Okay, I think I can work with that. I have to start by explaining what freedom is, because that's the real point of the debate. Freedom is where you yourself decide whom or what you wish to write about. You may choose to write about G A Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. You may choose to write about Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, at same. It's entirely your decision, and in the course of the work you may change your mind! You need no one's approval to do so.
Now imagine that you may only write on Approved Topics. Sitting Bull is approved - Custer is not. This is to “correct historical oppression” which you did not enact, or to “redress perceived injustices” by committing new, very real ones. For the greater cause of “Social Justice” (the most recent hate movement to cloak itself in high-sounding but empty rhetoric), you are no longer free.
Now, you may have intended to write on Sitting Bull all along. You might even agree that the other side have been shortchanged by history and their own story ought to be included. Perhaps. (My friend chris_gerrib, and he is a friend, is of this school of thought.) If so, you are fortunate, for you are not trammeled by the walls now in place. Others are not so fortunate. Sooner or later your own luck will run out also - for those walls are placed without consulting you.
How pleasant a place the world would be If everyone in it agreed with me…
A utopia forcibly imposed - the stagnant, fearful world of Political Correctness, where “follow the leader” goes in daisy-chain circles of safe conformity and Victim Cards™ come in silver, gold and platinum, awarded by accident of birth.
Like its progenitor and role model “socialist realism,” works produced under Political Correctness are flat, formulaic, badly written - but glorifying the “historically oppressed” and disregarding the “oppressors,” both of which are rigidly and inflexibly defined. Like their role model, the Soviet Writers' Trade Union, those who do not conform are shunned, shut out. Good luck self-publishing! Maybe you can sell copies by hand…
The problem with rigidity is that it is brittle. It doesn't give way, flex, adapt - flexibility is “Trotskyite deviationism” - thoughtcrime. Instead it cracks. But technology and society are flexible, dynamic, and their advances are impossible to pin down to rigidity. So inevitably the cracks widen, as more and more people realize that a world exists beyond Political Correctness - a world of freedom, where people can write about Sitting Bull OR about George Custer, about black female lesbians OR about white Anglo-Saxon males as they alone decide. [And no one will then “correct” their stories to conform to imposed “social justice” quotas, as I was hearing about recently…]
Enthusiasm for Political Correctness wanes swiftly when it is no longer possible to punish the unenthusiastic. No wonder the “Correct Ethnic / Gender Studies” commissars are screeching bloody murder - like the Party they came from, they're losing their grip on the present and the future is no longer theirs. They're about to become completely irrelevant, unimportant, disregarded - and they know it.
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Date: 2015-05-13 10:54 pm (UTC)Okay, I think I can work with that. I have to start by explaining what freedom is, because that's the real point of the debate. Freedom is where you yourself decide whom or what you wish to write about. You may choose to write about G A Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. You may choose to write about Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, at same. It's entirely your decision, and in the course of the work you may change your mind! You need no one's approval to do so.
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chris_gerrib, and he is a friend, is of this school of thought.) If so, you are fortunate, for you are not trammeled by the walls now in place. Others are not so fortunate. Sooner or later your own luck will run out also - for those walls are placed without consulting you.
Now imagine that you may only write on Approved Topics. Sitting Bull is approved - Custer is not. This is to “correct historical oppression” which you did not enact, or to “redress perceived injustices” by committing new, very real ones. For the greater cause of “Social Justice” (the most recent hate movement to cloak itself in high-sounding but empty rhetoric), you are no longer free.
Now, you may have intended to write on Sitting Bull all along. You might even agree that the other side have been shortchanged by history and their own story ought to be included. Perhaps. (My friend
How pleasant a place the world would be
If everyone in it agreed with me…
A utopia forcibly imposed - the stagnant, fearful world of Political Correctness, where “follow the leader” goes in daisy-chain circles of safe conformity and Victim Cards™ come in silver, gold and platinum, awarded by accident of birth.
Like its progenitor and role model “socialist realism,” works produced under Political Correctness are flat, formulaic, badly written - but glorifying the “historically oppressed” and disregarding the “oppressors,” both of which are rigidly and inflexibly defined. Like their role model, the Soviet Writers' Trade Union, those who do not conform are shunned, shut out. Good luck self-publishing! Maybe you can sell copies by hand…
The problem with rigidity is that it is brittle. It doesn't give way, flex, adapt - flexibility is “Trotskyite deviationism” - thoughtcrime. Instead it cracks. But technology and society are flexible, dynamic, and their advances are impossible to pin down to rigidity. So inevitably the cracks widen, as more and more people realize that a world exists beyond Political Correctness - a world of freedom, where people can write about Sitting Bull OR about George Custer, about black female lesbians OR about white Anglo-Saxon males as they alone decide. [And no one will then “correct” their stories to conform to imposed “social justice” quotas, as I was hearing about recently…]
Enthusiasm for Political Correctness wanes swiftly when it is no longer possible to punish the unenthusiastic. No wonder the “Correct Ethnic / Gender Studies” commissars are screeching bloody murder - like the Party they came from, they're losing their grip on the present and the future is no longer theirs. They're about to become completely irrelevant, unimportant, disregarded - and they know it.