We’re constantly finger-wagged that wokeness, and its ancestor political correctness, is all just about being ‘nice’ and ‘polite’. That it doesn’t hurt anybody.
On the contrary: political correctness can and has led to some of the worst horrors of the 21st century (so far).
The Twin Towers would still be standing and 3,000 Americans still alive – not to mention the consequent disastrous toll of the ‘Great War on Terror’ – had an airport official not been paralysed by bureaucratic political correctness. When US airline ticket agent Michael Tuohey checked in Mohammed Atta and Abdulaziz Al-Omari at Portland International Jetport on the morning of September 11, 2001, he thought, “If these guys don’t look like Arab terrorists, who does?” Atta in particular sent a chill down Tuohey’s spine: he “had a palpable contempt in his eyes”.
Then the political correctness drummed in reasserted itself. “I mentally slapped myself, thinking, ‘I have to be politically correct.’” Besides, due to PC-infused regulations, he “couldn’t set them up for extra security”.
And so, 3,000 people died. Atta was, of course, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He and Al-Omari hijacked the plane that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.
If not for political correctness, too, paedophile monster Joshua Dale Brown might have been unmasked years earlier.
A horrified father has admitted he had fears about his son’s ‘weird and creepy’ childcare worker three years before the alleged monster was arrested for sickening crimes against children.
But the devastated dad told Daily Mail Australia he didn’t raise the alarm for fear of being branded homophobic for speaking out against Joshua Dale Brown, 26.
By the time the father’s two-year-old came under Brown’s shadow, the predator had been working in childcare for five years.
Five years in which nobody else was able to notice – or too afraid to notice – what was obvious to at least one father.
Brown was described as socially withdrawn and unsettling around children by the father-of-one, who said he always had a bad feeling about him.
He said Brown would regularly wear inappropriate ‘skin-tight jeans and leather boots’ to work in the childcare centre, and went out of his way to avoid him.
The father said Brown also refused to make eye contact and dodged any conversation with him.
‘I would try and interact with Josh when I dropped my son off and chat, and he would always turn his head and never look me in the eye. It was strange,’ he said.
‘He acted shady, would look away or at the floor, and my son never wanted to go to him, but he would run to the other educators.
‘I spoke to my wife about it and said “something is not right here”.
Sadly the father was all too aware of what would happen, should he dare to cast aspersions on one of the most protected ‘intersectional’ species.
‘But I was worried if I followed up, I’d be “that guy” and labelled homophobic, which I’m not.
‘I had no proof and what could I say? “He wears skin tight skinny jeans and leather boots with one-inch heels and looks like he is going clubbing, not to work?”’
Face it, Brown could have worn see-through lingerie, heels, full makeup and a wig and nobody would have said anything. In fact, he’d probably have been held up by the media as ‘stunning and brave’.
The father said he has offered support to the women educators at the centre who he said have cared for his son ‘like their own’ since he was a baby.
“This is not on them. They didn’t know – they are mums themselves. I have asked them if they were ever suspicious like me.
“But they just thought he was really great with the kids,” the dad said.
If only more people’s ‘situational awareness radar’ had been as acutely tuned as that father’s.
And if only political correctness hadn’t stopped him saying anything.
