Not original with me, but...

I have a beloved relative who for years would never say the word “idiot,” because (if memory serves) she’d been raised to believe that calling someone an idiot was as bad as swearing.

Which she also did not do.

However, the people who’d taught her that rule went to their eternal rewards long before Trump 1.0 or Trump 2.0, which is an even stupider Trump but with more bullets. Of late, I have heard this beloved relative use the word idiot, and I’ve even heard her swear.

Me? I’ve never shied away from calling someone an idiot and don’t get me started on fucking swearing, you fucking fuck. But here’s what I wonder:

For people who’ve coarsened their language in this time of stupidity, will they go back to speaking as they did in the Before Times, once the orange smear is out of office, dead, or no longer in the nation’s blood stream? Can we stop having pipsqueaks like U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno (who lives in a gargantuan glass house) cursing freely at a Congressional hearing? Will we stop pretending that profanity is a sign of masculinity, authenticity, or any thing other than the speaker’s inability to come up with a different word?

Obviously, different generations approach swearing differently (see this for more on that) but when someone curses in one of my college classes, they almost always apologize, though I don’t ask for that. And though I am a trash-mouth, I am also a skilled hypocrite and don’t find the need to sprinkle curse words in my lectures. I mean, why would I do that?

But there’s been a sea change lately, cursing-wise. Politicians, according to this study, have used profanity in public only rarely until recently. In fact:

It used to be rare for presidents, even as candidates, to swear in official remarks. Woodrow Wilson broke the profanity seal in 1919, recounting a time where he made a “conspicuous *ss of himself.” Since then, presidents, their seconds-in-command, and presidential hopefuls have used profanity at least 692 times.

87% of all uses of profanity (605) have taken place in the last 10 years, and 78% of all uses (538) have come from two politicians: Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Notably, both Trump and Biden escalated their usage over their terms, and Trump’s usage in his second term has outpaced his first. While Biden heavily relied on “damn,” Trump’s usage of profanity has been more varied, introducing “b*st*rd,” “b*tch”, “b*llsh*t”, and “f*ck” into the presidential vocabulary.

And as goes the raping felon, so go his minions and the rest of us kind of get caught up in the stream, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong. Trump is an idiot. He’s a fucking idiot, but part of me misses the days when swear words could still get our attention because we heard them in public so rarely.