Guest post: These y’all quaeda yokels
Originally a comment by Papito on Men with rifles yelling at us.
You have be pretty far down the rabbit hole to understand how these militia creeps think they’re being patriotic. The fact you don’t is a good sign. The fact I do reflects poorly on my relatives.
They’re patriotic to an imaginary country. That country doesn’t exist, has never existed, but they’ve been convinced it really does, or did, somehow.
The real country around them – full of people who are not white, and sometimes governed by people who are not male – is somehow preventing their imaginary country from coming fully into being. The laws of this real, imposter country, insofar as they infringe on these mens’ feelings and desires, prove how evil the imposter country is, and how urgently it must be opposed. This thinking is fundamentally religious in nature; they are motivated in similar ways to the Islamic extremists who want to establish a new Caliphate.
These y’all quaeda yokels don’t see the coronavirus lockdown a discrete response to a single problem; their complaint is not about a single policy mistake. They see it as part of a conspiracy to deprive them of the ability to establish their imaginary country. Hence the guns: they will need lots of guns to establish their imaginary country. They are explicitly fomenting a second civil war, or second revolution, after which they will be able to establish their imaginary country.
In this foolishness they are supported by numerous American politicians, such as Trump and Rep. Steve King. Abroad, they are supported by Russia, because Putin both loves to screw America up and loves right-wing extremism. Numerous Faux News talking heads also fortify their rhetoric.
In distinction to the kind of racist policing exemplified by the murder of Tamir Rice, these people pose an actual threat to America and its citizens. Also in distinction to movements like Black Lives Matter, the militia freaks have not just sympathizers but members in law enforcement, and are duly emboldened.
Y’all Qaeda?
Mind you I’m not offended, but most people who use the contraction ‘y’all’ are not gun totin’ Yankee rednecks. Elsewise, good post. ;)
Urban dictionary:
Preposterous. :P
I’m still not offended. :)
To be fair, twiliter, most people I knew who used the term y’all were gun-totin’ southern rednecks. Only one word different, right?
Not in my experience, people whom I’ve encountered in the South, actual Southerners who use the term ‘y’all’ have been mostly neighborly and generous folks, while people who are not from the South generally appropriate the term in order to sound more rednecky. I would think generally a Yankee who uses the term ‘yall’ to be a redneck, but a Southerner who uses it more of an average Southerner, and not necessarily a redneck or hillbilly.
Yeh the thing about the real you-all is that it’s simply the plural of “you.” English doesn’t make a literal distinction between single and plural you, so adding “all” does that job. It’s a solecism to use it for one person. Northerners think you-all sounds ignorant but they’re just wrong.
“Y’all” is the way rednecks say “youse.”
Papito, no I disagree. Youse is definitely Northern slang and not used in any common vernacular. Y’all is a common Southern way of saying ‘you all’. If you hear someone from Chicago or New Jersey say “youse”, you can probably bet they’re largely illiterate and probably seriously ignorant. If you hear a Southern person say “y’all” you would probably think nothing of it, as it’s common vernacular for the region. It surely doesn’t mean you’re a redneck per se, unless you have no business using the term. Like if you’re from New England or some Northern patch where people use it to mock the South, or appropriate it because they are really Northern rednecks. You don’t hear ‘youse’ in the South, because people don’t like sounding ignorant here. :)
twiliter, I don’t think that’s correct. I worked with people who were extremely literate and quite educated. When we hosted Michigan people for a seminar, they were the instructors (highly educated professionals – scientists, in fact). Youse was common vernacular to them.
And as for your experience with y’all, that might be true in your part of the South, but not in my experiences. So it probably depends on where you live.
They actually said youse? I stand corrected then, it does depend on where.
twiliter, I am enchanted by the argument that it is biased and mean to refer disparagingly to the Southern and redneck use of “y’all,” because “y’all” is widely used by literate and intelligent people; whereas it is objective and fair to refer disparagingly to the Northern and urban use of “youse” because it is only used by “largely illiterate and probably seriously ignorant” people.
You’re right Papito, y’all really needs no defense and I have no excuse. If it was entertaining though, despite that, then I am pleased. :)
I look at it this way, if a server at a restaurant came up and said “what can I get y’all?”, I would consider that sort of normal here. In Northern California where I’m originally from, I would expect to hear “what can I get you guys?”, whether the group contained ‘non guys’ or not, it’s mostly colloquial. Never in the Northeast, West, or anywhere else have I encountered “what can I get youse?”, combined with guys, folks, people or whatever. I have only ever heard it used in mafia movie spoofs.
All in good fun, twiliter.
I can affirm that I have heard “What can I get youse” many, many times from a server. You must have frequented the right establishments. Or maybe your didn’t recognize it.
Contrary to some weird youtube videos, “youse” is not pronounced like “use.” It is pronounced like “yiz,” “yez,” or “yuz,” depending on the speaker. So, “What kin a git yiz?” Heard that a lot. Or “Ken a hep yuz?”
I guess I’ll have to get out more! (once that’s safer to do of course) ;) Another example is ‘ain’t’, and I was brought up being corrected for using it and told it wasn’t a proper word, or told that it makes a person sound ignorant. I never thought it was so bad, but I was trained out of using it and still cringe a little when it slips out.
Oooh that’s interesting, yuz and youse and so on. It occurs to me that “yous/youse” was deployed as a marker in early movies featuring tough guys played by Cagney or Bogart. Or Bugs Bunny.
“What can I get yas” seems like a different thing – slang as opposed to a class marker.
Of course lots of class marker words become slang – the abovementioned “ain’t” for instance.
We need a sociolinguist up in here to set us all straight.
The professionals from Michigan said it sort of “yuz”. I suppose that is standard in that area.
On this little island, the existence of which most people ignore (except on the 17th of March), when speaking English the plural of ‘you’ is still ‘ye’ as the subject of a verb (“Will ye be coming to the party tonight?). As the verb’s object, it’s pronounced halfway between ‘yeeze’ and ‘yiz’, although I have no idea how that is supposed to be written (“We’ve got yiz the best cider”).