# "Intellectual Dark Web" Stupidity Omnibus **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 4, 2019, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193 "2019-01-04T13:53:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/241 "2019-06-20T01:03:26Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > And yes: Andy is uber-PC, even by Doper standards. The boy doth protest too much. I don’t agree with \*\*iiandyiiii \*\*on a lot of things, but wanting equal rights for all, and a reduction in suffering of human beings is somehow “uber-PC”? That seems strange to me. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/242 "2019-06-20T01:18:00Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I don’t agree with \*\*iiandyiiii \*\*on a lot of things, but wanting equal rights for all, and a reduction in suffering of human beings is somehow “uber-PC”? That seems strange to me. I mean… that’s basically the descriptivist definition of “PC”, right? Back in 2011, The Escapist published [an excellent Moviebob video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQCNS4eGmuY) explaining this exact dynamic. It’s 5 minutes long and clearly summarizes the actual usage of the term. A choice quote: The people complaining about the headhunter and african AIDS crisis imagery in Resident Evil 5 were not upset because the game was being politically incorrect. They were upset because it was incredibly insensitive and trading in cruel stereotypes. Because one of the most consistent and long-standing usages of “political correctness” is a snarl word to minimize, dismiss, or redirect _anyone_ complaining about things like racism. “Pfft, what, you wanna censor my media because it’s not politically incorrect?” when the reality was simply “I want the game designer/filmmaker/comic writer to make the game less horribly racist and think about what they’re doing.” Without the “PC” boogeyman, it’s a lot harder to spin critique into censorship. That was nearly a decade ago, before the “PC backlash” led [first to a massive harassment campaign against women and people of color in gaming, then to a massive right-wing youth movement](https://www.cnet.com/news/gamergate-donald-trump-american-nazis-how-video-game-culture-blew-everything-up/). Today, it’s still the same grift, just… worse. The usage has remained largely consistent; the rhetoric has become more vile; people are invoking it more and more in ways that make less and less sense. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/243 "2019-06-20T01:21:45Z")
I agree. I’ve yet to see a usage of “PC” to mean anything other than “I’m getting flak for saying racist and sexist things” ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/244 "2019-06-20T02:05:33Z")
> [@Unreconstructed\_Man](#): > > That seems pretty reductive. While PC may not have a scientific, cast-iron definition, I’d wager if you asked 100 people who didn’t like PC to define PC their answers would have a lot in common. Also, I’d be pretty surprised if more than a couple of people defined PC the way **iiandyiiii** seems to. Just around four years ago, I posted [this thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=762817) on the issue of those who whine about PC, by whom I mean the bigoted idiots who accuse perfectly reasonable people for having perfectly reasonable reactions to the bigots’ nonsense of being “PC”. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/245 "2019-06-20T02:57:48Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Funny you mention that; here’s [Slate](https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/stop-calling-everything-fake-news.html) from 2016 complaining that “fake news” as a term is becoming useless due to overuse: Unfuckingbelievable. You basically want to let the MAGA brigade get away with this. “These right wing assholes muddied the waters, so no sense even trying to look for your drowning kid, ma’am. Blame them, not me!” :smack: Meanwhile, you, Manson, and Monty continue to bat around your strawman. Having fun? I define political correctness as Jon Chait does: [Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html?gtm=top) If you dismiss Chait, Traister, Rosin, Mounk, Weiss, etc. as right wing bigots who stand against “equal rights for all, and a reduction in suffering of human beings”, you might be an idiot. You might have your head in the sand. But it strikes me as more likely that you are deeply, deeply dishonest. Like Hannity or Ingraham, you are more interested in shilling for your tribe than engaging honesty, more interested in tearing people down with “callouts”, even if they agree with you on 80 percent, than in reaching out to help people up, to bridge divides, to form a majority coalition to defeat the right. It’s sickening. Grow the fuck up. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/246 "2019-06-20T06:46:04Z")
