Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Our own p.c problem....

 Jonathan Chait wrote a dense, but helpful essay about the rise and reaction to intense "political correctness" in leftist circles. This won't interest many of you, but as I waded through it (Chait is a thoughtful observer and polished writer) the anecdotes he relates kept ringing a bell in the back of my mind.
These ideas have more than theoretical power. Last March at University of California–Santa Barbara, in, ironically, a “free-speech zone,” a 16-year-old anti-abortion protester named Thrin Short and her 21-year-old sister Joan displayed a sign arrayed with graphic images of aborted fetuses. They caught the attention of Mireille Miller-Young, a professor of feminist studies. Miller-Young, angered by the sign, demanded that they take it down. When they refused, Miller-Young snatched the sign, took it back to her office to destroy it, and shoved one of the Short sisters on the way.Speaking to police after the altercation, Miller-Young told them that the images of the fetuses had “triggered” her and violated her “personal right to go to work and not be in harm.” A Facebook group called “UCSB Microaggressions” declared themselves “in solidarity” with Miller-Young and urged the campus “to provide as much support as possible.”By the prevailing standards of the American criminal-justice system, Miller-Young had engaged in vandalism, battery, and robbery. By the logic of the p.c. movement, she was the victim of a trigger and had acted in the righteous cause of social justice. Her colleagues across the country wrote letters to the sentencing judge pleading for leniency. Jennifer Morgan, an NYU professor, blamed the anti-­abortion protesters for instigating the confrontation through their exercise of free speech. “Miller-Young’s actions should be mitigated both by her history as an educator as well as by her conviction that the [anti-abortion] images were an assault on her students,” Morgan wrote. Again, the mere expression of opposing ideas, in the form of a poster, is presented as a threatening act. [More]

I was frankly more puzzled than anything by this involved incident, having zero experience of this type of rancor. But it slowly dawned on me there are issues in agriculture that have generated our own system of similar p.c.  For examples, undercover animal rightist action or GMO opposition has only one acceptable response from producers. While several degrees less strident and threatening, there is little room in our media for any response that leans away from support for the status quo.

We are quick to take offense, implacable in argument, and inflexible in negotiation on the biggest issues facing our industry today. Our conduct is analogous to the rabid victimhood-seeking of the left, albeit much less prolix.

Chait nails the longer term problem with this strategy/mindset.
Or maybe not. The p.c. style of politics has one serious, possibly fatal drawback: It is exhausting. Claims of victimhood that are useful within the left-wing subculture may alienate much of America. The movement’s dour puritanism can move people to outrage, but it may prove ill suited to the hopeful mood required of mass politics. Nor does it bode well for the movement’s longevity that many of its allies are worn out. “It seems to me now that the public face of social liberalism has ceased to seem positive, joyful, human, and freeing,” confessed the progressive writer Freddie deBoer. “There are so many ways to step on a land mine now, so many terms that have become forbidden, so many attitudes that will get you cast out if you even appear to hold them. I’m far from alone in feeling that it’s typically not worth it to engage, given the risks.” Goldberg wrote recently about people “who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in [online feminism] — not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists.” Former Feministing editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay told her, “Everyone is so scared to speak right now.”That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use. Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree. The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal. The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph. [Same]
That was the trigger for me: exhaustion. Agriculture's unrelenting self-promotion and rigid sanctimoniousness has become boring. And if you haven't gotten the Tweet, that is the greatest sin in public discourse these days.



1 comment:

Unknown said...

I believe that's the same argument that OJ's team of lawyers used.
The only PC I have is the one I am typing this on. Call me a Fat White Boy-Cracker-Mobile Home Living-Redneck-and many other names...Words are just that words. Many Folks know when you are just funning around. Derogatory Terms are not allowed here.I have been called some of the worst by some of the best...