Bill Scher discusses rightie aversion to political correctness..
…Michelle has become a “hate crime howler.”
Michelle is by no means alone in promoting a “Conservative Correctness” (see the War on Christmas, the Dixie Chicks, Dick Durbin’s torture speech) where if you say something impolitic about the president, the war, interpretation of scripture, etc. an attempt is made to shame the speaker, pressure associates and stifle debate.
The kind of thing conservatives used to complain about. (Actually, still complain about.)
I understand why most conservatives play this game. Because to them it is a game.
Because they’re hypocrites and bullies. Their interest in conjuring up a phony narrative of the nature of liberals, and the joy they derive in getting under the skin of liberals, supersedes any interest in intellectual consistency. …
… “Conservative Correctness” should be called out for what it is. Mischief making.
For whatever excesses have occurred under the umbrella of “P.C.,” at least the intentions were generally honorable — mainly, trying to rid society of debilitating bigotry.
“Conservative Correctness” is not well intentioned. It’s simply just about intimidating people who disagree with you. …
… C.C. is not guided by principle. It does not wait for an actual transgression. It is happy to selectively quote, distort and manufacture outrage.
Therefore, it is C.C. that needs to be dismissed and ignored, so our campaigns can be real debates over issues, and not a string of ridiculous distractions.
It’s important to understand that bigots don’t believe nonbigotry is guided by principle, either. Wingnuts practicing “C.C.” generally think they’re only doing to lefties what they believe lefties do to them.
White racists, for example, nearly always believe deep down inside that all other whites believe as they do, and whites who say otherwise are either kidding themselves or lying. I know this is true because I grew up among white supremacists in a segregated community, and I’ve seen social-psychological studies that confirm my observations.
The more overheated whackjobs sincerely believe that the only reason white liberals cozy up to minorities is to serve some larger and nefarious goal, such as (back in the day) instigating a communist takeover. I guess these days they think we’re trying to instigate an islamofascist takeover; I haven’t been keeping up.
Bigots generally are not the most nuanced thinkers on the planet. They’re more the “you’re either fer me or agin’ me” types. Anyone who doesn’t want to wipe out Muslims and spread Judeo-Christian hegemony throughout the planet hates America.
Social psychologists will tell you that bigotry is a strategy for “conserving cognitive resources” (I love that phrase). People do tend to be uncomfortable with others who are “different.” This may be something of a vestigial instinct, a holdover from those long-ago days when human civilization was all about fighting off other tribes who wanted to kill your tribe and take all your stone tools. From here, we liberals might define ourselves as people who have gotten over our instinctual fears of the “other” and instead find diversity stimulating and enjoyable.
Political conservatives are not necessarily bigots, but I think much of today’s right-wing extremism is fueled by irrational fears of the “other” and modernity generally. And because righties conserve cognitive resources by thinking in simplistic stereotypes, they aren’t capable of thinking through their fears and perceiving how irrational most of them are. They also find it inexplicable that there are other people living among them — us — who aren’t afraid of the things they are afraid of. To them, we’re the irrational ones, because we don’t understand that all those islamofacists are lurking just outside the cave and want to break in and murder us and steal our stone tools. Or else, we do understand it, and we’re working for the enemy tribe. They think we must be fixin’ to stab them in the back and invite the enemy into the cave for a mastodon barbecue.
When the phrase “political correctness” was first coined, as I recall, it was something of a joke, ribbing academics for going overboard creating “inclusive” language, like “physically challenged” for “disabled.” Wingnuts seized the phrase and turned it into an all-purpose explanation for why liberals say crazy things like “racial discrimination is wrong” — the standard response is “Oh, you’re just being P.C.” Meaning, “you don’t really mean what you say.”
But we really do mean what we say, and when righties conjure up some phony outrage in order to bash liberals, we get all caught up in answering charges, explaining logical fallacies, and pointing out hypocrisies. We do this because we assume they mean what they say. And, frankly, the more cognitively challenged among them probably do mean what they say, because they can’t critically think their way out of a wet paper bag.
But Bill’s hypothesis is that many of the opinion leaders among them — he discusses Michelle Malkin because he knows her personally — don’t mean what they say. They know good and well that many of the outrages they gin up to bash us with are contrived. They’re just trying to bully us, often because (deep down inside) they think we’re trying to bully them. So while we’re exhausting ourselves in a mighty intellectual struggle, they’re just playing tit for tat and barely working up a sweat.
And if this is the case, we’ve got to stop letting them jerk our chains. We should just dismiss their lunacy with “Oh, you’re just being C.C.”
I’m glad you brought up the fear of the “other”.
Many years ago I realized the fear of communism was way out of proportion to the actual threat (when I also realized the only long term successful communist movement is right in our midst – those picturesque Amish), and that is was just fear of “other”. I’ve always been struck by how difficult that insight is to convey – I guess because people who’ve invested in fighting Communism (even if only with their votes) are unwilling to admit their fears were irrational.
But back then, the bad guys had armies (in the millions) and tanks and missiles and bombs and subs… You know, stuff that can do serious damage. How can anyone think a few thousand wannabes with automatic rifles and a few RPGs are any kind of serious threat?
Well, Ronnie convinced a lot of people that Nicaragua was a serious threat. Not to mention Grenada (with a population less than that of many a state university).
Support a strong military – help prevent bed-wetting!
This sort of reminds me of an exchange that occurred yesterday between Chairman Henry Waxman and Rep. Patrick McHenry during a meeting of the house oversight committee. (It was highlighted last night on CNN, but I unfortunately don’t know of any links to a video clip available online.) It seems as though the thought of the oversight committee functioning as its name might imply when it comes to Iraq is beyond the intellectual grasp of Mr. McHenry; at some point during the day, the gentleman from North Carolina accused Mr. Waxman of partisan witch-hunting. Mr. McHenry honestly believed that it was impossible that this sort of investigation is both genuine and well-intentioned.
These sorts of hearings and inquiries are taken very personally by the Republicans in congress. One of the reasons we have seen so many of them stonewalling in an attempt to prevent any sort of investigation into the waste and excess of Iraq is not just because they are covering for Dear Leader but because they see this as a personal affront to their own integrity. At some point, it became impossible for so many of the Republicans in the legislature to separate the ideas of personality and politics.
The term “political correctness” was around for a long time before it was seized upon by the MSM; accounts differ but it seems to have originated in the radical left.
But as for the PC of the right, that too has been noticed. Robert Hughes, in Time and The Culture of Complaint, called it patriotic correctness; Lewis Lapham, I believe, called it economic correctness; and Michael Lind, in Up from Conservatism, noticed the same phenomenon.
Nevertheless, that there is a PC of the right bears repeating, because one of the rights talking points is that only the left has a party line to enforce.
And it also bears repeating that the left, too, has its simplistic stereotypes and irrational fears of the “other.”
Also, “you’re just being P.C.” is a handy way of dismissing all calls for a more equitable and open society.
Excellent post Barbara, and the phrase conserving cognitive resources is intriguing. This conservation likely precludes the idea of an observing self that maintains awareness of ones strengths and limitations appropriate to role, goal and context.
Without observing self I will not be aware that as a white male I am at the top of the foodchain in this patriarchal society and will not be aware that my “dominant” culture limits and denies those from a different subgroup in ways that I have never experienced and have no basis for relating to.
When the other subgroups complain, resist and attempt to procure for themselves then I will be likely to interpret their beliefs and actions as not only different, but competitive with my own unrecognized dynamics of domination and control. That makes it much easier to objectify them, split them off and justify my ridicule, marginalization and hostility towards them.
Alcoholics, narcissists and those infected with naked political ambition resist political correctness for these reasons and rely on their ability to project onto others the same self-serving self-centered strivings and machinations they cannot see in themselves. Does any of this sound familiar?
The term “political correctness†was around for a long time before it was seized upon by the MSM; accounts differ but it seems to have originated in the radical left.
I don’t know about the radical left. In my memory, which is highly suspect, the term started to float around in academia in the mid-1970s, although it may have been around longer than that before I noticed it. Anyway, in those days there was much thrashing around about language, because we were all getting our consciousness raised (there’s a blast from the past) about racism, sexism, and other biases, and people were becoming aware that the very words and phrases we used had biases built into them. The English language, for example, has a built-in male bias that treats men as the “default” sex and women the “alternate” sex.
