Defiant prose

Speaking of the “invoked reader” ploy, a college English text I recently perused warned that such a rhetorical device could be dangerous, because it runs the very real risk of alienating readers: “Those who read text and do not fit the mold of the reader invoked there can feel excluded from the text–left out and thus disaffected,” the authors admonished.

Although the authors have clearly stated a valid point and raised a notable concern, my worry is that it can be taken too far–particularly by the so-called educated, cultural elite in America today. And by this, I mean the prim and proper pundits at the New York Times, for instance–or the stuffy professors in the Ivory Towers at various American institutions of higher learning across the country–at the universities, no less.

My concern is the alarming trend of political correctness, academic censorship, and intellectual inhibitions that regularly beset the prestigious writing world. In my opinion, fierce, jarring, polemic rhetoric seems to be discouraged and discredited in academia–now more than ever before.

We are told to be “civilized” or “civil.” We are enjoined to be considerate, to be compassionate, to be careful about hurting the feelings of others, because, in an increasingly relativistic and nihilistic world, in a world where the sacred traditions of Western rationalism and enlightenment values are being routinely called into question and even callously discarded, everyone and no one is right and wrong at the same time. There are no longer any universal truths. Common sense values are rapidly eroding. Aristotle is cast by the wayside. “Diversity and multi-cultural perspectives” are blindly embraced.

And yet, while we eagerly promote “gay rights” and “women’s studies,” while we embrace “ethnic diversity” and promote “multiculturalism,” I cannot assert my identity and individuality as a man–as a writing conservative male in mainstream America today. I am not allowed to use such classic and traditional personal pronouns as “He” or “him.” I am forbidden from using “man” or “mankind” to broadly refer to humanity as a whole, implicitly including females as well. No major U.S. newspaper would publish me.

They–the liberals and their Gestapo PC police–would have my prose arrested, stifled or re-educated. In their eagerness to be “inclusive,” I feel oddly excluded–ostracized–often viciously attacked–much maligned and marginalized–or viewed askance .
They would subdue my raw, muscular, masculine, adamant, confident, and vigorous prose. They would deprive me of my innate manhood. They would castrate and neuter me intellectually, as they would the great Frederich Nietzsche, were he alive today. They would have me instead as a kinder, gentler, more sensitive and compassionate–more “reasonable and professional,” more “enlightened”–weaker–writer.

I will have no part of it.

Here, in the Op-Ed pages of the Saipan Tribune, from Ed Stephens, John Rosario and myself, you get boisterous, strident, swashbuckling prose you won’t find anywhere else. The CNMI is truly the last frontier of American journalism. I hope we keep it that way.