The Greatest Threat Facing Humanity Is Our Use Of Pronouns – Huh?

As Donald Trump settles into his role as imperator of the empire known as The United States, he is setting his priorities. Excuse me for describing him using the pronoun “he.” Oh! I did it again using “him.”

How bad is this pronoun pandemic? NPR reports there is an email circulating at NASA this week that informs employees and contractors to strip all pronouns from correspondence and other online references. The email that NPR has seen states:

“In response to the Executive Orders, NASA has disabled features in id.nasa.gov and Teams that allow users to add pronouns in their display name in Microsoft Outlook and Teams. For users who have previously added pronouns to their display name, those pronouns will be automatically removed from the system.”

The pronoun crisis enveloping the United States goes along with an end to DEI, the organizational policies and practices put in place to support people of various backgrounds to provide them with resources to succeed in the workplace. How awful to give a leg up to someone, for example in a wheelchair, whose mind is sharp and who can contribute to the success of a business or government agency by installing ramps. The real target of Trump Imperator and his minions is visible minorities and others who don’t look lily white. How far removed is this from master race ideology?

The pronouns issue would be funny if it weren’t so perverse and sad. Does pronoun correctness take precedence over funding the victims of wildfires that recently swept through parts of Los Angeles? Will the pronoun war solve other climate change and extreme weather disasters, the opioid crisis, fentanyl deaths, uncontrolled immigration, abortion, the rights of women, the undocumented and the children born of dream chaser parents?

I am old school when it comes to language use and admit to having trouble when a single person asks me to describe them using the pronouns “them” and “they.” I grew up thinking these two pronouns referred to more than one person. 

I grew up during the transition when women’s liberation turned “Miss” and “Mrs.” into “Ms.” Men stayed “Mr.”

I also grew up in a period when you referred to political leaders, at least in Canada, by using terms like “the honourable” or “right honourable.” These honorifics have gone out of style in the 21st century.

I also grew up using “Dear” to begin a letter rather than “Hi,” “Ho,” or “Hey.” “Dear” does seem antiquated in the present, particularly when the person is unknown to you.

Humanity and the planet face real, not pronoun problems. The top ten list for me includes:

1. Climate change
2. Biodiversity loss
3. Pollution
4. War and conflict
5. Food and freshwater insecurity
6. Economic disparity
7. Pandemic risks
8. Technological risks including unregulated artificial intelligence (AI)
9. Drug trafficking
10. The dumbing down of humanity

Note that the use of personal “pronouns” and “DEI” don’t make it to my top ten, although, one could argue that the pronoun issue may fit the last one on the list.

Reading the news from the United States this week has seen an escalation in “dumbing down.” In pursuit of pronoun insurrectionists and the saving of money the Elon Musk hit squad has targeted personal data records of government employees in ways not seen since the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s when looking for Communists and Communist sympathizers.

Musk’s DOGE squad has attacked public health agencies like USAID. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are targeted. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is besieged. Employees of the GSA, the Government Services Administration and the IRS, Internal Revenue Service, are targets. Medicare and Medicaid likely will be next. Employees are calling the administration’s attack on their departments equivalent to “digital book burnings,” comparing DOGE’s acts to the Nazis and the Soviet Union.

Facing all of the challenges we have presently on this planet, NASA has found it important to tell its employees and contractors this week that “a uniform signature block” when using the nasa.gov address is sacrosanct. The email stated, “The signature block should not include additional embellishment.”

This is the agency that brought us Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for man…one giant leap for mankind” I’d say the leaps we are making are taking us backwards.

Thank you Trump Imperator, and your consigliare, Elon Musk, for putting America on the right path with pronouns and through so many other executive orders. And Trump wants Canada to become the 51st state???? Not “a snowball’s chance in hell.”