Republicans Revel in Political Incorrectness
The 2016 Election has been graced with some of the most bigoted comments by potential candidates in recent American history. Many Republican candidates have vocalized their distrust in the Muslim population, including Ben Carson, who denounced the idea of a Muslim American president, as well as Marco Rubio, who belittled Islamaphobia in a nation where it spreads rapidly with every terrorist attack. And of course, Donald Trump has gone so far as to implicate that Mexican immigrants are either drug mules, criminals, rapists, or some combination of the three. And yet, these are the very candidates gaining traction.
So how did this paradoxical correlation come to be?
The anti-PC outrage has morphed into a conservative movement, masking hatred with a bigger cause. Seemingly, these candidates have tapped into a nativist nerve. Many Americans see this type of outward stereotyping as a refreshing bit of honesty, as if the candidates are finally vocalizing the secret disdains that the public has been too afraid to admit out loud.
Better yet, it comes from an entity whose reputation of reliability has been tainted time and time again: our government. While Donald Trump is not (yet?) a part of our government, he has promised to infiltrate it with this type of open “discussion.” As one Trump supporter put it, “When Trump talks, it may not be presented in a pristine, PC way, but we’ve been having that crap pushed to us for the past 40 years! He’s saying what needs to be said.” Having someone validate intolerance with bluntness can be especially attractive when it is packaged with the idea of re-authenticating the government as a whole.
And it’s not just candidates fueling the movement to fight political correctness; it’s their supporters. Syndicated columnist and American political commentator Ann Coulter has come out to endorse Donald Trump, as many Americans have, for his unfiltered language. In this speech, Coulter raves about the increased television coverage of “Anchor Babies,” “Sanctuary Cities,” and “Mexican rapists,” accrediting this newfound wave of discussion to Trump. Comparing him to Joseph in the Bible, Coulter praises Trump for his unwillingness to surrender to liberal “Speech Nazi’s.”
What Coulter refuses, or is unable, to see is that she is not promoting intellectual conversation, she is fostering fear, and Trump is doing the same. Hate speech only breeds more hate, and this level of political incorrectness is nothing less. In recent months, hate crimes against Muslim Americans have shot up, in correlation with increased global terrorist attacks as well as inflammatory campaign rhetoric. There is no need to alienate the Muslim American community in our time of insecurity; in fact, we need them now more than ever.
There are ways to be genuine and informational without being belligerent. To truly educate the American public, we must tone down the hyperbole in the anti-PC movement, and give Americans facts uncontaminated by prejudice. Of course, there are cases where political correctness has gone too far; in an age growing more and more wary of microaggressions, there is an understandable backlash to the sanitization of modern language. However, on the political stage, candidates have huge influence, and therefore enormous responsibility. The further we can stray from bigoted jargon, the better. If we’re looking for an honest conversation, let’s have one, rather than a hostile rally or an antagonistic speech — the American public has proven too impressionable to weed through the sensationalism.
