The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Political Correctness Is A Medieval Shield Trying To Stop A Hellfire Missile

Posted on | November 28, 2015 | 41 Comments

by Smitty

Instapundit points to umair haque’s introductory essay, “How Political Correctness Failed Liberalism“. I guess it’s a series, and maybe I’m jumping way ahead. But here is a taste:

The question is: why? What caused the decline? We may attribute it to many causes, and surely many have contributed. But one above all strikes me. Not merely competition from the right, nor a betrayal by the center?—?but the irrelevance of the left. Yet. “Left” and “right” aren’t poles on a fixed spectrum. Indeed, what I hope to demonstrate is that in many respects, left has become right, the center has vanished, and the right has become left. And so I will conclude this series of essays by proposing a new political typology altogether.

It’s a well-written essay, and worth reading in full. But I think the author may be standing too close to the problem.
Step back and consider the real thing that has changed in the last century: technology. If you don’t believe me, go shop at Borders.

Those managing Political Correctness–the Democrats, the Codpiece Media, academia, Hollywierd–are, as haque points out, attempting to “conserve” something: the power of The Anointed.

Technology is a hellfire missile coming right through that political correctness. Technology exposes (some of) the details of the corruption that people generally infer is going on in high places. But, more importantly, technology raises the question of why those places are so flipping high in the first place. Why should I listen to abject nitwits of either party tell me things I know are untrue, skip over facts I know are key to understanding an issue, and recommend courses of action I know will worsen a situation, and end up being precisely the opposite of the “solution” proclaimed by the no-talent rodeo clown du jour?

Improvement will come when the audiences wise up and understand that efforts to manipulate them emotionally (I think the latest Politically Correct twaddle is the sin of cultural appropriation) and just laughs, tweets, and blogs them to a comfortable oblivion.

The same goes for political candidates. Sure, it’s all theater; the medium reduces candidates to mere reproducers of bumper sticker philosophy; and the last guy that (traditionally) knew everything was Erasmus. But that’s no excuse for the shallow, boorish celebrity air-headery we see in Donald Trump, who seems mostly to be #OccupyResoluteDesk giving it the Full Bullworth.

Reject all this Political Correctness. Reject the idiocy. Reject all the argumentum ad hormonum. Reject the propaganda-based fear-mongering, e.g. the anthropogenic global climate warming change (or whatever they’re calling it this week) noise and demand calm, factual arguments.

Because if anything can save the Enlightenment from Political Correctness, it’s technology empowering people to laugh at these nitwits.

Comments

41 Responses to “Political Correctness Is A Medieval Shield Trying To Stop A Hellfire Missile”

  1. Steve Skubinna
    November 28th, 2015 @ 8:09 pm

    Laughter is not the only response…

    But it is the most practical. Because going all medieval on their sorry butts will eventually be counterproductive. It will change the focus from their stupidity and unfitness for society to our physical aggression.

    However I do have to say that of all the progressive nitwittery of the past two decades, the one that brings most strongly the urge to grab a bat and go upside some smug proggie’s upper brain housing group is cultural appropriation. These sh!tsucking weaseld!cks actually presume to dictate what foods I may or may not eat and under what circumstances, based on what part of the world my grandparents came from?

    Nothing demonstrates the trivial totalitarianism, the gross illogic, and the casual racism of these no talent clowns more than that particular idiocy. And the most amazing part, to me, is that none of them falter to a stop midsentence and say “Wait a minute… that’s really stupid!” They have fallen beyond the Stupid Event Horizon, from which coherent thought cannot escape.

  2. KAI!
    November 28th, 2015 @ 8:12 pm

    So when a Christian is offended if I say Jesus had two dads and took his own mother’s virginity it’s all on them? It’s not about me saying something that is rude and offensive? Well God Damn, what the hell are people upsets about?

  3. KAI!
    November 28th, 2015 @ 8:13 pm

    What is the difference between being pollute and being politically correct?
    I though politeness was an American virtue.

  4. CrustyB
    November 28th, 2015 @ 8:52 pm

    Sense: This Makes None.

  5. Mike G.
    November 28th, 2015 @ 9:48 pm

    Really dude!?! How’d you like it if I came to “your house” and took a big dump in the middle of your living room.

    Evidently your parental units failed you somewhere down the line.

  6. M. Thompson
    November 28th, 2015 @ 9:56 pm

    If he’s really annoying, call in Wombat-Socho.

  7. KAI!
    November 28th, 2015 @ 10:01 pm

    Hey, your being politically correct. Get off your PC high horse.

  8. Matt_SE
    November 28th, 2015 @ 10:23 pm

    I found that essay to be dishonest or cowardly. The writer seemed like a young fellow who either didn’t know enough about the subject, or wouldn’t admit there was little equivalence between the sides.

    He strikes me as the kind of guy who would say both sides in the Israel/Palestine thing are equally guilty of something. Bullshit.

