Politically Correct
I have no idea whether illegal alien/immigrant & anchor baby are “politically correct”, but I do know they are derogatory and factually false.
Let’s start with the latest cause célèbre of the bigot class – anchor baby. Like Canada and lot of other countries, US automatically grants citizenship to everyone born here – it is their birthright. The bigots claim that this birthright grants the baby’s parents protection from deportation if they are undocumented and costs taxpayers all kinds of money for the “cradle to grave care provided for US citizens”. Given that US citizens receive minimal help from the government, which is why we have such a high rate of poverty and homelessness, Canada is better deal. Ask a homeless vet how much the US spends on its citizens. Further having a child who is a US citizen does not keep anyone from being deported if they are undocumented.
The biggest problem with calling undocumented immigrants “illegal” is that lacking the proper paperwork is not a criminal offense, it is a civil offense. This is by design to avoid the costs and procedures of criminal trials. With the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, the cost of criminal trials for all of them would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The undocumented immigrants are deported after a hearing by an administrative law judge, not a trial by a jury, and there is no requirement that they be provided counsel.
“Political Correctness” is right up there with “No offense meant. but…” and “If anyone was offended…” The people who use these terms know they are being jerks, but they won’t mend their ways.
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People who use the term “political correctness” are jerks upset that they got called out for being jerks, pure and simple.
God (@GodHimself on Twitter) has one commandment: Don’t be a dick. The people whining about political correctness are the same ones who violate that One Commandment, then whine that you’re being “politically correct” when you point out that they are, in fact, being a dick.
It’s sort of like the whole thing about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. If she wants to be called “she” and wants to be called Caitlyn, it’s no skin off my back to call her that. It hurts me in zero way at all to call her Caitlyn. Calling her “Bruce” when she wants to be called Caitlyn would be a real dick move. Sort of like Ernie Terrell calling Muhammad Ali “Cassius Clay” in this video. (Ali of course got the best of that fight, shouting “What’s my name?” every time he landed a blow).
I wasn’t actually aware of the Bruce/Caitlyn thing, but did know about Bradley/Chelsea Manning, which I assume is pretty much the same. There are a lot of people from the South who move away and don’t really want people to know what is written on their birth certificate. I’m really not interested unless they are signing legal papers that affect me what people what to call themselves, and have no interest in what people are doing in their bedrooms, unless it might blow up.
They want to be jerks, but they don’t want people pointing it out.
The only reason I brought up the the Bruce/Caitlyn thing is because the right wing has been in a tizzy, refusing to refer to her as Caitlyn because “He still has a Y chromosome so he’s still a man so there!” To which I have to say, so f’in what. If she wants to be called “Princess FiFi, Queen of the Galaxy”, let her have her fun and address her that way. It doesn’t hurt anything, and blustering about it is a real jerk move.
Even if you think she’s nuts, so what? Treating crazy people with kindness is one of the things that differentiates good people from, well, jerks. You can tell more about the character of a man by how he treats the most afflicted and least amongst us than about anything else that man says or does. Just sayin’.
I hate to bring in facts and reality, but a Y chromosome is only a 95% indicator of male. We know this because they started genetic testing in the Olympics because of complaints that some of the Eastern Bloc athletes competing as women were actually men. The ability to have children is a bit more important in determining sex and at least one British grandmother who was tested is XY and doesn’t look at all male.
I always found that people who are incapable of learning are much nicer than those who refuse to learn.
OT: TMF certainly looks sleek.
Biological sex is one thing; gender identity is another. If someone… Jenner, for example… identifies as female, presents as female and calls herself Caitlyn, who TF am I… who TF is anyone… to dispute an essentially personal matter with her? It’s none of their goddamn business. If they can’t take her self-identification, well, that’s their problem, not hers.
How did America get to this point? Why does anyone, “conservative” or otherwise, give a flying F what anyone not sharing a bed with them decides to call herself? Does it make them feel… um… icky? If it does, they need either a good shrink or a period of serious introspection. Their problem, not ours.
The people that were a PITA for me as a supervisor were all overtly heterosexual and hell-bent on proving it. I’m really not interested in other people’s private lives. If there is no measurable impact on me or mine, I consider it none of my business. The people who complain the loudest about these issues want to enact laws to impose their beliefs on me. That is not going to happen without a fight.