> [@orcenio](#): > > You’re not paying tradesmen for their skilled time, crafting, and labour; but a multi-millionaire to serve you comforting political opinions over a microphone. You send him money for this. Like real money. > > Mailing multi-millionaire “influencers” monthly checks because they say comforting things to you is televangelist level scamming. Sam Harris’ fulltime job is collecting money from supporters like you. His full time job is creating content that supporters like me find valuable enough to pay for. Just like Beyonce, or J.K. Rowling. I was initially just going to ignore your post because it is so flagrantly baseless. But then it occurred to me that some otherwise reasonable people who haven’t ever listened to the podcast might believe I’m implicitly conceding your absurd point. So. –What “tradesmen” am I paying for “their skilled time, crafting, and labour” when I listen to the White Album? Pretty sure it all just goes into the pockets of McCartney, Yoko Ono, et al (or is Michael Jackson’s estate still in control of those rights?). After the Apple shareholders get their cut, of course. –“Mailing monthly checks”? Did you just take the bus here from 1986? 😕 –Serving “comforting political opinions over a microphone”. I honestly am not sure if you are being disingenuous, or have never actually listened to the podcast and are genuinely confused as to what it’s all about. Either way, as I say, there may be others reading who don’t know what the deal is, so I’ll take a little time to eradicate some ignorance. Here are some excerpts (transcribed by me) from just the last month of the “Making Sense” podcast, since my card gets charged monthly. I have removed “ums”, “you knows”, and other verbal tics (for example “what-what are you…” is just transcribed as “what are you…”), but have otherwise attempted to present mostly contiguous, unedited blocs of conversation. Note that the middle two are not about politics at all: **#157 “What Does the Mueller Report Really Say?”** > [@](#): > > HARRIS: One question I have for you–and this is the one thing Mueller didn’t do that seems really shocking to me, or at least in some counterfactual situation, one imagines that he did do it, and the world looked very differently the day after–why didn’t he subpoena the president? > > WITTES: His explanation for this is that it would have taken a lot of time, and they had the information they needed without it. > > HARRIS: What they didn’t have is the supernova of perjury that would have dawned the moment you put him in front of a microphone, swearing to tell the truth. > > WITTES: Correct, although you are not actually allowed to put someone in front of a grand jury in order to have him commit perjury. > > HARRIS: The so-called perjury trap. **#158 “Understanding Humans in the Wild”** > [@](#): > > HARRIS: So, what do we know about work, and career, and power, and influence? Obviously this is a very big question, but I want to go into this area. What do we know based on the social science that is most actionable, most important to know and therefore most useful in people’s lives? > > GRANT: Where do you want to start? > > HARRIS: Let’s start with a noun, like a person’s career, or work. What advice do you have, what do you think you know as a result of being a specialist in this area that the average person might not know? > > GRANT: It’s funny: that’s the question my students ask all the time. And I never know how to answer it! But I think I have something, based on years of trial and error on that. So: I think when most people choose jobs, they choose based on the nature of the work, and the status of the organization–holding constant factors like pay, for example. And I think there’s a big missed factor there, which is culture. We have decades of evidence that the culture of the organization you join has as much impact on your happiness, your success, and even your career trajectory, as the actual characteristics of the work itself, or the characteristics of the job you take. > > Yet we don’t know how to consider that, because culture is messy. It’s hard to measure, it’s hard to recognize, sometimes we get conflicting cues. And so I guess what I would suggest is, for anyone looking for practical advice: what you’re supposed to do is interview the company. Once they give you the job, you have to ask yourself, “Is this a place where I can be successful, and where I can flourish?” > > And if you ask about what the culture is like, you get a bunch of platitudes back. People will say things like “Oh, we value integrity, and excellence.” Well, every other company claims that too, right? I think where you really learn about a culture is, you ask people to tell a story about something that happened in their workplace, that would not happen anywhere else. And if you ask a bunch of people in the same organization that question, you can start to recognize patterns in the stories…[Grant describes a study showing that these stories break down into seven archetypes] So if you break down these stories, you can see that they are fundamentally about three questions: “Is this a safe place to work? Is this a fair place to work? And can I have an impact?” And those are the things people really care about in a culture. **#159 “Conscious” (with, for the first time ever, Sam’s wife Annaka Harris)** > [@](#): > > SAM: The sense of self is bound up with, really identical to, the feeling that you are the author of your thoughts and actions. > > ANNAKA: The self that has free will. That’s really where the illusion of free will lives: the self is the thing that’s free. > > SAM: They really are the same object, or pseudo-object. The feeling of self _is_ the feeling of agency. > > ANNAKA: Right. > > SAM: And that is the feeling that “I could have done otherwise.” There was nothing at my back pushing inexorably in one direction. I was not determined; this thought wasn’t determined; the movement of my hand wasn’t determined. I did it. It is the feeling of “I did it” that is both the feeling of freedom, and the feeling of self. > > ANNAKA: Yeah. And, I would say, this is where consciousness plays a role also. This is where consciousness comes in, and how free will and the self are illusions that prevent us from seeing consciousness clearly. Because even if there is some sense in which the brain is making a choice, there’s some processing that’s taking place, that’s choosing right over left, that’s choosing Door A over Door B, in some sense–there may not actually be at some more fundamental level, there may not be a sense of causality in this way–but when we talk about processing: even if we can say that the brain is making a choice, the idea that your conscious experience is the thing that is driving that decision is part of the illusion of free will and self. **#160 “The Revenge of History”** > [@](#): > > HARRIS: It seems we can take very little for granted right now, politically, and that we are now part of history in a way that wasn’t so obvious a couple years ago. So, when I say “we”, I mean those of us in the West who are so privileged that we could have imagined that we were not part of history at some point in our lives. So I guess I’ll start with you, Yascha. For those who don’t know you, what are you focused on, and what are your foremost concerns at the moment? > > MOUNK: I started worrying about the state of our democracies sort of before it was ‘cool’. I saw the rise of far right populist parties in various European countries throughout the early 2000s, observed things like the appeal of Sarah Palin in 2008 in the United States. I did some survey work with a colleague, [name garbled], that showed that people put a lot less importance in living in a democracy than they used to, that they were open to certain authoritarian alternatives to democracy, even. So I sort of connected the dots, and started shouting into the wildnerness, saying “Guys, we’ve got to be worried about this–perhaps our democracies aren’t really stable.” And people said to me “You’re Cassandra”, and I said “Cassandra was right, dammit!” > > So that was sort of my life. And then 2016 rolled around, and Trump won in the United States, you had Brexit. Since then, you’ve had the rise of people like Bolsonaro in Brazil, Salvini in Italy. So I’ve become one of the chief “explainers” of right wing populism. Now, orcenio: the choice is yours. You can stubbornly double down on your facile claims about this podcast, if you want to look utterly ridiculous. Or you can just bail out of the thread, or carry on within it as though I didn’t provide any of this evidence about the content actually found in the podcast. Or–and this would be impressive–you can actually acknowledge “Okay, mea culpa: even if I may not agree with Harris’s perspective on some things, there’s clearly a lot more to his podcast than I realized.” Ball’s in your court. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/247 "2019-06-20T09:42:31Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Unfuckingbelievable. You basically want to let the MAGA brigade get away with this. “These right wing assholes muddied the waters, so no sense even trying to look for your drowning kid, ma’am. Blame them, not me!” :smack: > > Meanwhile, you, Manson, and Monty continue to bat around your strawman. Having fun? > > I define political correctness as Jon Chait does: [Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html?gtm=top) > > If you dismiss Chait, Traister, Rosin, Mounk, Weiss, etc. as right wing bigots who stand against “equal rights for all, and a reduction in suffering of human beings”, you might be an idiot. You might have your head in the sand. But it strikes me as more likely that you are deeply, deeply dishonest. Like Hannity or Ingraham, you are more interested in shilling for your tribe than engaging honesty, more interested in tearing people down with “callouts”, even if they agree with you on 80 percent, than in reaching out to help people up, to bridge divides, to form a majority coalition to defeat the right. It’s sickening. Grow the fuck up. :mad: As far as I can tell, this appears to be a giant straw man. