In my experience, by far the worst thing about political correctness as a cultural force has been anti-PC backlash over the last 20 years. In my lifetime, that'

In my experience, by far the worst thing about political correctness as a cultural force has been anti-PC backlash over the last 20 years. In my lifetime, that's been a far more destructive force than even the most cartoonish forms of PC overreach that people like to cite. Since the mid-'90s we have lived in a world where assholes have been given a blank check to be as dumb and toxic as they want- all they have to do is preface it with, "Now, it might not be politically correct to say this, but..." They also have a blank check after the fact because they can blow off any fallout from some dumb, toxic thing that they said with excuses like, "I'm too busy to be politically correct all the time". I have literally never in my life been affected by political correctness, and I would guess that the reality is that hardly anyone else has been either (especially the people that complain the longest and loudest about it). But I would argue that the most toxic elements of American culture and American politics nowadays come from people who feel empowered to be assholes, because they can blow off any criticism by claiming that their assholishness is just a lack of political correctness rather than plain old asshole behavior. Put another way, I remember several decades before political correctness existed as a concept that people were generally aware of. I think it has enabled a spike in asshole behavior that hasn't been good for anyone involved. Some of those assholes are stereotypical overly PC people doing stereotypically overly PC things, but in my opinion something like 99% of those assholes (that we wouldn't have, were it not for the PC movement) are the vocally anti-PC people who think they can and should embrace the most toxic versions of themselves because to do anything else would be to give in to the PC people that they imagine are lurking around every corner. It has enabled them to be the worst they can be, and to double down on it by lionizing the worst assholes they can find, all in the name of being anti-PC.