The Evolution of Political "Correctness"
What, you thought there was a reasonable endpoint to this?
So this is what the “arc of history” was bending toward.
Not an enlightened, post-racial society administered by efficient and benevolent light-bending elites whose dream-states provide a bountiful utopia of civility and abundance, but a dictatorial dementiacrat shouting at us from a creepy Lucasfilms stage set as backdrop to a 21st century Orwellian dystopia. The only thing missing last Thursday night was John Williams’ Imperial March soundtrack - the geniuses likely having surmised that would be over the top. Perhaps next time.
How in hell did we get here?
Back in the sepia-toned halcyon days of the 1990s, one could easily be forgiven for believing the world was fundamentally changed and that we’d left the harsh and barbarous reality of kleptocratic Marxist collectivism (and its conjoined twin fascism) behind for good. The Cold War was over, peace was breaking out across the globe and we were finally realizing the economic bounty of digital automation through genuine peer-to-peer network connectivity that eliminated informational transaction frictions. The old politics - at least we thought they were old - of politically managed scarcity went the way of limited bandwidth, just as the buggy whip of silicon gave way to gallium arsenide and fiber optics and live streaming video. Surely we’d be living resplendently among the stars in short order!
But the siren song of 19th century class resentment, envy and loathing was just getting warmed up for its next act. Clinton (and I don’t mean the affable redneck horndog) would precipitate a new paradigm in politics known as the continuous campaign, commandeering the White House itself to serve as the political epicenter for rightthink - the promulgated correct way of viewing all things political. Leveraging access to senior staff and even the White House itself, Clinton manipulated and directed the mainstream media like a wing of the Democrat party - ensuring that only favorable messaging could emerge, while disagreeable notes were met with smashmouth retribution - the equivalent of doxing today.
What emerged was a metamorphosis of “spin” (which is a preferred perspective based on the presumption there’s more than one way to look at something) into an aggressive and offensive form of logic called political correctness, which simply assumes the question is answered: of course there’s only one right answer. If one’s views are politically correct, after all, that must mean other views are incorrect. And not just mistaken, but immoral, corrupt, depraved and obscene. Incorrect views aren’t in opposition to correct views - they’re in defiance of reality.
Now the Clintons of course, were at least adept as politicians, so even if they felt this way about their opponents - for who knows what they truly believed - they wouldn’t actually have gone so far as to say it, at least not in the 90s. PC is after all, just a con, a grift, a Jedi mind trick to play on the weak-minded rubes who get their news from mainstream media. So even while they were otherizing their political enemies, they knew fundamentally this is just a political con, and if some of their more loyal foot soldiers actually believed it, so much the better.
Throughout the GW Bush years, PC became sharper and harsher - the less the “trick” worked, the harder the edge became. We called it “Bush Derangement Syndrome” or BDS for short. It was a real thing. Of course all that was set aside with the immaculation of B. Hussein Obama, the political bringer of light who would usher in the Age of Woke.
Wokism of course, is a fundamentally goofy psychologism dressed up as something far more serious - and was derided as such to the point where today it finds itself retired from the euphemism treadmill, even among the wokerati. But back in the days of Obama, it described an emergent culture of Superior Beings unshackled from the somnolence of racial, sexual and gender-based oppression - which is apparently everywhere. Being woke was more than just being “aware” - hell, anybody could be aware of differences among the human species. Woke demanded more than awareness or even acceptance. It demanded and would tolerate nothing less than adoption of a complete psychology of guilt by birthright.
But notice this: wokism wasn’t so much about the poor was it? Class, it turns out, wasn’t quite as useful the tool in the Marxist kitbag anymore. Not when people could simply become unpoor by staying married or getting a second job or training for a new vocation that pays better. The truly oppressed became the lesbian couple making six figures a year while hoping to make their lives complete through adoption. But it turns out, politically at least, there just aren’t a sufficient number of truly sympathetic cases among the woke class. Not in the 2010s and not with a culture that largely accepted all that and then some.
Trump pointed all that out. He openly mocked and castigated the incredible tininess and silly insignificance of the woke culture. In response, they broadened the front. By the end of Trump’s admittedly polarizing four years, the hard left of the Democrat party was unified beyond just culture. They resurrected the 19th century term social justice and adapted it to be inclusive of the role of government in every facet of our identity through the legal system, including sex, vocation, education, religion, the arts and even science itself. Considering the government as a willful participant in this campaign, if one is willing to use it as such, this is a very dangerous alliance. Trump, as a populist, ran against the government - but the Democrats, as the party of government had but to demonstrate the will to embrace the power.
However it is he got there (and that’s subject for a whole raft of discourse in itself) Biden inherited this more muscular, post-woke, universally sentient Leviathan which eats that which resists it. And Biden may not understand much else about his position, but he fundamentally get this much: The Beast demands feeding.
And feed it he has. From Day One of his administration, he signed a raft of executive orders, each salving the wounds inflicted on The Beast by Trump. And since that time we’ve experienced roughly a Watergate-equivalent political catharsis each month. Was it really just two weeks ago that the world blew up over his illegal cancellation of nearly a trillion dollars of student loan debt? Or the month before that when he raided the Trump residence on the basis of a partisan affidavit? Or just a month prior when he signed the ironically named, sharply partisan Inflation Reduction Act which spends just shy of a trillion dollars on pet projects for The Beast? Or the month before that he empowered the executive bureaucracy to facilitate an end run around the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling?
After last Thursday, this all seems so long ago. Ancient history. There’s no longer even a mask of civility or justice being served. It’s a time of war and that was a war speech. The Other Side is no longer a worthy adversary or an opponent. They’re The Enemy. And while Trump may have tens of millions of loyal followers and can fill a stadium on any given day with over 100,000 fans, Biden has F-15s and nuclear bombs!
And don’t you forget it. If you won’t bend to the arc of history, we’ll bend you to it!
As to the content of The Speech: Trump and his most loyal followers have every constitutional right to believe the 2020 election was stolen and rigged - just as Hillary's followers and media enablers were permitted the same latitude in 2016 and as Al Gore's voters were given the same wide constitutional grace in 2000. It may appear unseemly and divisive (to some) to dwell on the topic, but that's politics. When you're in office, your focus is supposed to be on governance (of the whole nation, for the good of the whole nation), not feeding The Beast. Bush totally ignored his detractors after 2000 and Trump largely did so (though the relentless investigations of the Russia hoax were a constant distraction).
Biden, on the other hand, has turned his entire presidency into a continuing war against his former opponent - making every policy decision a direct rebuke to Trump and his voters. This has been legitimately decried as "Third World" territory. Because if Biden was in fact legitimately elected, then he should govern as such and not fixate on - and seek to disqualify - his former opponent as an "enemy". What we saw Thursday night was not just unseemly, undignified and even "creepy". It was beyond all that. It was The Most Powerful Man on the Planet declaring himself illegitimate and beholden to The Beast.
So does that make him The Beast’s keeper or vice versa? Is this a new fascism or a new Marxism? Does it make any difference?
Either way, we are on The Road to Serfdom.