Donald Trump, Fear, and Being PC

This post in not about Donald Trump.

I will not rant about Donald Trump.

OK, it sort of is, and I sort of will. He is the inspiration for this post. Yes, Trump is my muse.

Something that is said over and over about Trump is, “he’s not afraid to speak his mind” or “he says what we’re all thinking.” Those two qualities are what intrigue me.

The idea of liking someone because he or she ‘says what we’re all thinking’ makes sense. On the surface. Why wouldn’t we like someone who shared our viewpoints? Seems OK.

But when the viewpoint being spoken that ‘we all agree on’ is bigoted, that’s scary and not something with which we should be OK.

The issue boils down to the base instinct out of which many of us operate: fear.

We have two instincts from which we operate: fear and love. Fear is the ego. Fear is fight or flight. Fear is being against gun control because you believe any change to the law could resulting in you waking up one day to your house being raided and guns taken away forever. Fear is irrational, and operating out of fear limits us from being our best selves.

When many of us ask ourselves the question, “why would anyone support Donald Trump?!?” – the explanation is that those who support Trump are operating from their fear instinct. Those who support Trump are not their best selves.

Many find his off the cuff, say-what-I-feel attitude refreshing. ‘It’s OK to not be politically correct all the time when we speak, it doesn’t mean we’re actually bad people, right?’ His argument is that he doesn’t ‘have time’ to craft his language in a politically correct way, and neither does America for that matter.

Fear and the notion of being politically correct are intertwined. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s article in the Washington Post makes the connection between not being PC and operating from a basis of fear – fear that our First Amendment rights will be threatened. Fear that the way we speak will be criticized and that those of us who historically have had the power to label and name will lose that power.

The term “political correctness” is so general that to most people it simply means a discomfort with changing times and attitudes, an attack on the traditions of how we were raised. (It’s an emotional challenge every generation has had to go through.) What it really means is nothing more than sensitizing people to the fact that some old-fashioned words, attitudes and actions may be harmful or insulting to others. Naturally, people are angry about that because it makes them feel stupid or mean when they really aren’t. But when times change, we need to change with them in areas that strengthen our society.

When we constantly speak in ways that marginalize others, our identity becomes that of an intolerant person. Talk and identity are too closely intertwined, and Trump is trying to untangle them. He argues that he sometimes speaks in a way that may ‘come off’ as culturally insensitive, but when it comes down to action, he is supportive of marginalized groups. The truth is – if he doesn’t speak in a way that is inclusive, he’s not supportive. No amount of backpedaling will save him. His efforts to untangle talk and identity are failing.

There has been a lot written in the last few years about being PC.The articles here from The Washington Post and The New York Times are good examples. Most recently, South Park satirized being overly PC with their newest character, PC Principal, a total bro who can’t stop calling Caitlyn Jenner “stunning and brave,” goes around checking people’s privilege, and saying things like:

You know, there’s still some people out there that say “What does being PC really mean?” Well, I’ll tell you what it means. It means you love nothin’ more than beer, workin’ out, and that feelin’ you get when you rhetorically defend a marginalized community from systems of oppression.

Anyone who ‘doesn’t have time to be PC’ is just a bigot. It means you’re operating out of fear. Doesn’t being PC just mean we’re culturally sensitive and not inherently discriminatory in our everyday talk? Our talk reflects our identity. Anyone who argues that what Trump says about women, minorities, other underrepresented populations – doesn’t reflect how he really feels – is delusional. How can our words be so disconnected from our beliefs?

When we operate out of fear, our country becomes a scarier place. The future of women’s reproductive health is threatened, mass shootings continue to happen with no effort towards gun control (or mental health for that matter), and the GLBTQ community is continuously marginalized.

Being PC matters, and it’s the shift we need from operating out of fear to operating out of love. Operating out of love is  actually LISTENING to individuals and groups when they self identify and following their lead instead of ignoring it.

Just because something isn’t inherent to us and may ‘take time’ doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to change it. It’s called growth. It’s called exploring new perspectives that challenge our traditional way of thinking and lead us down a path of further understanding and inclusion of those whose voices are heard less or not at all.. It means just what PC Principal says, “rhetorically defend[ing] a marginalized community from systems of oppression.”

But, according to Donald Trump…ain’t nobody got time for that.