Appeasement! or: Another Good Word Gone Bad

I stand before you crestfallen. I have discovered a dirty little secret about myself. Only the thin veil of internet anonymity allows me to confess this, as it is something to which I could never, in person, admit. Like Neville Chamberlain (in Munich! in 1939!) and like Ronald Reagan (cut and run from Lebanon!) later on, I have discovered that I am an appeaser.

Dirty sounding word, isn't it?

For most of my life, certainly, for most of my political life, by which I mean my life while interested in politics, appeasement has been a dirty word.

Quite frequently, it's linked to Neville Chamberlain, oh, and Munch! and 1939! But I'll bet you didn't know that. It takes a keen and insightful mind to notice those little details.

Sorry, I'm dancing around the issue. I am trying to hide my shame. I am trying to put off having to relate, under the thin tissue of internet anonymity, the sordid tale of what happened.

Here's the word.

The other day, my wife was upset with me. Deep down, I think she just wanted to annex Schleswig-Holstein, or maybe it was Alsace-Lorrain, but the point is, she was upset with me. She said it had something to do with the fact that I hadn't done the dishes.

And I . . . oh G-d it's hard to admit . . . I appeased her. I wrapped up what I was doing, and then I went and did the dishes.

Y'all see where this is going, right?

Merriam-Webster says that appease means "to bring to a state of peace or calm," or "to cause to subside" or, and here's the killer, pacify or conciliate, especially in the sense of "to buy off (an aggressor) by concessions usually at the sacrifice of principles."

Well, that's only the third definition. (I'm not vouching for Merriam-Webster in particular, but I don't think any kind of straight-faced argument can be made that the primary meaning of appease is "to abandon your principles.")

We have taken a sufficiently fine and honorable word, of long and regular usage, and perverted it to always mean Munich, always mean 1939, always mean Neville Chamberlain (who was in Munich! in 1939! and an appeaser!). We have cheapened its meaning in the pursuit of lockstep ideological conformity. Every conflict, every dispute, someone's gonna come running out and start talking about how any compromise with the other side is appeasement.

I speak, here, particularly of fo-po, or foreign policy.

Should I have not appeased my wife? Should I have said, "Not only will I not do the dishes, but you'll go do them right now?" Should I have further said, "And if you don't get to it tout de suite, you'll taste the back of my hand?"

No, no, and no, really I shouldn't have done that.

Now I'm hungry, and I think I'll go appease my appetite.