  9. Fail Burton
    November 28th, 2015 @ 11:14 pm

    You have a lot of groups who see themselves as having been the also-rans of history. Now that they have full equality and opportunities, they still are and they’re looking for scapegoats. Turns out there may have been a legitimate reason they were also-rans in the first place. That’s what political correctness is; insisting on equal outcomes where all the teams tie for first place, because that happens so much in sports. Why look in the mirror when you can call your neighbor a racist, get them fired and get yourself your very own “safe space.” They should call them “crippled spaces.”

  10. Wombat_socho
    November 29th, 2015 @ 2:17 am

    Everyone is now more stupid for having read the drivel you just posted. Bye now.

  11. Wombat_socho
    November 29th, 2015 @ 2:19 am

    You rang?

  12. Fail Burton
    November 29th, 2015 @ 5:34 am

    Being polite is not telling a fat woman at a cocktail party she’s fat. PC is operating on the belief she’s not fat; she’s differently abled or an unweighed citizen or a shining paradigm to rebel against the normative. That’s why we’re importing the entire Third World here. We’ve actually come to believe the fiction that people who’ve never shown a sign of technological competence will carry America into the next generation of fast-attack nuclear aircraft carriers. Dirt is not magic; why aren’t they doing that at home and why am I not swimming to their countries?

  13. smitty
    November 29th, 2015 @ 5:56 am

    Interesting. I guess I came down more on the “ignorant” side. The idea that he was attempting dishonesty never occurred to me.

  14. smitty
    November 29th, 2015 @ 5:57 am

    I’ve done OK in life, but feel an underachiever much of the time. But scapegoating is certainly something to avoid.

  15. Squid Hunt
    November 29th, 2015 @ 7:21 am

    The difference between being polite and political correctness is forced adherence. If you’re rude, you get called a jackass and everyone moves on, even on the internet. If you violate political correctness, you get screamed at, mobbed, children are photographed crying, cities go up in smoke, and then every politico you’ve ever liked on Facebook gets a mic pushed in their faced so the whole world gets to see them denounce you as an evil kitten killer and likely klan operative. Political correctness is a political stunt. That was and is its only intent.

  16. DeadMessenger
    November 29th, 2015 @ 7:40 am

    Yes, because he’s actually too stupid to understand what dishonesty is. He’s lived a short lifetime in which there cannot be lies, because there’s no truth. There’s only subjective feelings and opinions about stuff and in his defective mind, all are equally valid.

  17. Ilion
    November 29th, 2015 @ 8:10 am

    Indeed, what I hope to demonstrate is that in many respects, left has become right, the center has vanished, and the right has become left
    That sentence alone from the quoted snippet, was a dead give-away that he’s either ingorant or bullshitting (or both).

  18. RS
    November 29th, 2015 @ 9:15 am

    I read the linked essay yesterday via another site, Insty perhaps. It seems the author’s general thesis is PC focuses on trivialities instead of big ticket items, and thus, it’s doomed to irrelevancy. That’s perhaps true, but I noted the author’s unproven assumption that the “big ticket” items all involve greater government intervention/interference in our lives. For example, he speaks glowingly of “income equality” as being a preferable battleground to sexless restrooms. Had the author realized that focusing on PC trivialities, “microagressions,” “safe spaces” and so forth is doomed in the face of real battles like imperialist Islam, he might have succeeded.

    As for technology slowing the advance of PC, there’s some truth to that as well, as evidenced by the government’s continued efforts to regulate the internet and enforce election laws on bloggers and news aggregation sites like Drudge.

  19. RS
    November 29th, 2015 @ 9:19 am

    The PC crowd equates using the “N-word” with pointing out that the correlation between the breakdown of the Black family and the problems black Americans have. In other words, PC requires a denial or willful blindness to objective reality.

  20. CaptDMO
    November 29th, 2015 @ 9:40 am

    “What is the difference between being polite and being politically correct?”
    Generally, about one standard deviation (15 or so IQ “points”) on the bell curve.
    “Polite” is HOW to think.
    PC is WHAT to think….or else, TANTRUM!

  21. CaptDMO
    November 29th, 2015 @ 9:43 am

    WOAH! Are we to understand that stereotypes
    actually come from somewhere?

  22. Adobe_Walls
    November 29th, 2015 @ 11:01 am

    But he’s a leftist isn’t he? Liar prima facia.
    I do find the notion that Hellfire missiles have a role to play in combatting Political Correctness intriguing.

  23. Steve Skubinna
    November 29th, 2015 @ 12:05 pm

    Jackboots, for one thing.

  24. Fail Burton
    November 29th, 2015 @ 12:11 pm

    You can measure the tranquility of a person’s life by the triviality of their complaints. That’s probably the key to the fall of liberalism; it’s won all it’s battles and is finding trouble justifying its own existence.

