Donald Trump is on a war path against political correctness. And America is increasingly behind him as he leads the charge to take the beachhead. US media reportedly does not know what to do about Trump. It covers him because he delivers the all-important ratings their shareholders salivate over yet, in doing so, the industry gives him an even more powerful soapbox upon which he spreads his virulent views on immigration, race, and guns.
So, we ask, what’s the problem? Simply debunk his views using the “right” thinking, right? But, it’s really not that simple when you’re in the “news” media business…
Producers know that when you put someone who’s likely to spew falsehoods and who’s impervious to all attempts to correct them on the air, that person is going to get a lot of opportunities to repeat his falsehoods, and it’ll be very hard if not impossible to debunk him. Viewers will get a healthy sampling of lies, and undoing that damage in the space allowed will be nigh impossible. As Jay Z once said, “A wise man told me don’t argue with fools, ’cause people from a distance can’t tell who is who.”
The trouble with Trump, we are told, is that he is “politically-incorrect”. But then perhaps we need to step back and ask an important question: What, essentially, is political correctness trying to achieve? If you boil down political correctness to its essence, we will see that it is trying to bury supposedly unsavory human cognitive biases no longer “appropriate” in modern societies but which are, in fact, irrevocably hard-wired into the human brain.
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So the next correct question to ask, in that light, is this:
Will political correctness succeed?
Everyone has their biases. Everyone is judgmental. Everyone holds a deeply-ingrained suspicion of people who don’t look like them, behave in unfamiliar — often unsettling — ways, and speak in a different language. In hindsight, it now is evident that the dogma of political correctness went a bit too far in trying to suppress all of those very human conditions much the same way that the great monotheistic religions suppressed human sexuality for centuries. Something’s gotta give. To the sexual revolution we saw in the late 1960s that was a long-overdue counter-punch to the theistic conservatism of the parents of the baby boom generation, perhaps we are now seeing a growing backlash against the political correctness liberalism of recent times.
This is, perhaps, the reason why Americans are so willing to believe Donald Trump unconditionally despite all efforts of today’s hipster liberals to drive some modern “sense” into the debate — because he is saying things people who are weary of political correctness want to believe. There is nothing baffling about the Trump phenomenon. It’s been the modus operandi of organised religions for millenia — repeating lies and false statements often enough and repeatedly enough as to effectively trump (pardon the pun) any intellectual effort to debunk them.
Indeed, if we are to understand the bigger point of what Trump is making in, say, leading us to believe that President Barrack Obama will be letting 200,000 Syrian refugees into the US when the fact is Obama only committed to just 10,000, is that, just maybe, American voters have taken the overarching position that Syrian refugees whether they number in the hundreds of thousands or just in the thousands are not welcome. In that regard, the position is consistent though the details vary.
Media should be quite familiar with this state of affairs. Images of carnage from a plane crash make great headlines and pull in the hits. CNN, by its own admission, made a lot of money off the Malaysian Airlines crashes — because aviation safety (which is optimal to within economic reason to begin with) is of the moment‘s importance when the latest plane crash is making headlines. But crunch the numbers and the fact that emerges is, people are more likely to be hit by a car and die while crossing the street than be killed in a plane crash. Nonetheless, plane crashes make headlines. Pedestrian fatalities don’t.
In that sense Trump is both a product of American media and of the audience’s choice of what is attention-worthy (a human condition that media science capitalises on) regardless of the facts. In business, timing is everything. Trump is a businessman and knows when that moment to capitalise on is at hand. Trump is seizing that moment today.
Perhaps we are seeing an America getting back to its old comfy familiar values — the very values that, arguably, made it a big, wealthy, and powerful country. You don’t get that rich and that powerful by being overly politically-correct in your strategy. Trump should know.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
to be fair, his is a rather refreshing if not bold and opposing view in America’s societal climate, considering that America’s currently in a cultural crisis of sorts due to political correctness – as the internet puts it, “Social Justice Warriors”, people who are (sometimes literally) hellbent on imposing political correctness in the name of People of Color and Minority groups including LGBTs (especially with the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement and the rise of Same Sex relationships in the US, especially after the legalization of weddings from such relationships) Their usual targets? White Caucasians (bonus points for being straight, moreso male) and basically anyone whom SJWs can interpret as even being slightly homo/trans-phobic and what not. I don’t have the complete details since it’s a whole new level of discussion, but I’ll leave some links hopefully that provide light on this topic.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/social-justice-warrior
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/donald-trump
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/make-america-great-again
I get that he’s divisive, but there’s a whole page on Facebook titled “Social Justice Warriors” out to debunk and mock the overzealous PoC people, who have done many questionable things in the name of “Social Justice” like sending a metric ton of digital vitriol to an online tumblr artist just because she draws slimmer versions of characters from “Steven Universe” to the point of almost causing her to commit suicide (that was even noticed by the CREATORS THEMSELVES, prompting the critics of SJWs to award Steven Universe with the title of “Worst Fanbase Ever”), telling white people to “stop appropriating other people’s cultures” (when the other people that tell them to do so are also white) to the recent spike of “Safe Spaces” running around the American College community (the most recent one being the University of Missouri.)
