Scott Tibbs



Using profanity does not make your argument better

By Scott Tibbs, May 31, 2023

Too many people think profanity is an "argument." It is not. It makes you look childish and stupid. If your method of political "argumentation" sounds like an Eddie Murphy stand up routine in 1987, you are not convincing anyone. In fact, you can usually tell when someone is too dim-witted to make an argument based on facts and logic, because they say the F word over and over and over again.

We saw this recently as Miller Lite had a woman running around saying the same curse word over and over as she talked about how the beer company had exploited scantily-clad women to get the "male gaze" to sell more beer. The use of sexuality to sell products is indeed something worth discussing, but whatever message the beer company was trying to send was lost under a pile of manure. Having a woman running around cursing is also degrading and exploitative, just in a different way.

This is not new, of course, but has gotten worse since 2015. Using profanity as an "argument" has even become accepted, or at least tolerated, among many Christian conservatives who would have recoiled at profanity as an "argument" fifteen years ago. Becoming angry and dropping F bombs shows you are "authentic" and that you "care" about the issues, when it really shows you have very little imagination and a limited vocabulary. "At least he fights," they say, as someone beclowns himself by imitating Andrew "Dice" Clay.

It is one thing if someone drops a profanity because they are legitimately angry. It is another thing to be crass as a performative tactic, to get attention or clicks or to show "authenticity." When someone speaks publicly and all they can say is the F word, it shows a complete lack of self-control by someone who should not be trusted with authority or who cannot be taken seriously in their arguments about public policy.

But as much as we might laugh at Leftists who behave this way - or scream the F word at the Fourth of July parade - it is worse when "conservatives" engage in this behavior or defend our "leaders" when they do it. It does not make you a "cuck" or a "loser" to insist on better behavior or to insist that leaders show maturity. The conservative movement and the Republican Party - spurred on in part by the "entertainment wing" of the movement in conservative media - needs to return to the days of Ronald Reagan. We need to be better.



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