Anyway, by the 1970s academics were busily writing papers and holding symposiums on how the English language could be reformed to iron the biases out of it. I was an editor at a university press in those days and was exposed to a lot of this stuff. Some of the reforms the academics came up with have been widely adopted (“chairman” became “chairperson”; “Mongoloids” became “people with Downs Syndrome”) but some of it was silly. Calling someone “visually challenged” instead of “blind,” for example. The phrase “politically correct” was used to make fun of the more absurd linguistic contortions coming out of academia at the time.
I know that some other accounts trace it to the communists in non-communist countries, but be that as it may, I was using it before the big cover stories appeared in New York and Newsweek. It seemed a counterpart to the “socially correct” stationery that you could buy from Crane’s.
But I’m glad you brought up the idea of conservation of cognitive resources. I believe it’s behind all sorts of prejudices, stereotypes, and scapegoating, even the scapegoating of individuals in dysfunctional families. It saves everyone the trouble of reinventing the wheel (speaking of our prehistoric ancestors).
I know that some other accounts trace it to the communists in non-communist countries
I’m about 98 percent certain that’s a right-wing fantasy.
People do tend to be uncomfortable with others who are “different.†This may be something of a vestigial instinct, a holdover from those long-ago days when human civilization was all about fighting off other tribes who wanted to kill your tribe and take all your stone tools. From here, we liberals might define ourselves as people who have gotten over our instinctual fears of the “other†and instead find diversity stimulating and enjoyable.
I wrote a pretty lengthy diary series on Daily Kos about this a few months ago. My basic point was that conservatism seems to be based on the evolutionary strategy of competition and liberalism seems to be based on the evolutionary strategy of cooperation. I never felt that George Lakoff’s nurturant parent metaphor made much sense for explaining liberalism, so I tried to come up with something better. (Although the strict father stuff seems frighteningly appropriate for conservatives, who always follow an alpha male.) I first read about Lakoff on your site, Maha, so I’d love to hear your feedback. Here’s the link:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/5/121112/8217
I think it’s true that many of those ‘outrages’ are knowingly contrived, or at least amplified and broadcast in an effort to bother their opponents and/or boost ratings. (They may spring from a kernel of actual bigotry.)
I like the idea of “You’re just being CC” as a put-down response. My particular preference is a deep belly laugh, admiring the humor of their foray into absurdity, and treating their noise as the joke it ought to be. “War on Christmas? BWAH-ha-ha-ha! That’s good. Really, very witty. You guys are so funny sometimes. ‘Watch out, Target, here comes the 95th Elf Brigade for a counter-offensive!’ Ha! Love it. Good one.”
It would be naive not to acknowlegde that the PC of the left is also frequently used for “intimidating people who disagree with you”. Bullying is a tactic employed by both sides of the political aisle.
>It would be naive not to acknowlegde that the PC of the left is also frequently used for “intimidating people who disagree with youâ€. Bullying is a tactic employed by both sides of the political aisle.
Amen, Lyle. Nat Hentoff observed, back in the 90s (Village Voice?) that it was the liberal students, not the conservative students, who felt the most intimidated by campus speech codes–the conservatives had their own culture. Sadly, RWers have not made this PC hype out of whole cloth.
“And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”
Re: the origins of “politically correct”, message 2 on this page from The Linguist (via Wikipedia) tentatively places it in the 30’s or 40’s.
It would be naive not to acknowlegde that the PC of the left is also frequently used for “intimidating people who disagree with youâ€.
Among individuals I’m sure it happens, and righties are full of scare stories about PC on college campuses, but among liberals and progressives generally? Not so, sir.
Liberals are intolerant of intolerance, and speak up when people are genuinely being exploited and oppressed. This is not “intimidating people who disagree with you.” It is speaking up for human rights.
What we don’t do as a rule is fabricate atrocities and scare stories just to bash the opposition, whereas with the Right’s it’s their main strategy for dealing with us.
Bullying is a tactic employed by both sides of the political aisle.
Not to an equal degree. With the Left, it happens sometimes, but it’s not the norm. With the Right, it’s about all they do.
