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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

Attack of the Literal Grammar Nazis

Today on "Idiotic Psychopaths Desperately Hoping For Public Relations Damage Control," following on the recent news of the NRA asking their members to maybe not show off their Open Carry rights by "casually" bringing assault rifles into restaurants even though it is technically legal in some places, my buddy Jake retweeted a cryptic link from Heeb Magazine, which in turn led me to this remarkable gem:

Yes, that is a tweet from the actual real-life official twitter of the American Nazi Party, in which they are being fascistic about grammar. They are literally Grammar Nazis.

Perhaps more disturbingly, I agree with them. Good grammar IS important. I share personal philosophical beliefs with the American Nazi Party. This realization was slightly disconcerting, of course, so I decided to peruse their Twitter feed to see what other kinds of causes they tweet in support of. Things like...animal rights...sustainable organic foods...they're vocally pro-life...and encourage a straight edge lifestyle (less surprising than it should be)...they're anti-corporation, and support local businesses....ooh, and they also love Moms! Er, wait a second...

Okay well then so ignoring that last little hashtag there, and the swastika, and the specification of "Aryan" moms above all, maybe Neo-Nazis aren't so bad? It seems they care about a lot of the same things I care about, or the things that people like me care about. That's kind of weird, right?

Oh. Well. Nevermind. We're now back to your regularly scheduled supremacist scumbags. Still, this is certainly a lesson in the banality of evil — that for all my touchy-feely artist progressive politics, I could (unfortunately) find some commonality with the American Nazi Party. And in a weird way, I kind of respect their attempts to police the grammar of their followers. Poor language skills often (though not always) betray a lack of education, and, well, they wouldn't want us got-dayum libaruls to think that modern-day Nazis are ignorant, now, would they?

Ahem. Right. Anyway.

Discovering this horrifying corner of Twitter reminded me of a happy little tune I used to sing with friends when I was just a wee young lad haunting American Legion Halls across Connecticut. It went a little something like this: