Your personal relationships are a critical source of your knowledge. They determine how you perceive the world and inform you about the larger world. In that sense, we might say that relationships based in mutual trust and affection are the ultimate source of power. This connection has always been well understood by dictators, large scale and petty alike. By ordinary folks, not so much.
But you’ve noticed, haven’t you? Certain folks who seem addicted to power are always trying to control personal relationships, always seeking to destroy human bonds that get in the way of their agendas. That’s because people who feel socially isolated — or who feel the threat of being socially isolated — are more easily controlled.
Political correctness is little more than a tool of psychological manipulation. It serves to isolate people through fear in order to silence and control the lives and knowledge of others. We delude ourselves if we think we can “opt out” through silence every time we’re confronted with an attack on our beliefs. Cocooning only pulls us deeper into the PC matrix by isolating us further from each other. It only serves to seal off the doors.
This blog is an attempt to explore this reality, to dissect it, and to shed a little bit of light on it. If we want to preserve freedom of expression and freedom of association, we’d best face these facts head on. I want to help illuminate the connection between human bonding and power. If we wish to rebuild civil society, we must reach out and speak truth in love. And we must do it one on one. And face to face. In our daily lives. Because renewal is not going to happen through the media or Hollywood or academia, all of them essentially part of the PC Force. The best path forward is for people of goodwill to forge lots of new bonds with others, connections built on trust and goodwill.
About me
I write about society, culture and education. My essays have appeared in The Federalist, Washington Examiner, American Thinker, Public Discourse, Human Life Review, New Oxford Review.
In my previous work as an intelligence analyst, I focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. I’ve also raised three children, served as a public school substitute teacher, and homeschooled for several years as well. I have a B.A. in journalism and international relations from the University of Southern California and a Master’s degree in Russian and Soviet history, also from USC.
I’ve been fascinated by the phenomenon of political correctness ever since I experienced social dynamics as a child in public school. Many of us have come to realize that whether in the schoolyard or in Congress, it’s the same manipulative force at play. When adults fear social rejection for expressing a non-PC thought, they tend to respond like children who are threatened with the schoolyard taunt of “cooties.” They gravitate towards those who have not been tainted and avoid those who have been. All the while, a mysteriously anointed elite makes the rules and picks the winners and losers. The majority just seems to go along with it, even though they have the power to stop it. My interest in this peculiarity intensified as I studied the history of communism and totalitarianism, and the intense propaganda campaigns that labelled independent thinkers as “non-persons.” It seems to me that as distrust and fear take root, people allow themselves to be sorted, hoping for safety. Instead, they become even more isolated from one another and vulnerable. Then they withdraw and cede their power in order to survive socially and physically (in that order.)
I’ve decided to blog about this while I attempt to write a book about it all. Thanks for visiting!