Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Thought Prison explores the ramifications of political correctness on language, and thus thought; its casual denial of logic and insidious reach into the realms of science and learning; its total saturation of its twin supports, the mass media and ruling elites. Once the collectively self-imposed blinkers, of good causes and good intentions, are stripped away we can see the nanny state and moral universe beyond for what it is a catastrophic delusion that is destroying the world we know. Most of us think of political correctness in terms of its scope for irony. It provides opportunity to protect us from a vaguely troubling acceptance of an enforced orthodoxy. We are familiar with the no-go areas defined by PC taboos race, sex (or to be PC, gender), ethnicity, sexual preference, disability, class and indeed of it being an engineered term to suit political and scientific argument. What we may be less able to accept is that PC is something in which we are all complicit. Thought Prison examines the way we are now, and how the Western world has come to be that way. It reveals an Orwellian dystopia that instead of being characterized by a crude authoritarian elite, is supported and driven by an irrational yet equally totalitarian and all-pervasive status quo of our own making, dominating politics, economics, public administration, law, education, the military, health services our very selves."
Synopsis
"Political Correctness is marginal and mainstream, ridiculous and mandatory, crazy and normal." Political correctness is the dominant ideology of the Western intellectual world. It is what the West has instead of a religion. It is a thing of the political Left in its origins and central constituency. Yet, in recent decades, it's been embraced by the mainstream political Right and Centre.
Political correctness therefore represents the triumph of the Left. Nonetheless, it very obviously violates both common sense and logic and is destructive of all that is good, beautiful and true. So, at one and the same time, PC is marginal and mainstream, ridiculous and mandatory, crazy and normal.
Political correctness obviously dominates its core territory of politics, public administration (the civil service), law, education and (especially ) the mass media. But PC also substantially shapes everything else: foreign policy, the military, policing, the economy, health services, and personal life: the mating game, friendships and even family life.
This book explains how something so bizarre and wicked could become so ubiquitous and unremarkable.