PC

1

Just beneath the sleek and slick
virtue-signaling facade-propping trick
              of smug  cosmopolitan tolerance;
just behind  the flimsy tinsel-thin front
              of self-professed acceptance
                            and all-embracing respect

                     most make-believe liberals
                     are desperately keen to project

lurks the ever-present threat
       of a dormant authoritarian streak
              which suddenly goose steps its way
to the fore the instant
these officious creeps feel the need to police
the sorts of things plain speakers might say.


2

A brilliant system  devised to sterilize speech
and suck the life out of language
       a not-uncunning plot
       to throttle the range and limit the reach
              of permissible and possible thought

a frightening  black-or-whitening
ever-tightening noose around nuance
       a celebration of linguistic restriction
              a catalyst for cognitive corruption
what’s PC  but a sinister scheme
       to hinder wisdom and stifle discussion?


Censorship  by plausibly deniable means
an ongoing attempt to hamstring dissent
an evil device  designed to bind and gag
              irrefutable uncomfortable truths

a monstrous machine conceived
to smother  both dis and unapproved views
       the disguised-as-benign leading edge
       of newspeak’s devious  virulent wedge

what’s PC  but an odious program
       whose dystopian  unstated aim
              is to curb or shut down debate
by declaring topics and postures it hates
                                          strictly off-limits

while contriving  to blindly align or equate
       certain notions and phrases and words
                     with ill and offensive intentions
       (no matter how shrill  illusory or absurd
       the inferred or suggested connections)?


3

A clever measure  developed to pressure
                     the hoi polloi to self-censor
a nifty ploy applied to inhibit
the commoner’s commonsensical instinct
to agree  to the free exchange of opinions

what is political correctness
but an assault  on honesty and directness
       but a pretext for relentless aggression
       towards unfettered unfiltered expression

but an undeclared war on straightforward talk
                     rationality and clarity of thought
an ingenious invention cooked up to confuse
a wily ruse   to put sense on the defensive

and by no means least   this last:
a deceptively effective gaslighting act
unleashed  to condition the simple masses
       to place less weight and faith
                     in the stable light of facts
                                   and solid observation

       than in the fickle  ideological twinkling
       of idiotic theories and wishful thinking?


4

The insidious suppression
of both candor and freedom of speech
the sugarcoated perfection
of euphemization’s overweening reach

PC — fancying itself the zenith
                            of hip sophistication
and the pinnacle of verbal taste and tact —

PC — vis-a-vis the word — is in fact
nothing if not   a priggish unenlightened
subconsciously frightened
language-loathing load of humourless rot

whose noxious effluence flows
from the intolerant close-minded confluence
              from the cowardly  tyrannical surge
that occurs where the currents of evasion
       hypocrisy and thought muzzling merge.