Is the tide finally turning? It feels different this time - article by Ol' Remus song by The Liberty Bard

 

 

Political Correctness
Ol' Remus

Scott Collins at The Los Angeles Times reports, "Robertson, the long-bearded patriarch of the clan of Louisiana duck-call merchants, is on "hiatus" from filming episodes of the No. 1-rated cable reality show after giving a GQ magazine interview where he made anti-gay remarks and questioned the need for the civil-rights movement." No fair minded person would call his remarks anti-gay so much as Politically Incorrect. He expressed his opinion frankly, without evasion or apologizing in advance. Nor has he backtracked. Remarkable.

For once we heard something other than value-free, pH-neutral blather. Said differently, he committed a thought crime. And for once, like-minded people defended themselves and the speaker from the hosing that followed. It's a rare and welcome moment.

The reason that so many Americans love Duck Dynasty is because it represents the America usually ignored or mocked by liberal elites: a family that loves and cares for each other, believes in God, and speaks openly about their faith. As PC enforcers often forget, tolerance is a two-way street. - Sen. Ted Cruz, Facebook, via Tal Kopan at politico.com

This is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades... This is why there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. - Camille Paglia, via Caroline May at dailycaller.com

This stuff has a dismal history tracing back at least to Prohibition, which was closely tied to the women's suffrage movement, and pushed to near-completion while men were overseas fighting World War I. It arose from noble intent perhaps, but it was naive and unenforceable to a certainty. The results, aside from being disastrous, were a national joke, as is its replacement, the War On Drugs. Both set new standards for stupidity, exactly the sort of thing do-gooders either won't see or can't resist. They seem to have an appetite for conspicuous but pointless domination, wasting other people's lives and misallocating resources on a colossal scale.

The Sons-of-Prohibition go on and on. The Korrectness Korps prohibited trans-fats for instance, not just for themselves but for everybody, thereby saving the unwary from Death by Donut and making the world safe for GMOs one supposes. This is "because-we-can" nannyism, Bloomberg-style. The prohibition against trans-fats is based on dubious science, probably junk science. And good science is bad enough, the half-life of all medical knowledge is pegged at about twenty-two years. Ban salt? Without salt you die. Secondhand smoke kills? Not according to the National Cancer Institute. Future school kids will write essays about these diktats and wonder, "what could they have been thinking?" Their parents will assure them it can't happen again. Pshaw and tsk tsk. It always happens again. It never stops happening.

Now consider the prohibition against dissenting opinion, Political Correctness as it's known. The term dates from the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Those caught—or more likely, those denounced, for voicing an independent opinion were sent to labor-reeducation camps for rigorous training in "politically correct" thought. Inmates confessed their deviant ways in ever more demeaning and self-destructive acts. The specifics of the criminal charge were not revealed, so inmates searched their memories and their imaginations and confessed endlessly, hoping to hit on it. It was a ruse, the formal charges were random contrivances.

What chance of release they had relied on convincing their captors of their total and exacting devotion to Marxist orthodoxy in word and deed. Stalin said breaking a man was more satisfying than executing him. This is the how and why of brainwashing. We see it replicated today in PC to one degree or another. It's the foundation of the White Privilege scam, for one.

Political Correctness in its modern form came to America around the 1970s. At first it was ridiculed, a sure-fire laugh for standup comedians. But it became ever-more powerful in sly and surprising ways. Knowing the latest version required close attention, it was no idle exercise to stay current, a misstep had social and career implications. "Afro-American", once mandatory, is now heard as a sardonic insult. Oops. A couple of generations have grown up believing Political Correctness is the default reality, that deviation is illegitimate by definition. It's intent is to ensure dissent expends a lot of resources to overcome a perception of malicious intent, no matter how compelling its merits.

The opposition to all this was well anticipated. Appeals to free speech and our tradition of unencumbered expression were shouldered aside. PC intensified, then awarded itself the power to penalize, notably with zero tolerance policies and hate crime laws. In the main, opponents of PC failed, and they continue to fail insofar as they misunderstand Political Correctness. They think it's faintly humorous 'nice talk' designed to make everybody feel good, or just some Victorian scolds with clumsy rules for a "non-threatening national forum". Annoying, but after all, unpleasantness is, well, unpleasant. No, stereotypes didn't become stereotypes on the basis of nothing at all. And no, it's not just making nice, it's an iron-fisted political gulag with compulsory self-censorship, or as they put it, "words have consequences."

