1. Quick thoughts on 80s "political correctness," civility, anti-PC conservatism, & democracy. tl;dr, what conservatives called "political correctness" was a request for basic civility, respect, reciprocity, and democracy. Conservatives' refusal to grant that is what got us Trump
2. It is important to remember that "political correctness" is a term that conservatives used to criticize progressives in the 80s and 90s. It is not a term that progressives embraced. It was always an insult. Even using the term shifts the debate onto reactionary terrain.
3. Late 80's progressives drew attention to how language and culture (like calling women "girls" or using epithets like "f*ggot" or "n*gger" or being part of a frat that proudly proclaimed "no means yes") sustained anti-democratic systems of asymmetrical violence.
4. When LGBTQ people are spoken and thought about as "abnormal" and "lesser than," this contributes to a host of other social phenomena that make the lives of such people less self-determining, more precarious, less free than straight people.
5. The request made of straight people to change their language, to be self-reflective about how they spoke and thought about their fellow humans who happened to not be straight, was a request for civility, for reciprocity, for inclusion in the circle of the democratic "we."
6. It was this request for inclusion that D'Souza, Bennett, Bloom, and the whole army of right wing "anti-PC" intellectuals in the early 90s turned into "the threat of the new Stalinist language police." A cruel inversion.
7. As has often been the case in US history, a request for recognition and inclusion by the marginalized was inflated into an existential threat to the very nation itself. (See today's pearl clutching about the college students who are going to unravel the fabric of western civ).
8. In this thread, I try to expand a bit on how such demands for recognition and reciprocity are the warp and woof of American history...it is the history of Abolition, women's rights, civil rights, etc. of which many Americans are proud.
9. So when people in the @gop (and right wing media outlets like Fox) define themselves so stridently as "anti-PC," it's hard for me to see what they mean other than "we refuse to grant you the civility, the dignity, of recognizing you as being equally self-determining as I."
10. Take, for example, this representative Trumpian moment. What he is saying here is this: "Neither I, nor anyone in this room, can imagine ourselves as being unjustly apprehended by the police. Thus, rough 'em up." washingtonpost.com/news/post-nati…
11. PC says "innocent till proven guilty." "There but for the grace of God go I." Trumpian anti-PC winks and says "Come on, we know people like us don't get picked up by the cops. So go ahead, rough THEM up."
12. Same goes for the inhumane treatment of families seeking asylum at the borders. "WE will never be in this situation, so go ahead, split those families up. Who cares. Only the politically correct would see such people as worthy of our care and concern, of our reciprocity."
13. The same lens can be applied to our contemporary conversation about enabling each person to determine which gender pronouns they prefer. Progressives are like "ok, tell me what you like to be called." Conservatives are like "the entire fabric of the universe is unravelling!!"
14. Living together in a diverse democracy is really hard. We've never gotten it right & probably never will. But if we want to get it *more* right, the way we do that is to strive to treat people who are different from us with the civility, respect, & reciprocity we would want.
15. I seem to remember some rule (maybe a golden one?) that lay at the heart of a faith tradition that has been historically influential in Western Civilization...I can't quite put my finger on what it is tho...
16. h/t to @sethrockman for helping me see the links between civility and PC.
17. When an 18 yr old says to you "I preferred to be referred to as 'they,' not she," they are not putting you in a gulag any more than your friend Thomas (who prefers to be called Tom) is. And btw, that 18 year old probably has far less social or political power than you. Chill.
