Intolerance will NOT be tolerated!

Tolerance is a buzzword. I am here to be a buzzkill.

If you utilize the definition, you aren’t playing by the rules. If you utilize the rules, you are playing with the definition.

Think of all the things you currently believe deserve ‘tolerance’. Okay. Got your things? Are you sure? Think hard about it. I want you to be certain.

My guess is your list consists of things you already agree with. Is this tolerance?

Tolerance is ‘allowing’ things you don’t agree with, even though you don’t agree with them! So now: What are the things you believe most deserve ‘tolerance’?

Hate speech? Bullying? Molestation? Rape? Terrorism? My guess is that you want ‘tolerance’ of things you already support. I don’t support this view of tolerance. I am intolerant of ‘tolerance’.

On social media I have stated: Intolerance will NOT be tolerated! I have often received acquiescence from unsuspecting oxymoronic adherents. Being intolerant of intolerance is, quite simply, being intolerant. No big mystery there. However, what about my stance: Intolerance of ‘tolerance’? What then?

Surely this palette is much grayer. I am serious, but about what, exactly?

The english language. I just want things to mean what they mean, and not their morphological 2nd cousins once removed. I understand ‘Google’ is a verb. I can accept that because it is a word which is only decades old, at best. It hasn’t removed anything. But I like words to mean what they were intended to mean. Perhaps I expect too much. Maybe I am just a dying generation – that needs to go away – to make room for those who ‘don’t care much for words’.

Take the word ‘save’, for example. The oldest generation alive are the only ones who are even aware of its meaning: to keep money. Everyone else thinks it means ‘to spend’. SAVE, SAVE, SAVE! What does that mean? It means to spend, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t mean spend, how are you going to ‘save, save, save’, without funds? Actually, there is an answer: You borrow. That’s right. You can borrow money in order to… save, save, save!

If this word actually meant ‘save’, spending money should make you rich.

But there will be no tolerance for english. There is barely tolerance for words in the 21st century, let alone a collection of them utilized for cohesion.

Could this be a Vast-Winged conspiracy? Some sort of over-arching design? Perhaps.

But I’m not playing.