It so often appears there is no refuge from the world of cheap virtue signaling and manufactured outrage in the West today. No innocent outlet, no harmless diversion, is safe from this tiresome manifestation of cultural decay. It's critical to realize that this feeling itself is one of the primary goals of political correctness. It is intentionally designed to make you feel weary, angry and beleaguered.
Policing popular language is a crucial weapon in establishing the everyday tyranny...
The latest sliver of stupidity comes from the world of professional sports. Major League Baseball has announced that it is getting rid of the term "disabled list" to describe players who are out of action due to injury. Solving a problem that no one genuinely cared about, MLB wants to avoid giving "the misconception that people with disabilities are injured and therefore are not able to participate or compete in sports," as a league official asserted.
A Million Paper Cuts
Yes, of course, in the big picture, this is an extremely small matter. But that is exactly the point. Under the rigid code of political correctness that seeks to permeate every aspect of our lives, even the least significant of trifles will not escape notice. The term "disabled list" has officially been around since 1966. Baseball fans have been using it for over 50 years as part of the comfortable parlance of the game: "When is so-and-so coming off the DL?" "He's hurt. They're putting him on the DL for three weeks." And so on. And now all baseball fans are being told, “you can't say that anymore.”
Policing popular language is a crucial weapon in establishing the everyday tyranny our new authoritarians are keen to usher in. It's meant to be discomforting. It's meant to be irksome. It's meant to numb your psyche. They want to make you go along with something that is silly, irrational and even offensive to your own natural thought process. Do it enough times and you will be conditioned to go along with anything.
Professional and big-time collegiate sports are often a unifying force in a community, making them an excellent field in which the PC Police can operate. The corruption of money and the corporatization of sports today has made this less so, yet nevertheless, the framework is still there. Have you ever noticed that all of the changes made by the language Bolsheviks in sports always lead to something dull, generic and lifeless? Two prominent name changes under the guise of protecting Native American feelings serve as classic examples. St. John's University in New York City had a long, proud basketball history under the name "Redmen." The University of North Dakota had a similarly iconic heritage in hockey with its "Fighting Sioux" moniker. Not only was it mandated that these cherished team names be banished forever, but just as importantly they were changed to the blandest mush of tranquilized nothingness that a soulless apparatchik could ever come up with. "Red Storm" and "Fighting Hawks" are the new school nicknames, and the logos that are supposed to embody school spirit have about as much personality as a stop sign. All part of the plan.
Accepting the Idiocy
This everyday tyranny goes beyond sports, of course. When you see absurdities like an atheist serving as a Christian minister or all-girl "Boy Scout" troops, your mind instinctively rebels against the pure inanity of it all. The PC Police want you to react that way. Because they also want you to realize that you won't be able to do anything about it either. There is a new reality. The desired lasting effect is demoralization and a further alienation among our already-divided citizenry.
This is how Cultural Marxism works. Anything that can splinter, anything that can disrupt harmonious community flow is salutary to the cause of overthrowing a society. The demoralization effect is meant to keep you in your place. A person watching a sporting event on television who can't even think the term "first baseman" in his own head without wondering if he is committing a sexist thought crime against imaginary future female Major League Baseball players is not going to revolt over more weighty matters.
Fear of violating established PC tenets, combined with the sapping of energy that comes with the constant swallowing of things that defy all common sense, leads to apathy and resignation. Our politically correct tyrants want to drive it home to you that something that was once yours – be it a sports team or a Boy Scout troop – has now been harnessed for the new community order. Church and scouting were once cornerstones of an America that no longer exists. They are not being destroyed. It's worse than that. They are being conquered and repurposed.
It is most certainly not expected that one instance of everyday tyranny is going to keep an entire population in check. But a thousand will. Enmeshing citizens in a net of quiet acquiescence to that against which the mind rebels makes for a highly effective control mechanism. True social oppression does not operate on a distant plane. It impacts human lives in small, personal ways. Yes, even in something so casual as a common baseball phrase.
