Being Politically Correct About Being Politically Correct

While it has finally started to taper off, the last five years saw a sharp increase in the amount of attention paid towards being "politically correct." It was all the hype. So what was being politically correct all about? It was about not saying or doing anything that could be interpreted as offensive to a particular group of people. An example might be making a joke about the quality of the French military in a French class. Anyways, I am sure nearly everyone reading this already knows what I am talking about.

Most of you who know me realize I have never been very concerned with being politically correct. If it is a good joke, I will tell it. If it is how I truly feel about an issue, I will not hide it. So why is it that I am not concerned with the matter? Originally, it was because I was strongly opinionated in that I should not attempt to disguise, mask, or dilute who I was just because someone might get offended. I was going to be blunt because it was not worth the effort for me to gloss over something because people found it unbecoming. Afterall, do you see anyone putting paper bags over ugly people because they are not attractive? I am going to end this paragraph here because that sentence sums up the idea I was trying to portray better than anything I could have imagined.

Today, I realized that I had been right all these years. I just did not have the logical argument worked out yet. The problem with the present notion of "political correctness" is that it relies on the speaker to not say anything that could potentially be offensive. Considering that anything can be offense to the wrong/right person, a person cannot say anything. Assume a person used to be cruelly humiliated for their weight as a kid when they bent over to pick-up a pen off of the floor. Throughout their childhood, their peers would joke about dropping pens and the strain of having to pick siad pen up. That means you could potentially offend someone by simply remarking, "I dropped the pen." However, if someone were to ask you what you just happened as they saw you stop taking notes in class, it might be considered rude (and therefore not politically correct) to ignore them altogether for fear of offending them by stating you dropped the pen. Now this case is taken to the extreme.

Some of you are probably thinking that in the case of the "pen" individual, it is such a ridiculous thing to be offended by that they should simply understand. Therefore, they should take the responsibility upon themself to not be offended. Why if one person cannot be offended in a unique situation can an individual not be offended in a common situation? If we shift the responsibility to prevent people becoming offended to the listener rather than the speaker, we no longer have to worry about a situation not being "politically correct." We need people to simply understand that the individual is not intentionally trying to offend them. I would have to say in most cases, it is obvious to tell when they are. And if they are trying to be offensive, but we assume they are not, does that really make the world worse? Maybe their would be a few less fights each school year. I am not even going to attempt to project its ramifications onto international politics.

In summary, let us all stop assuming everyone around us is an asshole who is trying to piss us off. Maybe they really do just think it is a funny joke. Maybe what they are saying is their real opinion or observation. Why does it have to be an effort to offend you? Then again, maybe everyone is an asshole, but how does getting offended help the situation?

Presidential Campaigns II: Financial Matter

This is long overdue, but here's my continuation on presidential campaigns. I spoke briefly in the last post about the amount of money being pumped into presidential campaigns. Most of this money is used to slander the opposing candidate. Where does it come from? A fair portion is provided by third party sources hoping to gain an influence on the future decisions of said candidate should the individual become president. First off, just because someone provides funding for a person's campaign doesn't mean they need to honor the donation with later legislation. The donater provided the candidate with the money because they thought they were the best person to promote their interests. That means they respect whatever decision the candidate makes when in office. It is like hiring a head football coach for a college program. When that is done, the school is putting its faith in the individual to lead the program as best as he sees fit. If that means when the game is on the line that he chooses to go for the 2-pt conversion to win the game instead of kicking the extra point and going to overtime, the school needs to accept that. They don't expect the coach to ask them what they think he should do in said situation. They're paying him to make the right decision. If in the long run, they determine he is not the best choice, they may remove him for another coach. If a campaign funder determines their candidate is no longer the best choice for future elections, they can support another individual. Still, the candidate has no reason to alter their decisions based on who provided them with cash. I know this isn't likely to happen seeing how corrupt individuals are and how much they like to play the game for themselves, but I can hope there are still some decent people out there.

Secondly, we spend millions, if not billions, of dollars on advertising, et cetera, for these campaigns. Then we decide the government is in debt and people are starving. Why not make the presidential campaigns more useful than seeing who can throw the most money to push their public image? There are a couple different directions this can go in. The first is to limit the amount permitted to be spent on the campaign. This option allows those with lesser finances to actually stand a chance in the campaign. They don't have to own an oil company to pay for their election. Then feel the need to influence the market in favor of their holdings to make up for their losses. The second direction is to put a stipulation that any money spent on the campaign must be matched to charities, taxes, et cetera. At least this way, all the money thrown into an individual's election would be providing some service to the general public because right now the commercials just annoy me rather than provide any sort of service.

I doubt any sort of policies along these lines will be accepted any time soon. Still, I think they could greatly improve the usefulness of presidential elections. While the Roman bureaucracy had plenty of corruption, they use to make individuals fund their election campaigns on their own. Then when they served in office, they received no compensation. This was because it was seen as the responsibility of the more fortunate to provide and care for those without as much. I think there are times when this vision is lost in our current politics. The United States Constitution was founded on these ideals. Every individual involved in the Continental Congresses and the early national conventions were well educated in the politics of the Greeks and Romans. Maybe our school systems need to spend a little more time focusing on these aspects than telling us how bad the cold war era was.