The Sept. 30 online Miss Manners column, “Miss Manners: He said something offensive. I froze,” gave advice to a reader who heard someone repeatedly use the “r” word. Miss Manners’s response surprised me.
The reader wasn’t asking how to punish or humiliate anyone. She froze after hearing a man use the slur three times and wanted to know how she could respond respectfully if it happened again. Instead of advising the reader to remain neutral, Miss Manners should have advised her to speak up.
There’s a lot of room between staying silent and starting a fight. A calm response could be as simple as: “That word is a slur against people with intellectual disabilities. Please don’t use it.”
I hear regularly from people with intellectual and developmental disabilities about the pain the “r” word has caused them. Many people remember exactly who called them that word and how it made them feel decades later. Staying quiet also sends a message that using the word is acceptable. People with intellectual disabilities have spent years telling us otherwise.
The consequences of normalizing use of the “r” word reach far beyond a single conversation. Normalizing it affects who gets respected, included, supported and given a fair chance.
Politeness shouldn’t mean pretending nothing happened. A brief correction can be respectful while making clear that people with disabilities deserve respect, too. Miss Manners was right that we don’t have to pick a fight, but we don’t have to stay silent, either.
Katy Neas, Washington
The writer is CEO of the nonprofit the Arc of the United States.
What does $185 billion buy?
U.S. Space Force Gen. Mike A. Guetlein’s Sept. 24 online op-ed, “Why America needs Golden Dome for protection,” offered a much lower price tag than previous estimates: $185 billion. The important question for Congress is whether those dollars would be better spent on other defense priorities.
The original executive order establishing the program called for a system capable of protecting the United States against ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, as well as other advanced aerial attacks from adversaries. However, Guetlein described a system “optimized for the threats that pose the greatest risk.”
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Golden Dome could cost about $1.2 trillion over two decades. Several outside analyses put the cost even higher, with the American Enterprise Institute’s Todd Harrison estimating $3.6 trillion in today’s dollars. Congress needs to know whether Guetlein’s much lower figure reflects narrower capabilities, a shorter time horizon or different assumptions about costs.
The federal government is $40 trillion in debt and is paying more than $1 trillion in interest to service that debt this year. Plus, the U.S. Navy has a massive shipbuilding backlog, and recent wars are depleting munitions faster than the Pentagon can replace them.
Congress should ask not only whether Golden Dome can be built for $185 billion, but also what protection that price actually buys and whether it is the best use of limited defense resources.
Steve Ellis, Washington
The writer is president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
A better way to fight mosquitoes
Regarding the Sept. 29 Metro article “Silver Spring company offers novel service: Mosquito birth control”:
I hope that the new mosquito birth control method is a sign of where mosquito management is headed. I understand why mosquitoes are unpopular. Their bites can be maddening, and some can spread serious diseases. But mosquitoes are not malicious. They are tiny animals trying to survive, helping pollinate plants and serving as food for countless birds, bats, fish and other wildlife. Finding ways to manage their populations without blanketing backyards with insecticides shows that our protection doesn’t have to come at their expense.
The goal shouldn’t simply be fewer mosquitoes. It should be finding ways to live alongside other species without harming them.
Melissa Rae Sanger, Brighton, Michigan
I’ll skip this cancer test
Regarding the Sept. 29 news article “FDA panel backs controversial blood-based cancer test”:
I’m not quite sure who the newly approved general blood-based cancer-screening test is meant for, except that it is certainly not for me. I’m 80, and I have absolutely no interest in finding out that I might have cancer somewhere in my body that is not currently bothering me in any way. Discovering something like that would of course be worrisome and surely subject me to well-meaning pressure from my doctors to get all sorts of (expensive) tests at frequent intervals. This is simply not the way I want to spend either my time or my insurance company’s money. Thanks, but I’ll get a test when I feel like something specific is off.
Barbara Meierhoefer, Arlington
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