We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely. - A&E Network press release

Martin "Banshee" Bashir at MSNBC was not fired right away for his pornographic/scatological remarks concerning Sarah Palin [he said somebody should urinate and defecate in Sarah Palin's mouth], but the Duck Dynasty guy was fired immediately for expressing his Christian values a bit too firmly. - Carlos Eire at babalublog.com

Political Correctness is not a free-standing option, nor is it an alternative code of happy-talk, it's the hard-wiring for a cult of coercion designed to negate free speech by setting non-negotiable margins on thought itself. PC violators are fast-tracked to the leper colony, and there we see the nature of Political Correctness: opposing ideas are not just wrong, they're not just illegitimate, they're literally unspeakable. Even the "Intellectual Right" is embarrassed by the "non-PC Right." Ambitious political outfits want into the PC system. It's a handy, fingerprints-free star chamber. Notice how the global warming extremists, its persuasion being unpersuasive, strain for a piece of the action. No debates for you, it's straight to the Nuremberg docket.

Notice also how the non-PC marketplace is being criminalized outright, to wit: those "'automatic' assault rifles designed to mow down classrooms of adorable toddlers at one go". And thereby inconveniencing PC-Approved preteen sex recruitment, they don't add. Incidentally, the liberties homophiles award themselves are astounding, now it takes a whole 'nuther "the talk" to prepare boys for "education" salary. Probably not most, but many of these 'educators' should sell if their IQ reaches 70.

The straight white collar world is so imbued with LGBT orthodoxy that as soon as GLAAD issued its statement about Phil Robertson's GQ interview, A&E just went ahead and tortured itself. Its immediate censure and suspension of Robertson was a pure and very public act of self flagellation. The LGBT world didn't have to lift a finger. All it took was a short press release. - Doug Mainwaring at americanthinker.com

If politics is downstream from society, it worked as intended. Merely questioning some detail of the Politically Correct code marked one as an aggressive cretin. But there came a time when serious, effective confrontations occured, and in doing so discovered PC's weakness: it only works if they can turn people into zombie blivots populating an eager-to-please collective. To this end, they've largely taken control of the national dialogue as they understand it, television and newspapers, faculties and legislatures, in short, the shuck'n jive tentacles of official power and decision-making. It's a classic mistake made by medieval royalty to the Politburo, and now by DC and their Stasi-state apparatus.

In times past, resistances peddled underground newspapers and staged street theatre to build support. Today such things are mainly useful to give activists a dynamic outlet, the real work occurs long before these things happen. Such public displays announce the final push over prepared ground. It begins in conversation. Perhaps someone expresses a reasonable, carefully worded, mild reservation about some aspect or another of the PC code. It builds as like-minded people find each other and speak more frankly, it matures as events clarify and inform their opinions. In a deep but informal way, dissent eventually coalesces into a self-aware critical mass. The internet facilitates all this, it's where people talk among themselves beyond their own neighborhood.

The regime wages savvy operations against it to be sure but, like resistance movements of the past, a dispersed opposition can absorb their frenzy with barely a yawn. This is where we find ourselves today. Political Correctness and its interlocking system of repression is visibly faltering. Issues thought safely set aside are reappearing. Even the vaunted NSA can neither locate or avoid the pain. PC pillories a victim or two and beats its chest, but looks silly doing it. Even its loyal cadre sees what's happening, and they suspect this is no minor setback. They smell an authentic consensus welling up beneath their feet. Notice the fencing-in of reader comments at news media websites, or their outright discontinuance. The trend is not their friend. Those with their ear closest to the ground "get it" and are edging toward the exits.

Political Correctness is still potent, but newly vulnerable. PC assumes compliance will be preferable to the social price of disobedience. Alas, compliance is otherwise unenforceable, and that's PC's decisive weakness. Prohibition was repealed because it fell into deserved disrepute and, being unenforceable, was unenforced. Duh. PC is failing the same way. The personal price of compliance has overtaken the personal price of disobedience, in fact, non-PC terms are a near-reliable gauge of sincerity. This, incidentally, is what's behind the rapid-fire issuance of new PC terms, a self-destructive cycle if there ever was one, but they never did have more than a delusion of adequacy. It's no secret PC Police have to be watered twice a day.

The drill has become familiar. Someone speaks out in favor of maintaining the traditions of marriage, and instantly the gay rights organizations are up in arms, making threats, filing lawsuits, and mobilizing protests. Then, instead of Christians putting up a serious resistance, there is apathy, apology, and defeat. The script was repeated over and again, time after time. This time was different. - Robert Arvay at americanthinker.com

The Duck Dynasty revolt reveals more about PC than their worst fears allow. After decades of being effectively unopposed, Political Correctness is playing defense, but it has no experience with it. It's paranoiac fluster at any challenge is followed by—and people notice this—slapstick overreaction that looks ridiculous even to the disengaged. Defending PC today points out the defender as a hopeless rube, and supplicants for absolution as invertebrate wusses. The rising defiance to PC is causing genuine panic in their ranks. PC has been unconstrained by reality for decades, now it's far from sight of shore, held together by little more than cant and chants, its internal stresses incapable of withstanding any informed confrontation. It's buckling. The people know it.

 

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