Forget Political Correctness

Courtesy of businessinsider.com

I would like to thank Donald Trump. I think he’s a baffoon, but I like the fact that he doesn’t seem to care about political correctness. When a Caliphaniac (my term for Middle Eastern terrorist) blows themselves up, they are typically told that their families will be cared for. Trump says we should blow up their families. However clever this may sound, it’s all kinds of wrong.

The fact that he doesn’t care who he offends makes Trump a real trailblazer in the public space -- especially for an actual politician (although I use the term loosely). Imagine, if you can, politicians saying whatever they think regardless of who it offends. It would be the end of political correctness as we know it. At the very least, we’d need to rename it. We could call it Wimp’s Correctness or maybe Overly Empathetic Candy Ass Correctness.

For example, as a white guy, I’ve always wondered why I can’t publicly say “hey nigger, what’s up?” Black guys can say it to me, but god help me if I say it back. Last year, I used the word “Oriental” to refer to Asians and my Asian coworkers almost blew a proverbial gasket. Apparently, “the ‘O’ word” is off limits now. They knew what I was talking about so from a communication standpoint, the word worked just fine. Who’s idea was to make it offensive unless you’re referring to rugs?

This all strikes me as a big waste of everyone’s time. How many hours do we spend collectively every day searching for just the right words to say something? Frankly, it’s bullshit -- and that IS the right word. If you can’t look into someone’s heart and determine whether they’re being malicious or not, go take some empathy lessons - you’re probably an asshole anyway, so you need them.

I cringe every time I see some parent teaching their little ones political correctness. It usually goes something like this:

Child: “Mommy look at that fat man! He’s huge.

Mommy: “Sweetie, it’s not nice to point and he’s not fat, he’s massively challenged.”

Child: “What’s ‘massively challenged’?”

Mommy: “Never mind. Just don’t call people fat.”

Child: “That’s dumb.”

Mommy: “You mean intellectually suboptimal.”

We take simple descriptions like fat, ugly, dumb asshole and change them to obese, cosmetically, intellectually, and attitudinally challenged individual. Just the cost in hard drive space to store all this crap is unfathomable.

As much as a president Trump might get us all killed, he might also shake off a few bad habits. Maybe if we got a few more things out in the open with some straight talk, we could start to heal some of the unspoken (or jibbered up) wounds. I dare to dream!