86, OR THE ROAD TO PERDITION
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Abstract: This essay critiques the alarming weaponization of legal and governmental institutions under the Trump administration to suppress free speech, exemplified by the absurd investigation into James Comey’s innocuous seashell photo post, misinterpreted as a violent threat due to the slang term "86." The author dismantles this overreach by contextualizing "86" within American diner lingo, highlighting its nonviolent origins, and condemns the administration’s broader campaign to intimidate critics—from journalists and lawyers to universities and comedians—through legal threats, funding blackmail, and censorship. Warning of a slippery slope toward authoritarianism, the essay calls for resistance to these encroachments on civil liberties, urging readers to defend free expression and reject the distortion of language for political repression. The piece underscores the erosion of constitutional norms and the urgent need to safeguard democratic freedoms against an increasingly oppressive regime.
Obviously I respect and enjoy using words to get attention; in my own little way I can play with the same language that gave us Shakespeare, Conrad, Melville and Twain. I love a good play on words as well -- else I wouldn’t have engaged in the double entendre by captioning these pieces Out of My Liberal Mind. Although we have had presidents with almost literary fluency -- most recently, Obama’s command of language at times bordered on the poetic -- and many with a more basic business-like command of English, and even a couple of occasional word-stompers like Eisenhower (“Things are more like they are now than they ever were before”), Gerald Ford {“If Lincoln were alive today, he'd be turning over in his grave”), or George W Bush (“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family”), we’ve never had any absolutely debase the language like the current incumbent whose adversaries are nothing but radical Socialist lunatics. (Safe to say they’re not radical, Socialist or lunatic -- but that’s not the point, is it.)
Lately, though, we’ve been treated to a combination of linguistic insanity with a blend of outrageous abuse of executive branch power. Little could anyone imagine the insanity that would grow out of Trump weaponizing the legal agencies of government to the point that the Secret Service was instructed recently to investigate possible criminal proceedings against ex-Republican James Comey, former Director of the FBI, for posting a photo of seashells on a beach displayed to read “86 47”. No one has suggested that Comey himself arranged the shells, just that he came upon them on a beach after someone else had placed them and snapped a pic. When someone told Comey that to some paranoid MAGA people “86” might theoretically suggest a violent act, Comey immediately took down the posting. Is it conceivable that anyone seeing Comey’s original posted photo could seriously believe he was urging an attack against the U.S. president such that the full resources of the federal criminal investigation services needed to be mobilized?
Wikipedia says, “Eighty-six or 86 is American English slang. . . . . In the hospitality industry, it is used to indicate that an item is no longer available, traditionally from a food or drinks establishment, or referring to a person or people who are not welcome on the premises. . . . ..” According to Merriam-Webster,
“eighty-six is slang meaning ‘to throw out,’ ‘to get rid of,’ or ‘to refuse service to.’ It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning that an item was sold out. There is varying anecdotal evidence about why the term eighty-six was used, but the most common theory is that is rhyming slang for nix.”
Any hint of violence here? A threat to commit mayhem or murder? Any incitement? Of course not. If you search deeply enough you can find a rare isolated dictionary that among other meanings includes in the definition of eighty-six the idea of eliminating by killing, but do any of you happen to own a copy of Green’s Dictionary of Slang. More appropriately, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the great repository of historical meaning of the language and gold standard for definitions, “86” or “eighty-six” means exactly what all of us think it means and does not include any mention of murder in its ancestry. Are there any people so out of touch with reality that they don’t understand that to 86 a drunk is to stop serving him, not murder him.
Eighty-six is a classic part of what some call diner lingo which includes such colorful jargon as “99” meaning an urgent situation like “the boss is here!” or “99, manager needed at table 4”; and “33 at the door” meaning a customer is waiting. “Adam and Eve on a raft” calling for two eggs on toast. Other vivid examples: “burn one, take it through the garden and pin a rose on it”, meaning a burger with lettuce and tomato; “cowboy with spurs” is a Denver omelet with fries; “Adam and Eve on a raft” is a call for two eggs on toast; “give it shoes” is an order to go“; and my personal favorite restaurant slang, “drown the kids” isn’t an invitation to commit infanticide but a request for . . . boiled eggs. End of digression.
It’s a damned slippery slope if you can’t freely urge the public to “86” a politician. Try this thought experiment, if you will: it is an election year, and the incumbent president is seeking re-election. Could it be a crime for me to put an ad in the newspaper urging the citizenry to “86 the jerk”? Certainly that has to be OK. So would it be substantively different if I ran the ad a year before the election? Or today, in response to Donald Trump saying he might seek a patently unconstitutional third term. Or will Attorney General Pam Bondi dispatch the FBI to my doorstep. How things have changed under Trump. Consider that Sarah Palin was criticized -- but of course not prosecuted -- after putting out an ad in 2010 with a map with stylized crosshair graphics targeting the district of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, even after Giffords was nearly killed and left permanently impaired in a 2011 assassination attempt.
