"Targeting"

anti-discourse discourse has fallen in love with a word

You do X. I say that I disagree with X, and would prefer for you to do Y. Maybe I also tell other people that you do X, and that I disagree with X. This means that I have targeted you. Here’s a letter from medical industry groups to Attorney General Merrick Garland, offering a distinct echo of last year’s NSBA letter. Look at the second and third paragraphs:

The accusation that dark actors are engaged in provocation and “targeting” is a response to people posting videos of doctors at children’s hospitals talking about gender-affirming surgery, including hysterectomies. Social media companies are aggressively removing those videos, so watch one here if you haven’t seen them. The fact-checkers, doing what they do, have staggered to the fainting couch, insisting that it’s an insane far-right conspiracy theory to claim that children’s hospitals provide gender-affirming surgery to children — a claim that followed the discovery of videos showing doctors at children’s hospitals talking about the gender-affirming surgery they provide. At the children’s hospitals. WHY DO PEOPLE BELIEVE THESE CRAZY CLAIMS, they shout, watching actual video of the exact thing being claimed.

Man posts video of himself tending his geraniums; social media account posts the video and says that the man tends his geraniums; news media reports that social media account is targeting man with extremist geranium theories. The tediousness of this maneuver can’t be exaggerated. Here’s the “targeting” language again, in a message from professional lunatic Taylor Lorenz:

Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok

Why is she obsessed with me? @TaylorLorenz, I don’t want to date you

“We also say you intend to continue to target hospitals.” By posting the actual content of internal discussions between doctors and hospital administrators. Saying what’s happening is targeting. These stories hang fear-adjectives all over every sentence, signaling far more than they’re describing:

Fanatical far-right extremist wreaks havoc with vicious claims suns rises in east!

But here’s the pinnacle of the adjectival-assumption signal-narrative, from Amanda Marcotte at Salon: “How children's hospitals became the right's newest target of hate.” Here’s the lede, and read this carefully:

Amid all those cuing adjectives, what is the stunningly cruel and unhinged subject of this story doing? She’s “pointing at.” That’s it — that’s the identified action. She’s crazed! She’s engaged with the unhinged! She’s….pointing at. What is she pointing at? Actual discussions.

Argue what you want to argue. If you think children’s hospitals should provide gender-affirming surgery, say so. I’ll say in response that they’re mutilating children, but you make your argument and I’ll make mine. It’s an argument. The tactic of preventing argument by calling disagreement “targeting” is stupid and lazy, and not enormously difficult to see through.

Last year, the National School Boards Association did the same thing that the medical associations are now trying, calling on federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute critics. The result is that the the NSBA is falling apart, and parents are suing school districts that actually took Merrick Garland up on his subsequent offer and reported disagreement as a crime.

Related, Mollie Hemingway notes that the New York Times debunked a bunch of insane conspiracy theories from election deniers….then reported the next day on the arrest of the person the insane election deniers had targeted with their bizarre lies: