Trump, Obama and the Assault on Political Correctness

> Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statement: A big problem this country has is being politically correct.

I would ask anyone who agrees with this statement, what concrete problems does it actually cause? Is it depressing wages for the middle class - is PC culture to blame for increasing disparity in wealth and income? Is PC culture shipping jobs overseas? Is PC culture shooting unarmed men in the streets? Is it spying on us and reading our emails?

There are aspects of political correctness that irritate the hell out of me, as well, but it's almost always very abstract. Rarely does it encroach on my personal life at all. As near as I can tell it is mostly restricted to college campuses, and the gulf between academia and real life is a much larger leap to make than most people realize, I think. PC culture has no chance of co-opting the broader American culture to any significant degree. I have a single friend who has gone all-in on PC lately, and yes frankly talking to him sometimes can be a real pain in my ass. But he's still my friend because he's still a decent person, he can still be reasoned with, and he often makes good points.

On the other hand I have several people in my life who years ago doubled down on the opposite of PC culture - right-wing arealism, and I can tell you that these people are orders of magnitude more insufferable than the most ardent Social Justice Warrior I can imagine. They ruin Thanksgivings. They tell racist, or sexist, or otherwise bigoted jokes and get incredibly upset if you don't laugh or, heaven forfend, you insist they cut that shit out. They repeat outrageous lies they read about on the Internet or heard on talk radio or occasionally cable news, and it is absolutely impossible to reason with them about any of it because they have been basically brainwashed beyond all reason at this point.

Frankly I think all the bloviating we see about "PC culture" these days serves mainly to draw attention away from the fact that much of the right wing in America has become completely disconnected from reality, to the point of it being a mental health issue. Why is no one talking about that?