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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   39305 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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It's Different When We Do It

I'm against Libs of TikTok cancelling random poor workers for not knowing when to shut up. But this article makes a case for it.

First, the author makes a case that "Normie Bloodlust" is common and never punished. Think of people expressing hope that a rapist is raped in prison. I don't think the author believes that this behavior is good, per se, just common and usually unpunished.

He then goes on to say that "there’s nothing unfair, and certainly nothing unconstitutional, about facing social opprobrium for unpopular speech and behavior." He seems to support that sort of cancellation, whichever side of the aisle it is coming from.

But then he argues that the Right has been facing a different, unfair type of cancellation:

The reason you can get fired for liking a Steve Sailer tweet, or donating $25 to a legal defense fund, isn’t because of a Groundswell of Popular Outrage — it’s because your employer can face 9-figure fines if they refuse to enforce a particular set of social strictures.

When my doxx was released, the “expose” got 400 likes on Twitter. For perspective, I’ve had 10 tweets with more than that in the last 72 hours. 400 likes is not “viral”, even with a dozen antifa doxxing rings (at the height of their energy) and a reporter from the Guardian helping it along.

It turns out, nobody actually cares if an entry-level finance drone thinks that feminism sucks.

But it wasn’t about a “social media outrage mob”. My employer was a glowie intelligence contractor — they didn’t “cave to popular pressure”. They don’t even sell to the public.

It was about avoiding the threat of being sued for creating a Hostile Work Environment by allowing my words to go unpunished. They fired me to comply with federal law.

The last interesting point he makes is that:

A good friend who works in HR issues the following warning:

“not sure people realize that 1) a presidential assassination attempt is like a every 30 years black swan event where the HR Ladies are forced to fire anyone who says the wrong thing, and 2) the HR Ladies relish these opportunities to make a few ingroup firings because it reestablishes their neutrality and legitimacy”

“lots of ppl seem to be victory lapping over a "vibe shift" that is really more of a temporary vibe window that will snap shut within weeks”

I think he makes some good points though I disagree with the conclusion that it is fine and dandy for the Right to cancel struggling zero-influence people for saying things that were normal to say two weeks ago.

I don't think it was normal, even two weeks ago, to actually call for Trump to be assassinated, and yeah, you might have faced consequences for it (or not, depending on how your boss feels). That's why this celebration of victory is premature, nothing has really changed. Many individuals on the left have overreached and gotten burned, but nobody is going to get fired merely for supporting Biden, let alone for being gay or black or trans. The rules, written and unwritten, about what you can or can't say at work, are still written or unwritten and enforced or unenforced by the same fat liberal white women.

to actually call for Trump to be assassinated

Prof. John McWhorter, of all people, did, on a public podcast. He later recanted, but still.

Glen Loury can't abandon the propaganda of McWhorter as a " moderate, centrist calm reasonable person" while criticizing him for his comments of favoring the assassination of Trump.

We really are living in the times of the cult of symbolic centrism, symbolic antiracism, symbolic racism, symbolic nazism, etc, etc. Where groups and individuals are assigned irrational undeserving positive and negative status and associations, based on false expectations.

Hope we see some genuine lowering of status and consequences for people like McWhorter and the end of the illusion that people like Loury want to maintain. Is Loury going to stop constantly talking with McWhorter in the way he isn't talking with many people to the right of his?

Alternatively, things really are coming apart to such a degree that even the calm, reasonable people are losing their minds.

A lot of people think that Trump dead would be a net-positive outcome. My problem isn't that this is mean, but rather that it is dangerously wrong. Trump does not generate the culture war, but rather was generated by it. Killing him will not magic it away, but will only throw gasoline on the fire.

Trump got Babbit killed. Trump is getting people killed.

Trump is not some magical output of a culture war. Trump is a danger to us all.

If you want the violence to stop, the person blaring violent rhetoric nonstop has to be silenced.

  • -24

Trump got Babbit killed.

How, exactly? Please explain the causal chain between something Trump did and the Babbit shooting.

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