Paul Lentz, Author
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Holy Fire

Pendulums, Political Correctness, Trigger Warnings, and Spoilers

12/10/2016

 
​What started as political correctness has grown like Topsy—into unplanned and perhaps unintended enormity. The pendulum is still swinging in that direction. For example, we’ve invented “trigger warnings,” introductory words to a document, a blog, an article in the press, etc. that warn people that they might be offended or traumatized if they read the article, blog, or book. Another phenomenon is the “spoiler alert,” used by a reviewer who cannot write a review of a book or movie without giving away a key plot point.
 
Examples (which I made up):
 
For Nathanial Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”: (Spoiler Alert) This book portrays adultery and sexual conduct by unmarried persons including a man of the cloth. If these subjects might offend you, please select another book. Perhaps something from the “McGuffey Readers” series. And, no, “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Red Badge of Courage” are two entirely different books.
 
For Alexandre Dumas, père’s “The Man in the Iron Mask”: This book may offend or cause severe psychological damage to any person who has a phobia of having his or her head covered with an iron mask and then being imprisoned.
 
For Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”: This book includes dialectic speech that demeans Persons of Color as well as speech by melanin-deficient persons who use the “n-word.” If you might find this offensive, read no more.
 
For my blogs: WARNING: If you are a dumba__, you may be offended by the attempts to use correct grammar and vocabulary in the following essay. Of course, if you’re a dumba__, you probably don’t know that, so go ahead and read.
 
For the Jewish Bible (the “Old Testament”): This book treats incest, adultery, and polygamy as acceptable family values. It describes more than two million murders including those of children, the sale of women into sexual slavery, and the first recorded incident of date rape.
 
My inventions are all true, including the date rape in the Bible. [It involved Lot and his daughters after they escaped from the destruction of Sodom. The story is told in Genesis 19, especially verse 31 and following.]
 
Trigger warnings are censorship. If an author places a trigger warning on his or her work, that is self-censorship. When a newspaper editor, web site administrator, or social media site puts trigger warnings on others’ submissions, that’s censorship. In either case, trigger warnings block access to ideas, to thoughts, and to information.
 
Battle lines have been drawn between supporters of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and academic freedom, and those who want to ban all speech they find in any way offensive. But, the First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech. To block speech one finds offensive is censorship, blocking access to ideas, thoughts, and information.
 
The First Amendment in simple terms was created to protect political speech, to allow people to speak out against elected officials without fear of reprisal or gagging.
 
One of the first things elected politicians did was pass the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798). The “Alien” part made it easy to deport immigrants and made it harder for them to vote. [Sound familiar?] The “Sedition” part prohibited public opposition to the government, and allowed fines and imprisonment for writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government.
 
I agree that knowingly publishing false information is inappropriate. Scandalous? I’m thinking Bill Clinton and a p____y-grabbing president elect. [You knew I was going to get Trump in here somehow, right?]
 
One reason the Federalist congress got away with this in 1798 was that the Supreme Court wasn’t considering the constitutionality of laws at that time. Besides, the justices were all members of the same political party that passed the laws.
 
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson opposed the laws, and convinced the state legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky to pass laws saying that the A&S Acts were illegal in those states. (Sound familiar? This exercise of “states rights” was later used to justify the secession of the South in the Civil War.)
 
Oliver W. Holms, Jr., a Supreme Court Justice, in a unanimous decision of the court, wrote that speech in opposition to the draft during World War I was not protected free speech under the First Amendment. Part of his opinion was that the First Amendment does not protect “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater and causing a panic.” Most people don’t include the word “falsely” when they think they are quoting Holmes.
 
Holmes’ opinion was based in part on both the World War I draft law and yet another sedition law passed in 1918. Holmes wrote that the defendant’s opposition to the draft was “a clear and present danger” to the US war effort.
 
This ruling was not overturned until 1969 (!) when the Supreme Court ruled that speech could only be banned if it was designed and likely to incite an imminent illegal action such as a riot.
 
The United States is becoming Balkanized in part because people are determined not to hear words and ideas that they think might be offensive. We need to get off the politically-correct bandwagon, we need to ignore trigger warnings, we need to use reason and facts rather than propaganda and myths. We need to parse the statements of politicians and shills on national media to find the truth, and we need to challenge their lies.
 

    Author

    Registered Curmudgeon, scientist, skeptic, humanist, and writer.

