7 ms·

He decides because he believes something strongly it permits him to publicly attack someone he works with... Imagine having to deal with this guy in a team when

He decides because he believes something strongly it permits him to publicly attack someone he works with... Imagine having to deal with this guy in a team when he has a strong opinion on something the team disagrees with ...

holler 6y ago
Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.
- dlp211 6y ago
  > where mob rule is becoming the status quo. The Government of the US is currently (mostly) controlled by a party that received fewer votes.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    That's not mob rule, that's completely and absolutely how the legal US government operates. Overturning the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment, which is no trivial task. Mob rule is entirely different: it refers to rule imposed from outside the law, possibly by a large group. Also, the "fewer votes" really only applies to the presidency, not the senate, house, or governors.
    - baddox 6y ago
      > That's not mob rule, that's completely and absolutely how the legal US government operates. Those aren't mutually exclusive. Middle school civics class explanations of the electoral college are fine. You can understand the reasons the electoral college was created and still oppose the fact that there have been multiple recent cases where the electoral college went against the popular vote. And, not that it's particularly relevant, but I highly doubt the very people who designed the electoral college would approve of its use when it seems to routinely elect someone who lost the popular vote.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        On the contrary, I think the electoral college was introduced precisely to ensure that the person who won the election was not who would win the popular vote.
        baddox 6y ago
        That's certainly not the case. The electoral college was designed such that each state's legislature chooses how to attribute their electoral college votes. Many states in the first few presidential elections just had their state legislatures assign the votes. But still, I find it difficult to believe that the people who designed the electoral college would think it's okay that we held a national election, we got to see who wins the popular vote, and we still choose a different person for President.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        As I understand it, many of the founding fathers explicitly feared that general populace would vote poorly and wanted people who were educated and had access to sufficient information to make a decision to do so on their behalf.
        waterhouse 6y ago
        I was also told the following rationale: If elections are decided entirely by popular vote, then candidates are incentivized to campaign in population centers, and have no incentive to ever visit sparsely populated states. (Like, bringing your margin from 70% to 85% of 4 million people is worth more than going from 0% to 100% of 400k people.)
        dlp211 6y ago
        Except it's simply not true. Instead candidates focus on a set of fairly high-population swing states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania.
        6y ago
    - majormajor 6y ago
      Not the Senate? The Senate results in huge vote power discrepancies.
      - dekhn 6y ago
        Power discrepancies and mob rule are different things. [edit: though it's correct that the Senate, like the EC, is not "popular", as every state has two senators, rather than a proportionate amount, like representatives]
        chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        That point in your edit is actually a pretty big deal. We're already in a situation where a majority of the Senate represents less than 20% of the country's population. Some people will (correctly) retort that the Senate was never intended to be popular in the way you used the word, but -- just like the Electoral College -- the significant concentration of population in urban areas is something that the founders almost certainly didn't foresee. While "mob rule" may be an unfair term, not only did more people vote for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, there have been more votes cast for Democrats than Republicans as a whole not only in Senate races over the last decade but in House races, too -- the Republican majority there is protected by gerrymandering.
    - dlp211 6y ago
      Maybe the mob is trying to rule because it finds the US government illegitimate because they're majority isn't being represented in the government. In order for Democrats to win the House they have to get more votes than 50%. Democrats received millions of more votes for Senate but don't control that chamber. Democrats received more votes for the Presidency twice this century and have been denied the power of that branch and as a consequence, the third branch, the judiciary, is currently controlled by Republicans as well.
