Donald Trump and the Sad Triumph of Right-Wing Political Correctness

[EasyAce]

The president isn't attacking P.C., as he once promised. He's sanctioned its use among his followers.
By Nick Gillespie
http://reason.com/blog/2017/08/18/donald-trump-and-the-ultimate-triumph-of/print

Back at the 2015 event at which Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency, his daughter Ivanka
introduced her father as, first and foremost, an implacable foe of political correctness. "My father is the opposite of
politically correct. He says what he means and he means what he says," she said, shortly before Trump characterized
Mexican immigrants as disease-ridden, drug-smuggling rapists ("Some, I assume, are good people," he granted).
In the first Republican primary debate, held in August of 2015, Trump himself reiterated that being anti-P.C. would
be the hallmark of his political life, declaring, "I don't frankly have time for total political correctness."

It's ironic, then, that perhaps Trump's greatest accomplishment so far as president is to make it OK—or maybe even
mandatory—for his followers to engage in the worst excesses of political correctness, especially its attempts to shut
down debate and heterodox opinions through bullying, appeals to ad hominem attacks, and unthinking "whataboutism."

Among the Trump faithful, there are never legitimate grounds upon which to disagree with anything the billionaire
says or does. If Barack Obama's most strident defenders were sometimes quick to claim any criticism of him was
racist, thereby delegitimating honest disagreement, Trump's supporters are equally quick to denounce any dissent
as proof positive of secret membership in Antifa, a pro-Hillary voting record, or a desperate attempt to look good
among the communists who run the much-discussed-yet-little-seen Washington, D.C. cocktail party circuit . . .

. . . Perhaps Trump's falling approval rating has less to do with President Obama, the press, or the supposed power
of Black Lives Matter to somehow cloud our minds and more to do with his inability to get much of anything done,
to turn around the economy (the recent claim that he created an "unprecedented" number of jobs in the first six
months of his presidency is flatly wrong), or to speak bluntly and honestly to the American people. On that last
score, a recent poll for CNN found that just "36% of respondents said Trump was honest and trustworthy, while
60% answered that the description 'does not apply'" . . .

. . . You're forgetting that most Americans actively despise left-wing political correctness for all the ways that it
chokes off even the possibility of meaningful debate about all sorts of issues that matter to us all. Far from wanting
a right-wing variant that squelches discussions before they can even get going, we want a social sphere we can talk
honestly, work toward common ground, and agree to disagree.