[Work pressures are interfering with blogging. Much of this is a re-post.]
Five years ago I wrote a long series on PC & Defects in Reality Testing. (The posts are also collected in the Political Correctness Archive, along with many other posts.) It remains, if anything , even more relevant to these times when we are at war with an unnameable enemy and our government and media keep being surprised by the identity and puzzled by the motivation of those who insist on continuing to try to kill us despite our "kinder, gentler" approach to the Muslim world.
Jeffrey Goldberg ponders The Meaning of Faisal 'Rorschach' Shahzad while Eric Scheie wonders if PC is A contagious form of mental illness. Unfortunately, PC does behave like an Encephalopathic virus; it damages the mind's ability to process data.
In PC & Defects in Reality Testing: Part VI, I wrote:
Political Correctness requires that those men who have been successful in our culture be seen as "oppressive white men". Any facts that do not fit into the basic structure of the model have to be rejected. Better yet, incorrect thoughts are simply ignored or dismissed. By using the language of deconstruction, the PC movement insists that reality is merely a construct (this is clearly analogous to transference) and that those in power create the construct and impose it on others. This is the equivalent of Mr. A's father insisting, while he hit him, that it was all for his own good. Mr. A, just like a society in thrall to Political Correctness could either believe his own experience or accept the authority (who he depended on) and deny his own perceptions. The only way to avoid constant internal tension would be to stop seeing those things that do not fit the acceptable model. Mr. A could not see that his bosses were not tyrants. For a very long time he could not see that I was not a tyrant. Political Correctness has stunted our social conversation about race, abortion, sexuality, and the dangers we face in an often hostile world. As long as we cannot allow ourselves to see, we have no chance to change dysfunctional structures.
In reality, there are probably fairly few PC "true believers." I suspect there are those who insist that all white men are by definition evil oppressors and the source of all that is evil in the world, but more commonly, those whose livelihoods depend on the Politically Correct simply train themselves not to see whatever doesn't fit, just as the New York Times reporter, Walter Duranty, could win a Pulitzer for not noticing the millions who were slaughtered by Stalin. To see the true reality and report on it would have been the end of Duranty's career. Instead, he lied to his public and to himself, and was rewarded with riches and prizes.
Increasingly, the tide is shifting. Reality is asserting itself, partly with the help of bloggers, biases and all. Unfortunately, those who depend on Political Correctness still have the ability, just like the KGB, to enforce their will on their subjects. Their power is waning but they still hold sway in the MSM, significant parts of the Democratic Party, and Academia. As their power shrinks, their rage grows. They can not tolerate dissent because once they allow their world view to be questioned, their power must crumble.
The problem of PC induced impairments in reality testing must get worse before they get better.
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