Yesterday, I was in the electronics department of a store at around 11 AM. The television sets were turned to CNN’s coverage of the Orlando nightclub shooting. An elderly man and his wife were standing next to a giant 4K TV, and I could hear him muttering under his breath: “Wait for it. Just wait for it.” The “it” the man was so concerned about was any mention of guns or gun control from the “politically correct” liberal news media. He then asked the clerk whether it was possible to switch the feed to Fox News. Watching this go down, all I could think about is how petty someone has to be that in the middle of a national tragedy they’re worrying about ideology while dozens lie dead, and family members are weeping and screaming on live television.
And then the presumptive Republican nominee decided to tweet his thoughts, and things descended to an all new level of narrow-minded bullshit.
When I went to a Donald Trump rally some months back, a common refrain from the people I talked with was the notion that Trump “tells it like it is,” and the country is mired in political correctness that keeps people from voicing uncomfortable truths. According to this characterization of the current climate of American discourse, there is a “cultural condescension” toward conservatives and conservative ideas, by which they’re the victims of a thought-policing left who stifle any discussion which conflicts with liberal orthodoxy. The people who buy into this sort of thing are largely male, white, and working-class—and one of the biggest demographic groups in support of Trump’s candidacy. And the common feature in listening to their arguments about political correctness is a perceived victimhood, wherein good ol’ traditional values are under assault by everything from red cups at Starbucks to the accommodations for public bathrooms, and betrayed by the inability of leadership to say things about the Mexicans coming over the border who want to “rape” and take jobs, and the radical Muslims trying to kill us.
In their minds, the victims are not the people of color afraid of being shot by cops during a traffic stop, or the women afraid of being raped on a college campus, or the transgender kids who can’t use the bathroom in public places, or the gay men and women who just want to enjoy a Saturday night out without being shot to death. No, white conservatives who have been asked to respect others, consider their grievances, and not say ridiculous shit are somehow the wronged party in all of this.
Because when we break the political correctness argument down, it’s really about idiots wanting to say stupid things and do it without anyone pointing out their stupidity.
From Karen Tumulty and Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post:
Cathy Cuthbertson once worked at what might be thought of as a command post of political correctness — the campus of a prestigious liberal arts college in Ohio. “You know, I couldn’t say ‘Merry Christmas.’ And when we wrote things, we couldn’t even say ‘he’ or ‘she,’ because we had transgender. People of color. I mean, we had to watch every word that came out of our mouth, because we were afraid of offending someone, but nobody’s afraid of offending me,” the former administrator said … The Republican front-runner is “saying what a lot of Americans are thinking but are afraid to say because they don’t think that it’s politically correct,” she said. “But we’re tired of just standing back and letting everyone else dictate what we’re supposed to think and do.”
In the 2016 Republican presidential primary season, “political correctness” has become the all-purpose enemy. The candidates have suggested that it is the explanation for seemingly every threat that confronts the country: terrorism, illegal immigration, an economic recovery that is leaving many behind, to name just a few … Cuthbertson, for instance, made a connection between her frustrations over political correctness and the other things she sees going on around her.
“I look at what I get every month — and thank God, I was financially savvy and saved. I can’t live off Social Security. And you look at these people who have never worked and they’re having babies and they’re getting free rent and free food stamps and free medical care,” she said. “I couldn’t afford what they have on my Social Security, and I worked 50 years.”
“Something has to be done because we’re shrinking, we’re being taken over by people that want to change what America is,” she added. “You can’t say it nicely.”
The above blockquote comes from a story which ran back in January, but the sentiment has resurfaced given the tragedy in Orlando and Donald Trump’s reaction. The final quote by Ms. Cuthbertson stood out to me, since in the president’s statement he markedly points out the issues which surround this incident bring up choices about “the kind of country we want to be.”
If that country is the one Donald Trump described today, then it will be a disgrace. It will be a country where none of candidate Trump’s plans, whether it be his imaginary wall or ban on Muslims entering the United States, would have prevented what happened in Orlando. It will be an America where a presidential candidate decries the supposed fear of using a three-word phrase, but betrays his cowardice and demagoguery in wanting to seal off America and point to foreign brown people who are the source of all of our ills.
Because why have any reflection on what happened? Why express any sympathy to the families of those that lost their lives? Why try to at least be a fucking human being before acting like a self-aggrandizing asshole? It’s a sad statement on the current state of politics that Lin-Manuel Miranda took more time to consider the import of recent events while accepting a Tony Award for Hamilton last night than the Republican nominee for president of the United States.
But that lack of self-reflection is evident every time we have national tragedies or huge discussions about the kind of country we want to be. When a violent crime is committed by an immigrant, the child of an immigrant, or even American citizens with a Middle Eastern background, we will have national discussions about terrorism and what to do about it. And maybe we should. But then will come the screaming that we should go further. That this is the result of Islam itself, and Muslims need to answer and denounce what’s happening. And people like Trump use it all to stoke fear and give people a boogeyman that needs to be fought by any means necessary, even if those means only will make things worse than they are. So let’s betray our principles, make ourselves feel better, and line up everyone with a weird name against a wall as part of some racial profiling scheme, even if it doesn’t work. So what we end up with is a society where “scary” people need to be watched and kept away, especially if they happen to be a federal judge in the Trump University case.
However, when murders are committed by white Americans, the crimes are considered unfortunate aberrations. We won’t have serious discussions about the state of mental healthcare in this country whereby a school full of kids are murdered, or the racial divisions which fuel an asshole to shoot up a church, or how treating any minority group as an “other” can stoke hate. Instead, we’re left with insane debates about the role of video games, or insinuations the victims share the blame in their own deaths. There were no Trump tweets demanding new security measures or asking white America to explain itself after the Sandy Hook massacre or the Charleston church shooting. And that’s because, for the people who say they support Trump’s arguments and mentality, there’s a tendency to think white killers must have been “influenced” in some way to go bad, where people of color are inherently dangerous. A clear example of this sort of thinking can be seen in the recent controversy over the Stanford sexual assault, and how there was in some ways a search for excuses to explain away a rape. Does anyone really believe that if Brock Turner was a poor black kid, or he was the child of immigrants and named Muhammad Baqir, a court would of given him 6 months?
And therein lies the rub of arguing political correctness. This is not a situation where people are being silenced from expressing an opinion. These are cases where stupid opinions are being called stupid and the stupid people who said them don’t want to own up to their stupidity, or confront the implications of what they actually believe. Because whether we call ISIS “radical Islamic terrorists” or murderous schmucks of the East in official correspondence makes not one Goddamn difference to our overall strategic position. And those that think it does are idiots. Therefore, the failure to use a three-word phrase of choice is not a sign of weakness or political correctness—it’s a recognition that our bombs and special forces are more likely to achieve a favorable result than an asshole with bad hair and small hands spewing nonsense.
“At its best, not being politically correct comes across as direct, unfiltered and honest. At its worst, not being politically correct comes across as crude, rude and insulting,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who previously worked for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. Trump’s supporters “may find it refreshing. That doesn’t mean they would find it presidential.”
Ayres and other analysts say Trump’s rejection of political correctness appeals to voters frustrated by the setbacks of the Great Recession and the global economy; immigration that has made the country more heterogeneous; and cultural trends such as gay marriage and measures to fight discrimination against African-Americans, which make them feel marginalized.
“This doesn’t fall out of left field,” said Marc Hetherington, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who studies polarization and voter trust. “But what these political actors have done, Trump and Cruz in particular, is give that … worry and frustration a voice.”