Balkinization  

Saturday, November 26, 2016

The new "political correctness"

Sandy Levinson

Anyone who seriously believes that the Trump "election" does in "political correctness" is simply mistaken.  Instead, we are daily being visited with new forms of political correctness.  In no particular order, let me suggest the following as things that will become a condition for participating in polite public conversation in the all-too-near future, on pain of being thought a political extremist or, even worse, not a "good sport" about being defeated in an election:

1.  Donald Trump is not a narcissist, a totally untrustworthy con-man, a sexual predator, or, ultimately, a sociopath.  Instead, he is a successful businessman who will bring a breath (and breadth) of fresh air to a Washington that is in dire need of disruption.

2.  In addition to overlooking his patent psychological deficiencies, one will also have to deny that he is  entirely without any relevant knowledge about almost all of the actual policy areas where the decision-making buck will stop in the Oval Office.  Horace Greeley, I believe, once said that he would as soon trust the wisdom of his dog as that of Roger Taney.  It would be considered tactless to quote Greeley in the present context.  Or one might quote from King Lear that even "a dog's obey'd in office" as the preface to a discussion about political obligation, though that, too, would be considered politically incorrect.


3.  Donald Trump has not, knowingly and with malice aforethought, legitimized a variety of bigotries, including, but not limited to, hostility to immigrants, Muslims, the disabled, women, urban-dwellers, non-whites, non-Christians (save for right-wing Jews who share the perspective of Christian Zionism that Israel is a sacralized "holy land" that is, therefore, even more exceptional than even the United States).  He is simply attacking some of the sillier aspects of "political correctness" that afflict our public dialogue.

4.  Linked to 3 is the insistence that Steven Bannon as "just" a white nationalist eager to prevent the achievements of whites from being completely hidden by the rise of a more multi-culturealist sensibility and that Breitbart is simply a conservative alternative to the more liberal New York Times.

5.  Linked to 4 is the insistence that one should take seriously Donald Trump's attempts to put distance between himself and, say, David Duke (the person of whom he professed notable ignorance early in his campaign).  A man who feels no compunction at all about lying and misleading us about every aspect of his life is, for once, telling the truth when he professes to be upset that his rise correlates the increasing prominence of bigoted statements and, even more to the point, acts.  He is, after all, exactly the kind of person who would purport not to realize there's gambling going on in Casablanca.

6.  The electoral college, like the Senate, is really a valuable feature of our political system instead of an affirmative action program for the residents of small states (i.e., the Senate) and, with regard to the electoral college, the residents of small states and of those relatively few "battleground" states that get to be pandered (and lied) to every four years.  Opponents of affirmative action, who emphasize the need to judge all persons simply by the content of their character and not by attributes such as skin color, etc., are not roaring hypocrites when they defend the affirmative action aspects of the Senate and electoral college.

7.  The election was a model of "fair play," and we should all rally around the Obama Administration's declaration that there was nothing amiss in the election, including, in addition to the electoral college (see 4), the sheer and utter disdain for any semblance of truth or intellectual integrity by the ostensible "winner" and the intervention in a number of ways by Russia and other more amateur troublemakers who correctly believe that a Trump presidency, should the world survive it, might well fatally weaken the United States as a bastion of any kind of progressive (or, for that matter, respectably conservative) values.

8.  The apparent fact that our statutes regarding conflict of interest do not apply to the President is evidence that We the People see no problem with a businessman-president using the Oval Office as a tool for increasing his personal fortune.  We will pretend that the Emoluments Clause is simply a lawyer's technicality of no relevance to the present situation.

9.  Most fundamentally, that his selection by almost half the American public is not, as Mark Graber suggests, a ringing indictment of our entire political culture that calls into question the continued viability of the American experiment in self-government.

10.   [Just added]  One will have to refer to "President Trump" instead of, say, "the sociopath occupying the White House" or simply "the Master of Mer Lago."

I invite discussants to offer other candidates for "political correctness" in the era of Donald Trump.  It will be like learning a foreign language, but it is, after all, the language that approximately 47% of our fellow citizens appear to speak.



Comments:

We have to pretend nothing wrong was done regarding Scalia's replacement & that OBVIOUSLY Democrats -- some of whom already are talking about working with Trump in certain ways -- would similarly en banc not even give someone they praised in the past, who is older etc. a hearing. This so even though pragmatically, the odds were not on their side, and the next POTUS might choose someone younger and more conservative.

We are not supposed to call Trump a big b.s. artist (like some of us did beforehand) when he takes back various of the strident b.s. things he made a big deal about while running for President, making his supporters gleeful that "he had the right enemies" and spoke the truth bluntly. All politicians do that & he did it just like the others. He is basically not really special at all. The bottom line is that we are supposed to formulate a bland form of "President Trump."
 