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/248 "2019-06-20T09:50:13Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Unfuckingbelievable. You basically want to let the MAGA brigade get away with this. …No, you’ve got it exactly backwards - the MAGA brigade are the ones who have it right for once. This is _always_ what “PC” has meant; _always_ how it has primarily been used. (People have been screaming about the cultural equivalent of “CAMPUS PC!” for [nearly a century](https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/06/04/how-bret-stephens-and-bari-weiss-have-taken-ny-times-campus-concern-trolling-new-heights-just-2/223855), by the by, and that’s just tracking the NYTimes!) As that moviebob video from 2011 shows, this abuse of “PC” far predates the MAGA brigade. It’s _always_ been like that. > [@](#): > > I define political correctness as Jon Chait does: [Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html?gtm=top) Notably missing from this article: an actual clear definition of what “PC” is! But for the descriptivist, it offers: - Firing someone who wrote a shitty column mocking victims of actual bigotry from a volunteer position and expressing anger at them is “PC” (whereas the actual column is apparently inoffensive, because Chait is nothing if not privileged and wouldn’t recognize the bigotry if it beat him over the head, which it very much does) - Instituting a campus-wide speech code (no mention of what’s in that code or why it matters) is “PC” - Complaining or protesting about a demonstration you find demeaning to women (note: I do not agree with McKinnon) is “PC” Do notice that I’m doing what Chait wouldn’t do: actually explaining the positions at hand that he’s waving away as “PC”. When you do that, they seem considerably less like a mob of anti-free-speech radicals and a lot more like a whole bunch of very disparate people doing very different things with different reasons, motivations, and justifications. All of that gets boiled down to “political correctness”, and I honestly cannot find the through-line. Moving on… - Noticing that a satirical newspaper does a fair bit of punching down and hesitating to full-throatedly endorse them after they are attacked is “PC” - Not deciding to publish cartoons your editorial staff deems “offensive” and most people would agree are “offensive” and which would, in fact, absolutely alienate Muslims in your audience is “PC” - Not wanting a shitty hack comedian to speak at your commencement is “PC” - Not wanting the head of the IMF to speak at your commencement, citing the colonialist actions of the IMF, is “PC” - Not wanting one of the people who lied us into the Iraq War to speak at your commencement is “PC” - Not wanting your university to give an honorary degree (note: Chait just straight-up gets this story wrong, Ali was not invited to speak at Brandeis’s commencement ceremony) to someone with a long history of inflammatory anti-islamic rhetoric, up to and including making excuses for Anders Breivik, is “PC” - Content warnings to help students with PTSD avoid triggers is “PC” - Attempts to educate about minor but nonetheless hurtful racial slights is “PC” …In fact, let me pause here, because there’s something Chait refers to as a “central tenet” of PC right after that that absolutely gives the game away: “people should be expected to treat even faintly unpleasant ideas or behaviors as full-scale offenses”. Or, to put it another way: “if something offends you, shut up, snowflake. I get to decide what is and is not worth getting offended over, and while it’s worth getting offended over Condoleeza Rice being deplatformed, it’s definitely not worth getting offended over a war criminal like her speaking at your commencement speech.” Man, that definition I provided is looking better and better! So, moving on: - Having a [calm discussion](https://www.stanforddaily.com/2014/11/21/bloody-bloody-andrew-jackson-canceled-over-concerns-by-native-community/) with Native American groups on campus and, as a result, deciding not to run a play which is pretty fucking racist towards native Americans, is “PC” - [Deciding not to run a play](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/college-statement-vagina-monologues-2015) in your