Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
A fair amount of the "police let them do it" can be blamed on the police preferring to attack people protesting police brutality over maintaining public order. Which, you know, kind of vindicates the people protesting police brutality.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
Indifference is insidious.
Interesting. How shall we assess indifference to police brutality? Why is it that when people protest unambiguous police brutality and the police respond by refusing to do their job, it's the fault of the protestors for failing to lick the boot hard enough? Should we be worried that one of the central institutions for public order will mutiny if not granted impunity for their crimes?
What is it with Trumpists forgetting who was president from 2016-2020? Is Barr saying Trump got her fired?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
No. Trump has, from day zero been far above and beyond normal politics in the level of blatant dishonesty, in hus sheer commitment to manufacturing an alternative to reality. It seems to have fallen off again, but for a while posters here even developed their own cope for this with the "Trump lies like a used car salesman" bit, like shameless dishonesty was some kind of virtue (but also that we were supposed to ignore the fact that Trump makes your average politician look positively Washingtonesque).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
He's just slandering a large chunk of the country with laughably false disinformation in a breathtaking display of hypocrisy.
I'm not sure that's the hill the Trumpist movement wants to die on.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
Looks to be less cancellation and more just government censorship:
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr issued a threat Wednesday against ABC and Disney, suggesting he would take action over comments made by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel about the alleged Charlie Kirk assassin.
Pay fealty or be destroyed. Oh, sure, you might win the lawsuit, but can you really justify the risk? Far safer to join in the coalition of corruption than fight it. One of the more consistent patterns we've seen is that businesses fear retribution from the Trump administration far more than they did from the Biden admin (and rightly so).
The long march through the institutions has only just begun, and for the populist right base, it'll be a enjoyable hike indeed.
The ongoing problem for the right is that they have no one to replace their left-wing opponents. There can't be a long march through institutions, because after they fire all their hated enemies they're going to have to hire them back. The movement is creatively and intellectually bankrupt, as evidence by the remarkable collection of individuals they found to fill out the Trump administration. Hell, one of the biggest reasons why these institutions skew so left in the first place is that the American Right proactively retreated from them (unsurprisingly, when you build a culture that disdains artists and intellectuals while your opposition builds a culture that practically worships them, all the artists and intellectuals end up being on the other side).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
No conservatives signing a letter that includes a denouncement of the current leader of the conservatives doesn't tell you conservatives don't care about free speech
Not alone, no, though given that Donald Trump is consistently anti-free speech, you would think principled conservative defenders would be willing to speak out against him on that front. Combined with other factors, it's pretty suggestive that conservatives are not pro-free speech, just pro-conservative. In particular, they never extend the same sufferance or support they demand from others. You say the football has been yanked too many times, but there's no history of betrayed reciprocity here. Cancel Culture has always been a thing, but it didn't become a Thing until right-wingers started complaining about it.
And now FIRE is progressive!
I didn't say FIRE was progressive. One of the peculiar aspects of Free Speech discourse is that is primarily an intra-left debate between liberals and progressives, with the right contributing little beyond parroting liberal arguments and complaining that progressives are rude to them.
Greg Lukanioff, however, is openly and unambiguously a liberal, and more broadly, virtually every non-partisan civil liberties organization is staffed and supported by liberals. There's not really any conservative equivalent to FIRE or the EFF or ACLU.
but of the successful attempts the left clearly dominates.
If by 'clearly dominates' you mean a 50% vs 40% success rate, that would seem like an indictment of the theory of left-wing supremacy, given that this is supposed to be their home turf, where they enjoy material and institutional superiority.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
If you define leftism as forced economic redistribution
This is an unhelpfully broad definition. This would include things like the Inclosure Acts, which redistributed common land to private landowners, or Sulla's proscriptions, which redistributed assets from Sulla's enemies to his allies. I could go on, but seizing the assets of people you don't like and giving them to people you do is a pervasive element of political conflict. Identifying that as the distinguishing feature of leftism is confusing, not illuminating.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
11d ago
I'm not sure I agree with that equivalency, but nevertheless: Louis CK wasn't fired (and, as with many cancelled individuals, couldn't be fired by the very nature of his work). He got in trouble for actions taken in the course of his professional career that were not even political, which led to people disassociating from him for a while. Bret Weinstein got in trouble for statements made in his capacity as an Evergreen State professor, and also wasn't fired (he resigned). Damore got in trouble for statements made in his capacity as a Google employee; whether or not they pertained to his regular duties does not strike me as particularly relevant (to illustrate: suppose Damore had made unambiguously fireable remarks to a fellow employee over his lunch break. The fact that this was outside of his normal duties is irrelevant). The argument in Damore's favor is not that Google had no basis to fire him over stuff not directly related to his job duties, but that he was punished for something that didn't warrant it.
However, as I said, I think this is an incredible narrow conceptualization of cancellation that doesn't match common usage, would exclude many instance that are generally considered to be central examples, and would capture all sorts of things that don't fit common understanding.
