The insidious disease of Political Correctness has been metastasizing at an increasing rate lately, and I’m starting to suffer a repetitive-stress neck injury from repeatedly shaking my head in disbelief.
PC may have started with good intentions (I’m giving them wide benefit of doubt here). But, like most good intentions, it quickly turned into a pernicious evil. The original idea was that if we trained people not to say bad words, they would eventually stop thinking bad words, then eventually we’d all…uh…
What was the idea again?
Predictably, like any idea whose implementation would be in the hands of hyper-partisan arbiters, this concept became subject to abuse and escalation. More and more words were added to the “Bad Word List.” “Free speech” comes to mind. As does “Melting pot.” “Manhole” now apparently describes the genitalia of a particular variety of transgender person.
With the emergence (and persistence) of loudly reticent people like Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, and many others considered part of the Intellectual Dark Web, the PC crowd started to realize their “training” was not working. They have since given up on converting the rest of us and adopted the more-efficient method of swift and ruthless punishment. PC has morphed into a cudgel used by self-appointed speech guardians to protect the feelings of select groups against the tyranny of different ideas.
A more recent feature is the demand that we not only stop saying bad words, but be compelled to use what the anointed consider preferred words. Case in point: the pronoun idiocy.
Radical genderistas assert that if you fail to use their preferred gender pronoun, you are “denying their existence.” To be honest, it’s quite difficult to deny the existence of an enraged, screaming, green-haired, pierced, and tattooed being when he is spluttering kale-stenched spittle in your face while blowing a boat horn. Such people’s existence is all too real.
One continually baffling aspect of PC is the contention that perceived or even hallucinated offensive speech is equivalent to physical violence.
A crowd of SJWs lined up in front of the stage at a Ben Shapiro speech and shouted “Safety!” for ten minutes or so until security escorted them out of the auditorium. Apparently, they believed it was an “unsafe” situation to hear a person talking through a microphone. Leaving the room apparently did not occur to them as a solution to this threat. Evidently, the academy can’t even teach students to flee from danger.
To test this ridiculous words-equal-violence hypothesis, I was able to acquire a $1.2 million Rebuild America grant left over from the Obama administration, which was miraculously overlooked during widespread financial plundering by the 2016 Clinton campaign. Next, I instructed my Department of Self-Serving Research to look into the matter using only the most stringent application of the scientific method.
The study produced some interesting results. In spite of a 78 percent rate of funding attrition through the bookkeeping category “Administrative Overhead/Entertainment/Liquor Purchases,” our research revealed several important differences between the effects of offensive speech and physical violence. A representative—actually, the only—study sample is shown below.
“Figure 1” shows a study participant after the application of offensive speech. The participant was subjected to inter-personal communication consisting of:
- Cultural stereotyping;
- Mansplaining;
- Icky words;
- Accurate, yet uncomfortable, observations from others of his physical, psychological and behavior traits;
- Racial slurs;
- Polite disagreement with his viewpoints;
- Correction of factual errors in his expressed opinions;
- Direct verbal interaction with white males;
- Accusations of toxic masculinity;
- Being in the same room with a Republican;
- Deadnaming;
- Howling laughter, huffing, hooting, snorting, derision, and other forms of denigration;
- Vitriol; Eye-rolling, deep sighs with accompanying slumping posture, knee-slapping, and other negative nonverbal communication.
After the session, the participant was examined by a team of alternative-medicine practitioners, psychologists, sociology professors, essential-oil purveyors, persons of color, and feminists representing an accurate cultural cross-section of leftist society.
The panel found that the participant’s injuries included:
- Hurt feelings;
- Loss of self-esteem.
That’s pretty much it.
“Figure 2” shows the same participant after the application of a righteous beat-down by offended butch lesbians and transgender members of the girls’ wrestling team. After this session, the participant was examined by the triage team at the local teaching hospital.
The participant’s injuries now include:
- Cerebral hematoma;
- Brain swelling;
- Concussion;
- Fractured jawbone;
- Detached retina;
- Permanent vision loss in left eye;
- Loss of teeth;
- Loss of consortium;
- Crushed hyoid bone;
- Tinnitus;
- Hurt feelings;
- Loss of self-esteem;
- Loss of feeling in right arm.
So, there it is! Scientific proof that words and fists are not the same. This should make it impossible for the science-loving left to deny that its treasured words-equal-violence assertion is anything more than unvarnished nonsense.
The full report of this research will be available if I survive the lawsuit brought by our study’s participant.
Adapted from the book “Squeezed: Rear-Ended by American Politics,” also by Bourque. It can be found on Amazon if you have enough patience.
