Above and Beyond the 5 Senses
My guest blogger this month is multi-award winning Novelist Peter Canova, author of the First Souls Trilogy which includes his much-talked-about first book, Pope Annalisa. Today, he shares his insights with you on the dark origins of the latest trend in social behavior sweeping our nation- Political Correctness. As you will read in this article Political Correctness, aka, PC is not new to the United States or even the world. In fact it has been around for a very long time and has some very dark roots.
In the first part of this article, I described an incident of political correctness where a public figure unnecessarily criticized and embarrassed a lady for her use of a customary, non-offensive term that did not fit into his vision of politically correct lexicon. I can understand the reaction for, “so what, what’s the big deal?” Here in part 2, I clarify why it’s a big deal.
Political Correctness (PC)– today people:
a.) buy into it
b.) resent it, or
c.) brush it off as harmless drivel.
Political Correctness is not harmless.
Understanding its history, why it came into existence, and how it was used indicates the potentially pathogenic course of what is tantamount to a psychic virus.
This may sound a bit dramatic, but once you become aware of PC’s origin, history and usage, you may change your perspective. Contrary to the simplistic notion that PC is synonymous with politeness, sensitivity, and treating others with respect, it is a tried and true ideology of suppression, not of liberation. It was developed as a tool of societal control to eliminate free debate and rational discourse. Though it has been used in several repressive societies, it was brought to an art form in Red China.
“The Great Leap Forward”
During the communist revolution in China, Mao Zedong adopted two tools to succeed in gaining complete control over the country—unremitting violence and “correct thought.”
This was the beginning of modern political correctness.
In the early 1950’s just after consolidating power, Mao embarked on the Great Leap Forward, an attempt at rapid industrialization of the country. He would trade grain to communist Russia in return for setting up factories. The amount of grain he needed to be produced was enormous. He forced the Chinese peasantry into slave labor setting impossible production goals. If not met, he withheld food from them while most of the grain went off to Russia. It’s estimated that 14-20 million peasants died of starvation.
The damage to the country was so great, that members of his own party took the bold step of criticizing his rule. Mao was a sadistic dictator who did Hitler and Stalin proud. In order to eliminate his opposition within and outside of the Communist party, he needed to build an army that was in ideological lockstep with his goals. Enter “correct thinking” (his term) the ideological forerunner of PC. Mao’s correct thinking was my way or the highway, and the highway in this case was a one-way terminal trip. Ideology can be adopted intellectually or by force and the voluntary part wasn’t working so well. Mao needed a tool to enforce his new ideology so he did two clever things.
First, he codified correct thinking into the infamous Little Red Book, making his philosophy more tangible. His next step was nefariously brilliant. Taking a page from Hitler, he formed his own corps of stormtroopers to enforce his will and terrorize the population. He astutely recognized that young minds are the most impressionable and subject to indoctrination, so he recruited students into his army of terror. They swept across the country in what became known as the Cultural Revolution. The young students went on a decade-long rampage reciting verses from the Red Book and combating the “four olds”—Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas—which meant any traditional values that disagreed with Mao’s “progressive” direction. Getting to sound a bit familiar? The students murdered and brutalized their teachers, the older generation, and any that would not conform to Mao’s vision of a brainwashed culture.
How PC Migrated to America
The violence in China reached a crescendo in the 1960’s and 70’s. This event coincided with the Vietnam War and the huge anti-war movement in America that produce the first mass-radicalization on college campuses. The radical leftist elements that emerged in America during the war naturally sought models to guide their efforts in executing their agenda. I remember that time as a student. Large contingents of student radicals participated in the huge anti-war marches shaking Mao’s red book in their raised fists, eerily mimicking the millions of zombie-like Chinese students terrorizing their own countryside.
This radical movement proceeded to enforce its goals with occupations of college facilities, disruptions of classes, shouting down the opposition, and attempting to enshrine their views as sacrosanct ideas the correctness of which no one should dare to dispute. Thus appeared on American campuses and within the fabric of leftist politics the seeds of PC.
Fast forward to the present. The radical violence of the sixties abated, but the notion of eliminating free debate by establishing a sacred standard of thinking, language, behavior, and political views incubated and morphed into modern political correctness. Campuses today are still a spawning ground for indoctrination and a bastion of political correctness. The political leanings of college faculties, many of whom are products of the 60’s, is well known. You do not find many traditional voices there or in the American educational system in general. Lack of diverse ideas is becoming the death knell of traditional liberal education as much as it has caused the demise of an objective, non-partisan press.
Still, we have to be careful in drawing direct comparisons of the American experience to that of the Chinese. We have not reached that level of outright violence and repression, not yet. But, witness the recent suppression of opposing conservative voices on campuses through rioting and property destruction. At Evergreen College, the old 60’s tactics of occupying offices were employed along with intimidation of people opposing an “absence of white people” day on campus. You were a racist if you did not agree with whites absenting themselves from the college they pay to attend. How’s that for double-think?
