Politically Correct

For somebody who makes many grammar errors, who can’t speel worth a damn, and in general suffers dyslexia-driven writing issues, I am obsessed with communication.

My mentor taught me the “four parts of communication”.

1. What I say
2. What you hear
3. What you say
4. What I hear

If there is a mismatch between any of the two steps, then communication has failed. Only I know what I intend to communicate. Only I can do the work to verify, through what you say, and I hear, that I was able to communicate my concept correctly.

Part of the task of communication is agreeing on the meaning of words and of being able to identify what you are addressing.

If I use a word with one meaning, and you use the same word with a different meaning, it is unlikely that we are communicating when either of us use that word.

In the late 70s and early 80s, the feminists were becoming very vocal. They were making claims as to how good they were and how little they needed men for.

To put some perspective on this, in 1973, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in a tennis match to prove women were as good as men or better. She was 29, at the top of her game. Bobby Riggs was 55 and most definitely not at the top of his game.

But, at the time, we couldn’t actually talk about how men were different from women and how some jobs were better suited to men. We couldn’t because to try to discuss the issue would get you slammed as a male chauvinist pig.

By controlling the language, the progressives were able to stop any dissent or even discussion about the issues from a male perspective.

It took a new term to come into existence before that discussion could take place. “Politically Correct”.

Once the term was available to us, we could actually begin the discussions that were needed, on equal footing.

Affirmative Action is another one of those topics. The phrasing is wonderful. Everybody wants to be affirmative.

How dare you want to discriminate against blacks by taking away affirmative action.

We can’t, or couldn’t discuss the harm that was coming from affirmative action because doing so would get you labeled “racist” or worse. The topic was forbidden. Not because it shouldn’t have been discussed, but because it lived in a protected state.

The new language is “DEI”. We are trying to discuss it. But we are being shouted down as bigots, racists and misogynists.

Now consider a current topic, plane crashes.

First, if you look up the NTSB numbers for plane crashes, you will find that more planes crashed in January 2024 than in January 2025. Not what we are talking about.

One of the questions that came out of the crash in DC was the sex of the pilots.

Why?

It was because there are people, myself included, that believe that the pilots of the helicopter were not qualified to be flying that Blackhawk in that airspace at that time.

Why? Because they caused a fucking midair collision!

They messed up and killed people. We KNOW that the helicopter was above its max authorized height and had no pilot input to avoid the jet. We KNOW that the jet had nearly full elevators and a 9-degree roll to the left to avoid the helicopter.

So we ask, why were they allowed on that flight?

One of the first things that came out was that the pilot was female.

Was the collision because she was female?

There is nothing in the record, the facts, that indicate that her sexual organs had anything to do with the crash.

But that is only half of the question. The rest of the question is, “Was she qualified?”

This raises further questions, “Were the standards lowered to allow more women to ‘qualify’?” and “Were better qualified males passed over to have more female pilots?”

These are all questions that should be asked.

We are having trouble asking them because to ask them is to be yelled at for something that was not said.

What are we being accused of? We are being accused of saying that the crash(es) occurred because they were women.

The media talking heads make the claim that they have the secret decoder ring that allows them to translate our questions into what we “really” mean. And what we “really” mean is that women are not qualified to be pilots. We DIDN’t say that.

But it gets worse. That message gets out there. And some on the right are not careful with their words. They might be attempting to ask the same thing we are. But it comes out as “because they were women”.

As soon as that happens, there are a hundred NPCs to claim that that dogcatcher speaks for every conservative, for every Trump supporter.

And those on the left believe them. As Ally has pointed out, one of the difficult things for her to accept as being right of center, is that we aren’t in lock step. That we don’t support everybody with an R behind their name or a MAGA hat on their head.

That duffus over there can have his crazy ideas. I don’t agree with him.