I understand that a crazed gunman did attempt to shoot Donald Trump, and no rational person is the least bit happy about that or anxious to see it repeated. But it is a fact of American politics that virtually every president has equally been threatened. Four American presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy) have died tragically by assassin’s bullets; madmen have also fired at Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton, and men with guns have been stopped before shooting at not only Trump but William Howard Taft and Jimmy Carter. Sadly the presidency is very dangerous and requires prodigious efforts for security. And yet through all this, until this day, the constitution survived and the legal process functioned without frightening American citizens into docile compliance. Until 2025 freedom of speech was a reality.
JD Vance was very critical of Germany for passing laws labeling the neo-Nazi AfD Party as extremist and placing limitations on its activities, the major German political parties having declared they will not include AfD in any government they may form. Indeed German speech laws do make Nazi speech and symbolism illegal, but remember the Holocaust occurred within living memory and Germans fear that Nazi ideology still poses a palpable threat. True, German speech laws may indeed have gone too far, beyond what is needed; there is little doubt the German limitations on free speech including prohibition of extremely insulting speech are subject to abuse. A man was fined €1,000 for calling a politician “dumm” (German for “stupid”) on Facebook, and another was fined for labeling another politician an “idiot” on Twitter. Criminal charges may be lodged against a critic who called yet a third politician “dumm wie Brot” (as dumb as bread) on Instagram. Isn’t it the bottom of the barrel, though, when we have to cite JD Vance to defend freedom of speech in the U.S. from Donald Trump’s onslaught, but there you have it.
I believe it takes a truly distorted sick mind to try to bend the meaning of classic American restaurant vernacular into a criminal usage when there is no accompanying incitement or suggestion of violence, but it is becoming increasingly apparent day by day that we truly are now being governed by people with truly distorted sick minds. I frankly am scared, not for my personal safety -- I don’t think we’ve sunk quite that low, yet -- but for the looming end of personal freedom of expression and intentional suppression of free speech now taking place.
Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS news, has been forced to quit because she argued the network shouldn’t cave to Donald Trump’s baseless lawsuit claiming it edited an interview with Kamala Harris to make Trump look even worse; McMahon’s boss wants to sell the network, probably needs federal approval, likes Trump and wants to remain in his favor, so editorial freedom is dead at CBS. Now he’s about to sue ABC because it reported Qatar is giving him a multi-hundred million dollar airplane probably in contravention of the emoluments clause of the U.S. constitution: Trump says the network “fully knows and understands, this highly respected country is donating the plane to the United States Air Force/ Defense Department, AND NOT TO ME.” Give me a break Donald!
Law firms are being brow-beaten into excluding clients MAGA doesn’t like; otherwise their attorneys are denied security clearances and cannot handle litigation involving sensitive federal issues, in other words making their occupations untenable. Universities are being blackmailed with the threat of withholding federal grants and research funding if they don’t toe the line in terms of diversity hiring or curriculum changes. Security protection has been canceled for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security advisor John Bolton and other former public officials who have received credible death threats but have expressed views in opposition to the current administration -- with public announcements as if to enhance the peril deliberately. Promises to end the Ukraine war before day one, to lower the price of groceries, to reform health care, to reduce the cost of housing -- all forgotten in favor of spite and retribution. And now you cannot say Trump should be “86-ed” without fearing you might end up criminal court!
What’s happening in the United States now isn’t just an attempt to criminalize hate speech or alleged threats of violence. It is a broad scale coordinated campaign to intimidate large populations of journalists, lawyers, comedians, and (per the NY Times) Beyoncé. Donald Trump has announced his distaste for the rule of New York Times v. Sullivan, the long-standing Supreme Court interpretation of the free press language of the First Amendment that requires a showing of actual malice or wilful falsehood to succeed in defamation lawsuits against the media. It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize that the threat of large-verdict financial liability for calling Trump an economic moron or corrupt would make late night television incredibly bland and empty, editorial columns in the New York Times and even the Wall Street Journal vacuous.
I have spent more than the past year in my own very very small way satirizing, criticizing, even insulting Donald Trump and his gang, and you know I’m not going to shut up. I beg you few readers to get louder and not quieter, increase the drumbeat, invite a friend or two to join our little circle of readers, write a letter to the editor. Fan the liberal flame.
Arne Werchick, after fifty years as a litigation attorney, pro tem judge, law lecturer, former Presiding Arbitrator of the State Bar of California, and past president of the California Trial Lawyers Association, moved to Hawaii and lives with his wife Ruth and their rescue dog Topaz. He writes Out of My Liberal Mind (werchick.substack.com), a periodic free blog about issues of concern to the liberal community and can be contacted at liberalmind@werchick.com.