"Political correctness" has been a feature of the Right for 30 years or so. It's a lot of what Frank Luntz does.

But even in the more usual sense it applies to all Republicans. For example, Paul Ryan isn't a con man, he just wants "dynamic scoring" for his budget "proposals". We can't call his plan to replace Medicare with vouchers by its real name because Ryan would be sad if we pointed out that that's his actual plan. Etc.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Sandy:

I would be pleased to teach you how Americans speak outside of places like Harvard.

"God" is the creator whom we worship.

"America" means the exceptional nation in which we live in freedom.

"Patriotism" means love for America, not blaming it first for every human malady.

"Freedom" means living how we please, not how you think we should live.

"Family" means a husband, a wife and generally children, and makes all three healthier, happier and wealthier.

"Military" is the organization in which we volunteer to serve to protect America's freedom, not the source of all evil in the world, but often the solution to those evils.

"Terrorist" means evil people who kill, injure, torture and rape civilians to make a political point. These people are not militants or radicals.

"Islamic terrorist" means a terrorist who kills, injures, tortures and rapes civilians in the name of Islam.

"Waterboarding" is a way to make terrorists talk and is far better than they deserve. It is not torture.

"Gun" means the tool we use in the military, to protect ourselves and our family, to hunt and to target shoot.

"Second Amendment" means our right to own, carry and use guns.

"Pickup truck," Jjeep," or "SUV" means a multi-use light truck we use to drive around town or to play off road, not the cause of the end of the world.

"Summer" and "Winter" are seasons, which are not caused by pickup trucks, Jeeps or SUVs.

"Illegal alien" means a foreign citizen who entered and stays in this nation against our laws. These law breakers are not undocumented, dreamers or Americans in waiting.

"Slavery" means an evil system which ended a century and a half and was not the fault of anyone alive today.

"Racial discrimination" means favoring or harming someone because of the color of their skin and is not justified by slavery.

"F_cking pissed off" is how we feel when someone who thinks he or she is morally superior to us calls us a racist, sexist, homophobe, xenophobe, bigot, denier or deplorable for the beliefs above.

 

SPAM I AM!'s mea culpa for branding Trump over and over again while advancing the declining Cruz Canadacy as a fascist sounds like it was delivered from a kneeling position in hopes of being removed from Trump's enemies list. But Trump's campaign demands a public apology for SPAM's calling him a fascist. SPAM's list reading between the lines would seem to seek to restore Plessy v. Ferguson. Perhaps SPAM feels that Trump's election:

1. Will extend the life expectancies of the white male working class;

2. Will make the white male working class more procreative;

3. Reduce suicide rates of white male working class;

4. Cure white male working class addicts;

5. Return white male working class to their coal mines and enjoy blackface (but not black lung).

SPAM is speaking from the gutter.
 

Sandy, to add to your new PC list, consider this variation on Calvin Coolidge:

"THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS THE PRESIDENT'S BUSINESS."
 

Bart was unable to state the climate denialism of his tribe in any recognizable or refutable form. It has nothing to do with seasons. The unstated implication that driving SUVs (or flying or heating your home with oil or gas or running air-conditioning powered by coal) has no effect on the climate is wrong. Actually, since it has been comprehensively refuted as science and carefully debunked in lay terms for two decades, it is the contemptible position of deliberate ignorance.

I note that in his view Timothy McVeigh should have been tortured by waterboarding.
 

James:

Do human CO2 emissions cause temperatres to go up or down? Cause heat waves or cold spells? Cause droughts or heavy rains? Global warming or climate change?

From a lay point of view, this business entered the silly season years ago.

From a scientific POV, you cannot have causation without correlation.

 

Why bother using special characters to hide your word? It does nothing to hide it, and in this enlightened era of pussy grabbing, it seems ridiculous to maintain any pretense of courtesy.
 

Because of automated naughty word filters, silly. I thought everybody realized how common they were; At many sites correctly spelling a long list of words gets your comment sh*tcanned. ;)
 

Shag:

Fascist politics succeeds when the political elites offer nothing but bad alternatives. Your dowager queen in waiting offered an unusually bad alternative.

The election is over now. You and Sandy lost. Get through your stages of grief and the accompanying denial fantasies.

Let us move on discuss the new administration's actual governance. As Mr. Obama demonstrated, campaigns and governance are two very different things. I suspect this will also be the case with Mr. Trump.