student group because you’re worried it’s not inclusive to transwomen and instead letting a different student group run that play and writing and running a new play which is inclusive is “PC” Again, quick pause, do note how Chait describes this, then head on over to the Stanford Daily article and Mount Holyoke statements to look at how the actual “victims” of “PC” describe it. Kind of a difference, right? Almost as if Chait is not being entirely charitable, reasonable, or even truthful in his descriptions of the “PC police”, and even if he were, including them on a list alongside “violently disrupted a feminist installation” gives people entirely the wrong impression. This is, again, a constant refrain. Also, quick pause for a different, far more serious reason: > [@](#): > > Trigger warnings aren’t much help in actually overcoming trauma — an analysis by the Institute of Medicine has found that the best approach is controlled exposure to it, and experts say avoidance can reinforce suffering. Fuck you, Jonathan Chait. What do you think “controlled” means in “controlled exposure”? I’ll give you a hint - it’s not “I was reading this book and suddenly a passage came up that reminded me of my recent rape”. [You are not these kids’ psychiatrist; it is deeply unethical to give people psychotherapy without their consent; this is not what exposure therapy is or looks like](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/30/the-wonderful-thing-about-triggers/). This objection to trigger warning basically says, “I do not know what exposure therapy is or how it works to help overcome trauma, but because the word exposure is in it, I insist you be exposed without warning to things that aggravate your trauma.” Chait consistently gets this one wrong, and he’s not the only one. This is something of a bugbear of mine, but really it’s just yet another thing wrong with this stupid, stupid article. So, moving on with my list: - A professor’s fear of seeing backlash for their words and actions is proof positive of “PC culture”. > [@](#): > > “Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate.” …Huh. There we go. An actual definition. And you would have saved me half an hour if you had just quoted that one sentence. Unfortunately, this falls _completely flat_ because Chait is obviously not a prescriptivist on this. He’s not saying, “I define the term PC as X, Y, and Z, here’s a real-word thing that fits that definition”, he’s saying, “PC is a thing that exists and is characterized by X, Y, and Z”. That’s a descriptivist term, which means the obvious objection is, “ **that’s not how people use the term PC** ”. How do I know? Because this definition he offered has _fuck-all_ to do with a great many of the examples he cites! Who’s saying that it’s “illegitimate” or “bigoted” to invite a war criminal to your commencement speech? The kids just don’t want their commencement speaker to be a war criminal. Who’s saying that it’s bigoted to run the Vagina Monologues (hint: not the gals who, in their statement on why they’re not running it, point to another student group who are as an alternative)? The theater group in question just thought it might be insensitive to transwomen. Additionally, as a concept, it’s not a very good one. Why, exactly, is it only “PC” when the left does it? The right is _incredible_ at regulating political discourse by defining opposing views as “bigoted” and “illegitimate”! They do that _all the time_! In fact, unlike the left, sometimes, they actually have institutional backing in doing so! And if “PC” has its roots in the 1990s, they didn’t learn that from lefties; the “moral majority” predated the 90s, as did McCarthyism, as did countless attempts to frame atheists as anti-christian bigots for demanding the first amendment be upheld, and so on, and so forth. Indeed, Chait talks about “leftist hegemonic control”, which is just… Dude, that’s not a thing! People calling you a racist on twitter is not “control”; it’s certainly not the dominant social culture in any meaningful sense. A strongly-worded petition is not “control”. Even in academia, the idea that this was some kind of coup by the left is [completely fucking wrong](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/political-correctness-free-speech-liberal-data-georgetown) - left-wingers get attacked, deplatformed, and fired for this shit _more_ than right-wingers (once you ignore the outlier of Milo Yiannopolous, which we should ignore, because he is a troll whose entire schtick is about baiting exactly that reaction). Does Chait provide any evidence of “hegemonic control”? (Note: individual anecdotes plucked from context with no underlying data where most of those he’s talking about have been misrepresented is _not_ evidence for what he’s claiming here.) No, he just moves on to talk