If anything, at least Trump has some principles if any. SJW logic usually when given enough analysis, usually boils down to the second coming of Hitler’s Nazi Germany (which, ironically, SJWs call people who don’t agree with them or refute their line of thought.)
It’s different issues which are mixed together under the labes “political correctness”. For example setteng up a program which brings more black kids to college would mean that either less college opportunities for whites or create new college with (mostly white) taxpayer’s money. Mostly poor white families fear that they will be left behind.
Same sex marriage is a totally different issue. Not a single heterosexual marriage is affected by gay marriages. Allowing gay marriage does not limit the opportunities of hetero couples.
well, again far right activist Bening0. I know who is the author already when I read the headline on Facebook 😉
Well, I have to correct some facts: According to recent polls Donald Trump would lose against Hillary Clinton by a 10% margin which is huge in the US. Trump just leads the primary polls against other republicans who all are against political correctness. Trump is just a populist who provides simple answers for complex problems. However, trying simple solutions has never worked in history.
Yeah I was referring more to the audience Trump has built on US TV that had made him so irresistible to news program producers – as a result of (1) his being the top Republican candidate and (2) the sheer savvy with which he applies himself to the medium.
His becoming the top Republican candidate and ending up as Clinton’s rival wpild, by itself, be an interesting experiment to watch.
Indeed the simple answers could potentially win votes. Whether they work or not is less of a factor during elections.
Nice analysis. Though I have to wonder why you do not have write-ups of this kind when engaging on the topic of PH politics. Oh sorry, making you work on something that has very little substance is asking a bit too much.
Trump is also a good Show Biz personality. Political correctness is telling people, what they want to hear…truth or falsehood, to gain votes.
Trump say correct things, and exaggerate them, a little bit. People love it…he is hitting on: ISIS terrorism, immigration, illegal immigrants (Filipino TNTs), etc…
He is also a good manager of his business empire…
Trump is the voice of an awful lot pissed off Americans..this country has evolved quite rapidly,in a mostly negative direction in the last few generations.Although our standard of living is much better than most of the world,many believe America is headed for third world status,mostly due to poor leadership,and an inability to to look further into the future and see the ramifications of bad decisions that are made today.This ain’t the America I grew up in,and Im sure most folks over 50 and possibly younger would agree with me.It’s a hard pill to swallow,to see a once power leader losing its mojo,rotting from the inside,not leading on the outside.Trump stirs peoples emotions,in an attempt to restore the greatness,because if America doesn’t lead,no one will.
That being said,I’m not endorsing Trump.He provides dumbded down answers,which appeal to adults with the education level of a 3rd grader,paints in broad strokes and can’t really provide any in depth solutions to the problems we face today.What America likes about him is that he is a brash,succesful, politcal outsider,who is not beholden to the big corporations and special interest groups,and who is ” in the face” of the”establishment”……however it remains to be seen how long this will be tolerated….
Democracy was supposed to champion freedom of speech, and yet the simple rules of table decorum could clamp down on the rights their forefathers had fought and died for.
I think the reason why Trump is so popular not merely because of how brash he may talk. If you will look at the line up, it’s Trump, then Carson, then Fiorina, then the other Republican candidates (although the other two have slumped down the list recently, replaced by Rubio). These frontrunners are not “politicians”, unlike the other candidates. On the other side, Bernie Sanders is gaining on Hillary. I think people are sick of the ” traditional” politician candidates because they seem “fake” to the people. If not for Clinton’s name recognition, Sanders would have probably been the frontrunner.
Another reason Trump is the frontrunner is because he is a pop culture mainstay. He’s a celebrity known for his outspokenness and un-PCness. US Americans are not immune to the glitter of celebrity.
Lemme repost this. (Warning: Expletives)
“They. Just. Don’t. F—-ng. Get it.”
This really summarizes the general sentiment of those who voted for Trump.