Hentoff made the observation in “‘Speech Codes’ on the Campus and the Problem of Free Speech” in Dissent of Fall 1991. It’s not yet at the Dissent site but you can find the article at http://www.brysons.net/teaching/csun/hentoff.pdf
or in HTML format by Googling something from this passage from it:
“By and large, those most intimidated—not so much by the speech codes themselves but by the Madame Defarge-like spirit behind them—are liberal students and those who can be called politically moderate.”
Re: the origins of “politically correctâ€, message 2 on this page from The Linguist (via Wikipedia) tentatively places it in the 30’s or 40’s.
I looked. As someone else pointed out, in those early examples the meaning and context were different from what the term meant when it emerged into mainstream usage in the 1980s. The only connection between “political correctness” as the word was used in the 1980s and how it might have been used by communists ca. 1930s was tongue in cheek, I assure you.
I can’t emphasize enough that the term started out as a joke.
Between individuals it does happen. On a librarians’ Listserv, we were once discussing the term “native” and when it is shunned or coveted. I brought up the example of the latter in the title of the gay newspaper The New York Native which has since either gone under or changed its name. I received a private e-mail accusing me of homophobia.
I’ve also been accused of trollery for pointing out that some progressives, like me, are Christian.
Between individuals it does happen.
I’m sure it does, but that’s beside the point. The world is full of brained-damaged (or should I say cerebrally challenged?) people. You can find examples of people doing all manner of unsavory things. But I’m talking about general trends in the activist political left and the activist political right.
lucidity — Interesting. I never studied evolutionary psychology formally, but I seem to have arrived at some of the same conclusions on my own.
Re Lakoff — I don’t generally disagree with him, but like you I don’t think he always goes deep enough, and often his “framing” suggestions seem like band aids to me.
Re religious fundamentalism — you absolutely must read Karen Armstrong’s “The Battle for God” to get the bigger picture.
Are you certain you shouldn’t say “you’re just being CCC?” (council of conservative citizens: see SPLC site for more)
Or…just cut to the chase and say “you’re just being KKK.”
Very good points here and I think you’ve said it well.
The one point I would add is the basic insecurity that underlies the fear of the other – it is their own insecurities that drive their fear and these messages of hate. The hate covers the real fear inside that their own limited view of the world might be incorrect. Admitting they are wrong is the hardest thing in the world fot them, as we see right now in Bush and his administration. They cannot ever admit they were wrong, since their whole world might shatter.
It really is a small, frightening little world they live in.
It saddens me that we can’t come up with a suitable way of having mature discourse without engaging in mean-spirited para-diddle or political flaming-bag-of-dogshit-on-the-front-porch rhetoric. I thought that about a wheeled large six foot high jelly doughnut, which represents the spoon-fed naiveté and Diane Sawyer-esque candy-assed gloss over that we, as a country, tend to force-feed an ever-grateful body politic that still thinks it’s cool to do the Fonze “thumb-up” thingy. By filling the large doughnut with plastic vacuum-molded life-sized replicas of baby arms and legs and heads, the disenfranchised parade crowd, sitting in their own pews, would perhaps contemplate the other-worldly, alien-like gradual osmosis of the skeptical side of the duality of the mind and the true revelation of the “real” you behind the voice in your head that everybody just assumes is the true self, pardon the contradiction. Obviously, by now, you’re spitting grape nuts, acknowledging my obvious ignorance of the laws of physics, for it does not take a half scoop of fresh brain to realize that after a while, the effects of gravity and the tendency of objects with higher density suspended in a colloidal sweetened material matrix would mean that the plastic replicas would eventually start a premature breakdown of the glutens in the already jelly weakened cell walls of the doughnut and gradually break down the electron shells to the degree that arms, heads, and legs would begin to slowly extend, as if they were being shitted, from the bottom, although the appearance would suggest that “they” are holding on to the confectionary mother ship with a passion, grasping dough-like the terra-firma of their doomed existence, as we all must.
This is a discussion that’s long overdue. I’ve often been grasping for words to describe the right’s rigid, simplistic, falsely dichotomous thinking, eg you’re either for America or you’re with the terrorists, and have long known that they have their own form of PC, which is even more trenchant than anything the left had, and which they cannot admit to.
