Social stimuli and the punishment for reacting incorrectly.

In today's politically correct society, the sheep mentality is a pervasive one that attempts to dictate how we behave and think. In the presence of certain social stimuli, behaving in any manner that does not mirror the mindless drones around you will earn you one of the many hateful labels that we are suppose to fear like the Black Death itself. The labels themselves are also a kind of social stimuli, and that stimuli also has a certain behavior pattern that is supposed to follow. Reacting differently to the abhorrent scarlet letter you are given will only solidify in the mind of the sheep just how ugly and dangerous to society you are.

Anytime the media trots out another daily edition of whatever typical social stimuli we are supposed to digest this time, our duty as citizens is apparently to observe it and behave appropriately. A recent example would be a local news story where a young girl wrote a letter to the executives at Dick's Sporting Goods with the complaint that their catalog featured no female models. The writer of the letter made sure to drop in the compulsory tag words. Words like "equality" for example. The writer actually pontificated about herself for over half of the letter and then went on a meaningless tangent for about a quarter of it, but those things don't matter. The purpose and quality was adequate for use by the media to serve as our daily dose of propaganda and training.

The sheep immediately began reacting the way their masters hoped, even using the expected "you go girl!" cliches. Lots of support was shown for the rude and sarcastic attitude of the letter and no one seemed to take issue with the writer asserting that because no females were in the catalog, that Dick's doesn't support women following their dreams. Also, no one mentioned the absurdity of the writer claiming that women would have an easier time breaking into women's sports if Dick's had featured women in their catalog.

My reaction to the news story was not similar to the reaction of the mindless drones in the comment section. As expected, this caused some people to regurgitate that ready-made label in a few different varieties. "Sexist". "Woman hater". The usual suspects. It was as predictable as anything can possibly be.

I'll just say that I actually don't dislike these people who attempted to control my behavior with their hateful labels. I don't have any negative feelings toward them personally because I know that they were reacting with absolutely no thought required. They were simply following the training their masters have given them. It was mental muscle memory for them. When one encounters a certain type of social stimuli, such as this letter I talked about or a gay marriage news story or an article about how evil guns and their owners are, you are required to pull from yourself a purely emotional, thoughtless, rigid response. Failing to do so, or rather, succeeding in doing anything but, will place you in a category that used to be reserved for people like Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. They'll tell you that you're as dangerous to society as any terrorist and in the more extreme cases, they'll give you that label as well.

These labels are completely meaningless. Sexist used to mean thinking that one sex is inherently inferior to the other. Racist used to mean the same thing in regard to race. Homophobic is a fairly new word, and had it been in use for longer, it would have meant the same thing in regard to sexual orientation. But those labels don't mean those things anymore. In fact, they mean only one thing. They simply mean that you didn't react correctly to the social stimuli of the moment. The sheep will sometimes use the blanket label of "bigot" in cases where they've determined that your transgression either doesn't fit into the neat box of racism or sexism, or when you've reacted incorrectly in such a way that they're confident that you're equally as dangerous on the full range of social issues. Outing yourself as a Christian can easily get you labeled a bigot, for example. Especially by atheists.

The thing to remember about all this political correctness is that it is essentially an "end-around" to avoid 1st Amendment constraints. The Marxists who are working hard to transform America into a communist-socialist utopia can not technically control what we think and say. So in place of taking office in Congress and passing laws against the 1st Amendment, the powerful have trained and conditioned the masses to ostracize members of society who do not react correctly to the distributed stimuli. It has the same desired effect, which is to silence dissent toward a collectivist society, but it's much harder for the masses to notice.