Two Penn’orth: We need weapons inspectors for language too

If my long lusted-for, progressive, Anarcho-Syndicalist, free love, environmental saviors revolution fails to manifest itself and save us from the capitalist abyss we’re currently heading towards, then the cry that epitomizes our civilizations decadent selfish decline in to oblivion will surely be ‘SHOTGUN!’

I must confess to being a little out of touch with this phenomenon when I arrived at Warwick. Like a fuddy-duddy Daily Mail reader lamenting the use of the word ‘innit’, I found ‘SHOTGUN!’ rather alien to me. I was only aware of it as a silly American method of anti-deliberation used to decide who might claim the things thrown at the front of the automobile.

I was, however, deeply naïve. Shocked and awed, I became to realize that like the bubonic plague, this seven-letter word had spread to all walks of life. From deciding the recipient of the last spring roll to who would answer the door, ‘SHOTGUN!’ prevailed.

All of my instincts resisted this new craze. ‘Something is out of place here’, I thought, my social science spidey senses tingling. If Hitler had invaded and shouted SHOTGUN!” through the radio to the terrorized Polish population, would the trembling civilians of Eastern Europe have turned round to one another and calmly said ‘fair play – he did call shotgun’?

What if George W. Bush had ‘SHOTGUN!’-ed for the presidency in 2000, instead of relying on blatant electoral fraud? What if he had simply stood on the White House lawn talking sports with Al Gore and suddenly shouted ‘SHOTGUN!’? Would Gore have reluctantly proclaimed that ‘whilst I profoundly disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision, we must acknowledge Mr. Bush did call shotgun first’? Would everybody have shrugged and mumbled ‘fair enough’?

Ostensibly, words like shotgun seem harmless. No doubt most of you will think I write this to be contrary, a twat, or simply for a laugh – and you would be correct on all fronts.

But as a Marxist bastard, I also sincerely believe that every generation in a given epoch is infected with the ruling ideology of their society’s elite and its economic modality. And what better expresses a society of anti-democracy, selfishness and the supremacy of private interests than the “SHOTGUN!” phenomenon?

This nasty phrase is no more than a grown up version of the whinging ‘me, me, me, I, I, I, want, want, want’ mentality of a spoilt child. So next time the doorbell rings, or there’s only one beer left, and someone “SHOTGUN!”-s, punch them, tell them to shut the fuck up and to behave like they live in a democracy, not a shopping mall.