What’s more, in many ways, Trump is practically the poster boy for PC. Remember that obnoxiously smug Google Chrome extension set up to auto-replace “political correctness” with “treating people with respect,” a variation on a left-wing leitmotif? Trump validates that Chrome extension with the entirety of his behavior. If anyone ever creates a Chrome extension that replaces “political incorrectness” with “being a bullying jerk,” they should call it Trump 1.0.

Trump has, at various times, painted Mexicans who live illegally in the United States as a horde of violent criminals and rapists; impugned a judge’s impartiality because of the judge’s Mexican background; suggested banning all Muslims from entering the United States; speculated that the mother of a fallen American Muslim soldier who appeared with her husband at the Democratic National Convention didn’t speak because “she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say”; mockingly mimicked a disabled reporter for challenging Trump’s false statement that thousands of Muslims had danced in celebration on September 11; and insulted the looks of his female primary rival Carly Fiorina with the jeering comment, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”

When a man who behaves this way is held up as a fighter against political correctness, it lends credence to the leftist fallacy that the alternative to PC is unabashed bigotry and male chauvinist pig-erry. Yes, it’s very true that the cavalier, anything-goes abuse of such loaded words as “bigotry,” “racism,” “sexism,” “misogyny” etc. by the cultural left has greatly weakened the stigma and impact of those terms. (If you can get “called out” for racism for wearing dreadlocks while white, there’s not much shame in being called a racist.)

But Trump-style “political incorrectness” can easily have the reverse effect, especially if Trump is actually elected president: it can be invoked as proof that demeaning and hateful attitudes toward minorities and women really are rampant in America and that PC is the thin rainbow line that stands between us and the triumph of such ugliness.