 

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Regarding naughty words, Sandy Levinson might try to let them thru unless they are overly abusive -- he has written in the past that he found it inane among other things for the NYT, e.g., not to use "fuck" or some other curse word when germane to the story in question.
 

I understand filters, although they are clearly not automated here, but they should be absolutely unnecessary now. Political correctness is less about what you shouldn't say (at least, not without trigger warnings) to what you must say ("why won't you say "Islamic terrorists?" Just say it!" "All Lives Matter" etc. etc.). We should drop pretense entirely in the new era, call a spade a spade, use straight talk, etc.

Given the predisposition of the incoming leader of the free world to say whatever pops into his mind, there should be no more concern about calling Republican policies vicious and fundamentally racist, intent on disenfranchising their opposition in order to cling to power and give more money to their overlords. We should make it clear that they are the party of self-hating moral perverts and white supremacists, and since respect means nothing in the current era, we should chant such insults at every given opportunity: theatres, football games, the corner when they walk by. Verily, the worst of the Internet is our new normal--icons of hate and divisiveness are now embraced as our sages, brought close to provide counsel when dealing with a world that may not share our enlightened state of discourse, but will have little option but to play ball.

All of this comes wrapped in a postmodern politics of the sort that would make Shanks and Tilly blush--using manufactured subjectivities to repudiate the existence of an objective reality. The sages might say it was piling enough bullshit that you can't find the ground anymore, but they'll play it off legit. They'll rightly call you a cry baby if you should vocalize doubt of the mandate of a party that has lost the popular vote in all but one of the last seven elections.

Everytime the "will of the people" is invoked in one of the sages' pronouncements, we should protest, but we won't. We'll be too busy trying to figure out the respectful way of dealing with fire starters--you know, to give them a chance. Meanwhile, they will rob us dry and make us clean the mess up again--as with Reagan, so with Bush. As with Bush, so with Trump. The mistake is to believe this is new, that the collapse of civil discourse is the work of a single demagogue. The phenomenon previously spawned a generation of Adornos and Marcuses--all shaking their heads as they read the latest, wondering if anyone read their works at all.





 

SPAM I AM, with this

"Let us move on discuss the new administration's actual governance. As Mr. Obama demonstrated, campaigns and governance are two very different things. I suspect this will also be the case with Mr. Trump."

proclaims: "Give the man I called a fascist over and over again in my support of the failed Cruz Canadacy a chance."

What if Trump indeed is a fascist as SPAM proclaimed even after the Cruz Canadacy failed? Do we wait until a multiple Trump Towers are in the works in post-Fidel Cuba, with even more of a Trump brand on foreign policy?

SPAM continues in his efforts to be removed from the Trump enemies list but is reluctant to make a public apology for branding Trump as a fascist. But what if SPAM is right?

As to Trump's actual governance, we have to wait as Trump has provided mixed signals during the transition so far. SPAM might instruct us whether such mixed signals are what a fascist would do.

 

By the Bybee [expletives deleted], I just read Jon Grinspan's NYTimes OpEd "The Saloon, America's Forgotten Democratic Institution." It's a good read, including references to The Gilded Age.
 

Bart: "Do human CO2 emissions cause temperatures to go up or down? Cause heat waves or cold spells? Cause droughts or heavy rains? Global warming or climate change?"

All of these. The greenhouse effect from 36 gigatonnes of CO2 (10 gigatonnes of carbon) injected every year means that the atmosphere is hotter. That is, it has more energy. Energy translates into more extreme weather of every sort. The swings to hot will be more common than the swings to cold, though.

You know, if you wanted to learn about this stuff rather than recycle dumb talking points supplied to you by propagandists, there are a number of good websites like this to study. But this would involve your recognizing that you know as much about this as about string theory, so I don't hold my breath.
 

BD: "Let us move on discuss the new administration's actual governance. As Mr. Obama demonstrated, campaigns and governance are two very different things. I suspect this will also be the case with Mr. Trump."

proclaims: "Give the man I called a fascist over and over again in my support of the failed Cruz Canadacy a chance."


Is there an alternative?

I observed that Trump was offering a fascist campaign, but his proposed polices more closely resemble those of Hoover and FDR. The latter was not compliment.

What if Trump indeed is a fascist as SPAM proclaimed even after the Cruz Canadacy failed?

Then his actual policies will more closely resemble those of Obama.

Remember, the differences between socialism and fascism are only really a matter of emphasis and degree.

As to Trump's actual governance, we have to wait as Trump has provided mixed signals during the transition so far. SPAM might instruct us whether such mixed signals are what a fascist would do.