about how social media has spread this phenomenon, as though getting ratio’d on Twitter somehow constitutes someone controlling your speech in a manner consistent with the dominant social power structure. Buddy, trust me, we’d all be a lot happier if things actually worked that way, because you’d _shut the fuck up for once_. The reality is, most of those Chait is complaining about are relatively powerless. They’re not “hegemonic” - they’re not even able to exert control! They’re individual opinion column writers, or kids on college campuses, or random people on twitter. There’s no institutional power here. The “PC police” isn’t going to go to your house and lock you up - the absolute most they could possibly do is tell your employer, “the guy you’ve hired is kind of a dick, and I don’t like that”. In fact, almost every example he offers is kids on college campuses, which is kind of the definition of “powerless mob”. These aren’t the masters of your destiny! They’re a bunch of angry kids who may be able to call your fucking manager! Are they going to be able to “exert control” over any power structure that doesn’t _decide_ to bend the knee? Does mainstream culture as a whole look anything like college campuses? Everything about this is stupid and wrongheaded. If we define PC as " a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate", then PC is powerless and largely harmless. If we tack on “by exerting hegemonic control”, then PC does not and never has existed in any meaningful sense, because “the left” does not and never has had institutional power, outside of perhaps the USSR if you really want to stretch the meaning of the word “left” to the absolute breaking point. And if we define PC by how it is actually used, we end up with exactly what I’ve been saying: a right-wing snarl word used to minimize and dismiss anyone who has something to say about social justice. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/249 "2019-06-20T09:56:53Z")
Also, I would be remiss to point out that if we define “PC” that way, we’re left with very little recourse when something actually _is_ bigoted and illegitimate. For example, let’s say a presidential candidate says “Mexico is sending us rapists”. That’s bigoted. That’s wrong. That position should damn well be “illegitimate”. And any attempt to point that out is “PC” by Chait’s definition. Or at the very least, any attempt to put institutional weight behind that illegitimacy certainly is. “PC” is inherently negative. It’s a snarl word. It never, ever, _ever_ has a positive connotation. So where does that leave us? How do we respond to actual bigotry? Again: shitty definition, harmful to discourse, Chait can go fuck himself. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/250 "2019-06-20T14:21:13Z")
BPC, unlike some others, I can’t claim that you didn’t grapple with the substance. Nearly everything you say makes my heart sink (and you definitely deserve the crown, more than Andy, of “most uber-PC person here”), but it was a substantive response, no question. I’m not going to attempt to respond point by point (doing all that transcribing yesterday was already enough of a time suck, and I really think I am going to need to try to go “back on the wagon” in terms of staying off boards and social media on the weekend). But I do want to push back on one specific thing, which is the idea that college kids have no power. First of all, they go on to fill in the bureaucracy of powerful institutions of all kinds, including the media–and Weiss and Mounk have articulated how the new generation of Millennials filling those roles have had a chilling effect–but I witnessed up fairly close as a resident of Missouri at the time how untrue this is even while they are still in college. [In a kind of Maoist coup](https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/09/us/missouri-protest-timeline/index.html), students got the top administration of the flagship University of Missouri hounded out of office, over…what, exactly? Their inability to prevent a few individual bigoted dickheads (who were not employees of the university) from acting like bigoted dickheads (albeit, it’s important to note, nonviolent ones)? 😕 And it’s really hard to say what proportion of the student body they represented, but I can’t believe it was anything close to a majority. Like Jacobins and Bolsheviks before them, they punched way above their weight. The only positive outcome of any of this (not covered by the CNN piece) was Melissa Click’s firing. ---
