There’s a current pandemic that no one seems to have noticed. Verbal tics and palsies have always been with us but they have grown to epidemic proportions since the recession of Covid. It has several variants, the most common of which is, you know.
So pervasive is the you know variant that it has reached into every conversation. It is particularly prominent in professional speakers who should, you know, know better. The entire population seems to have contracted the affliction. The only solution seems to be the development of a vaccine against the infection, though its etiology is unknown.
Even RFK Jr has promised to support this effort. When asked about the subject given his skepticism about vaccines he replied, “This problem is so widespread, you know, that I can’t ignore it.”
President Trump who thus far has not contracted the disorder, he takes hydroxychloroquine as a preventative, said he will divert some of the border wall money to support a crash program to, you know, develop a vaccine.
To show the ubiquity of the problem see the video below. It’s not that florid a case of the you knows as it has a frequency of the phrase of only about two per minute. Another milder verbal palsy is right. It usually appears in the middle of a sentence for no discernable purpose. It occurs a few times in the video.
Other verbal meanderings include very unique. How very unique differs from unique is never specified. Another puzzler is graphic video, is there any other kind? What is meant is that the video may be disturbing or show the consequences of mayhem.
You may respond to the above by observing that in a world of woe, I am focusing on a problem of so little import as to be wandering in a world of the precious. My response is to suggest what might have happened if these verbal tics were as prevalent in 1863 as they are today.
Four score and seven years ago, you know, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal – right?
Now we are engaged in a very unique civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, you know, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. You know, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, right?
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this, you know, very unique ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it you know, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, you know, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the very unique work which they who fought here have thus far, you know, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the very unique task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion, you know, to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth, right?
And finally, be advised that the video above is very graphic.