I’ve always wondered whether righties really believe what they’re arguing or whether they’re just trying to needle or get under the skin of their opponents – a form of bullying. I concluded that most of them do not think for themselves, they simply repeat stuff they haven’t thought through. They will say anything to protect what they perceive to be their tribe, and bullying is an important aspect of this, probably the most important aspect.
They despise weakness, which in their minds means tolerance, and value aggressive strength, which means winning (bullying) in any form, and at any cost.
Excellent post, very well said, agree with every point you made maha and using the comments by Bill Scher to kick it off with was brilliant. This is EXACTLY correct:
I understand why most conservatives play this game. Because to them it is a game.
Because they’re hypocrites and bullies. Their interest in conjuring up a phony narrative of the nature of liberals, and the joy they derive in getting under the skin of liberals, supersedes any interest in intellectual consistency…
… “Conservative Correctness†should be called out for what it is. Mischief making.
And if this is the case, we’ve got to stop letting them jerk our chains. We should just dismiss their lunacy with “Oh, you’re just being C.C.â€
I’m old enough to remember what being “anti-establishment” meant. In the mid-to-late 70’s when the GIs were coming back from Nam and men were wearing long hair and fatigue jackets, any young person just knew that there was no fighting the establishment, oh, you could try but you really wouldn’t ever get anywhere with it, at least not in a Red State. Later, when Clinton came along, it seemed like the anti-establishment crowd finally had someone to speak for them (speaking for my then-politically naive self only). Then, as any anti-establishment long-hair would be expected to do (by the establishment I mean), Clinton messed it all up with the sex thing. Messed it up so bad that the establishment got control again – boy did they ever. You can’t get much more establishment than Cheney or Bush. I really don’t think the polarization is going to change until the baby boomers start dying off.
Democrats and Progressives need to ignore the right and just get on with an agenda. Now, what is that agenda exactly? I definitely know what the agenda is any time I listen to a right wing talk show host…
I was looking around the Web today for stuff on this general issue and one of the things I found was a quotation from Ann Coulter saying the next Torquemada would be the liberals. Whoa, does that put things in perspective, because it’s so obviously false! It wasn’t the liberals who said that you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.
Two thoughts on that point:
1. “They’re worse than we are” is no excuse to ignore people on the left who try to enforce a party line. If Wikipedia is right, the current sense of “politically correct” seems to have originated among radicals who were chafing at the party line laid down by other radicals.
2. But that being said, we need to remember the big picture. The RWs are indeed hypocrites and bullies, and they indeed think the left is bullying them, because bullying is what they understand. (And we need to remind the freshman class in Congress to stand up to those bullies!)
Are you certain you shouldn’t say “you’re just being CCC?â€
Civilian Conservation Corps? 🙂
i love “cc.” i think we can use it to gauge how extremely ridiculous an argument from the right is, ie, “that position has about 10 cc’s of cc!”
.“They’re worse than we are†is no excuse to ignore people on the left who try to enforce a party line.
I agree, but before I ban you for being annoying I want to explain, patiently, that the problem with liberals in the past several years is that we haven’t had a “party line.” And the Democrats have been stumbling over each other playing “more conservative than thou.”
One of the things that’s held us back is a knee-jerk tendency on the part of some people to always find “balance” by claiming both sides are just as bad. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren’t.
I am always happy to speak up when I think someone on “my” side is in the wrong. I really don’t need lectures on that point, thanks.
If Wikipedia is right, the current sense of “politically correct†seems to have originated among radicals who were chafing at the party line laid down by other radicals.
I sincerely believe Wikipedia is wrong, as it often is, although I can’t prove it.I suspect whoever wrote it was a rightie who is not as old as I am and has no clue what he is talking about.
Was Gandhi ‘pc’ or ‘cc’? He was neither. Rather, he was authentic AND fearless in tirelessly introjecting non-warring responses into the serious entrenchment of empire-created injustices.
Gandhi was a great leader because, more than anything else, he was also a great teacher who could help those on either side of the injustice equation rise beyond what we today would label ‘pc’ or ‘cc’.
I’m amused by the caveman days vistigal instinct to fight off other different tribes thought. If this is a holdover still existing in rightwinger behavior that has not changed at the same rate over time as other groups of people, it’s no wonder they can’t accept evolution science.
