Tag: #politicalcorrectness

Posted in #unicornchallenge

The Glory Days – Unicorn Challenge March 28, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

She liked bars. She didn’t drink or smoke. She didn’t go home with strange men. She was simply a people watcher and some of the best opportunities were in bars, but these were the boring 2020s. Everything was so politically correct, so sanitized that nothing was fun anymore.

Back in the 70’s, when rock and roll and women’s rights were shiny and new, everything was fun. There was no such thing as political correctness. Men and women were busy experiencing live music in bars and relating to each other in a way that had never been possible. They were high on life. The downside was that they were high on other substances too. They didn’t know much yet about the downsides of those substances, including liquor. Those were the Glory Days.

She looked around this bar stuck in a corner of the airport. Bright lights, men only except for her. She couldn’t hear the music over the intercom because it was too soft. The men were quietly talking to each other, but certainly not to her. They even looked like they were practicing political correctness. She preferred to laugh. She didn’t think she’d have much fun people watching in this place. 

Even people her age had bought into the whole new sanitized world notion, except when it came to politics. That was where you found the passion, but none of the fun. The entire world was at stake. 

Time to go. She would put on her headphones and drift away.

Thanks to Jenne Gray and CE Ayr for hosting the Unicorn Challenge.

Posted in Non-fiction

The Case for Political Correctness

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Speak Out

In the spirit of speaking out, I believe in political correctness. There. I said it. Do you know why I believe in political correctness? Because I call it, for the most part, manners and being polite to other people. Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe my mother taught me well. I always thought that being respectful about someone else’s politics or religion was the polite thing to do. In fact, as I grew up, I didn’t know the political affiliations of most of my classmates or neighbors. Sometimes, I knew their religion only because I knew who I went to Sunday School with and who I didn’t. No one really talked about it.

Over the last five years or so, political correctness has been a hot topic. The consensus among the public seems to be, at least during the last Presidential election, that political correctness was not a good thing. Who am I to say? But, I think the lack of it has caused chaos in our society. Lack of political correctness pits neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Why not just go vote or go to the church of your choice without making a big deal about it? Keep your business to yourself?

Dropping political correctness from the vernacular and from our behavior has had an effect on our society and, I say, a detrimental effect. As I run around out in the world these days, I feel like people are studying one another, trying to figure out these very personal things about each other. I further feel like that if you don’t pass muster, if you aren’t the correct political or religious persuasion according to their standards, then they aren’t interested in your friendship. Meet the galvanizing of America! Meet the red people and the blue people! Can this possibly be a good thing? I don’t think so.

I have many friends who have different political and religious beliefs than I do. We have lots that we talk about that is not associated with politics or religion. Don’t you? Are those two topics suddenly the only two that Americans can speak intelligently about? What happened to music, literature, relationships, and everything else that is going on in our world?

I refuse to surround myself with people who think just like I do. How boring would the world be if we all thought alike. On the other hand, I don’t want anyone pushing their beliefs down my throat. That brings us back where we started. To manners. And political correctness.

Does this mean that we can’t discuss these hot button issues? Of course not! We need to discuss them, particularly when we are electing the government of our country. We need to discuss them in the proper forums. If the government tries to ram its beliefs down our collective throat, then the people of the U.S. are going to rise up and protest as we should in order to protect our rights as a nation. The government needs to remember that not all the people support their particular point of view and the government is representative of all the people, not just half of them.