What is an "Inthinkable?"

Have I ever mentioned that one of my favorite movies  of all time is the comedy Blazing Saddles? Yes, the movie is vulgar, outrageous, humorous at the same time. The movie is at once a spoof of other movies, and breaks the "rules" of racial portrayal in movies that had obtained a generation before. As such, it wasn't truly ground breaking in 1974, as much as it confirmed how far the U. S. had come in such a short time. In his article at the American Thinker entitled The Inthinkables, he notes that:

Schnatter lost it all this week, including his name on a football stadium and a business school. His offense? Referring to irrevocable history about the founder of a competing franchise during a conference call, though inappropriate vernacular has never been ascribed to Schnatter himself.

Once upon a time, Schnatter could have spoken of Colonel Sanders's ingrained culture without consequence. And once upon a time, Blazing Saddles was produced. Mel Brooks often laments that his comedy masterpiece could never be made today. But in 1974, the art of thinking without being offended was not lost. Sane people were not actively searching out cause for their feelings to be bruised.

I had experience once of exactly what Mel Brooks was speaking of in the Vanity Fair article. I was talking to someone at work about movies and asked if he had ever seen Blazing Saddles He claimed he had not. I then began to describe the scene where Cleavon Little rides up and reads the gathered town his appointment as the new sheriff. When the town folk point their weapons at Little, he draws his own weapon and points it at himself, saying in a gruff voice, "Lower your weapons or the nigger gets it!" Then, one of the Johnson women says something to the effect of "I think he means it. Better do as he says." Little then takes himself hostage over to the sheriff's office. My co worker became outraged. It didn't matter that the movie was a spoof, or that Richard Pryor had cowritten the movie script, or that Cleavon Little agreed to say the lines and that Mel Brooks, a Jew, would understand discrimination. For any thinking person, if was a comedy that made fun of everyone and everything. To the perpetually outraged, the 'inthinkables," any word may be a trigger to display outsized emotional response and signal their virtue.

Words convey meaning, nuance,  feeling, concepts and thoughts.  By closing off certain words to being expressed, we close off our ability to think the things the words express.  Even the so called hurtful words have historical meaning that should not be forgotten, lest future generations find themselves repeating the sins of the past.  This is why, for instance, the tearing down of the Confederate statues is a mistake.  The Confederate statues are a reminder of a time when we treated other human beings a beasts of burden, and some men took the labor of others as their own.

We were wise enough once to know what was truly evil and what wasn't. We were also strong enough to think for ourselves. Regardless of our level of education, we knew what words meant. And even those of meanest sustenance could articulate abstract notions without fear.

Words are vessels of thought. Words are not thought themselves, but they contain and convey thought, albeit sometimes crudely. But words must never supplant thought. Destroy a word, and it becomes difficult to conceive that thought again.

What transpires today is a more grievous abomination. If words are retained at all, they are now weighed and measured according to the feelings they evoke, and not the concepts they contain. It is but one channel through which reason is being actively replaced with unfettered emotion.

An "inthinkable" is one of these who has lost the ability to think and reason,  Along with the ability to reason, such people have lost any sense of humor, of irony and wit.  They would never understand the sarcasm of Jonathon Swift's famous essay A Modest Proposal thinking it was intended to be mean and heartless rather than putting a mirror to society and the politicians of his day.

Read the whole thing and if you are not an inthinable, think about what is happening to our society, of culture, and our nation.