The psychology of political correctness

Faith writes:

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but there isn't anything in conservatism that's comparable

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Ahem.It's called "political correctness." The right is just as "PC" as the left, just about different things.The insistence that being gay is a "choice," that abortion "kills a baby," that supply side economics works, and on and on.For crying out loud, the ACA was a Heritage Foundation plan. It was implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. And as soon as it was advocated by a Democrat, it was "socialized medicine" with "death panels.""Political correctness" is the taking of a position for the political cachet it gives. Whether or not you actually believe in it is irrelevant."Political correctness" is a term that Marx coined to describe the right.

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Show that there is a SYSTEMATIC body of accusations that is used in a systematic and predictable way

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Are you truly saying that you have not noticed that all conservative outlets in this country all seem to have the same talking points, down to the very word, at the same time? Do you not remember the 2000 election regarding Gore?Gore had his interview with Wolf Blitzer where he was asked about his accomplishments and he mentioned the High Performance Computing Act, stating that as a senator, he "took the initiative in creating the internet." Since it is often called the "Gore Act," this isn't that odd of a thing to say.Nobody thought anything of it.Until some conservative outlets (Drudge, if I recall correctly) about a week later thought to make it into a talking point, at which point the quotation of Gore curiously changed from "created the Internet" to "invented the Internet," as if Gore was implying that he had pulled all-nighters writing the TCP/IP stack in Pascal while living on Hot Pockets and Mt. Dew.Everybody using the exact same phrase at the exact same time.We see this over and over in the conservative media. An "opinion" pundit such as Bill O'Reilly will make a statement on his show. The next day, the "news" program in the morning will have a story about how "people are talking" about the talking point made by the "opinion" guy the night before. This then gets hyped until the claim becomes fact despite it quite often having no basis in reality.How many people are still claiming that Planned Parenthood "sells baby body parts"? Despite the fact that every state that has looked into this has been unable to find any evidence of such, the videos that were put forward as "proof" actually show the precise opposite (the PP rep repeatedly refuses to sell anything despite the hoaxer trying to goad them into a deal), and the Texas grand jury actually indicted the hoaxers. For crying out loud, Carly Fiorina stood in front of national cameras and literally lied about a video she claims to have seen regarding it.How many people on the right now think that there were thousands of Muslims in New Jersey who were celebrating the terrorist attacks on 9/11?Notice how the entire conservative movement has come up with this nonsense "Thurmond Rule" that says presidents aren't allowed to nominate justices to the Supreme Court in their last year. They all say the exact same thing: "Never been done in 80 years!" Except that Reagan nominated Kennedy in November of 1987 (and was confirmed by the Democratically-controlled Senate in February of 1988).Here's Mitch McConnell insisting that judicial nominations be given an up-or-down vote: So why is he so against his own position? Heck, he's even going against Scalia's opinion on the matter: Back in the 70s, you may recall that Nixon had resigned. But, the confirmation of Ford's choice for Vice President, Rockefeller, was taking some time. And some were saying that Democrats were trying to delay the confirmation since it was an election year and they didn't want Rockefeller being able to help in the elections.Scalia, as the chair of the Administrative Conference of the United States, which was in charge of making the functioning of the government better, wrote an opinion piece saying that nominations put to the Senate should be voted on by the Senate within 60 days.And yet somehow, nobody seems to be talking about the "Scalia Rule."To pretend that the right isn't "politically correct" is to deny reality.Edited by Rrhain, : Added video

LamarkNewAge writes:

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Obama has deported millions (more than every previous president combined)

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Incorrect. On multiple levels.First, the term "deportation" isn't used anymore. Prior to 1996, there were two measures: "Excluded" and "Deported." "Excluded" meant those trying to enter but were stopped. "Deported" was the expelling of those who had made it in.After 1996, those two were combined in a single measure called "Removal." This is part of the reason that some say Obama has more than all other Presidents combined...previous Presidents are having the "Excluded" numbers not included while Obama is having his included, artificially increasing his numbers. More importantly, "Deported" doesn't have a meaning anymore except in a colloquial sense.But, that's 1996. Clinton and Bush were after that date. But even then, the terms changed. Prior to 2006, if you were caught before entry were categorized as "Voluntary Departure." That is now known as "Return" which also includes a category of "Reinstatement." Then there are also the "Expedited Removals" that don't appear before the federal court system.In addition, Bush and Obama report their numbers differently. Bush combined Removals and Returns while Obama only dealt with Removals. Here are the numbers from 2001 to 2012 (from DHS):

