There...I said it.
I will face certain disagreement, but I care not. 'Political correctness' is a feeling. It is ethereal. It is unmeasurable. It is also not intellectually mature discourse.
But it has pervaded our discussions of all things cultural and political, and used as a weighted pejorative....instead of argument on merit.
It is typically employed by the right, to explain away those paradigms they disagree with...most often [or indeed solely] against the left. Yet those on the right who employ this tactic, fail to realize that 'political correctness' exists as surely on their end of the spectrum as it does on the opposite.
For the reasons initially stated. It is a feeling. Why then, would a socio-poltical subset who usually derides basing assessments on feelings, employ the very tactic they make caricatures of?
imo, the democrats and the leftists say anything they want, then bully the right, using PC claims/accusation as their billy club.
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
It is unclear what you are trying to say here, so I don't know if I agree or disagree. All ideological camps use speech codes to keep the faithful in line and to club opponents over the head.
ReplyDeleteI recommend Orwell's brilliant essay, Politics and the English Language
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part42
Here's a money quote:
"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
He expands on this theme in his essay, The Principles of Newspeak.
http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app
What I mean is that not only is "political correctness" a vague and undefined notion, but that general consensus on the right seems to be that this tactic only exists on the left.
DeleteInter-camp speech codes surely exist...my question is why can't otherwise intelligent people argue issues on their merits, rather than degrade their argument with intellectually immature tactics?
OK. I think I get you.
DeleteIn answer to your question, people can't do that for the same reason they cannot think for themselves, leaning instead on the bastion of ideology.
It's maddening, which is why I've run screaming from partisan politics and the swirling media circus that keeps the whole absurdity forever in our faces and our consciousness. It's all obfuscation and tendentiousness in the service of narrow political agendas.
As Orwell said, Politics is responsible for debasing the language.
"politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred,
and schizophrenia." -- George Orwell
Like you, I stand dumbfounded that a vast, overwhelming majority of the electorate not only put up with it, they cheer it on like the Patriots vs. the Giants