The article to which the above image was attached is entitled, "Sticks and Stones: Why language is more powerful than you think." Probably, almost everyone reading this blog posting will be aware of the "Sticks and Stones" reference. I first heard this little poem from my Mother:
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
As presented to me "way back when," by someone who continues to be an authority in my life, this "children's rhyme" was intended to have exactly the impact suggested by Wikipedia. My Mother gave me this little verse to serve as "a defense against name-calling and verbal bullying. [It was] intended to [help me] increase resiliency, avoid physical retaliation, and/or to remain calm and indifferent."
In fact, thinking logically, the same verse, intended to help me to remain "calm and indifferent" in the face of a verbal attack, could also be seen as advice to prepare to fight and win a physical battle when someone attacks with something more than mere words. Quakers and draft resisters, and Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who become influential with me after I was no longer, strictly speaking, a "child," didn't have a cute little poem to advise me, but I did become convinced, nonetheless, that we needed to develop a society in which attacks - verbal or physical - are not immediately countered with opposing force (and hopefully superior force). We need some different "non-violent" strategy, but just ignoring attacks, even if non-physical, isn't sufficient.
Our political conflicts, today, reflect real, and substantial, and meaningful disagreements and have "real" consequences. We may, for instance, be on the road to "dictatorship," in the estimation of many. How do we resolve these attacks upon us, in our current political situation? This question came to mind when I read a recent edition of "The Warning," a Substack blog published regularly by Steve Schmidt, a political and corporate consultant who has most usually worked on Republican Party political campaigns, but who is "warning" us against Donald Trump, and his entire retinue, including Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance. Schmidt's blog posting from February 11, 2025, can be read in its entirety if you will just click this link. It's worth reading.
Despite my appreciation for the counsel delivered to me by my mother, I think I agree with the National Children's Museum (who published the article about "Sticks and Stones" that I referenced right at the start of this blog posting). Words have consequences, and can "cause great pain." They can, in fact, transform the realities we inhabit, becuse we build the social, economic, political, and physical realities upon which we depend on the foundation of the "words" we use to define that "political world" in which we most immediately reside.
Ignoring verbal attacks is not enough. Instead, I am recommending that we "Speak Truth To Power."
Speaking out and presenting our best understanding of what is "true" is very important. In fact, it is vital. The social, political, economic, and physical realities that constitute the "real world" we most immediately inhabit are based on the words we use to describe it, and if those words don't "tell the truth" then we can lose all that is best in what we have achieved so far, and will be stymied in our efforts to do better in the future.
Despite that children's rhyme, words can hurt us (sorry, Mom). When attacked with words - and we are under attack - it is absolutely vital that we insist that the words we deploy will tell "the truth" in opposition to the "power" that is deploying its untrue words against a government that is, truly, "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
If we want that kind of world - and that has been our aspiration since 1776 - it is "we, the people," who must speak out now - speak truth to power - lest that government so wonderfully described in Lincoln's words does, in the end, "perish from the earth."
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