The mixed signals are what give me some small measure of hope Trump's governance will be better than his campaign. Apart from the head scratcher of putting the surgeon Carson in charge of HUD (put the black guy in charge of public housing?), Trump's appointments so far are top notch conservatives. The foreign policy team its filled with strategic thinkers who know how to employ both hard and soft power and have no illusions concerning the nature and goals of our enemies. We'll see if Trump follows their advice.
 

James, good luck trying the use of actual facts on a climate denier. There's no way to get through. The last 20+ years tells us that. I think at least a part of this, no make that the only reason, is that coastal cities tend to be more liberal and conservatives would love to see them sink into the ocean. What they seems to forget is that a warmer climate with more energy will feed tornadoes and horrible storms with flooding down the center of this country - conservative land for the most part.

What makes me laugh is climate deniers are really just plain old science deniers. Did they learn nothing in chemistry, did they take chemistry? Or is chemistry and physics a liberal plot to force better gas mileage from all cars, including the beloved pickup, SUV, and Jeep?
 

BD: Do human CO2 emissions cause temperatures to go up or down? Cause heat waves or cold spells? Cause droughts or heavy rains? Global warming or climate change?"

James: All of these.


Kudos for getting the point. My comment would have gone right over the heads of most of the AGW faithful.

The greenhouse effect from 36 gigatonnes of CO2 (10 gigatonnes of carbon) injected every year means that the atmosphere is hotter. That is, it has more energy. Energy translates into more extreme weather of every sort. The swings to hot will be more common than the swings to cold, though.

Let's start from the beginning.

The AGW hypothesis claims that human GHG emissions into the atmosphere will retain enough solar energy to create a general warming of the atmosphere. If this hypothesis was true, atmospheric temperatures would rise in tandem with the exponentially rising human GHG emissions over the past century. There is no such correlation. Yearly temperatures swing wildly up and down by up to 3-4 degrees. Decadal temperatures have risen and fallen by less than a degree. The starkest lack of correlation was since 1997, when the amount of human GHG emissions equalled all the years before to the industrial revolution, but atmospheric temperatures have flatlined.

The proof offered in support of the AGW hypothesis consists entirely of computer models assuming the hypothesis through "carbon forcing." Problem is none of these models has successfully explained past temperatures or predicted future temperatures. In sum, AGW proponents tested their hypothesis against reality and reality disproved the hypothesis.

The complete unhinging of GHG emissions with temperature over the past two decades have caused AGW proponents to change their pitch from global warming to climate change and to claim that weather event outside of the norm was evidence of such climate change. This led to patent nonsense like claiming global warming leads to severe winters or that it causes both droughts and heavy rain. In order to justify the economy killing costs of abandoning inexpensive fossil fuel energy, the wackier of the AGW priests claim that global warming leads to hurricanes and tornadoes. Inconveniently, severe storms have actually decreased over the past decade of surging GHG emissions.
 

SPAM I AM! is demonstrating that he is a total suck up to the man he described over and over again as a fascist while trolling, unsuccessfully, the Cruz Canadacy. SPAM is getting into anal lockstep with the upcoming Trump Administration. Of course, SPAM had that experience with the Bush/Cheney 8 years ending with their 2007-8 Great Recession. SPAM tries in vain to to modify his descriptions of Trump as a fascist post election. Just check the Archives at this Blog as the Trump campaign has done, perhaps monitored by Brett as the overtly Trump troll at this Blog.

As to SPAM's knowledge of science, it's called stringing along theory.
 

What he's doing, is demonstrating that evidence can change his opinions.
 

No, Brett, SPAM I AM! is pulling the same HUMPTY-DUMPTY method you have used in the past to explain what he meant by accusing The Donald of being a fascist over and over again during the campaigns. You and SPAM walked in anal lockstep with Bus/Cheney during their 8 years and SPAM is obviously planning to join you in anal lockstep with Trump/Pence, BrettBart (unBreit) together again.
 

Here's the closing sentence of a NYTimes book review of a biography of Herbert Hoover:

"And it’s worth remembering that until Donald Trump, Hoover was the last Republican to win the presidency without a Nixon or Bush on the ticket."

An omen of October 29, 2017?
 

Shag, you can't have been paying very close attention to think that Bart and I have been in lockstep for the last 8 years. Unless maybe by it you mean, "Not at each other's throats."
 

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Shag/Brett:

I meant what I posted about Trump.

Repeatedly, I took Trump to task for scapegoating foreigners for the economic problems caused by our failing progressive government and offering himself as a strong man to solve the problems. This is classic fascist politics analogous to early 1930s Hitler.

I did not discuss Trumps policy proposals because I distrust lifelong progressives who suddenly become born against conservatives to get elected. I have seen that movie before far too many times.

