OK, these days I tend to have mostly liberal political views. Trump gives me the creeps. Though not with great enthusiasm, but I rooted for Trudeau over Scheer. More broadly, I prefer a welcoming, open, tolerant society over one that is isolationist and xenophobic. I prefer a comprehensive social safety net even at the expense of higher taxes. And as a middle-aged white man, I am not the least bit worried that I am being marginalized by women or visible minorities; quite the contrary, my concern is that both women and minorities still often face prejudice and stereotypes, and have to fight uphill battles.
But every once in a while, I run into things that just make me want to root for Trump. As in, “in your face, you clowns”.
Like, when, a license plate that clearly alludes to a Star Trek meme is suddenly banned because some social justice warrior finds it offensive.
A perfectly ordinary English word is now banished from Manitoba license plates because it happened to remind someone of the sad history of aboriginal Canadians.
Yes, it seems that resistance is indeed futile. When SJWs arrive, you will be assimilated. And you will not even be allowed to say so, because the word itself gets banned and you’re only allowed to use words from the list approved by Ministry of Tolerance or whatever.
Darn it, let me present my own, slightly modified version of this license plate, appropriate for this occasion I believe:
Just to make it clear, it is not my intent to make light of the suffering that Canada’s aboriginal population experienced for many generations. The cultural genocide, sexual abuse, forced assimilation, broken up families, broken lives, economic deprivation, not to mention all the things that are still going on, from chronic unemployment and inadequate medical care to the lack of clean drinking water (in a supposedly first world country!)… These are all real tragedies, tangible problems and it is Canada’s shame that they remain largely unsolved in 2019.
But none of these problems will be addressed by this cottage industry of phony outrage over ridiculous things like a dictionary word on a bleeping license plate or the words of a 1940s popular song. If anything, letting people supply their own context and find offense in everything achieves the exact opposite. It cheapens genuine, real concerns and subjects them to ridicule, ultimately harming the very people that these fearless warriors of political correctness are pretending to defend. In reality, of course, that’s not what they are doing. Rather, they are Trump’s counterparts on the opposite end of the political palette: narcissistic poseurs, infantile hypocrites playing the self-aggrandizing role of valiant defenders of the faithful.