Remember when “telling it like it is” (that is, speaking and writing in blunt, “real world” language devoid of the fripperies and embellishments of what was seen to be over-educated, dessicated discourse) was promoted and praised? If you’re old enough to remember the Sixties and Seventies you do. And like many of that era’s fashions, this practice soon became overused and exaggerated, resulting in today’s atmosphere of f-word this, f-word that in areas that the liberal arts were supposed to “uplift” and enlighten, which in turn has led to a frantic backpedaling and seeking of the sort of enforced niceness that was once seen as one of the main weapons of the older generation against the young. What a difference a few decades of “brutal truth” makes…
The problem is, along with the rules of polite discourse we have thrown out the idea that there is a superior culture that all must at least have knowledge of and preferably imitate as well as we can. So instead of a movement towards “highfalutin’, fancy-assed” over-cultured activity, we get this:
As lawyers take over the internet, only a certain level of discourse is deemed acceptable. People like me, from lower class backgrounds, where blunt talk about the obvious, undeniable differences between ethnic groups is commonplace, are increasingly pressured to adopt a phony baloney way of writing in order to be considered acceptable.
The flowery utterances of the snobs of yore might have been irritating to the hoi-polloi, but at least it indicated a society firmly planted in the solid ground of Western Culture, all 2,000 plus years of it. Today’s yammering Kos kid and puling “spokesperson” for this or that politically-correct group of busibodies might as well come from another galaxy, one where all the stars have burnt out long ago.
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