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Halloween Costume Blues

That magical time of year is here, when the Left goes out of its way to be the enemy of fun.

Hmmm…we’d better narrow that down. That isn’t really a seasonal thing. We refer specifically to the night of Hallowe’en, the evening before the Feast of All Souls. This masquerade event, which has grown to be the nation’s second-largest holiday (commercially speaking), is marked by morbid and gruesome themes.

It also increasingly has a dark side.

It draws the soulless and humorless from their loathsome lairs to suck the fun out of the living.

They seem immune to garlic, and it’s illegal and distasteful to spike them. Nor do they require an invitation, unfortunately; no Old-World vampiric courtesy for them. Holy symbols, though, do enrage them—and so will an old-fashioned costume contest.

In the spirit of obliging their need for outrage, we propose a rating system, to evaluate your costume’s offensiveness—because in the battle for Hallowe’en, offense is better than defense.

Our “point system” will be based on cultural appropriation. As a general rule, the more points you are given, the more superior the “culture” you appropriate is, to that of your own culture. (Your own culture, American Greatness reader, is clearly inferior to any other culture, real or imaginary—so you have an advantage. Or should we say, a privilege?)

This list will help you maximize outrage, with your costume, or your child’s. (Having a child, or better yet, more than one, is also offensive—so while it’s too late to do so in time for this Hallowe’en if you haven’t yet, plan ahead for next season).

There. Did you rack up a good outrage score?

Are they pretending to be deeply upset more energetically than you’re pretending to be a caricature?

In 2019, that’s winning Hallowe’en

Closing Note from Monalisa:

I despise political correctness.

I grew up under Ceaucescu’s brutal communist regime, a regime that practiced the same tactics as the “politically correct” woke-scolds of today. In communist Romania (The Socialist Republic of Romania, to be clear), self-appointed arbiters of “respect” and “the greater good” decreed what was and wasn’t acceptable thought, speech, and action.

Under communism, wrongthink and wrongfun were punished with depersonification. People lost their freedoms as well as the means to make a living. They were ostracized, shamed, and punished for defying tyrants—both official and unofficial. The communists used identity politics (even though it wasn’t called that at the time) to divide people and solidify their power over them. In this they were just like the “progressives” of today.

It always starts small. Something seemingly innocent here. Something totally innocent there. We don’t want to offend people. Surely, you’re not for being offensive. Surely, you don’t want to make people uncomfortable. You’re a nice person after all. Just be “respectful.”

But it never works out quite that way. Because by today’s standards, some cultures are more equal than others, some people are more deserving of “respect” than others, and some people must never be offended while others must suffer through any offense given.

To quote Charlton Heston, “Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history’s pocket change. Courage is history’s true currency.”

I cannot echo Mr. Heston’s statement strongly enough.

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About Joe Long

Joe Long lives in Cayce, South Carolina. He holds a master's degree in history from Georgia College and State University. His book, Wisdom and Folly: A Book of Devotional Doggerel, was published in 2020. He has a very patient wife, five homeschooled children, and a job.

Photo: Ashley Sandberg/EyeEm/Getty Images

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