PC AS MAOISM

Some extracts from an interesting recent post by the VERY incorrect Jim Kunstler:

I was warned before my lecture visit to a Union College sociology class that several black students in the class were "upset by what you wrote" in the assigned book, Home From Nowhere, specifically, the chapter titled "The Public Realm and the Common Good." in which I really did try to grapple with some of the problems of race and social status.

Well, anyway, I gave a formal slide lecture about civic design and then there was a Q and A period, and a very pretty Barbadian girl made a little speech saying, "I'm offended by what you wrote about the underclass and about affirmative action, etc etc." It was as though she were reciting a girl scout pledge, something beyond practiced: rote.

I'm not an academic, which is to say that I don't have to function in what must be a semi-psychotic melieu these days. But I have a keen interest in the phenomenon of political correctness for two reasons. 1.) it's so bizzare and nonsensical, and 2.) it was created, or perhaps a better word is developed, by my generation of 60s hippies who now run the universities. But I've been mystified as to actually what it is. Now I think I finally know: it's just good old-fashioned Maoism.....

So what we're seeing in the universities these days is a very special form of low-grade Maoism -- young people given a license by the university authorities to harrass and re-educate their elders. For practical purposes, only 'minority' students have that license.

What got me in the incident I describe is how perfectly programmed the young lady was, as though she had allowed herself to become a walking palm pilot. And the incident had the peculiar aura of an oft-repeated ceremony: visiting lecturer comes in, visiting lecturer gets scolded for incorrect thinking, visiting lecturer apologizes for all the multitudinous turpitudes of the white race.

I think I shocked the class by replying to the young lady that the time for complaining and being a crybaby is over; that this nation is about to face troubles that will dwarf her adolescent anxieties at a small private college; and the real issue for her and anybody else in the room will soon be how to live a purposeful life in the face of extremely difficult times.