This is not especially for you for any reason other than my hesitation to bring it up to others who are too irrational to discuss most things anyway. Beware! The following contains irony and examples of the very idiocies it seeks to expose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ0SI0R-DmM
When anyone bemoans “Political Correctness” as a sweeping force that curtails free expression of ideas, I am reminded of a wonderful expression attributed to Twain. It covers the impulse to say certain things which may seem in the moment or even as part of an ongoing personal problem like something really clever or insightful to say but easily with a bit of reflection and certainly in retrospect are idiotic right then and at any time short of enough alcohol to inebriate an elephant and no one around but a fly on the wall to hear. Such expressions of opinion or humor or even supposed insight are stupid even drunk and alone, but if one is stupid enough to inflict that level of impairment on oneself and fortunate enough to be alone at that moment, the impulse and stupid expression fit the situation. Justice maintains balance. However, given a chance in company and a lack of impulse control, whether out of exuberance or neediness, the fool thing is out of the mouth, and then the defensiveness rises to protect the so-called ego. The straw specter, that evil shadow Political Correctness, enters on the emotional level of my dog ate my homework.
What I’m driving at is easy to demonstrate through simple questions. What is it anyone refrains from expressing because of so-called political correctness? What is the reason and the intention for expressing the incorrect thing?
I can make a joke here to show I’m not humorless while also demonstrating what I'm getting at.
I make a point of using the N word every day in order to avoid slipping into that Political Correctness funk. (Pause for the horror to spread like the shadow of Political Correctness slipping over freedom of expression.) By the “N word” I mean no, which means no except when I am being ironic.
I can sense that that one has them rolling in the aisles. Thank you. Tip your waitress, whatever her objectionable attitudes or even if she’s a man. Ooh! Is that a slip? I don’t think so. My men never wear slips under their attire.
On the intellectual side, consider arguments which have the form of reasoning but are actually quite without any sense or science. Let’s treat it like an ad for a new app: Think 24. Think 24 wants to share something: Black People…more of them in prison statistically; more likely criminals. It’s that poverty thing and single moms, history of slavery, and anger from so many sources. Here’s another one: Women too emotional for leadership…their reproductive organs just control them. They are inclined to have babies and stay home nurturing. Asian drivers…no Asians in NASCAR or Formula One, few Asian truck drivers in nations outside Asia. How come Orientals [sic] all get glasses so young anyway? White men...can't think of a thing. That might get a laugh. It certainly plays a big part of advertising.
I need to work on more plausible stupidity of expression. I’m too stupid naturally to rise to a level where I can readily make stupid arguments seem as reasonable as truly stupid persons seem to be able to do consistently.
Let’s take a well-known real-life example. Freakonomics, a popular book which has gained its authors ridiculous credibility, stipulates an infamous connection between a decline in crime rates nationwide in the last quarter of the 20th century and free access to abortion. The authors imply if not declare not merely a positive correlation but also a causal relationship between termination of unwanted pregnancy and reduced crime rates. This is very imaginative indeed if a mind is about as sophisticated as the morality of Charles Dickens’ characters and plots. I am sure the little twerp who came up with it is still delighted every time he thinks of it, and he’d get a hard-on if he had a penis. Unfortunately the lengthy oral ministrations his mother gave him resulted in the loss of manhood completely which is why he grew into the giggling weasel he is to this day, though expressing himself quite often ever since the appropriate bullies were forced to refrain from pummeling him into the isolation and alienation that his genetics and correct social reaction to him ought to have predetermined. In fairness he was in fact probably raised by a single mother too emotional to imbue self-censorship because of her disappointment at not being accepted on the racist talk show circuit. It’s a well-known fact that men think with the genitals so I can’t help but express myself this way. Go ahead and criticize me reasonably. I have my Political Correctness card ready.
A friend who is often quite insightful made a particularly bad argument. From his own experience, always a bad sign, he stated that women who beat out men for acceptance to higher education and even jobs were more likely to become stay-at-home mothers and so should not be considered as seriously for the jobs or those competitive spots in education. You see, they were depriving men who would have to be the sole supporters of families of those positions, those opportunities. Setting aside the devaluation of the importance of child-rearing, for we all know a care-giver at home running a household and raising kids can be a chimpanzee or howler monkey with no education or work experience and still do a bang-up job, let's consider first the concept of merit and deserving because we earn it. A rich person who becomes a selfish pig cannot be deprived of his wealth on the basis that he is not doing as much with it as someone else might. He earned it, we assert, however ludicrous that may be. Similarly, if a person, man or woman, wants to outperform academically and then out-compete vocationally other applicants, and then walk away, how is it any more prone to societal correction than the rich who do not use their wealth for better purposes? The other interesting circular argument in my friend's reasoning is that women are more likely, at least in his experience, to decide to raise the kids and not work outside the home. Of course he is aware of single moms, his mom having been a single mom for at least part of his childhood and youth. Somehow that didn't rise to a level he could identify and acknowledge that not all mothers raising kids are solely raising kids. Nor does the fact men can't get pregnant somehow eliminate a woman's biological role in reproduction as a basis for depriving them of equal opportunity. No. It is a stronger reason. Men can't get pregnant so they must be given the edge over the more qualified child-bearing sex. Mmm, yes. The fact women bear the initial brunt of our species’ survival is commonly used to marginalize their aspirations everywhere else. Even when we celebrate motherhood, it's often a way of keeping anyone in those roles inferior to the Big People who go out and EARN a Living in the Market, you weaker creature at home, man or woman. Weak loser, no status, my money, me, me, mine. Spray with disinfectant and disrepute of choice; just kill all the cootie loser germ-gene.
I hope I am giving ample evidence. That Twain quote, paraphrased, better to keep your mouth shut and let others wonder about how weak your thinking is rather than open it and remove all doubt could as well apply to me, trying to work my way out of my impulses and idiocy when grappling with these concepts and emotions.
Political Correctness as a concept is itself a straw man. There is no such thing separate from two other behavioral characteristics, which serve better to explain, and to reveal, what this political correctness critique is all about.
The first is a tendency towards sociability, the desire to get along and fit in. In terms of the political correctness red herring it works two ways: First, we don’t want to insult and alienate others; second, we want to insinuate ourselves closer to a group by expressing the same misguided interpretations of the world and by doing so avoid scrutiny ourselves. I'm like you, so pay no attention to the moron behind the curtain of stupid expression. That way everyone can feel like “community” at the stag party or cross burning.
The second behavioral characteristic is prejudice. Political Correctness is code for rationalized prejudice, plain and simple, for bad thinking all around with the intent to marginalize, stigmatize, and isolate as preparation for doing material harm personally, legally, physically, and encouraging others to join in or at least stand by idle, while groups are considered and treated unjustly. There is no politically incorrect statement which has any other intention, and none of them leads directly to fresh and exciting insights on old ills of the human condition.
As a final proof consider the ways I have expressed myself here. Choose the parts that are rhetorically superior and those that are decidedly inferior in terms of persuasiveness. I suggest all of us need to work all the time to express our ideas better and less ourselves at our emotional worst, which includes thinking better of what is best left unexpressed if its expression is resentment or veiled hatred, open anger, like so much flatulence from a steady diet of bad ideas and worse ways of interpreting information: in short things appropriate to disaffected adolescents or small children still learning how to get their needs met.
KLK
