on political correctness

  Sometime in the 1990s, the practice of political correctness gained widespread traction in American society. According to the theory of political correctness, nothing should be said publicly that might offend someone who may be listening. Additionally, anyone who feels offended after hearing something someone else said has the right to complain about what was said, forcing the utterer of the offending remark to apologize publicly for her (perceived) transgressions and to make grand pronouncements regarding her steadfast and perpetual love and respect for the person or group that has decided to consider itself maligned. Political correctness at best forces people to be conscious of the feelings of others; at worst, it drives inherently racist and discriminatory opinions (which all but the most disciplined and enlightened among us have) below the surface, where they invariably fester, and grow. Allowing the free expression of racist and discriminatory opinions does two things: it makes racists easier to spot, and to thus avoid; and it grants the individual who harbors discriminatory opinions the ability to vent his or her feelings of hatred verbally, before the venting process turns physical.
  In my opinion, political correctness has hamstrung life in America. Instead of confronting our true feelings and voicing those feelings in public where they can be challenged and counter-acted, we now play nice, pretending to be best friends while making no progress on our stated mission (found on the back of every single dollar bill in circulation) of crafting One out of Many.
  Political correctness is counter-productive also because it implies that, as a speaker in public, I am somehow responsible for the emotional well-being of my audience. If I say something offensive, it is the choice of the listener to be offended by what I have said. The offended party can just as easily decide not to be offended by what I have said, and go on with her day. Too often, however, that person calls for my censorship because she has decided to be offended by what I have said. The theory of political correctness demands that a person complain if they have decided to be offended by someone else's comment; it reduces the likelihood that the offender will voice his true and honest opinion, thus encouraging him to lie, to practice deceit. (I consider the replacement of our desire for truthfulness with socially-acceptable deceitfulness a symptom of the greed and individualistic self-aggrandizement inherent to capitalism.)
  So, next time you are offended by what someone else has said or done, remember: you can always look away, leave the offender's vicinity, or simply consider, in your own mind, their opinion silly, false, or just plain stupid. No one is forcing you to be offended by the actions of another - your bruised feelings are your choice alone, your burden to bear. So please, keep your feelings honest, voice your discriminatory feelings loudly and proudly, and help stamp out the scourge of political correctness.
  Honesty will again prevail in this country, but only if we can first be honest with ourselves, voicing our feelings and opinions freely and in the knowledge that they will be greeted by those seeking, not their own self-satisfaction, but, through open and lively discourse, the betterment of those among us who have been blinded to the equality of all persons (as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence).

(For a perfect example of the doctrine of political non-correctness, watch Clint Eastwood's movie, Gran Torino.)

Stand up. Speak out. Spread freedom.
JPR

being nice can kill you dead

a new study indicates that containing your feelings after an argument can lead to an early death. to sum up: the nicer and more accommodating you are, the more you are tolerated in the short run, but the more you damage yourself in the long run. I will hazard that a number of factors have led to an increase in niceness, and thereby premature death, in our society, but the most damaging of those factors is the Political Correctness (PC) movement that started in the late nineteen eighties.

I cannot provide hard data to directly back this up, but it would be reasonable to assume that PC has led to increases in lying and dying in this country, as people resort to PC standards rather than expose their true feelings. I am convinced it has also led to more men being pussy-whipped and to men dying younger (for, if my hazy memory of the summary of the study is correct, men are more likely to swallow their true feelings during a fight, especially in the corporate world). recently, following the maxims of Brutal Honesty and other philosophies that trounce PC and champion Truth, I have experimented with freely telling the people around me what I really think, not what I think they think I think they think I should be thinking.

the result? after an initial shock, people tended to more directly address my concerns, they spoke to me as an actual, unique person, and they seemed to have more respect for what I had to say, even if, like most things that escape my lips, what I was saying was churlish balderdash.

niceness is a sickness. too much niceness, like too much sugar, can kill you. I hereby motion to designate one day out of the year, preferably in winter when everyone is cranky anyway, as Angry Day, Trouble Time, or Day of the Flagrant Asshole. the name has to be catchy and, especially, marketable, so that marketers can market the crap out of not being nice and convince a million people to pin a frowny-face on their lapels. just look at AIDS awareness day, or autism awareness day. the people making the stop-AIDS t-shirts and teddy bears with tiny stop-autism t-shirts on them are making big, big money. there are nationalized events, 5k's, telethons and sit-ins (well, no sit-ins, but you get the point). sickness is business, baby.

it is important that we study the negative effects of niceness, and encourage Americans to be less nice going forward. join me, John Paul Roggenkamp, in my quest to spread awareness of the dangers of Mandated Societal Niceness. together, we can repeal the negative effects of Political Correctness. together, we can transform America back into the honest, dreadful, hard-scrabble, speak-your-mind-freely place it once was.

do your part; make the effort to be not-nice to someone today. once you get started, it's hard to stop. it wasn't so long ago that people dueled to the death over words. hey, at the least we would have fewer idiots to have to listen to.

virtuously,

JP

p.s. I'm not a doctor, but you're just going to have to trust me.