Like, hypothetical: someone makes a film disparaging MLK Jr (or whoever; it doesn't really matter). Outraged social media mobs lobby to have showings pulled and the director and producer blacklisted. Under your criteria, this would not be cancellation.
It is really interesting to see different Political Weirdo Forums' assessment of public mood re: the Current Moment. Because they're... all over the place.
has anyone else noticed this new “lawmaker” noun?
It picked up like a while ago as a catchall for elected officials (especially sub-Federal). It's suitably generic so you don't embarrass yourself by accidentally calling a county councilor a county boardmember, plus it sounds more impressive to quote a "lawmaker" instead of county board member from Tumbleweed County.
Where have these 'significant number of people' been in the last decade?
Providing basically all of the intellectual defense of free speech as a principle. Organization like FIRE, for instance, provide legal backing in First Amendment cases on a broad, non-ideological front despite being founded and run by liberals. The vast majority of signatories on the famous Harper's Letter are liberals or leftists. Few are conservative, and virtually none are associated with the populist Right that dominates the Republican establishment.
By contrast, right wing "free speech" defenders have mostly been massive hypocrites, e.g. Musk making a habit of suing critics or anti-BDS laws in Red states. Likewise, there are no real conservative equivalents to organizations like FIRE (or even the ACLU, despite its serious institutional decay) that make a point of standing up for free speech regardless of who the speaker is.
In the real world, it doesn't matter how highbrow and principled you are if you do nothing for them. If you sacrifice nothing for them. You're just a coward.
Can you be specific as to what you're expecting? If speaking out and providing legal support doesn't amount to anything, I'm not really sure what would count.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
I am not sure I follow. My comment was not meant to suggest these people deserved to be shitcanned; it was meant to provide well-known examples of people being cancelled for their actions. That in turn was meant to substantiate my point that Jiro's proposed definition of being cancelled would exclude many cases we'd intuitive consider to be central examples.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
Off the top of my head: Gina Carano (or Chuck Wendig :V), Louis CK, Bret Weinstein, and James Damore were all censured for things they said/did, not for tangential association with someone else.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
12d ago
This definition would exclude many, if not most, prominent examples of cancellation.
The right can and has canceled people all the time, no assassinations required. A cursory inspection of FIRE's databases on campus speech will reveal no lack of incidents coming from the right (830 of 1760 incidents), and that is purely focused on campus speaking events.
The major asymmetry is that there are a significant number of people on the left who oppose cancellation as a matter of principle; their counterparts on the right are either fewer in number or vastly more passive. Right-wing opposition to cancellation is overwhelmingly centered on right-wingers getting canceled.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
Cancel culture didn't start in 2015 or whenever you, the reader, became woke to it. It is not a left or right wing phenomenon. It is bad behavior, but it is also a corollary of freedom of speech and freedom of association. You could make a case for political views being a protected class, but nobody with policy making authority seems quite prepared to bite that bullet.
My take is, contacting an employer with the intent of getting someone fired for something not work-related or fired in the public interest as a 'concerned citizen', by definition, is cancel culture.
The ambiguity here is what does it for something to be not work-related? On the one hand I mostly agree that an employer's interest in their employees' lives starts and ends with the work day unless it directly relates, but I don't think this has unlimited extension. As an extreme example, if I discover one of my employees moonlights for ISIS, I think it is reasonable to fire him even if he has never lets his hobbies impact his work so far. Or, for a perhaps less silly example, if one of someone who operates dangerous machinery keeps racking up DUIs, I would think I am reasonable to worry about his alcoholism even if he hasn't shown up drunk yet.
But once you accept that there are some exceptions, it really becomes an argument about where the line is rather than whether or not there is a line.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
People afraid of anti-immigrant or white supremacist or anti-LGBT violence are far more reasonable in their fear than people afraid of anti-conservative violence. Not only have we had numerous incidents of domestic terrorism to that effect during the Trump era, but under the Trump administration many of these sentiments have obtain implicit or explicit state backing. If you want to dismiss them as irrational, you can, but you can't do it while simultaneously arguing that people like OP are rational in their fears.
(hilariously, in the time since I started composing this, we had an unironic 'kill the poor' statement from a Fox host proposed as a remedy to the problem of mentally ill homeless, so put another tally mark in the 'right-winger oblivious to their own rhetoric' column)
These groups achieved everything they needed by appealing to historical injustices, and they could have left it there.
This is pure revisionism. There was no moment where 'cultural conservatives' agreed to some compromise position on social issues. They have fought every inch of the way. There was no 'there' to leave it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
Jan 6 will continue to be a major point of contention not for the level of violence in itself, but what that violence (along with other aspects) represents: an attempt forcibly subvert election outcomes. This is sui generis in the history of American political violence.
That seems pretty distant for saying they should be beaten up for the positions they hold.
Firstly, physically manhandling someone against their will is assault. But, to rewind, the reason he is 'clarifying' is that he previously said this:
"I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way. It's time to put an end to this nonsense."
If you consistently characterize peaceful protestors as criminals, suggest the police should be deployed against them, suggest people should take matters into their own hands, etc... then I'm not inclined to be charitable to coy walkbacks.
