But Oh So Politely

Today's thought is Political Correctness.

A method of robbing one side of the ability to say what they mean without being rude.

A quote from a TV show (Babylon 5) sums it up, "If you cannot mean what you say, you cannot say what you mean."

I love how one side has taken control of the very language. Being Progressive sounds so good doesn't it? You're on the side of "progress"! Think that a Progressive could sell what they are shilling if they had to say Socialist or Communist everytime they currently say Progressive.

Progressive has a double meaning for taxes. When people hear "progressive" tax rates, they don't think, "rates get progressively higher as your income rises." And we were very carefully prepared to not think that way by how the rates were presented.

PC has led to some other demons. Why is it that calling someone a WOP is just a mild insult and CENSORED still unthinkable? In the early 19teens calling an Italian immigrant a WOP would get you a knife in the ribs. Why did that insult fade but CENSORED remains fighting words? Almost as if someone had an interest in keeping that term current.

And there is nothing special about any specific word. You find someone who hates blacks, and you prevent him from saying, "CENSORED" he can heap enough hate and scorn on "Sir" there is no doubt that he means "YOU FILTHY CENSORED". Aren't tones and inflection fun?

So, since there is no real escape from bigots and bigotry, why attempt to channel the discourse a certain way? What purpose does it serve to retain one word as the insult when those who would use it can be insulting without using it?

And how many correct terms have we blown through for persons of Negroid descent? Colored. Black. African-American. And how many of those have also developed into the functional equivalent of the dreaded N-word? And African-American is particularly amusing to me, an Afrikaaner who moves here would, technically, be more of an African-American than a black person born and raised in Detroit.

I know this is rambling and disjointed. I understand that blacks, unlike Italians cannot hide where their ancestors hail from. But here's an observation I have made; Most everyone I have ever heard say something disparaging about blacks is angry about affirmative action or some related program. And that seems to have more to do with anger at the government and transference than racism.