72 Books and arts The EconomistJanuary 27th 20182 curtail civil liberties ofopponents, includ-
ing media”.
Alas, these catalogues and checklists
are more emotionally satisfying for Trump
opponents (see, he is a tyrant, they can ex-
claim) than genuinely illuminating. Mr
Trump says horrible, shameful things all
too frequently. But he has not actually
locked up opponents or sent thugs to
smash printing presses. Thatmakes for a
puzzle. Isthe president an autocrat, or does
he justplayone on TV? The puzzle is not
solved by crafting pseudoscientific tests for
autocracy that give equal weight to harsh
words and malign acts.
Both books are at their strongest when
examining how Mr Trump flouts norms
with impunity. Both ascribe the presi-
dent’s success to the similar insight that
modern politics resembles a form of tribal
warfare. What a leader does matters less
than whom he is for, and above all, whom
he is against.
For much of the 20th century, the pro-
fessors write, politics worked because
most practitionerssubscribed to two vital
norms. First, mutual tolerance, or the un-
derstanding that competing parties accept
one another as legitimate. Second, forbear-
ance, or the idea that election-winners ex-
ercise some restraint when wielding pow-
er, rather than treating politics like war.
Not Mr Trump. Mr Frum describes the
president in near-animal terms, as sniffing
out his opponents’ weaknesses—“low en-
ergy”, “little”, “crooked”—in the same way
that he instinctively sensed the weak point
in modern politics: “that Americans resent
each other’s differences more than they
cherish their shared democracy”.
Neither book flinches from tracing the
role that race, class, education and culture
play in what are ostensiblypolitical argu-
ments. Mr Levitsky and Mr Ziblatt offer the
troubling thought that the norms of civility
and compromise seen in Washington be-
tween the end of Reconstruction and the
1980s rested, uncomfortably, on racial ex-
clusion. Southern whites did such an effec-
tive job of disenfranchising freed slaves
soon after the civil war that black turnout
in South Carolina plunged from 96% in
1876 to 11% in 1898, as voting curbs bit. As a
result, many southern states endured what
amounted to decades of authoritarian sin-
gle-party rule. As the professors bluntly
put it: “It was only after1965 that the United
States fully democratised.” The parties
have been sorting themselves along racial
and classlines ever since.
Neither book blames all American ills
on racism—they are more nuanced than
that. But the authors of both do argue, in
effect, that America has never tried to
maintain democratic norms in a demos as
diverse as today’s. Unless that can be fixed,
it is a grave threat to the republic. Keep it in
sight, even as the Trump Express flashes
dangerously past. 7I
N THESE potty-mouthed times, when
certain world leaders sling profanity
about with abandon, many observers nat-
urally lament the debasement of speech.
But instead of clutching pearls, why not
find a silver lining? Learning more about
when, how and why people swear offers
insight into everything from the human
brain to a society’s taboos. Trash talking
even affords some real physical and social
benefits, asEmma Byrne argues in “Swear-
ing Is Good for You”.
For all their shock value, swear words
are practical and elastic, capable of threat-
ening aggression or coaxing a laugh.
Among peers, profane banter is often a
sign of trust—a way of showing solidarity
with a larger group. Critics may say such
language reveals boorish thinking or a lim-
ited vocabulary, but swearing is often im-
pressively strategic, and a fluency in crass
language typically correlates with verbal
fluency in general.
Because the language learnt in infancyhas the greatest emotional resonance,
swearing in your mother tongue always
feels most powerful, even among the most
fluent multilinguals. As swearing func-
tions as a complex signal, subtle enough ei-
ther to amuse or to offend, these words
vary according to what a culture deems un-
mentionable. Russian, for example, “has
an almost infinite number” of ways to
swear, most of them involving the honour
of your mother. As for Japanese, because
the culture is largely free of an excretory ta-
boo (hence the poo emoji), there is no
equivalent of “shit”. Yet the word kichigai
(loosely translated as “retard”) is usually
bleeped on television. Translatorsoften
struggle to render curse words and insults
in other languages, as their emotional heft
tends to be culturally circumscribed. For
example, Westerners were more amused
than alarmed by reports of an Iraqi minis-
ter declaring “A curse be upon your mous-
tache!” to a Kuwaiti diplomat in 2003.
Women who curse face a double stan-
dard. Although swearing in a male-domin-
ated profession can be a short cut to accep-
tance, women are also more likely to be
shunned or seen as untrustworthy—even
by women—when they sound like steve-
dores. This is not only because women are
expected to be more polite than men, Ms
Byrne suggests, but also because swearing
tends to be associated with sexuality. Since
women are judged more harshly than men
for their sexual adventures, bad language
leads to assumptions of bad behaviour.
Stoicism in the face of pain may seem
noble, but swearing a blue streak is appar-
ently more helpful. A study of volunteers
forced to plunge their hands in ice-cold wa-
ter found that those who swore kept their
hands submerged for longer than those
who were stuck bellowing a neutral word.
By making people feel more aggressive—
and therefore, perhaps, more powerful—
swearing seems to improve the tolerance
of pain.
A self-described swearing evangelist,
Ms Byrne is certainly bullish on the merits
of bad words. But in her eagerness to prove
how “fucking useful” they are, she some-
times overplays her hand. She argues that
swearing makes people less likely to be
physically violent, but offers little evidence
to back this up. She commends the way
piss-taking can help people worktogether
more effectively, but largely overlooks the
way this approach can alienate minorities.
She also occasionally trades empiricism
for hyperbole, as when she declares: “I
don’t think we would have made it as the
world’s most populous primate if we
hadn’t learned to swear.”
Still, “Swearing Is Good for You” is an
entertaining and often enlightening book.
It may not quite stand up the bold claim of
its title, but Ms Byrne’s readers are sure to
come away with a fresh appreciation of
language at its most foul. 7Profane languageFoul play
Swearing Is Good for You.By Emma Byrne.
W.W. Norton; 240 pages; $25.95. Profile
Books; £12.99РЕЛИЗ
ГРУППЫ"What'sNews"