Do you have examples of prominent right-wingers doing either of this (for cases of unambiguous police brutality)?
Off the top of my head: Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump Jr. both openly mocked the Pelosi attack. Mike Lee mocked the murder Melissa Hortman and suggested the far-left was to blame. I don't know what 'unambiguous' police brutality means, given how lenient the US is to police violence, efforts of state governments to curtail protest rights, and the tendency of right-wingers to equate any form of protest stronger than standing quietly for an hour or two with rioting, but one of the more notorious incidents to come out of the summer 2020 protests was the dispersal of protests in Lafayette Square in DC at the direction of Donald Trump and with the approval of prominent Republicans. We have Ben Shapiro has advocated that Derek Chauvin be pardoned, as another, later example.
On a policy level, you have things like the Trump administration pulling back on civil rights investigations related to police brutality and refusing to enforce oversight, which I would argue constitutes tacit approval for police brutality (as long as the victims are not the wrong sort of people).
For more grass roots expression, I guess you're just going to have to take my word for it that a lot of conservative voters subscribe to the Tango & Cash theory of criminal justice (and can get pretty damn racist about it to boot). Or not.
Alternatively, if you'll forgive the shitty image macro, I think this succinctly captures why left-wingers are unimpressed by right-wing scolding.
(90% of what I know about it I pick up from this website).
No offense, but the TheMotte is literally a forum for right-wing culture warriors and a handful of contrarian gadflies who like arguing with them. Even for the people who aren't far right, they're almost always people with progressive-critical views. It is in no way representative of American political culture, or even of normie conservative American political culture. It gives you a very one-sided view of the state of affairs, e.g. persistently highlighting RW grievances with academia while ignoring or downplaying influential right-wing media figures and general bad behavior. (If one were to base their impression of US politics purely on Motteposting, one might conclude that the right has virtually no media presence, rather than the reality that there's a massive right-wing media ecosystem).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
Not only that - we've had several domestic incidents stemming from ideas that are fairly normal on the Motte (e.g. Great Replacement Theory).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
I'm not sure what the lesson is there
Debate is a skill. Most people overestimate their ability to assemble an argument on the fly, overestimate their knowledge of a subject, and even when theoretically prepared overestimate their composure when an unfriendly interlocutor starts pushing on them.
You can loose an argument to someone who is obviously, comically wrong because they more prepared and more composed in the actual debate.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
13d ago
If you have certain values, and you express them, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who would love to see you get decorated with your own blood, watch you exsanguinate, a chunk of mineral tearing through your vital structures, turning you into a pile of meat instead of a man.
Interesting.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to put this on you, specifically, but this is exactly how many of those people have felt for years or decades - Like conservatives want them (or their friends/family) to not exist, and would shrug and make excuses (if not cheer) if they were murdered. Looking at the rapidity with which many conservatives started calling for blood (and in particularly renewing already intense animosity against trans people), it's, uh, hard to blame them for thinking that.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
14d ago
There are people like @JeremiahDJohns or @ArmandDoma [1] [2] who are very critical of the far left, but also seem to not understand how Kirk isn't "far right".
TheMotte's idea of far-right and YIMBY twitter's idea of far-right are two non-overlapping circles.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
14d ago
But once it does happen, celebrating this happy turn of events is perfectly wholesome.
I am personally of the view that celebrating someone's death is bad, even if the person was an asshole, because exercising sadism is bad for you. I understand why people aren't tearing their clothes and gnashing their teeth. I likewise understand (and basically agree with) why they push back on efforts to lionize Kirk. However, even with all that, to actively celebrate it is too much. Most of us have negative or inappropriate thoughts, but you should aim to tame them, not cultivate them. There are instances where I might cut you some slack (e.g. NYers cheering OBL's death), but it is not wholesome.
What sticks in my craw about pearl-clutching from conservatives over less-than-decorous reactions to Kirk's death is how one-sided it is. Trumpism is a movement literally founded on turfing out respectable conservatives in favor of tribal nastiness. A significant part of Trump's initial appeal was that he was a loud and proud asshole who didn't care about decorum, and that has carried forward through his entire movement. The aesthetic of cruelty, a gleeful willingness to offend ("facts don't care about your feelings") has been a central element post-Trump conservatism*. The reason you're not supposed to celebrate Kirk's death isn't a generalized principle of decency or respect for the dead. It's because Charlie Kirk is a Good Guy and you're not supposed to make fun of Good Guys. It's totally cool to celebrate death and misery as long the subject deserves it.
*It was always present (e.g. Rush Limbaugh), but under Trump it came to the forefront.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
15d ago
In addition to the Helldivers bit others mentioned, I'd note that nowadays the Three Arrows has been picked up (seeming without irony) by a number of far-left types.
Bending over backwards to make excuses for police murdering people and undermining efforts to hold them accountable is an extreme and hostile form of indifference (and it produces more crime). I used to be more charitably inclined, until 2020 made it abundantly clear that many right-wingers were not simply credulous of police excuses and actively supported police brutality as long as it was directed against their idea of someone who deserved it.
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