**Author:** ![Unreconstructed\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/76d3ee/32.png) [@Unreconstructed\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unreconstructed_Man)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/251 "2019-06-20T14:38:57Z")
> [@Budget Player Cadet](#): > > It’s a snarl word. It means fuck-all, and any useful meaning it might have had (for example: I think it’d be a great term to have to discuss the Chinese social credit system, but you fuckers ruined it!) With all due respect, I think the way people like you have ruined the terms Nazi, fascist, alt-right, and white supremacist is a _wee_ bit more consequential. Like, ten years ago, if you told me Bob was a white supremacist I’d know _exactly_ what you meant. Nowadays, I don’t know if Bob is a member of the English Defence League or if he voted to leave the EU. Any more dilution and we’ll have to retire those terms completely because they’ll just be utterly useless. I’ll address the rest of your post when I’m back at my computer. Doing long posts on a phone makes me go all stabby 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/252 "2019-06-20T14:56:03Z")
> [@Unreconstructed\_Man](#): > > With all due respect, I think the way people like you have ruined the terms Nazi, fascist, alt-right, and white supremacist is a _wee_ bit more consequential. Like, ten years ago, if you told me Bob was a white supremacist I’d know _exactly_ what you meant. Nowadays, I don’t know if Bob is a member of the English Defence League or if he voted to leave the EU. Any more dilution and we’ll have to retire those terms completely because they’ll just be utterly useless. It’s already worse than that. Those top Mizzou administrators were pushed out for allegedly being white supremacists because they didn’t exert a power they don’t even have (to prevent any individual on or near campus from ever saying anything bigoted), a power which would be completely illegitimate if they did have it. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/253 "2019-06-20T15:31:47Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But I do want to push back on one specific thing, which is the idea that college kids have no power. First of all, they go on to fill in the bureaucracy of powerful institutions of all kinds, including the media–and Weiss and Mounk have articulated how the new generation of Millennials filling those roles have had a chilling effect– The “original” (the term’s origins go way back but this is what most people think of) wave of “PC gone mad” complaints was in the early 1990s. People who were freshmen in college in 1990 have now been out of college for about as long as I’ve been _alive_. They’re typically in their late 40s. So if this argument is to make _any_ sense, why is it that we’re not now seeing “PC GONE MAD” stories in basically every echelon of power? Why is it that all of Chait’s examples _still boil down to college campuses_? Here’s a hint: “crazy shit I did in college” is basically its own genre, and this argument is _really fucking stupid_. People change. They grow up. They become less radical. Depending on how you want to see it, they grow thicker skins, or become beaten down by a hegemonic (using this word more accurately than Chait here) mainstream culture that really does not care about things like people of color being asked, “So where are you from? No, I mean, where are you _from_.” (Or, for that matter, concentration camps for immigrants and asylum-seekers.) I’m sure Weiss wrote about this - complaining about PC is her whole schtick - but if you give me Chait making a dozen complaints of varying degrees of good faith about colleges, I’ll respond to that in kind. Really, this isn’t the part I’d rather you responded to. It’s a sideshow that’s barely important, and the objections to it are patently laughable (the example you bring up is the one person in a position of power they can influence, because they literally pay his salary). What I want is an actual coherent definition of the term that makes a goddamn lick of sense. What I want to know is what “PC” is. The definition Chait offered was a bunch of fucking nonsense - it did not describe the things he was complaining about, and I don’t think it actually describes anything that has ever existed. That’s what we’re talking about, remember? So yeah, “political correctness”: still just a right-wing snarl word. The only contribution Chait has offered is to outright say that it’s only ever pointed left. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/254 "2019-06-20T15:50:06Z")
