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Today, Jesse Singal wrote an opinion for the New York Times where he argued that Trump defunding youth gender research was a bad thing, despite the terrible research coming out of that part of science. He thinks that reform is in order, not slash-and-burn practices. In my opinion, there is definitely enough research out there by now that you can confidently release something like a Cass Report without anything new. Certainly, funding bad actors makes no sense, but to me, reform is little gain, and even a good new study must follow around minors that have gone through the unethical transgender science grinder.
It reminds me of an (unpopular) opinion Trace shared the other day on Twitter regarding the axing of funds for museums and libraries. Even if anthropology is 99% leftist, well, the institutions belong to those who show up, so right wingers just need to get in there and fix it themselves. While I appreciated that stance as it related to conservative law organizations, and as it related to Twitter when left-wingers were leaving the site en masse, I find it pretty distasteful to give up anthropology to positive feedback loops, and let our history become a mockery when it is within one's power to just raze it.
Deus Ex took a look at this perspective. Spoilers for Deus Ex:General Carter, after the UNATCO plot is exposed, decides to stay within the organization, because institutions are only as good as the people that comprise them. Later in the game, you see him in the Vandenburg compound. He has given up on his idea of reform and joined the resistance.
I'm going to guess most of this forum disagrees with Trace and Jesse on this matter in pretty much the same way that I do. Can you name any areas in government or other organizations where you do agree with them?
The fundamental problem the Red Tribe/American conservatism faces is a culture of proud, resentful ignorance. They can't or won't produce knowledge and they distrust anyone who does. They don't want to become librarians or museum curators or anthropologists. The best they can manage is the occasional court historian or renegade economist, chosen more for partisan loyalty than academic achievement and quite likely to be a defector. The effect is this bizarre arrangement where rather than produce conservative thought, they are demanding liberals think conservative thoughts for them.
Occasionally rightists will plead weakness to rationalize their lack of intellectual productivity, but this is nonsense. They have had plenty of money, plenty of political power, and a broad base of support. Unless we accept the Trace-Hanania thesis that they literally just lack human capital, we're left with the conclusion that the right-wing withdrawal from intellectual spaces is a sort of distributed choice. Razing institutions because you can't be bothered to make your case is just barbarism.
I have spent my entire adult life, and even before that, with the knowledge that if I ever spoke my true political/social views I would instantly torpedo my entire career and social standing forever. I have been living under a censorious regime in a country that supposedly enshrines freedom of speech as one of its highest virtues for My. Entire. Life. The only place where I can even come close to honestly speaking about how I view the world is in anonymous and pseudoanonymous forums like this one, and even then I take pains not to get too real with y'all because it's really not that difficult to dox someone with a long post history and it just takes one obsessive.
Why are there no rightists in the academy? Could it be because they were systematically deplatformed and depersoned and dethroned on a generational, decades long project to completely seize control of elite production forever? No, it's because righties are dumdums, we're all dumdums.
And now you have the audacity to complain when the institutions you hollowed out are being kicked over, all the support columns contributed from the right having been forcibly removed? Boo hoo.
If you may allow me a moment of cathartic ranting emerging from decades of repression; razing these institutions is a moral imperative. I want them to do it more. I voted for it. I hope it gets worse for you. I hope your degrees not only become worthless, but millstones to drown you. I hope you have to hide your former affiliations on your social media and resumes, like I have had to do with my views for my entire life. I hope you know every ounce of the fear and anxiety your regime has smothered on me like an inescapable burial shroud, for, again, my entire fucking life. I hope they are so thorough with their dismantling of your institutions that in 50 years your cathedrals that are on the tips of every tongue now are only vaguely recalled in retrospect. A quaint historical artifact, like Standard Oil. Only then can something somewhat resembling what was lost be built from the ashes.
You stomped on us for 20+ fucking years, did you never think what would happen when we became the shoe? You deserve everything bad that is happening to you; you will deserve the much worse things that are still to come.
Sorry for the heat, but it's probably more honest than what you usually get. If you read between the lines, you should have seen this seething rage boiling over years ago. I am quite certain that many, many people feel the same - they just don't say it, yet; the habit of censoring one's own emotions, thoughts, and opinions for safety being deeply ingrained. The tighter you seal it, the more dangerous the pressure cooker becomes.
No, I actually hear stuff like this on the regular from gainfully employed relatives and acquaintances, loudly telling anyone who will listen how they're not allowed to speak their mind for fear of dire consequences.
For reasons that I don't understand, a lot of right-wingers simultaneously openly, viciously loathe liberals but also seem to crave their respect and approval.
And why don't you believe them?
You do realize what they AREN'T saying, right? Do you ever wonder what they don't say to you, you seemingly being clearly hostile to their entire worldview, when they complain about not being able to speak? Do you have an ounce of self-awareness about what a damning statement it is on your character that people complain to you about not being allowed to speak their minds instead of actually speaking their minds? Complaining to you about not being able to say things is their only safe way of expressing that they don't feel comfortable actually expressing themselves around you.
People crave good careers and not being harassed by twitter randos. In many areas access to such things is gated by saying goodthink and not saying wrongthink. Don't confuse kowtowing to the mad emperor with heartfelt respect for his insane majesty.
I think you will understand this position better when you are made to bow.
Considering that several of them are openly sexist or homophobic and routinely make outrageously bigoted comments about blacks and latinos to my face, with seemingly no expectation that I might find any of that objectionable, I can only imagine the true opinions they're hiding are that George Wallace was right.
(to be fair, at least one of them seems to grasp that it's not appropriate to openly say all our black coworkers are incompetent, but he either thinks I privately agree with him or at least trusts that since he outranks me I just have to put up with it (he's correct on that last point)).
What makes you think I haven't? I don't think conservatives understand that the reason their ideological adversaries are unsympathetic is not because they don't understand what it's like to have to bite your tongue, it's because many of them have had a boot up their ass their entire lives.
whose boot?
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