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Just Because The Country's Circling the Drain . . .

Jan Flynn

There is no excuse to let our syntax standards down


My well-worn coffee mug NEVER feels badly. Photo by author
My well-worn coffee mug NEVER feels badly. Photo by author

I understand your plight. We’re living through dark and uneasy times, my friend, with many occasions when you feel the need to verbalize your angst. 


At moments of high emotion, one cannot be expected to wax eloquent. As long as you’re not merely spewing more hate and insanity — which, these days, equates to spitting on a fish — you should be free to lighten your heart by expressing what burdens it.

It’s understandable and entirely justified if the national and global news causes you to feel bewildered, demoralized, frustrated, helplessly enraged, and even despairing. You can divulge all such sentiments to me and I will listen with attention and compassion.


Just don’t tell me you feel badly. It sets my teeth on edge.

I know you mean well. You were no doubt browbeaten by a string of pickle-faced English teachers who, while they never unlocked the mysteries of syntax for you, did a very good job of convincing you that the correct way to say something must be the most awkward way to say it.


As a recovering English teacher, I feel bad about that.


Not badly. And I’m correct in saying so.


Also as a recovering English teacher, I could cause your eyes to glaze over inside of two minutes were I to launch into a helpful explication of the difference between action verbs and linking verbs and which ones are modified with adjectives rather than adverbs.


Don’t panic. I’m not going to do that.


But I implore you to hear me out on this: the adjective “bad” and the adverb “badly” can both be applied to the verb “feel.” But they mean very different things (because action vs. linking verbs, which I have promised not to go into).


If you feel bad about something, that means you are experiencing emotional or psychological discomfort. 


Personally, there are many things at this moment about which I feel bad.


I feel bad that a convicted felon with clearly deteriorating cognition is sitting in the Oval Office. I feel bad that he has ordered a concentration camp to be prepared at Guantanamo Bay for the “criminal aliens” he plans to disappear there — perhaps even if said aliens’ crimes consist of nothing more than being in the country with an expired visa, because it’s unclear what he means by “criminal.” 


It’s unclear what he means by anything he says. I feel bad about that too.


I feel bad that an unelected, unaccountable, pathologically greed-driven gazillionaire who is eager to trash the American economy has his hands on the federal payment system. I feel bad that he’s got access to all my financial data, and yours too. I feel bad that he can hold Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, and every other federal payment hostage — while he spins out his fantasy of colonizing Mars. 


I also feel bad that he was, at least at one point, an illegal immigrant, and that he got away with it. 


I feel bad that babies who once had a chance at a healthy life in developing countries who were recipients of USAID until days ago, will now die of malaria or diarrhea.

I feel bad that no matter how fastidious I am about my use of the internet, I can’t open my browser without being exposed to images of #47 and his band of cruelty capos. 


Please take heed: I don’t feel badly about any of that.


Because if you feel badly, that means you are either incapable, deficient, or incompetent when it comes to feeling. 


And while that may certainly be said to apply to #47 and his broligarchs, it does not apply to me.


Nor do I believe it applies to you. You wouldn’t have read this far otherwise.

 

So as we all figure out how to navigate through the rubble created by the New World Disorder, let’s at least be clear as we give voice to our dismay.


Because things are badly enough right now, don’t you think?



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