I say own it. It's okay to hate. All of us do.
-- A right-wing troll, commenting on a response to a post in the social media feed of a friend about language policing.
I treasure those rare moments when someone publicly steps outside the safe boundaries of hypocrisy and euphemism and outright expresses the truth behind certain behaviors and attitudes.
I usually don't respond to trolls in any form because that's all they want - a response, hopefully one filled with negative emotions brought on by the troll's statement. No negative emotions here - it's not news to me that some people use "they all do it" to justify their nastiness. I didn’t respond to him there but I will here, because there is more to this than justification. It opens a window where we can see an ugly truth more clearly.
"All of us do." Is that true? A case can be made, although to do it requires facing something we don’t think about too often. How many times do we use that word in ordinary speech: "I hate hot weather" or, "I hate Donald Trump" or, even, "I hate people who hate other people."
“Hate” can mean many things. So let's clarify before we proceed.
When we use that word "hate" in other than a casual context (like the troll was clearly doing) we're really talking about the contempt and dismissal of a specific target -- usually another human or group of humans.
Still, even with that narrowing of definition, most people hate someone. Those "someones" may be a personal enemy, or a person or people with whom the speaker violently disagrees. Or they may be a whole group of other humans perceived by the speaker as "outsiders."
Despite what he would have likely claimed if called on it, our troll here clearly meant that last sentence. We all hate "outsiders" he is saying; the only difference between us is which outsiders we hate. Therefore, in his logic, "political correctness" is just hatred, in another form.
When I was a child, if you dared to let the "F-word" slip out in front of an adult the best you could hope for was a stern lecture - most parents I know would have resorted to a father's belt or a mother's switch. But at the same time, the "N-word" was in common use by all ages in the purely white segregated culture of my early years.
Now, many decades later, that forbidden F-word is common outside strictly religious circles while that N-word will quickly get you some form of condemnation outside strictly Caucasian racist circles.
That's language policing, and it should be obvious that it's not an expression of hate. Instead, most often, it just expresses a culture's values.
So let's be clear: the battle-front in the culture war over "PC" isn't a reaction against language policing itself like it tries to claim - it's a battle over what is acceptable and what isn't. What the culture tolerates and what it doesn't.
In traditional American values any consensual sexual activity outside the "bonds of holy matrimony" was considered dangerous and destabilizing to society, and both secular laws and religious doctrine fought hard against it in every way possible including the stern use of language policing. Whereas racism (defined as the attitude that the different ethnic cultures of earth's people were ranked in a God-given hierarchy of merit with yours at the top) was considered normal, natural and obvious. No language policing needed.
So let's strip the hypocrisy and euphemism and false equivalence away here, and dismiss the slippery twisting that allows night to be said to be day and down to be equated with up.
"It's okay to hate. All of us do." in the context in which it was written here is not a generalized observation about human failings.
It's the cornerstone logic in defense of the "traditional" attitude that the Caucasian race is superior to all others, and that this bedrock knowledge is normal, natural and obvious and there should be no penalty, social or legal, to expressing it.
I'm grateful to this troll for writing down in black and white pixels the assumption that lies barely hidden behind the furious resentment of certain people knowing they can't use the "N-word" in public nor use dismissive jokes contemptuous of groups of people not like themselves without risking being called on it.
The only part of his statement I agree with is: "Own it."
So fly your flag, trolls. So we will all know who you are, really.