@Brute: I imagine you were being facetious, but the concentration of hormone-altering birth controls and other powerful pharmaceuticals in the water supply probably increases year over year.
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interacti ... y1_01.html I frankly do wonder how many modern trends are influenced by this--from mood disorders to drug resistant diseases to lower fertility rates to increased transsexualism.
Anyway, political correctness seems like both an obvious and innocuous concept. IMO the weaponization/politicization of the term "political correctness" arises from the same angry white populism responsible for Trump. The marginalized and disenfranchised who feel threatened by "the other" and thus see "political correctness" as an affront to "muh freedumbs" (that is the freedom to marginalize and disenfranchise "the other" instead). Seriously, when I see the words "political correctness" in the context of someone complaining about it, my most immediate word associations are "bigot" and "Trump". Sorry, is that a "micro-aggression"?
In my opinion, political correctness is actually a combination of two very simple things your mamas should've taught you: showing basic respect toward others' differences and self concepts, and not putting your foot in your mouth.
There is also a clear and obvious difference between a mistake and political incorrectness. In keeping with the transsexualism example, if you call a trans woman "sir" by accident because you are not aware of their "varying identity" then you are making a mistake. If you deliberately misgender a trans person you are being politically incorrect and IMO an asshole (the two being sort of synonymous).
That should also make the answer to this question obvious:
"And at bottom, at what point does the quest for stamping out micro-aggressions just become old-fashioned witch hunts against well-meaning people?"
The answer is that it becomes a witch-hunt when the people actually are well-meaning. I don't see many examples of this, though. More often I see bigots shielding obvious bigotry by complaining about "political correctness".
For that matter, the stuff with students mistaking the priest for a KKK member seems rather unrelated to political correctness. I think it's much more a commentary on today's culture of fear promulgated from the top-down.
I don't really remember any "safe spaces" from my college daze, but then that was ten years ago. I suppose it's possible I'm too disconnected from whatever trends are so alarming. But to be totally honest, a lot of the complaints about political correctness seem ironically analogous to people "claiming victimization" over "micro-aggressions". Students organizing safe spaces through campus to discuss their differences and issues doesn't seem to be hurting anyone, much less any of you.