SamElliot said:
Therumancer said:
I'll say flat out bigotry is what society needs more of right now, people who are willing to flat out ignore political correctness and what's nice, focus on problems like a laser, and work to correct them even if it involves being mean. Honestly I think political correctness perpetuates problems and actually does more damage to the people it sets out to protect than it helps them... largely because it tells them that things that aren't okay are just fine.
Up until this point, I disagreed with some of the things you said, but could find common ground with your arguments, but this...this is indefensible.
First of all, bigotry and "ignoring political correctness" does not "focus on problems like a laser." In fact, if anything, it clouds the real issues. Take the so-called "War on Terror," for instance, which has really been America's bloodlust against Muslims. People in this country have played into Osama bin Laden's hands by turning it into a religious war. In our haste to fight back at these "Arabs" that killed our citizens, despite our complicity in the creation of their mindset (government support of dictators, propping up Afghani rebels during the Soviet invasion, only to abandon them after the war ravaged most of their country, etc.), and proceed to persecute people who "look" like they are Muslim, act angry or fearful when we see actual Muslims do benign things like pray towards Mecca, or even claim that we should just "nuke the entire Middle East," a quote I've heard several times from people of various social backgrounds. It's not helpful, it offer no insight, and in fact makes we, the people easier to manipulate by the powers that be by having us fight each other rather than the corrupt systems that want power and money. I have problems with certain elements of Islam (mostly how it's practiced in certain regions of the Middle East), but I'm not going to hate every single Muslim that I see and claim that "they are all the same" just because of those problems (why, if I were to do that to a white Christian without having heard a word they said or seen their actions, everyone would be pointing out all the numerous ways they could be different).
Despite the protestations of a lot of people, "political correctness" is not this pervasive, all-threatening entity that's driving us to ignore the problem (anyone who thinks it is hasn't been watching the news, since we let a lot of incorrect statements like "All terrorists are Muslims" go unchallenged). Is it sometimes really stupid? Yes, but the "anti-PC" movement is a lot dumber (Larry the Cable Guy titled a chapter in his hack book "David Cross and the PC Police," despite Cross being about as un-PC as modern comedians get) and way more destructive to society, as what they are really doing is goading the dumb into hating minorities so that they can be sold their own racism back to them.
Well, no point is going to have everyone agreeing with it. Like a lot of things I post, some people wind up agreeing with me, but given the political leanings of most here the majority don't. This really is Bob's crowd so to speak.
To me, you seen to illustrate a big part of the problem with political correctness, and of course you believe what your saying. If there weren't a lot of people like you, there wouldn't be arguements like this taking place.
When you get down to it, our disagreement is largely going to come down to the specifics of incidents. For example I do not believe there is any real "American Bloodlust against Muslims", though truthfully I think it would be a good thing if there was as you might gather from a lot of my other posts on the subject.
In the end as I see things the problem is the muslim culture throughout the Middle Eastern geographic region. These problems have existed for a very long time, going back to when I was a little kid, and probably beforehand. A lot of the things the politically correct use to claim our actions in the region are unjust, were actually attempts at a measured response. Rather than invading we tried to work with the various leaders in the region, including dictators to stop the violence that way. Backing guys like Saddam Hussein was done to back one of the more progressive factions in the region, in hopes that they could balance out countries like Iran without us having to invade, and perhaps even plant the seens of a renaissance of sorts in the region. The ultimate failure of these kinds of actions in the region, along with general diplomacy, is exactly why I think bigotry against the region is not a bad thing. Right now people want to try and convince themselves that we're dealing with a radical fringe within the culture, and that most of the people want change and progress, when that really isn't true. One of our big difficulties is that progressive leaders that want to reform these societies, or even just work with us, usually wind up facing rebellions. Pakistan is a good recent example, where the goverment was on our side, but the people themselves were not and turned on their own leadership because the people themselves support the terrorists and what they stand for. We also see it in Iraq or Afghanistan where after toppling the goverments and giving the people a chance to set new laws and policies, they don't even try for the seeds of progress, declare their nations "Islamic", and ultimatly kill every ambition of progress we had through the region. We wanted women's sufferage throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, but the people themselves refused to even plant the seeds of it, and right now in meetings our women who hold positions of authority are forced to wear the traditional heavy robes and pretend to defer to men.
As I see thing it's the tolerance of the region and it's behaviors, that has lead to problems getting this far, and the continued threat. Of course a lot of it is also that changing anything in the region is going to involve actions defined by the UN as Genocide (since by their own very PC logic, we should preserve things that want to kill us). Nobody wants to go to war, or put that much blood on their hands (even I don't exactly revel in the thought despite the points I make), and political correctness and messages of tolerance provide a conveinent way of avoiding reality while claiming to be involved in some kind of maligned moral crusade.
See, it's easy to say "we deserve this for supporting the dictators", but who is going to wind up in charge of these countries if they are gone? Chances are for all pretensions of freedom, it will be another dictator, another group of theocrats, or whomever which is liable to have a very anti-western agenda since in many cases it's support of us that has caused a lot of discontent to begin with. It's like how in Egypt there really isn't any clear replacement for the leader they are removing, all you see are people who just want that guy gone. The biggest faction (which are not the overall majority there at least) being hard core Islamics who want to turn it into an Islamic nation run under Islamic law. None of the groups there seem to really want any kind of truely progressive goverment, and really all the options that seem viable are worse than the dictator they got rid of, or constant civil war. The tradgedy of the situation being that there is no real solution.
I'll also say that a big part of political correctness in situations like this is the attitude that for whatever reason it's wrong for the US to pursue it's own interests, but not for other nations to pursue theirs even when they conflict with us. In a lot of conflicts, as I frequently say, the issue is "us or them" right and wrong isn't a part of it. They pursue their agenda with what they have, we pursue ours, just because we're a big country and liable to win (easily) doesn't mean that I feel it's somehow wrong. Of course then again a lot of the opposition typically comes down to people not wanting to actually have to do anything, given that they are fat, happy, and content. Nobody wants to head out to war, or see their loved ones do so, and whether or not it's right in the big picture nobody wants to look at burning cities and millions of dead civilians and think "we did that" (unless they are a total sociopath).
I doubt we're going to agree here, but the point is that I say bigotry is good because you need to single out problems and address them. In most cases political correctness amounts to a problem being too big, or too morally ambigious, for people to want to deal with. They would rather not do anything, take what they see as a moral high ground (even if it's not), and hope for a magical solution than take any kind of action. To be honest a lot of those failed attempts in situations like the ongoing Middle East crisis, are the result of political correctness. We backed dictators like Saddam hoping that with our help the region would progress, and our assistance would convince them we weren't the enemy. With the majority of people being anti-western (not a fringe minority) we wanted to avoid going into places like Iran directly because of this, and instead were trying to help Muslims sort it all out themselves. Failed attempts like this made things worse, and honestly, the situations I propose are extreme (even if they would help with global overpopulation) but truthfuly I think if we had acted more directly decades ago the situation wouldn't currently be so
messed up.
In the end though we are going to have to agree to disagree. I actually do believe in trying tolerance, and diplomacy first, but there is a point where you have to admit that it's not working, and start singling groups of people out and take action, even drastic action if you want anything to change.
