Word of the Moment...IV

(Alternate Title: Am I An Idiot?)

I follow poet Taylor Mali on Twitter, and after reading a recent post, I had to wonder if I'm an idiot or if he was being too witty for his own good.

"The wise path to peace resembles surrender to those jingoists distrustful of nuance. Don't get it? Then I'm talking about you. #Bergdahl"

What?

Did his autocorrect screw up again? I read it two or three more times and still drew a blank, so I figured he must be talking about me, because I have no clue what his tweet meant. I did know it all centered around that funny "jingo" word. Off I went to the dictionary, where I found:

"jingo - noun - a person who professes belligerent patriotism"

Um.... okay. That was totally...  unhelpful.

Maybe it's just me, but I still didn't get it. So I piece together that jingoists must be those people who profess their love of country in a belligerent way and don't trust nuance. But the wise path to peace is like surrendering to those people who belligerent profess their love of their country. And not only that, by using the word "profess" it can imply that the person isn't patriotic, or at the very least, isn't as patriotic as they think they are.

Still with me? I'm not so sure I am. So, yeah, now I really think he's talking about me.

The only other explanation is that I'm taking him too literally because he's unintentionally been too witty and out-smarted his sense of how smart his followers are. Or maybe his followers are that smart, and I truly am just an idiot.

Either way, I eventually reached a point where I didn't care. I learned a new word - probably one I'll never actually use* -  but I'm way past the point of caring anymore.

Until Next Time...
Jingoly Yours,
Michael

*to be fair, I did use the word as the topic of this post. I don't think that counts though.