To defy the PC goblins passes as radical truth-telling
Virginia Heffernan on John Kelly and “political correctness”:
How good it feels; it’s almost a high. When we can’t be bothered to temper our provincialism — or lechery and racism — we get to dress up ignorance as bravery, rebellion. To defy the PC goblins passes as radical truth-telling. In a flash, our existential terror about being obsolete and left behind — at being a “dinosaur,” as Harvey Weinstein once described himself — turns into bravado about that very same backwardness.
We know the type.
John Kelly, the beleaguered White House chief of staff, despises political correctness.
And he doesn’t just hate it on behalf of geezers who can’t get girls to laugh at their off-color jokes anymore. He hates it on behalf of violent men like former White House aide Rob Porter, a “man of true integrity and honor” with a straight part and squared shoulders, whom Kelly advised to weather the storm of emerging evidence that he had choked, dragged and punched his former wives.
That’s even though the FBI told him Porter was a security risk. Bros before…national security? That’s the motto now?
In December 2016, when Kelly accepted Trump’s nomination for the head of the Department of Homeland Security, his first post with this administration, he promised to put a stop to what he saw as the world’s two worst scourges: terrorism and political correctness.
“The American people voted in this election to stop terrorism, take back sovereignty at our borders, and put a stop to political correctness that for too long has dictated our approach to national security.”
For “political correctness” read “respect for human rights.”
Anyone who heard that statement knew what Kelly meant, and it was terrifying. Kelly’s contempt for political correctness had, years earlier, lurched into contempt for the law itself.
Kelly acted on this odd ideology when he ran the United States Southern Command, which put him in charge of Guantanamo Bay from 2012 to 2016. He was so keen on his private war on political correctness that he — a general whose status as a Marine seems to be the most important thing to him — subverted Obama, his commander in chief, by sabotaging the president’s efforts to resettle detainees. Under Kelly, Gitmo guards had no time for PC concepts like international norms; they subjected prisoners to what the rest of the world considers cruel and unusual punishment, including force-feeding and solitary confinement.
No wonder Trump chose him. No fucking wonder.
It’s also bizarre what people consider political correctness. So many articles in our press attract comments with people lambasting ‘political correctness’ when the thing they are complaining about is not even slightly related to that at all. Two recent examples were use of orange cones around road works and a socially conservative Pakistani immigrant complaining about nakedness in changing rooms in front of children. In the first case nothing to do with PC. In the second case, actually the direct opposite of PC. It was someone promoting a body shaming and religiously motivated conservatism. Pointing this out is sure to get significant down votes.
Human rights and being against beating women (or anyone) – not PC. Kelly is a wanker.
Rob – if those human rights are for women, non-whites, or LGBTQ – political correctness; identity politics. If those human rights are the rights of white men to continue holding a position of supremacy over everyone else by sheer force if necessary – not identity politics, and not at all something that could be called politically correct (and I can agree with that last).
Not beating up people is “PC” if those people are women or minorities. Not beating up people is simply normal order of business if those people are white, unless of course they are also poor or disabled, then it’s “PC” again.
Here is Rachel’s rant, well executed, first on that subject (laws for kicking the infirm) from last week:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-words-on-gun-tragedy-ring-hollow-given-past-legislation-1162946115643
She also bites the exact same kind of pinpoint legislation from one year ago to the day, cowardly “defended” by its main sponsor who claimed “We did not do a good job” of avoiding to allow people adjudicated to have severe mental disorder access to guns, while that was the single object of the very law that he personally made.
Shaking my head over how many such representatives can get elected, and not just once but every time. Something is rotten in many States, Ophelia.
In the age of Trump, Bannon, and the alt-right, the age of Putin, Orban, and Erdogan, the age of Front National, AfD, and UKIP, the age of MRAs, antifeminists, and pussygrabbers, the age of trolls and cyberbullies, the age of elevatorgate and gamergate, the age of FOX News, Breitbart, and shock jocks, the age of “shithole countries” and “good people on both sides” etc… etc…. doesn’t “defying the PC goblins” seem like the least “brave” or “rebellious” or “radical” thing you could possibly do…
The fact of the matter is that political uncorrectness, kicking down, the Law of the Jungle and the Biggest Bully Wins, rooting for the schoolyard bully who’s beating up the nerdy kid with the glasses and shouting “more blood!” is the new “mainstream”, the new “establishment”, dare I say the new “political correctness”…
@Bjarte Foshaug #5 – you honestly don’t think that was the old mainstream? Check out some random TV or stand-up routines from the ’70s or earlier, I think you’ll find plenty of kicking down towards women and minorities from people who were a heck of a lot more mainstream in their day than the alt-right and their ilk are today. Back then, overt racism and sexism were considered by many mainstream media gatekeepers (broadcasters, publishers, etc…) as “family-friendly”.
Karellen #6
Fair enough. I didn’t mean “new” in any absolute sense, and I may yet be wrong, but at least my impression is that up until sometime around 1990 the general trend was moving away from all that. Then something happened (I suspect it had something to do with a general backlash against left-wing politics following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that’s just my guess) and attitudes that were quickly going out of fashion started to become cool once again (usually under the guise of “irony”, “satire”, “humor” etc.).
In terms of absolute numbers overt misogynists and racists may be less mainstream now than in the seventies, but at least in my lifetime (I was born in 1975) they have never enjoyed such total control of the federal government. Even Reagan and Bush seem reasonable compared to Trump.
Also, whether or not is was ever true in the first place, there’s at least a popular perception that “political correctness” has been the prevailing paradigm for some time now (that’s why it’s called “political correctness” and why defying it is seen as “brave”, “rebellious”, “radical” etc.). So even if hardcore bigots were in fact the mainstream all along you might still say that – correcting this misconception – they would become the “new” mainstream in terms of public perception.
Bjarte – it’s like all the Christians who howl about how difficult it is for them to speak out, to have a voice, to carry their Bible in public, when everywhere you look, Christians are shouting, voicing, carrying their Bibles, making laws, forcing their views on everyone else, most of whom are too intimidated to be able to admit openly that they are not Christian!
In some of the many works I’ve read, the comment has been made that the early Christians post-Constantine thought the government was being tyrannical and oppressive when it allowed voices other than Christian to be heard and tolerated rather than suppressed. I suspect it is the same with the anti-PC crowd. If one person speaks up and says “I don’t like what you’re saying”, it seems like oppression and silencing, because it is a small space that now someone else controls, even if only temporarily.
iknklast, I also think that whatever people hold to be true tends to be more influenced by what everybody else is saying than by the actual truth itself. For example, in my country we are always telling each other that something called “Janteloven” (the Law of Jante, first described by the Danish author Aksel Sandemose in his novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks) – motivated by envy – is choking out all individual aspirations in our culture and keeping us down (the first law is “Thou shalt not think thou art something”). When Sandemose wrote the novel in 1933, there may have been something to it. But today, dismissing any criticism of excessive behaviors by blaming Janteloven has become a far more prominent feature of our culture than Janteloven itself (as seen by the fact that modern Norwegians are some of the most immodest, boastful, boorish people who ever lived). But once everyone is saying that Janteloven is keeping us all in a stranglehold, it hardly matters whether or not it was ever true in the first place.
Same thing with political correctness: Once everybody is saying that our culture is choking on political correctness it doesn’t matter if fascists control all branches of government, misogyny, racism and homophobia are rampant, and the rights of everyone who’s not a rich, straight, white male are under assault across the board.