I very much like his appointments to date, but I still have no real idea what Trump will actually do.
 

Shag was a tad strong.

It's useful to remember that a "conservative" is involved here. A full "libertarian" might warrant more than the occasional explicit opposition seen in these quarters.
 

"I very much like his appointments to date, but I still have no real idea what Trump will actually do."

Well, I've stated my theory before: Trump isn't a progressive or a conservative, he's a non-ideological pragmatist, who had to play the part of a progressive because of the business he was in, and where he was in it. Under different circumstances he might have spent the last few decades pretending to be a conservative.

His primary motivation, I think, is to be perceived as a "winner", and everything he has done has aimed at that.

As he ran as a Republican, there is absolutely nothing he can do that will make Democrats see him as a success. So he is aiming all his efforts at being seen as a success by Republicans and independents.

If Democrats were open minded enough for him to have a chance of winning them over, we'd be in trouble, because he's used to sucking up to them, knows by heart how to please them. But they're not, they are a lost cause to him at this point.

So he's going to 'dance with the one that brung him", because, in the end, he's got no other option if he wants the most people possible to think him a success.
 

Some Democrats are already talking about working with Trump on various things, even (saw a couple myself) maybe even joining his administration in some fashion. Democrats actually support workable government and it is doubtful that they as a bloc will refuse across the board to not be involved in the process.

That didn't happen with George W. Bush, and it won't -- for good or ill -- probably happen here. They will in various cases play hardball, use the filibuster or whatever, and in various cases Trump probably will suck up to them to get support. He already is changing his tune on various things including prosecuting Clinton, torture, the nature of the wall (maybe it will be a fence) etc. Anyway, since Brett thinks various Republicans are basically Democrats deep down, Trump has to "suck up" to them given the narrow margins in the Senate alone.

Finally, Trump is not merely some sort of chamelon that operates a certain way because he is successful doing so. He has certain qualities that will influence how he will govern, some as many across the spectrum has noted are problematic in various ways.
 

"Some Democrats are already talking about working with Trump on various things,"

That they are. Just as long as he's willing to do what they're interested in, instead of what he ran on doing. Very generous offer on their part.
 

Donald J. Trump will be America's first PG President. No, not in the TV/Flick ratings sense, but in The Donald's own celebrity rating in the Access Hollywood tapes. Brett has been providing piecemeal a history of the current Republican Party. No, it's not the Republican Party of Lincoln or even the Republican Party of Reagan any more. Brett's history starts with the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 that failed because of Newt's dalliances as well as those of successor Republican House Speakers (not counting Denny's which were secret). Then late in the Bush/Cheney Administration, the Tea Party invaded the Republican Party, with lessons learned from the Gingrich Revolution, its kettle steaming in 2010 and 2014. Then as the 2016 presidential campaign began, a brand new Republican rump group started to rumble, gathered steam in conjunction with the Tea Party kettle, combining the Tea Party and the rump movement to take control of the Republican Party by overwhelming its establishment, becoming the - drum roll - T-RUMP Republican Party, with the support of the Revengelicals (aka biblical Luddites). So Hail to America's first PG President, you dog, you!
 

PS As a geezer I cannot avoid being PC so readers of my 7:52 AM comment will have to use their imaginations to describe members of a rump movement.
 

"That they are. Just as long as he's willing to do what they're interested in, instead of what he ran on doing."

He "ran on" making America great again. The details were repeatedly vague and logically conflicting. He already is going back on stuff he clearly said. To the degree he did say things -- like certain foreign policy matters -- there are Democrats who are sympathetic to that sentiment. So the senator from Hawaii met him. "They're interested" in what "he ran on."

And, in various cases, he really doesn't care much. He didn't say much about 'x, y, or z.' So, as long as they stay loyal to him & it helps his bottom line (and he can spin things various ways there), they can go their own way a significant way there. Like Nixon didn't care that much about certain domestic issues, as long certain basics was followed and it helped his interests.

It is useful to look past someone having "the right enemies" and strongly disfavoring about various things one side ('the left' or whatever) has & not see things in a simplistic black/white fashion.
 

"The details were repeatedly vague and logically conflicting."

Yes, so vague and conflicting.
 

I'm going what he repeatedly said. When it suits, what people says matters to you, not some position papers. People have analyzed them too and critiqued them as well.

The point holds & going by what people actually voted for, what you actually said (the whole "pragmatic" thing), Trump repeatedly spoke in broad terms without being locked in specifics. And, when he did, there are Democrats who support the general ideas in various respects. Finally, there are things he doesn't care much about, and as long as the people don't conflict with his bottom line, he'll use them.

You really should get into politics. You spin nicely.
 

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