      - Simon_says 6y ago
        Trump is the president of the States, not the people. Anyways, he won 304 out of 538 votes, which is, in fact, a majority.
        dlp211 6y ago
        Yes, we all know how an archaism in our system allows for what is now the most powerful branch of government to be controlled by the minority in this country.
        Simon_says 6y ago
        Sorry, you said that he received fewer votes. I thought you might not know.
  - donw 6y ago
    No, only the current President received less of the popular vote. The government is more than just the President. Congressbeings are elected via direct election in their districts. The Electoral College is working as designed. It was never intended to implement a direct democracy. Here's a video that goes into more detail on the Electoral College and the Popular Vote Compact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUX-frlNBJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUX-frlNBJY
    - thisiszilff 6y ago
      Aside: This is the first time I've seen "congressbeing" and from now on it will be my preferred term.
- toyg 6y ago
  Politics by definition cannot be personal. It's the practice of resolving conflict within society; if you don't interact with society, there is no politics possible. (Note: this doesn't mean I agree with the behaviour shown in this case - nobody says politics between colleagues must be done over Twitter.) (edit: sad downvotes without actual logical counterpoint are sad.)
  - clairity 6y ago
    politics are profoundly personal but also pervades the whole human-organizational stack. conflict resolution might be one of its applications, but make no mistake, politics is primarily concerned with power and its application. (human) politics requires just 2 people, not a whole societies’ worth; even zero people at the limit, since politics happens in and with other species too.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    Politics at the workplace should be kept personal. Politics between colleagues should not be done at all.
    - toyg 6y ago
      I disagree. With that outlook, we would never have had the social movements that changed Europe for the better in the XIX and XX century. In modern terms, stuff like BLM influences who your colleagues are, how you treat them, and how you react to their demands for fairness.
      - DenisM 6y ago
        The world would be a better place if both Russia and Germany kept a lid on the practice of pressuring people into a political stance in the first half of the 20th century. OTOH MLK did not have his followers pressure coworkers - they kept it in the public, not behind doors.
        toyg 6y ago
- EtrianWizard 6y ago
  It's always been this way. Politics is intensely personal. It's not so much about conflicting ideas, but rather loudly delineating social groups and whose camp you're in. Pushing beliefs to simplistic extremes and demanding declarations of beliefs is an efficient way to make clear where yourself and others stand socially. Truth has little to do with it. Politics seems "stupid" because we're putting the cart before the horse.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    I think what's different now is how many strangers you're exposed to. A century ago, analogues to context-less twitter rage pile-ons were likely smaller and rarer.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. I'm not sure we should mark this down as a political and cultural climate thing. I'm more convinced the guy was simply an asshole and it so happens that he felt strongly about politics.
  - umvi 6y ago
    The thing is... he's not the only one. It's been happening for a while now at Google and other big tech companies - if your personal ideological views don't conform with the majority's... prepare to be browbeaten into conformance. Hence, many people are very secretive of their beliefs if they don't conform, and they may even "play along" like Winston does during the "Two Minutes Hate" (1984). Unlike 1984, we don't have a state or federal "thought police" but we kind of have something similar - a "thought mob" that patrols coworkers for evidence of thought crime.
- jxramos 6y ago
  It's not mob rule it's those who run the outrage-triathlon where those with the highest blood pressure and boil over tops win. If they can't steam anybody up to join them from their effervescence alone they deserve to fall to the wayside and get out the way. The outrage train is coming. We must ask ourselves daily, "what am I supposed to be outraged about now?"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
baddox 6y ago
I can easily imagine dealing with a tweet that asks me to do something, and then another tweet that says that I didn't do the thing that was asked of me. That doesn't sound too bad to me. What am I missing?
- scaredtobeme 6y ago
  Public shaming and the invocation of a mob against you?

