Politeness gone mad! Basic human decency taken too far!

I've been meaning to talk about political correctness for ages but recent discussions eg the hey hey thing made me decide to give it a shot.

So: I think "political correctness" is just a new form of politeness, eg an attempt to get people to treat others ethically and with consideration using peer pressure. Like any form of politeness, sometimes people get so caught up in the letter of the law that they lose track of the spirit, and it sometimes gets hijacked by those who care more about social standing and appearance than being a decent human being.

EDIT: something I was going to talk about and then ran out of spoons for was the way that the term "political corectness" is pretty much only used by people insulting a straw-man version of social justice. In this post I've acted liek it's a valid term to make life simpler but it's not, really.
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