.
The death of a construct that lives solely in our minds can be easy to miss. It is a slow death. As the cornerstones of its flimsy build begin to deteriorate, chipped away by those that beg to differ or lack reverence, a new construct is hoked up, almost overnight. Unbeknownst to us, the dreams and frights that lay tucked away in our unconscious begin to outline a new blueprint for a new construct. By the time we realize a new construct has been built to replace the old one, it has elaborated into a fortress, bedecked with wrought iron window cages and gothic stone arches.
If decorum is dead, then what new scaffolding has been erected in its place inside of the collective unconscious, here in 2020? Here inside our human negligence?
Decorum gave us a coverall to cloak our shame. It gave us a set of rules we could follow to convey to the world we are decent and within the bounds of civility, no matter how brutish we might get. Those who did not follow the rules of decorum were criticized for their disregard of our collective honors system–– just do it. These rule-breakers were booted from the community. How dare they poke holes in America’s mirage.
In the 19th century, an American white man named Samuel became obsessed with the Black psyche. He couldn’t fathom the hope of the slaves or their stubborn assumption of humanity. So, he called their dreams a disease. Drapetomania. It was Samuel’s hypothesis for what “caused” enslaved Africans to flee captivity. He believed that slavery was such an improvement in the lives of slaves that only those suffering from some form of mental illness would wish to escape.
The extensive perversion and gaslighting that white people have employed to break the mirror in front of them — lest they see the monster… is it not exhausting to be so deplorable?
We say decorum is dead because those with no decorum no longer face the consequences for failing at decency. Instead, we say, “Times have changed.” When really, nothing’s changed.
I do not mourn this fake funeral for decorum. Can we finally agree to say out loud that which we’ve all known: the Emperor is buckass naked.
