Covert

Covert operations need a stealth shield. They play with the cover of secrecy that is designed to be withdrawn at the right time. Curses are like that. They need to spring up and not be graciously presented. To retain their ability to spring up, they need to be slipped into regular parlance without too much priming. Curses do not have any build-up and do not have any winding-down. They come at you like nothing you have seen before. In the military logic, the covert operation is twice as safe as a regular operation to run. If it fails, it is easy to deny responsibility for it and operatives die but that is what they signed up for. If it succeeds, then the job is done and it is easy to express joy over a coincidental meeting of objectives without claiming responsibility for it.

Covert operations allow the denial of the intent.

Curses are deployed covertly but then they operate in an open battle-field situation. It is impossible to covertly curse someone because the curse might not be understood as a curse at all and so it might easily be diffused.

Such is language. Being explicit is a necessity and not a choice as subtlety has exhausted itself and to open the door now, we have to hammer it down. If we stand here knocking, the door will never open and we will never enter the scene.

Curses are inherently violent modes of expression. This does not mean, that by advocating a curse as a panacea of our times, we are advocating armed conflict. Because nothing can work on its own. Along with the ability to curse, we need to develop an ability to gauge the sharpest moment to slip it into our discourse. We need to lead and direct the conversation towards the point of inflection. Mapping the narrative, editing, manipulating, prospecting, call it something you like. But violent crime does not fit the description easily.

Language can be rule-bound and subject to penalisation. There are too many variables. Sometimes things just don't work. Meaning can be encrypted. And then as a text, as a piece of code, it also needs to feel honest. But both of these afflictions do not work together sometimes. Texts need to fail sometimes, in order to work. And that is covert.
Texts otherwise cannot cloak very easily. They only have the first read, a small window of access to affect us. If during that access, they fail. They fail for good.