Make Me!
It may not have been our first utterance, but it certainly came to our lips early in our childhood. While “Mommy” and/or “Daddy” tripped off our tongues before most anything else that was intelligible, it didn’t take us very long before we let the world know of the willful soul that lurked beneath our otherwise cherubic face. “NO!” both bemused and troubled those caught by surprise by its clarity and force. That being said, our lives were never quite the same, and those within earshot were put on guard, their innocent little babe having taken a quantum leap onto the road marked “independence.”
The speed and degree by which language acquisition takes hold of each child is as varied and unique as are the children themselves. Their first years witness an eruption of verbosity—initially nonsensical to older ears—but sooner or later bringing them into the conversational world of their family’s lingua franca. Children quickly change from helpless dolls their parents like to show off, to jocular and inquisitive creatures in their own right. Somewhere in the interminable passage through infancy and childhood--a blink of the eye in later parental recollection-- the personality and will of every child begins to make itself known. Smiles, waving arms, storm clouds of tears and tantrums—all become part of the resume each child composes as a unique member of the human race.
It doesn’t take long for “No!” to evolve into “Make Me!”, further setting parents back on their heels. Where did this come from? Yet it was there from the beginning, whenever spoonsful of baby food came out as fast as they were shoveled in. It was there when boundaries were tested in the many objects thrown from the high chair, or jettisoned from the crib. And it could not be ignored when those acrobatic squats and rubbery-legged collapses effectively sabotaged any parental effort to walk with or carry their bundle of joy—or whatever they thought of their bundle on such occasions.
“Make Me!” has a long history in human expression, perhaps one of the most confrontational yet most adaptive of our many communications. It certainly played a role in the now cherished rhetoric that inspired rebel patriots to risk their lives rather than knuckle under England’s laws and taxes. Patrick Henry’s immortal “Give me liberty or give me death!” was MAKE ME writ large on a revolutionary stage. When directed at parents or siblings, “Make Me” serves notice that this difficult child nonetheless has the backbone to resist the intimidation of bullies and other coercive influences. “Make Me!” is an assertive phrase that has many variations, all easy to recognize. Among my favorites: “I’d like to see you try,” “Oh yeah?” “You and who else?” or even the immortal Dirty Harry line, “Go ahead, make my day!” But it is the same impulse that is being trumpeted as a warning siren to anyone willing to push that button, take that dare, or challenge that conviction.
We should therefore not be surprised by the deafening roar of the Make Me proclamations and expletives we hear and see as part of our daily news cycles. From the far left to the far right, and from many points in between, people seem empowered, like Peter Finch in Network News, to hold nothing back and shout to the world, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Those of shorter memory may see this as a new and unprecedented moment of collective uproar now threatening the very survival of our Republic. Yet the longer view of history reminds us that Americans have expressed their Make Me convictions in nearly every decade and era of our existence. We have drawn lines in the sand over stamps, tea, whiskey, slavery, women’s rights, native peoples, the right to vote, declarations of war, isolationism, prohibition, child labor, immigration, censorship, unions and the right to work, polluted air and drinkable water, nuclear testing, animal rights, the rights of the unborn, and religion—decrying it and protecting it. The contemporary firestorm of civil disobedience, protest and social animosity that keeps Make Me in our ears on a daily basis is neither novel nor unprecedented. But it is disturbing, nonetheless.
No individuals or groups seem to have a corner on owning or venting their indignation. Who can deny the Make Me fervor embraced by Civil Rights marchers as well as anti-busing protesters, Vietnam War resisters, Tea Party activists, LGBT liberationists, and Green Party reformers? And today the same willful impulse lay behind the words and actions of so many Americans, whether they be anti-vaxxers, Woke progressives, BLM supporters, or America First proponents and their allies. COVID alone has stirred a pot from which millions of Americans now express their Make Me resistance known, some quitting their jobs and others refusing to rejoin the ranks of the employed. The aftershocks of an uncivil and unsavory presidential election continue to rumble across our land, spewing Make Me vitriol from nearly every quarter. Missouri may pride itself in being the Show Me state. But America is fast becoming the Make Me country, bringing out our pluribus far more than our unum.
What troubles me the most is what this groundswell of Make Me sentiment in America says about us at this moment of our history. We all recognize how Make Me fuels so many of our childhood interactions and so much of our adolescent posturing. In the mouths of the young it is often annoying and paralyzing, yet we understand and accept it given their age and the brevity of their life experience. Could it be that our country is now living through an arrested adolescence, one that revels in provocative and uncivil epithets, scripted emotionalism and unapologetic self-promotion? Could that be why we seem so ready to jump to oversimplified solutions to problems we naively cast in black-white, winner-take-all dichotomies, each guaranteed to separate those to be cheered as allies from those deserving cancellation as enemies. Yet when Make Me in any of its many forms becomes the common thread of our social interactions as adults, it raises serious questions about whether we have the maturity and wisdom to face the really significant and complex issues facing us, those that require deliberation, debate and dialogue, none of which comes easily to adolescents.
As I shake my head at the rancorous noise that bombards my ears at every turn, I wonder if we have lost all capacity for moderation and compromise in our political arenas. Is this the new normal in an America no longer conscious of nor linked to its past? Or are we moving through a new and dangerous era in which once-shared values and civility have given way to uninhibited, uncensored exhibitionism? Right now it seems to me that we can either de-escalate, reopen conversations, listen more than speak, and strive for compromise in our public and political discourse. Or we can hold our defiant and self-serving poses while turning up the heat and volume in this game of righteousness vs. evil we seem intent on waging. I would hope for and choose the former over the latter. But should this current mood continue, it may not be the best and most noble who will prevail in the end. Instead it will likely be the loudest among us, those who can make the most simplistic case to embolden that childish and adolescent spirit—that Make Me defiance--that too many now wear as a badge of courage and conviction rather than recognize as an emblem of insecurity and uncertainty.
