The patented PC whine

The patented PC whine

by digby

Ed Kilgore has a good piece up about Ben Carson and absolutely nails what constitutes his appeal --- and his danger:

In a column for the Washington Times after he got some rather natural heat for calling Obamacare “the worst thing to happen to America since slavery,” Carson offered a vague and circular defense about the law representing “a profound shift of power from the people to the government.” He then spent the rest of the column bitching about, well—it’s not too clear what he’s bitching about unless it’s just people making fun of his empty conspiracy theories.

[T]hose who want to fundamentally change America would much rather demonize someone who is exposing this agenda than engage in a conversation that they cannot win. Others join in the fray happily marching in lockstep with those who are attempting to convert our nation to something we won’t recognize, having no idea that they are being used.
Being made fun of (which is what Carson calls “demonizing”) is at the heart of his idea of “political correctness,” and it infuriates him ...

Political correctness is antithetical to our founding principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Its most powerful tool is intimidation.

If it is not vigorously opposed, its proponents win by default, because the victims adopt a “go along to get along” attitude. Major allies in the imposition of PC are members of the media, some of whom thrive on controversy and others who are true ideologues.
The true believers would be amusing if it were not so sad to behold them dissecting, distorting and repeating words in an attempt to divert attention from the rise of government control.

Kilgore observes:

None of this makes a lick of sense to the non-wingnut mind. But to the kind of people who are hailing Ben Carson as a potential president, hearing an African-American man tell them it’s their duty to defy “political correctness” is, whatever Carson intends by the term, an invitation to spout all kinds of racist and sexist nonsense. If anyone so much as frowns at them, well, they are agents of tyranny and not really Americans. And anyone who finds the premises of their world view not worth taking seriously is trying to “intimidate” them into silence—the silence of the grave!

I hadn't thought about the implications of all those white conservatives being invited to spout racist and sexist blather by an African American man. Yikes.


.