holler 6y ago

Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.

dlp211 6y ago
> where mob rule is becoming the status quo. The Government of the US is currently (mostly) controlled by a party that received fewer votes.
- dekhn 6y ago
  That's not mob rule, that's completely and absolutely how the legal US government operates. Overturning the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment, which is no trivial task. Mob rule is entirely different: it refers to rule imposed from outside the law, possibly by a large group. Also, the "fewer votes" really only applies to the presidency, not the senate, house, or governors.
  - baddox 6y ago
    > That's not mob rule, that's completely and absolutely how the legal US government operates. Those aren't mutually exclusive. Middle school civics class explanations of the electoral college are fine. You can understand the reasons the electoral college was created and still oppose the fact that there have been multiple recent cases where the electoral college went against the popular vote. And, not that it's particularly relevant, but I highly doubt the very people who designed the electoral college would approve of its use when it seems to routinely elect someone who lost the popular vote.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      On the contrary, I think the electoral college was introduced precisely to ensure that the person who won the election was not who would win the popular vote.
      - baddox 6y ago
        That's certainly not the case. The electoral college was designed such that each state's legislature chooses how to attribute their electoral college votes. Many states in the first few presidential elections just had their state legislatures assign the votes. But still, I find it difficult to believe that the people who designed the electoral college would think it's okay that we held a national election, we got to see who wins the popular vote, and we still choose a different person for President.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        As I understand it, many of the founding fathers explicitly feared that general populace would vote poorly and wanted people who were educated and had access to sufficient information to make a decision to do so on their behalf.
        waterhouse 6y ago
        I was also told the following rationale: If elections are decided entirely by popular vote, then candidates are incentivized to campaign in population centers, and have no incentive to ever visit sparsely populated states. (Like, bringing your margin from 70% to 85% of 4 million people is worth more than going from 0% to 100% of 400k people.)
        dlp211 6y ago
        Except it's simply not true. Instead candidates focus on a set of fairly high-population swing states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania.
        6y ago
  - majormajor 6y ago
    Not the Senate? The Senate results in huge vote power discrepancies.
    - dekhn 6y ago
      Power discrepancies and mob rule are different things. [edit: though it's correct that the Senate, like the EC, is not "popular", as every state has two senators, rather than a proportionate amount, like representatives]
      - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        That point in your edit is actually a pretty big deal. We're already in a situation where a majority of the Senate represents less than 20% of the country's population. Some people will (correctly) retort that the Senate was never intended to be popular in the way you used the word, but -- just like the Electoral College -- the significant concentration of population in urban areas is something that the founders almost certainly didn't foresee. While "mob rule" may be an unfair term, not only did more people vote for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, there have been more votes cast for Democrats than Republicans as a whole not only in Senate races over the last decade but in House races, too -- the Republican majority there is protected by gerrymandering.
  - dlp211 6y ago
    Maybe the mob is trying to rule because it finds the US government illegitimate because they're majority isn't being represented in the government. In order for Democrats to win the House they have to get more votes than 50%. Democrats received millions of more votes for Senate but don't control that chamber. Democrats received more votes for the Presidency twice this century and have been denied the power of that branch and as a consequence, the third branch, the judiciary, is currently controlled by Republicans as well.
    - Simon_says 6y ago
      Trump is the president of the States, not the people. Anyways, he won 304 out of 538 votes, which is, in fact, a majority.
      - dlp211 6y ago
        Yes, we all know how an archaism in our system allows for what is now the most powerful branch of government to be controlled by the minority in this country.
        Simon_says 6y ago
        Sorry, you said that he received fewer votes. I thought you might not know.
- donw 6y ago
  No, only the current President received less of the popular vote. The government is more than just the President. Congressbeings are elected via direct election in their districts. The Electoral College is working as designed. It was never intended to implement a direct democracy. Here's a video that goes into more detail on the Electoral College and the Popular Vote Compact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUX-frlNBJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUX-frlNBJY
  - thisiszilff 6y ago
    Aside: This is the first time I've seen "congressbeing" and from now on it will be my preferred term.
toyg 6y ago
Politics by definition cannot be personal. It's the practice of resolving conflict within society; if you don't interact with society, there is no politics possible. (Note: this doesn't mean I agree with the behaviour shown in this case - nobody says politics between colleagues must be done over Twitter.) (edit: sad downvotes without actual logical counterpoint are sad.)
- clairity 6y ago
  politics are profoundly personal but also pervades the whole human-organizational stack. conflict resolution might be one of its applications, but make no mistake, politics is primarily concerned with power and its application. (human) politics requires just 2 people, not a whole societies’ worth; even zero people at the limit, since politics happens in and with other species too.
- DenisM 6y ago
  Politics at the workplace should be kept personal. Politics between colleagues should not be done at all.
  - toyg 6y ago
    I disagree. With that outlook, we would never have had the social movements that changed Europe for the better in the XIX and XX century. In modern terms, stuff like BLM influences who your colleagues are, how you treat them, and how you react to their demands for fairness.
    - DenisM 6y ago
      The world would be a better place if both Russia and Germany kept a lid on the practice of pressuring people into a political stance in the first half of the 20th century. OTOH MLK did not have his followers pressure coworkers - they kept it in the public, not behind doors.
      - toyg 6y ago
EtrianWizard 6y ago
It's always been this way. Politics is intensely personal. It's not so much about conflicting ideas, but rather loudly delineating social groups and whose camp you're in. Pushing beliefs to simplistic extremes and demanding declarations of beliefs is an efficient way to make clear where yourself and others stand socially. Truth has little to do with it. Politics seems "stupid" because we're putting the cart before the horse.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  I think what's different now is how many strangers you're exposed to. A century ago, analogues to context-less twitter rage pile-ons were likely smaller and rarer.
rumanator 6y ago
> Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. I'm not sure we should mark this down as a political and cultural climate thing. I'm more convinced the guy was simply an asshole and it so happens that he felt strongly about politics.
- umvi 6y ago
  The thing is... he's not the only one. It's been happening for a while now at Google and other big tech companies - if your personal ideological views don't conform with the majority's... prepare to be browbeaten into conformance. Hence, many people are very secretive of their beliefs if they don't conform, and they may even "play along" like Winston does during the "Two Minutes Hate" (1984). Unlike 1984, we don't have a state or federal "thought police" but we kind of have something similar - a "thought mob" that patrols coworkers for evidence of thought crime.
jxramos 6y ago
It's not mob rule it's those who run the outrage-triathlon where those with the highest blood pressure and boil over tops win. If they can't steam anybody up to join them from their effervescence alone they deserve to fall to the wayside and get out the way. The outrage train is coming. We must ask ourselves daily, "what am I supposed to be outraged about now?"

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

baddox 6y ago

I can easily imagine dealing with a tweet that asks me to do something, and then another tweet that says that I didn't do the thing that was asked of me. That doesn't sound too bad to me. What am I missing?

scaredtobeme 6y ago
Public shaming and the invocation of a mob against you?