    Archives

    December 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    February 2019
    August 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    1984
    2016 Election
    2016 Presidential Campaign
    5G
    Afghanistan
    Aleppo
    Alien And Sedition Acts
    Alternative Facts
    Alt-right
    Antifa
    Antisemitism
    Arms Trade
    Baasad
    Barrel Bombs
    Bigotry
    Biodiversity
    Black Baby Deaths
    Black Lives Matter
    Boko Haram
    Border Wall
    Carrying Capacity
    CFCs HFCs HFOs
    Charlotte Riots
    Clean Coal
    Climate Change
    Climate Denier
    Cognitive Dissonance
    Cohen
    Collapse Of Civilization
    Crumbling Infrastructure
    Daesh (ISIS/ISIL)
    Dark Mountain Manifesto
    Dean Spicer
    Democratic Party Platform
    Donald Trump
    Doublethink
    Down Syndrome
    Duerte
    Dystopia
    Economics 101
    Election 2016
    Equifax
    Evangelical
    Evolution
    F-35
    Fake News
    Fallacies Of Logic
    First Amendment
    Flag Burning
    Football CTE
    Foxprop
    Fundamentalism
    Gary Johnson
    GBU-43
    George Orwell
    Georgia Gasoline Crisis
    Georgia Gasoline Pipeline
    GHG
    Global Climate Change
    Global Warming
    God
    Government Bureaucracy
    Government Shutdown
    Graven Images
    Greenhouse Gas
    Greenhouse Gasses
    Group Think
    Gunboat Diplomacy
    Hacking
    HADO Water Crystals
    "Happy Holidays"
    Harvey
    Hillary Clinton
    Holocaust
    Homophobia
    House Oversight Committee
    Hurricane Harvey
    Hurricane Irma
    Hurricane Katrina
    Incest
    Income Inequality
    Infant Mortality
    Integration
    Internet Bullying
    Internet Gatekeepers
    Internet Trolls
    Internment Camps
    IPCC
    Irma
    Iron Dome
    ISIS
    Israel
    Jared Diamond
    John Schnatter
    Kaka
    Katrina
    Kigali Amendment
    Killer Asteroids
    King Tides
    Kirchenkampf
    K-T Mass Extinction
    Law Of Unintended Consequences
    Leni Riefenstahl
    Libertarian
    Logical Fallacies
    Loose Cannon
    Lynching
    Malthus
    Malthusian Solution
    Marine Corps
    Marriage
    Masura Emoto
    Methane Emission Rule
    Milancovic Cycles
    Misogyny
    MOAB
    Montreal Protocol
    Mt. Pinatubo
    Mt. Tambora
    Muslim Ban
    Nazi
    Nazis
    Neo-Nazi
    Newnan
    Newspeak
    Newspeech
    News Sources
    Nuclear Arsenal
    Nuclear Warfare
    Obama
    Opiate Of The Massives
    Organized Religion
    Orwell 1984
    Out Of Africa
    Ozone Hole
    Papa John's
    Perceptual Filters
    Peter Abelard
    Pity The Children
    Politcal Correctness
    Polygamy
    Prisons Of Our Minds
    Propaganda
    Proxy War
    Putin
    Qatar
    Racism
    Rally In Newnan
    Recycling
    Red Herrings
    Republican Convention
    Republican Party Platform
    Righteous Right
    Robert Mercer
    Russian Cyber Attacks
    Russian Hacking
    Russian Internet Trolls
    Scorched-earth
    Sexual Dimorphism
    Social Media
    Solar Eclipse
    SpaceX
    Starlink
    Stream Protection Rule
    Sunspots
    Syria
    Tardisboy
    Teflon Don
    Ten Commandments
    Terrorism
    The Coming Collapse
    Third Presidential Debate
    Trigger Warnings
    Trump
    Trump 2020
    Trump And Climate
    Trump And EPA
    Trump Cabinet
    Trump China Policy
    Trump Legacy
    Trump Lies
    Trump's Chumps
    USMC
    War On Drugs
    War On Poverty
    Wealth Inequality
    Whale Song
    White Supremacists
    White Supremacy
    WikiLeaks
    Willing Suspension Of Disbelief
    Writing Fiction
    Young Earth Creationism
    Zero Tolerance
    Zero-Tolerance
    Zika Virus

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Holy Fire