    In another sense liberalism has been infiltrated by an ideology whose specialty is trivial and delusional gripe and hokum: Third Wave Feminism. Vague and ill-defined cultural relativism and post-modernism set the stage for the triumphal entry and onslaught of a comprehensive ready-made ideology 50 years in the making like Third Wave Feminism.

    So now ennui and a suicide cult has taken center stage in liberalism, and one which believes they are a back to nature lesbian emancipation movement which needs to destroy heterosexuality and the dominance of men. That madness has been camouflaged and mainstreamed into the public conscience as “social justice,” and it is just plain dangerous, because what it really goes back to is a time before the Magna Carta, destroying due process and renewing the idea of selective prosecution in a type of Star Chamber for men.

  25. Matt_SE
    November 29th, 2015 @ 12:57 pm

    Reminiscent of the “Southern racists became Republicans in 1965” bullshit.

  26. Matt_SE
    November 29th, 2015 @ 12:59 pm

    I can’t be sure either, but the “fool or knave” discussion is a classic for that reason: it seems to cover all the bases.

  27. Wombat_socho
    November 29th, 2015 @ 3:07 pm

    Wait, you mean we’re not being held back by the evil machinations of the sinister JOOOOOS? This changes everything! 😉

  28. Steve Skubinna
    November 29th, 2015 @ 3:39 pm

    No, he just means he personally is not. Probably not significant enough. Smitty’s not the sort to be alarmed if there’s a bustle in his hedgerow.

    The rest of us are, though. So stay on your guard!

  29. Quartermaster
    November 29th, 2015 @ 3:51 pm

    No, he just doesn’t realize those eeevil Joooos are doing to him. It all started at NPS, then at Canoe U. The finishing school was the fleet, and now he’s so dulled they have him right where they want him.

    Just be careful. You don’t want to end up like Smitty.

  30. Ilion
    November 29th, 2015 @ 4:11 pm

    Just so.

  31. Ilion
    November 29th, 2015 @ 4:12 pm

    … except that ‘fool’ doesn’t mean ‘idiot’, but rather means much the same as ‘knave’.

  32. smitty
    November 29th, 2015 @ 4:16 pm

    Yes, I linked Instapundit right after my byline.

  33. NeoWayland
    November 29th, 2015 @ 4:25 pm

    This is a bit off topic, but how does one call you in to deal with a special person? I thought for sure you’d pop in a few weeks ago because of a certain visitor, but you didn’t. So I guess there’s something we have to do to notify you?

    http://theothermccain.com/2015/11/10/well-that-didnt-take-long/

  34. News of the Week (November 29th, 2015) | The Political Hat
    November 29th, 2015 @ 5:55 pm

    […] Political Correctness Is A Medieval Shield Trying To Stop A Hellfire Missile Instapundit points to umair haque’s introductory essay, “How Political Correctness Failed Liberalism”. I guess it’s a series, and maybe I’m jumping way ahead. […]

  35. Steve Skubinna
    November 29th, 2015 @ 7:26 pm

    It takes a large degree of obtuseness to spend any time at all complaining about “microaggressions.”

    Seriously? Everything is so great that you’re reduced to scanning every interaction with an electron microscope searching for offense that you then will use as justification to destroy somebody’s life? And you can’t see how ridiculous that is?

    I’d love to have so few problems that the worst among them is somebody refers to me using the masculine pronoun on the flimsy pretext that it’s appropriate due to my penis.

    Well, except for the getting my knickers in a twist part because somebody used logic at me.

  36. A_Nonny_Mouse
    November 29th, 2015 @ 9:07 pm

    I’d never before seen a reference to the Codpiece Media … but … upon serious reflection, it is an absolutely PERFECT description: from “the who and what” the MFMSM covers and protects, up to and including “the what and who” they attempt to aggrandize.

    Heh.

  37. Wombat_socho
    November 30th, 2015 @ 3:29 pm

    The famous Wombat Signal is located atop Gotham City’s…no, I can’t do that to you. In reality, there’s an e-mail link at the top of all my posts; if someone is being a shithead, shoot me an e-mail. I’m pretty obsessive about checking it.

  38. NeoWayland
    November 30th, 2015 @ 4:38 pm

    Good to know. I’ll let you know next time.

  39. KrakenFartz
    December 1st, 2015 @ 2:55 pm

    The Jooooos are doing a spring clean for the May Queen? Oh noes! I hope there’s still time to change the road I’m on!

  40. KrakenFartz
    December 1st, 2015 @ 3:08 pm

    It is stunning how susceptible people who live ‘the life of the mind’ are to groupthink, and how groupthink is invariably the work of a small number of very rigid, determined agitators. Mindless intellectuals make the best useful idiots.

  41. Steve Skubinna
    December 1st, 2015 @ 4:07 pm

    My understanding is that there are two paths you can go by…