Year	Removals	Returns	Total
2001	189,026	1,349,371	1,538,397
2002	165,168	1,012,116	1,177,284
2003	211,098	945,294	1,156,392
2004	240,665	1,166,576	1,407,241
2005	246,431	1,096,920	1,343,351
2006	280,974	1,043,381	1,324,355
2007	319,382	891,390	1,210,772
2008	359,795	811,263	1,171,058
2009	391,932	582,648	974,580
2010	383,031	474,275	857,306
2011	388,409	322,164	710,573
2012	419,384	229,968	649,352

While Removals are up, Returns are down and the combined numbers are down in total. And in recent years, Removals are at major low (from ICE):OK...the picture isn't loading correctly, so here's the link: [ Image fixed. --Admin ]The claim that there have been more "deportations" under Obama than all other administrations combined is simply false.Edited by Rrhain, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Fix image.

LamarkNewAge responds to me:

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Thanks for those revealing charts.

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You're welcome. Though I have to ask why you didn't know about them when you made your original post. You made quite a lot of claims, very few of which were true and were easily determined to be untrue through simple research.You continued your errors in your response (see below)

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Though, somebody correctly pointed out that in-migration is quite low.

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That doesn't help your claim. Your claim was that Obama has "deported" more than all other administrations combined. That simply isn't true.

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Real "Unemployment" (not reflected in the headline number) is very very high for poor and lower-income groups.

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More like 40% than 5%.

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You're probably referring to the U6 numbers. There are many "unemployment rate" statistics. From the BLS: As noted, the "official" unemployment rate is U3. However, the U6 numbers refer to all people even vaguely related to the labor market who aren't working.That number is 9.8% (seasonally adjusted) as of March 2016 (http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate though you can go through the cross-tabs at http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab15.htm). If the U6 numbers for "poor and lower-income groups" is 40%, that means all the unemployed are for poor/low-income jobs. And since the U6 number has been cut nearly in half since 2010 (26M total to 16M total), your claim doesn't pass the sniff test.Now, the BLS doesn't really break down the numbers like that. After all, how does one determine "poor and lower-income groups" with regard to unemployment. After all, if you don't have a job, how do you distinguish someone who doesn't have a "high-end job" from someone who doesn't have a "low-end job."We can do a proxy by using disadvantaged groups such as by race or sex or by job sector such as service, mining, etc., but I'm having a hard time finding U6 numbers broken down by demographic.The only U3 number that I can find that is anywhere near "40%" is for black males aged 16-17 (http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm). Indeed, the March 2016 U3 number (not the U6) for black males aged 16-17 is at 45.2% (not seasonally adjusted). And that's bad. It's an increase of 10 percentage points compared to last year and whites and Latinos both showed decreases for that demographic of male 16-17-year-olds (things are more complex for women where whites saw a decrease while both blacks and Latinos saw an increase...no data exists for Asians.)But to be complete, all other demographics for blacks saw a decrease in the U3 number save for black males 35-44 (7.8% to 8.0%...black women saw a decrease in the U3 numbers).So while I can't find U6 numbers, your claim doesn't appear to be true given all the other data I can find. As I stated, the only way it could possibly be true is if the entire unemployment crisis was concentrated in a specific area and that isn't true.Where did you get your information?Edited by Rrhain, : Clarified a number

LamarkNewAge writes:

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I was looking at the labor fore participation rate of around 62% for those over age 16.

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That isn't unemployment.The participation rate refers to the entire population of potential workers and only breaks it down by those who either have a job/are looking for work and everybody else.This means those who are discouraged (the U6 minus the U3 numbers) are part of the non-participants group.But it also means those who have retired and those who are engaged in non-employment pursuits such as education are in that non-participants group. You will never have 100% participation nor should you. That means nobody can go to school, nobody can retire, nobody can leave the workforce for other things such as taking care of family members.For the past 40 years, the labor participation rate has been in the mid-60s. Going back to 1948 (which is where the BLS's data starts), the participation rate has increased from 58.6% to 63%. We do need to care about the participation rate. But part of the reason it has gone down is due to the aging of the population. More people are retiring (the Baby Boom) and leaving the labor market.That isn't the only reason and discouragement is an important thing to look at, but that's where U6 numbers come in.

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My 40% number can't be too far off.

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But it is. The participation rate is not a measure of unemployment.And your comments about immigration have no bearing on your claim that Obama has "deported more immigrants than all other administrations combined."That simply isn't true.