I don’t agree, to say the least, that Chait’s definition is “nonsense”. > [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > The “original” (the term’s origins go way back but this is what most people think of) wave of “PC gone mad” complaints was in the early 1990s. People who were freshmen in college in 1990 have now been out of college for about as long as I’ve been _alive_. They’re typically in their late 40s. So if this argument is to make _any_ sense, why is it that we’re not now seeing “PC GONE MAD” stories in basically every echelon of power? Because that wave (which I witnessed firsthand, as a college student in the early-to-mid-'90s) was weaker and more quickly was turned into a national punchline. Perhaps most important of all, there was no Twitter then. I do keep hoping we’re on the verge of shaking off the delirium again this time, and going into an “emperor’s new clothes” phase. Fingers crossed! > [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > the example you bring up is the one person in a position of power they can influence, because they literally pay his salary They don’t. At public universities, taxpayers and deep-pocketed alumni provide most of the funds. The students involved here were neither, to any appreciable degree. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/255 "2019-06-20T16:55:15Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > If you dismiss Chait, Traister, Rosin, Mounk, Weiss, etc. as right wing bigots who stand against “equal rights for all, and a reduction in suffering of human beings”, you might be an idiot. You might have your head in the sand. But it strikes me as more likely that you are deeply, deeply dishonest. Like Hannity or Ingraham, you are more interested in shilling for your tribe than engaging honesty, more interested in tearing people down with “callouts”, even if they agree with you on 80 percent, than in reaching out to help people up, to bridge divides, to form a majority coalition to defeat the right. It’s sickening. Grow the fuck up. :mad: It’s funny you accuse me of strawmanning and then you post this. LOL ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/256 "2019-06-20T17:14:33Z")
How is that strawmanning? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/257 "2019-06-20T17:34:45Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > How is that strawmanning? Because I posted nothing even close to what you are complaining about. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/258 "2019-06-20T18:21:34Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Because I posted nothing even close to what you are complaining about. Sigh. You posted: > [@Slash1972](#): > > I don’t agree with \*\*iiandyiiii \*\*on a lot of things, but wanting equal rights for all, and a reduction in suffering of human beings is somehow “uber-PC”? That seems strange to me. > [@Slash1972](#): > > I agree. I’ve yet to see a usage of “PC” to mean anything other than “I’m getting flak for saying racist and sexist things” The post you quoted from me that you complain is “strawmanning” simply points out that “Chait, Traister, Rosin, Mounk, Weiss, etc.” (all figures on the left or center-left) have complained that political correctness is a problem. The clear implication of your words is that they therefore are racist or sexist and don’t want to be called out on it. Which is absurd. (Two of those I named are well known feminists; another has written multiple hagiographical books about Obama.) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/259 "2019-06-20T18:29:59Z")
I can see why some want to keep the “PC” label alive-“Anti-PC” sounds so much better than “Racist, sexist, and gutless pig”. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2019, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193/260 "2019-06-20T19:30:38Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > The post you quoted from me that you complain is “strawmanning” simply points out that “Chait, Traister, Rosin, Mounk, Weiss, etc.” (all figures on the left or center-left) have complained that political correctness is a problem. The clear implication of your words is that they therefore are racist or sexist and don’t want to be called out on it. Which is absurd. (Two of those I named are well known feminists; another has written multiple hagiographical books about Obama.) Here’s a quick tip for you. I don’t give a crap who is liberal or conservative or left or feminist or what-the-fuck else there is. I don’t know who any of those people are, and I don’t care. I don’t know what they said about PC or any other fucking topic. I posted two things: [ul] [li]I find it strange that you consider someone who only wants equal rights for all and to lower human suffering “Uber-PC”[/li] [li]The times I’ve heard people say PC, it meant “I get flak for saying racist and sexist things”[/li][/ul] As you can see, I didn’t mention anybody in your list of yahoos. Your particular cites, and the people in them who complain about PCness have been more than adequately destroyed by others in this thread, so I don’t need to read that drivel. Also, one last tip for you: 5 people or 70 people or 150 people posting something on Twitter is meaningless. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intellectual-dark-web-stupidity-omnibus/827193.md?page=14)