I honestly think the phrase “politically-correct” has done more to destroy frank discussions and the spirit of intellectual inquiry than anything else. The moment someone says what’s really on their mind, knee-jerk accusations and insincere apologies abound, forcing people who may genuinely have an interesting angle on a topic to trip over themselves in backtracking that foot out of their mouths.

Are we that naive that we will accept their apologies as being heartfelt? No. I’d rather hear what’s really on their minds. I can always say “I disagree, but I’ve learned something from this conversation.”

I have to add that someone walking up to you in public and making their opinion known to you is not the same thing as you accidentally coming across a blog entry, an online article, or an online comment made. No one has any control of where you surf on the internet. If you accidentally stumbled upon a Samoan supremacist group, don’t blame the members for vowing to the certainty of the Taro kicking the Russet potato’s backside (wow, now that was a PC sentence right there if I’ve ever seen one! See how much fun we’re not having?)

Whenever I come across someone who wants people like me dead (too numerous to list here), I don’t wag my finger and scream invectives with righteous indignation. The only word that vibrates with excitement and anticipation within me is “why?” It’s almost a forensic curiosity in getting to the bottom of what made that conclusion tick.

My point is, just because someone has their prejudices ingrained, it doesn’t mean we should shush them with a whack on the knuckles and walk away. If someone feels creeped out by my black eyes, it doesn’t mean their puff pastry recipe stinks. What happens if they know something I don’t? I have bad teeth: does that mean you shouldn’t listen to my Photoshop advice? Not if you want to land that so-so date with that E-harmony woman who has five kids from six previous marriages who demands you have at least two houses.

Should we be so arrogant as to think that we’re always right in everything, and everyone else is always wrong when they don’t agree with us? No. Only people who use Babylock to serge think like that. (See how boring that last PC statement was?)

I’m always an interested listener, especially when I come across someone who doesn’t agree with me. When co-workers use to come to my office to talk (back when I had a full time job…when Jimmy Polk was our president), if I learned they were from a party that opposed my views, I would refrain from attacking and genuinely listen. It’s always enlightening to hear people who don’t parrot my views. People who agree with me bore me. Maybe I can learn something new. At worst, I confirm that he or she is a jerk.

At best, I learn I was wrong, and quickly move to reassess my own prejudices or ignorance.

I think when you combine lack of import tariffs, overseas outsourcing, and illegal immigrant workers, that’s a substantial group of people who are taking American jobs away. If those people are not here physically, they are undercutting the supply lines from afar.

That’s not the entire picture though. It’s convenient to be able to put a face to a villain, to target a foe that everyone can immediately point a finger at. However, I think there’s a larger adversary that can’t be pinned down as easily: it’s the democratizing nature of technology. In many job interviews I have gone to, the interview often began with the boss prefacing “the business isn’t what is used to be.”

Perhaps it’s the field that I’m involved in (graphics / publishing / performance / intellectual property), but I can’t think of many sectors where computers and the internet haven’t affected in some way or another. The access given to anyone with a mere computer connection gives him / her the ability to circumvent an elitism once reserved only to those with thousands of dollars of equipment, professional networking, upstart capital, and physical presence. Now that’s not to say they’ll always have the ability and know-how to produce works of comparable, professional quality. However, at the same time this “new democracy” floods the market with the riffraff of unwashed masses who charged a copy of desktop publishing software, or some DJ mixing program to his/ her credit card, it also gives visibility to true masters of the craft who would otherwise have remained undiscovered.

There was a time a musician or writer needed to find an agent, a publisher who needed to be pandered to, a test market, and a research company to gauge public appeal and financial risk in the returns, before she could even get her product out to the audience. Not anymore. These days, you could create something and share it the moment you saved and uploaded the file.

Of course, easy come easy go. And that means, the landscape is absolutely inundated with mediocrity – my blog is a good place to start. But here’s the unsung perk of technological democracy: where the established artists once had a comfortable moat to cushion against all these creative basement zombies from entering their domain, they now have to work that much harder to rise above the thicket, to actually prove to their backers that they have what it takes above and beyond the call of duty.

They have to answer to quality.