A Budding Climate of Intolerance
Recently we saw the politically motivated shooting of GOP congressmen in the wake of anti-Trump hysteria on the part of the media, the entertainment industry, and the campuses where students sought safe rooms with cookies and Playdoh to soften the shock of Trump’s election. Hillary Clinton described Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorable,” racist, sexist, homophobic and all the other clichés that dismiss the essence of your opponents in a single easy label –fits- all words. This shooting incident was also preceded by a comedienne holding up a severed Trump-head likeness and a public play in which Julius Caesar Trump is stabbed to death on stage by minority actors.
Am I laying this climate of hatred and budding violence at the doorstep of Politically Correct? There certainly is a nexus.
Political Correctness has transformed large segments of our society into uncritical dogmatists trying to silence diverse opinions. They are inculcated into thinking their way is the only right course for the human race. This entitled mindset is the only explanation for the depth of shock displayed in the anti-Trump phenomenon. Losers exist in every election, but this electoral loss by the left was like a mass psychosis, a hyper-indignant disbelief that the country could elect someone so alien to their way of talking, thinking, and acting.
In the brave new world of PC, if you disagree with the standard line on climate change, you’re a lunatic, and some have advocated jail terms for people holding opposing opinions. You must be aware of an ever-changing landscape of words you can use so as not to engender hurt feelings on someone else’s part. BTW, they get to define when and how their feelings are hurt. If you oppose economy-killing hyper government regulations that hurt the middle classes, you’re anti-worker. Multi-culturalism, a good and inevitable concept, has unfortunately been promoted with charges racism and white privilege, which is divisive, not multi-cultural.
Disagreements with the direction of the Obama administration qualified many as being racist. CNN happily trots out Van Jones to tell people that Trump’s election had nothing to do with the policies of the prior administration. Those policies demonized producers in the country as greedy “one percenters,” let Isis run rampant, and lost our nation’s credit rating by piling up record debt. Nope, there were no reasons to criticize the Obama White House. Instead, it was “whitelash” against a black president, which makes half the country de facto racists. But hey, that’s PC. I believe there was a backlash, however. It was a reaction by people fed up with Hollywood, the media, and politicians like Clinton telling them what to do, how to think, how to talk, and then calling them derogatory names for non-compliance.
The “PC” ideological virus is dangerous and needs to be called out because it is insidious.
Like other politically motivated infections of its kind, it operates under the banner of fairness, inclusion, diversity, and equality. So did Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and the Khmer Rouge. How’d that work for the people? Any unbiased observer can tell you that the PC police are the least tolerant, least inclusive, least fair, and least diverse group of dogmatists going. This should be a tip-off that, like so many other devious socio-political philosophies, PC is not sincere in its stated goals. It is merely a tool to gain power for people who historically have replaced what they oppose with something worse.
The ultimate course of thought control movements is to graduate to violence. Thought control acts as the conditioner to dehumanize one’s opposition. Once that is achieved, opponents become open targets. Modern American PC is still contained so far as a dominating ideological force. But, even if arrested at this stage, it has a chilling Big Brother effect of mind control already becoming normative for our future leaders on college campuses. Their uncontested, self-righteous worldviews are encouraged by their professors, the media, politicians, and the entertainment industry. We are raising a crop of non-critical, brainwashed lemmings in our educational system.
There is an American-Way and It’s Not “PC”
Of course, many people who agree with political correctness are not Maoist radicals, but ideas and language are the precursors of reality. By seeking to control the language and make their ideas the standard, the people who drive PC are injecting an inherently totalitarian strain into the body politic. Respect but debate has been the American way, and change has primarily been prosecuted through issues that uplift the nation, not fragmented interest groups within the nation. This has been the best formula for diversity to work.
We can still empower one segment of people without criminalizing another segment, but only if we do not allow Political Correctness to progress to the extremes toward which it is heading.
We must allow traditional debate free of intimidation to proceed without dehumanizing opponents under a barrage of dismissive labels.
Thank you, Peter Canova, for sharing your insights with us concerning political correctness and religious charitable organizations in the arena of world events.
As the reader of this blog/article, if you have any insights, suggestions, or responses you would like to share with the readership or Mr. Canova, please do so in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you.
About the Guest Author: Peter Canova is a multi-award winning author, speaker, and inspirational visionary. His book, Pope Annalisa has won ten national and inter
national book awards. The theme underlying Peter’s body of work is that all people have the ability to transcend their ordinary consciousness and experience information from a higher source within themselves. Learn more @ https:/
/www.amazon.com/Peter-Canova/e/B00GC4J54U
About the Author: Kathleen (Kat) O’Keefe-Kanavos is a TV Producer/Host and Author/Lecturer of Dreams That Can Save Your Life written with Drs Larry Burk & Berne Siegel which promotes patient advocacy and connecting with Dreams for success in health, wealth, and relationships. Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos Website– Personal Facebook– Surviving Cancerland Facebook–Dreams That Can Save Your Life Facebook– Google+ – LinkedIn – Pinterest – Twitter – Youtube– Book
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