I have been curious about current radical righties who began as radical lefties 30 years ago. How & why do they morph from one extreme to another?
The likes of Malkin and Coulter are not simply hypocrites and bullies. It is not just Mischief Making. It may be a game but that game has become highly rewarding.
They are making millions bomb throwing. Above all else they understand how to thrive in mass-market right wing media.
The caveman references are apt.
They feed the masses that undoubtedly are descended from cavemen that dined on vegetarian liberals of failed tribes. The meat they serve may be spoiled but their is no shortage of buyers.
I believe you are correct when you refer to winger rants as mischief making; however, I believe there are implied secondary affects which cannot simply dismissed as lunacy. Viewed as a whole, the winger rants serve as both a racist and theological populism. Whereas they easily define the other as Muslins, Mexicans, Liberals, etc., it is more striking to analyze who they claim as allies and supporters. Within this analysis it can easily be seen that they are re-defining what it means to be an American, what it means to be a Christian. They use both terms in specific exclusionary ways — see Tucker Carlson’s recent rant on why Obama is not a Christian. In pursuing this strategy the goal is not to simply reduce any progressive argument to “PC nonsense”, but to permenantly relegate all who disagree to the status of inferior, dangerous, others — enemies of the state, if you will.
Given the preeminence of the rambling wingnuts within the mass media, we must conclude that thier position, regardless of its problems, is striving to become the popular ethos. Though it is typically gratifying and evan humorus to dismiss the most outrageous hyperbole of the wingers (ie. soy milk make you gay), is should aways be considered that each hyperbole simple allows for a lesser extreme view to become accepted. As an example, I ask you to consider the mainstream acceptance of torture, and the endless discussions of when it’s appropriate; and little discussion of its inhumanity. Populism is generally a dark political road, and its desination is often lead to very dismal places.
It’s not going to work. Labelling someone conservatively correct will not invoke the same imagery as P.C., and will probably smell pedestrian and petty. I love the thought; it’s just not going to work.
What we need to do is take the negative term, “politically correct,” and label your opponents with it.
Example:
–These days, being politically correct is pretending Bush is an honorable man.
What we really need to do is to stop allowing ourselves to be distracted from constructive discussion by the rad-con diversionary tactics. How many promising blog threads about (e.g.) tackling climate change get blown out of the water when some loon comments that the science is all crap? Suddenly we’re re-running an argument that’s already been resolved 123923 times.
Disrupting discussion is a game but it’s also a game with a purpose – it’s the internet equivalent of sending in a few louts to turn an orderly demo into a violent riot. Rad-cons are terrified at the prospect of a new mainstream consensus developing that sidelines them to the extremist fringe where they belong, so let’s recognise their tactics for what they are and cut off their oxygen by ignoring them.
This brings to mind a recent article by David Brooks at NYTimes in which he coins the term Reasonable In Private (hereafter RIP). He observes politician wo engage in egregiously partisan antics in public who privately regret the “neccesity” to partake of such nonsense.
Link to article (required NYTimes access) : http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/opinion/08brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The article is both insightful and humorous.
I observed shortly into Bush’s first term that his disinclination to introspect, cooperate, and weight other perspectives while excepting himself from certain laws while citing God as his justification …. well, it resonated with and emboldened the same sort of narcisistic grandeur and unrestrained superego that those with already precarious psychological balance often possess.
Our politicians who engage in these shamefully farcical public shenanigans bear some responsibility for sounding the trumpet call that summons up their unbalanced minions like the zombies from night of the living dead.
Is this the sort of highly touted personal accountability that we can expect from the right? If this is what we were promised by the right, it speaks for itself.
I’m sympathetic to the general theme of your essay but remember that Karl Popper wrote The Open Society and its Enemies over his concern about the tradition of Plato _and_ Marx.
There are plenty of well intentioned groups that are not generally labeled among the Christofascist Neocons. As an example, I would toss up Mothers Against Drunk Driving and their call for random road block sobriety tests that stomp on the principle of probable cause. I’m sure that too is motivated by a traumatized excessive fear of the other.
Whenever you hear, “If only one child can be saved, it will be worth it!” ask yourself what principle of social liberty is being sacrificed.
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