Political correctness is like a cancer!— Dr. Kelli Ward (@kelliwardaz) August 27, 2018
Ward is the politician who complained that McCain's annoucement to go off his treatment was an attempt to hurt her campaign. And then when folks yelled at her about this breach, she tweeted that.
How is this clarifying or inspiring? Well, it inspired this post. It is clarifying because it reminds us that most of the complaining about political correctness is actually people who want to be awful without being called out for it. The effort to get people to call others by their preferred identities is seen as unduly restrictive, that people should be able to say what they want without consequences.
This all gets confusing at times because it sometimes hard to keep up with changes in society. So, Ward is handy here for she unwittingly (I am sure much of what she does is unwitting--without thought) reminds us that what is really at stake here is decency. That political correctness is really about people treating other decently. Accusing a fellow politician of stopping their cancer treatment for political revenge is simply not decent. Indeed, it is appalling.
So, I appreciate Ward for clarifying this for all of us. The folks who throw around political correctness as a slur or insult are indecent. Handy to have that simplified and identified for us. That it comes in the context of McCain's death is perfect, because he was often politically incorrect (he was calling Asian gooks as late as 2000), but he did recognize and apologize for his mistakes. Which is why one can be ambivalent about the man. He strived to be decent even if he failed much of the time. Which made him a fair more respected politician from both sides of the aisle. Surveys show he had more respect at the end from the Dems than the GOP, which makes sense since we live in a time where we need to ask the Republicans what was asked of this Republican long ago:
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