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I'm confused - are they not canceling people for sexual misconduct? If all the consequences are low probability and delayed by decades, why were so many people worked up about this?
The entire backlash against #MeToo only makes sense in the context of it actively going after currently prominent individuals.
I think the argument is that #MeToo accusations are strategically delayed to minimize harm to the left and maximize harm to the left's enemies.
If someone's in a position of power and supporting the left, the #MeToo accusations will be delayed until they're no longer in power or it can be guaranteed that they will be replaced by someone just as supportive to the left.
If someone's not supporting the left, the #MeToo accusations will come out immediately and be leveraged to their maximum extent to attempt to replace that person with someone more supportive to the left.
I'm not sure how much I agree with it, but this should be at least somewhat disprovable: there's gotta be some easy counterexamples.
Al Franken was a sitting senator when he resigned, but the accusations were from 2006 and didn't come out until 2017. And he did get replaced with another Democrat who won 76% of the vote, so it's plausible that it was timed to where they were sure the left wouldn't lose any power by it. But the accusations were from Leeann Tweeden, who has a few right-wing things in her bio: I don't know enough about her to know if that's accurate. "Left-wingers strategically get right-winger to accuse left-winger of sexual misconduct at a time where they're confident another left-winger can win the election" seems a little too complex for me to see as plausible.
My point is that's nonsense. These allegations most heavily impacted men in left-of-center spaces because those are the spaces where #MeToo-style accusations carried weight. Attempts to wield these kinds of accusations against right-wing figures by the left have largely been a failure.
The allegations coming out when they did was probably what wrecked Franken's career. They were pretty tame on their own, but the Dems were presently trying to hammer Roy Moore down in Alabama and wanted to avoid the slightest appearance of being soft on sexual misconduct.
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As one prominent politician put it: "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."
Notably, the Left still seems to hold Bill Clinton in high regard, despite a physical relationship with a much younger subordinate --- contra the TA and student elsewhere in this thread: intern and Most Powerful Man in the World. But somehow still allowed to be considered "consensual". And one direct accusation of rape. Also his wife who has long defended him against these accusations remains in good standing, as opposed to people who merely emailed Epstein a couple times.
Although the Chavez case could also be seen as an example of being willing to hold their own leaders to account: I generally have more respect for organizations that clearly abide by their stated principles. Uncharitably, I might not be surprised if we start hearing about how Chavez (famous union leader) was always a dirty right-winger because agriculture or quotes about immigration or that choice of flag.
Apparently, true progressives photosynthesise....
I'd like to see a story where one side has the politics of a certain Austrian painter wrapped in a soft pastel uwu aesthetic, while the other side has the aesthetics of the III. Reich and 1990's/2000's liberal politics. (In TVTropes terms, A Nazi by Any Other Name vs. Putting on the Reich.) Too many people, while they learned that the Nazis were bad, lack understanding of why, and treat it as an axiom; this is a house built on sand. Knowing that 'totalitarianism and racial narcissism are bad; the Nazis did those things; therefore the Nazis were bad' is the house built on rock.
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Well, he has been dead for 30 years, so it might be a little late to provide feedback and steer his behavior.
And it seems like this was not an unknown thing before now, so I don't know how much credit I want to give: "abiding by your stated principles" is mostly impressive when it's chosen over maximizing your capability to attain your goals. Is denouncing Cesar Chavez now costing them much?
But, to be perfectly mirrored, we'd have to look at people that died in the 90s, were credibly accused of sexual misconduct, and were right-wing, to see if right-wingers are currently denouncing or at least not supporting them. Maybe they don't clear this bar.
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Accusations that become culturally important scissor statements tend to be the ones that are delayed past the expiration of any possible proof or disproof. Like Brett Kavanaugh, how is he supposed to prove he didn't do something in high school?
That leaves everyone to fall back on their priors.
Less vague accusations, like those against Roger Ailes, don't make big waves.
Well, he could have kept a detailed journal of his activities showing what he did and where he went every day, that covers the entire period during which the event where he was accused of doing the thing could have occurred. But who does that?
That was a moment in which I realized that people destined for that level of achievement are often different from the rest of us. Like, I didn't do badly at a good high school, but I wasn't logging my social calendar purely out of principle; I was playing video games and hanging out with friends when I wasn't doing homework.
Of course Kavanaugh seems to have gotten in plenty of partying too. Like I said, different.
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