I Don’t Make the Rules
Julius Caesar drives a Jeep and the ancient joke banned from Twitter
Historical Linguistics
Language and history are my nerd-hobbies.
Over the course of using Twitter for 15 years, I found a like-minded community of people interested, motivated, and fluent in deep-diving a range of esoteric subjects.
In the fall of 2022, I blew up my account, anonymized it, and drastically cut back on usage.
I blocked the new owner. The site was already Where Nuance Came to Die™, but was proactively being converted from a office water cooler and town square into a digital bier-hall, circa 1923 Munich.
Anyways, I learned that management had announced a new content moderation policy which indicated the word “cis” was considered a slur.
Transgressive jokes are cool, but cisgressive comedy is officially prohibited.
As a language, comedy, and history nerd, I immediately found and quote-tweeted the owner’s words saying:
Diogenes would be translating “cis” and “cisgender” back into Greek SO fast just to mock, point, and laugh.
Since then, I’ve been put in time-out.
I came to a dawning realization: I think I’ve been “canceled” by the richest man on the planet. For mocking a stupid policy.
Finally! If you can’t dunk on people, it defeats the purpose of pointing and laughing at Nazis in the pub.
For #reasons, self-deprecation is against the moderation policy.
If Diogenes the Cynic didnt suffer consequences for teasing Alexander the Great, surely a billionaire with brain-worms will let a cis-hetero dudebro make fun of himself, brainstorming new names for his dream car.
There is a subversive historical linguistic joke (or meme) somewhere in here, and maybe a funnier person expounds on it.
But, until then, I don’t make the rules.
Teenage Dream Car
The cars on my bucket list as a (former) American teenager:
Lamborghini Diablo
Chevrolet Corvette
Jeep Wrangler
Not just any kind of Jeep, though!
Not a Sahara or the Moab edition, which are boring, dry deserts.
My dream was the Jeep Rubicon model.
For a teenage nerd who studied 4 years of Latin, the Rubicon was the best model of Wrangler.
Enemy of Language
Learning Latin involves reading a lot of history in a dead language.
Fifty years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Julius Caesar had marched his army back from modern-day Paris after putting down a revolt of Gallic tribes.
Caesar was in deep debt after years of borrowing cash to fund bribes in order to get himself elected to office.
The Roman Republic had already experienced ugly and traumatic civil wars.
As a result, the Senate passed a law which forbade a general to lead an army out of the province to which he was assigned.
The people in modern-day Switzerland & Austria were in Transalpine Gaul.
The people on the modern-day Italian side of the Alps were in Cisalpine Gaul.
The Romans also didn’t believe in censorship:
Swiss-Austrians were Trans
Northern Italians were Cis
The Alps are a mountain range and didn’t ask for any of this nonsense.
In this case, Caesar had been assigned to Gaul, both Trans and Cis.
I don’t make the rules.
Symbolic Barrier of No Return
The Senate gave Caesar a choice: give up his province and army by a certain day, or be declared an enemy of the State.
Between Cisalpine Gaul and Roman Italy proper was a stream which served as symbolic border separating the jurisdictions.
True story: Caesar got in his ancient Jeep Wrangler and crossed the Rubicon river. Neither Trans nor Cis asked for any of this.
This act of desperate ambition turned Caesar into the Main Character™ of the day, signaling an armed insurrection against the citizens of Rome and the Senate of the Republic.
Jeep Wrangler Rubicon is a vehicle model name capturing the symbolism of a physical and psychological barrier for ancient minds.
Crossing that barrier signified yet another assault on civic norms and laws, and the next war within the Republic.
It eventually resulted in dictatorship and the Roman Empire.
“crossing the Rubicon” became an idiom for describing the “point of no return”
More than 15 hundred years after Caesar borrowed huge amounts to corrupt the system, suppressed revolts of the Trans and Cis, and crossed the Rubicon, Shakespeare imagined him saying “Et tu, Brute?” on the Ides of March.
On second thought, Rubicon might be a nightmare model name.
To keep up with the times, a red-blooded, rock-ribbed American teenager might need new dream car names based on current events, popular symbolism, and updated language.
Fortunately, these models will be announced soon, so there are options to pick from:
Cadillac Capitol Walls
Bentley Barricades
BMW Windows
Chrysler Cis
Dodge Doors
Pontiac Pelosi’s Desk
Porsche Police
Subaru Scaffolding
Toyota Tape
But, I don’t make the rules.
Clearly.