Clinton

Political correctness

November 24, 2016 Incoherent ramblings , , , , , , , ,

I saw an article on facebook about some recent idiocy at Queen’s university.

The idiocy isn’t what is being dubbed a racist party, but the fact that a costume party is dubbed racist.

A comment on this (Leon) that I thought summed things up nicely was:

“It is people who criticize a bunch of kids dressing as racists who make incidents of real racism greatly diminished.”

There is an alarming trend of perverting language in the political correct circles that is mystifying

  • A kiss without a contract, triple signed and witnessed, is now being called rape, or it’s seeming legal equivalent “sexual assault”.  There are concent posters all over UofT that outline the legalistic contracting required for sexuality in this PC age.  I was too inhibited when I was an undergrad to have had much sexual activity, but I’m glad that I’m not an undergrad now subject to the current guidelines.  It’s definitely not okay to take advantage of somebody who is drunk, but this has been flipped on its head.  Sex after consentual codrunkenness now appears to be sexual assult in some places.
  • Failing to use the “correct” gendered pronoun is now “hate speech”, and is perceived as, or at least mislabelled as, explicit violence.  I’m a firm believer that people should have complete freedom to engage in hate speech or discrimination of any sort.  Let people dig themselves their own social graves instead of trying to legislate speech.
  • Costume parties, even at halloween, are now being mislabelled racist.  Attempting to point that out at some PC universities resulted in so much PC backlash that resignations followed.

I keep hearing about instance after instance of such events.  It seems like most of the people who are pushing the political correctness agenda really desperately need dictionaries.  Just because you can label two things as identical, doesn’t mean that they are.  A perfect example of this is the use of “sexual assault” now instead of rape.  The two are now identified as identical, even though sexual assault is a much broader term that includes groping.

There was lots in the recent US election media circus about how Trump’s bragging of pussy grabbing and aggressive kissing, acts that were facilitated by stardom.  One of the debate moderators explicitly called that sexual assault.  I don’t like the phrase sexual assault, because it is ambiguous, and has connotations of rape, while not necessarily being rape.  It seems to be a phrase designed to have the emotional impact of rape, while being something lesser.

Whether or not that Trump was bragging about sexual assault is probably dependent on state law.  Ambiguous language identifies unequal events with the same weight, and seems to be a characteristic of political correct speech and activism.  For example, calling pussy grabbing rape would be an obvious example of the misuse of language.  That’s why PC correct speech uses sexual assault instead.  A side effect of such PC correct speech is that actual rape, a horribly abusive event, is trivialized.  The irony in the Trump case was that the media could have focused on actual rape.  For example, Trump and his pedophile buddy Jeffrey Epstein, are codefendents in an actual rape case (which I understand has now unfortunately been dropped due to technicalities).  Characteristic of many of the charges laid against Epstein, this one is also of a child, in this case a 13 year old.

Of his buddy Epstein Trump said

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

It remains to see if Trump is a sexual predator on par with Bill Clinton.  My gut feeling why pussy grabbing got so much attention, but Trump’s case with Epstein did not was because Bill is also a good friend of Epstein, and had been down to Epstein’s pedophile island many times.  Raising attention to that would have distracted from Hillary’s campaign (perhaps even raised the issue that she’d also “partied” there, in ways currently unspecified).

I digress.

How can political correctness be combatted?  One way is calling out explicit misuse of language.  Be very careful to use accurate words, and not to conflate things in order to push an agenda.

Because the political correctness movement is anti-intellectual, I suspect that purely linguistic techniques to fighting it are doomed.  Are there active social techniques that would be effective?

I came up with one idea that I amused myself with.  Perhaps it is time to start hosting some explicitly politically incorrect parties, just to push back.  Imagine a Halloween party that you are not allowed into, unless you are offending some minority group.  Suggested costume ideas include Hilter, blackface, transvestites or red-indians.  If you aren’t insulting somebody, then you can’t come in.  If you don’t think that Hilter is offensive enough, perhaps the host would allow you in if you dressed as some other psychopathic killer like Kissinger or Churchill, but that risks turning the party into an political party instead of an anti-PC party.  Costume prize adjudication would be biased against those that are in a visible minority group, so you should get extra points if you are a cis gendered white male.  Bonus points to the hosts of the party should they hold it on a university campus.

Some initial thoughts on a read of William Blum’s “Rogue State”

July 22, 2014 Incoherent ramblings , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have started reading the disgusting book “Rogue State, A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” by William Blum.  It is disgusting not because it is poorly written, but because of the US government, CIA, and military atrocities it details.

It is also a discouraging book, and hard to stomach, and downright depressing.  It is, however, encyclopedic, thorough, and contains extensive references.  If you ever wanted a detailed list of US atrocities to counter arguments that governments, military, and intelligence agencies serve us positively, this book has everything on the shopping list.

There is a huge disparity between popular and media perception of the USA and what is presented in this book.  This disparity brings to mind the paradigm shift discussion of Kuhn’s “Structure of scientific revolutions”.  The perception of the USA (or its NATO and economic puppets like Canada) as freedom loving “democracy” is so indoctrinated into us that to accept the reality that exactly the opposite is true requires a complete paradigm shift.  It is too painful to realize that we have to totally discard our current world view, and be willing to accept the pain and discomfort associated with the mental revolution required to see the actual state of the world.  Kuhn also points out that such a revolution isn’t going to happen until people have a ready made alternative to the current paradigm.  The history of warfare and evil in our world is so pervasive, that I don’t think we have a ready made model of peaceful interaction available for this switch, and are therefore willing to overlook the errors of the current model.  I think that this book details enough of those errors that it puts the current world view on shaky ground.
I find this author to be is an extremely effective communicator.  A sample of his style can be found in this 2002 speech.

The speech above also contains a quote from the intro in “Rogue State” that I found particularly striking:

“If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize — very publicly and very sincerely — to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce that America’s global interventions have come to an end and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -– oddly enough -– a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to our victims and repair the damage from our bombings. There would be enough money. Do you know what one year’s military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.”