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I understand wanting to be charitable towards a good cause, but the current political shift represents an existential danger to our society. I've never cared wh

by sinker 6y ago

I understand wanting to be charitable towards a good cause, but the current political shift represents an existential danger to our society. I've never cared when right-wing wackjobs hoarded guns. I didn't lose my mind after 9/11, thinking terrorists were going to strike us randomly and frequently. Even after a somber fews days after Trump's election, I could feel things getting back to normal. The far-left radical progressive movement is different and has greater power and momentum than anything we've seen in the past two decades. Aside from destroying the reputations of a few truly bad people, we've seen them attack rational speech, deny biological realities, ingrain the perception of racism into innocuous encounters, unironically apply blatantly racist viewpoints towards white people, denounce any form of logic or reasoning as racism or sexism, and so much more. Your tepid response tells me you're not aware of the scope of this movement. It co-opts the good will of normal people and redirects normal liberal and progressive tendencies into something truly destructive. If you're tuned in to what's happening in universities, companies, workplaces; the pattern is hard to miss. The movement works on forced compliance, humiliation, denouncing logic, attacking perceived racism with actual racism. None of this is right and so many people and companies are going along with it. Most people are taking these movements at face value and want to do the right thing. Companies are pre-emptively capitulating to future demands because it's good for business. If you express nuance you're instantly and overwhelming branded as a racist or sexist. There is no room for thought or reason in this movement unless it points to a narrative that white men are evil oppressors. This isn't really about one man being murdered by a cop anymore, or even about racism in general. It's about a cult of victimization leveraging offense and outrage to oppress anyone who gains a modicum of public success in society, and the justifications by which they're acting defy the bounds of reality. The movement represents a greater risk than racism or sexism, it destroys the individual, eliminates free speech and thought, and coerces normal, kind people to say and do things which go against our most basic intuitions.

camtarn 6y ago
"If you express nuance ... There is no room for thought or reason in this movement unless it points to a narrative that white men are evil oppressors." The irony of this juxtaposition - bemoaning lack of nuance, then immediately following it with an utterly un-nuanced broad-brush statement - is quite impressive.
- sinker 6y ago
  Sure you can nitpick, but the point still stands. This movement isn't about equality or inclusion. It's an opportunistic power grab that exploits people's sense of good will. Read the Evergreen University story or listen to Bret Weinstein, a former evolutionary biology professor at Evergreen, on his recent appearance on Joe Rogan. This is a movement that operates on fear, paranoia, and coercion under the guise of equality. Without fear and coercion, it has no legs whatsoever.
  - awb 6y ago
    A bunch of folks came out looking like idiots at Evergreen. A bunch of people have died under police brutality. And the list of grievances goes on.. People are sensitive to different things. But there is some irony in all the outrage about outrage culture. I'd be more upset at the folks in power that make the decisions than the folks on Twitter pressuring them.
    - sinker 6y ago
      The folks in power are literal corporate overlords and the political elites in bed with them, draining the value of the labor and knowledge class who provide the wealth for this country. These are the same people going along with movements like BLM and the woke movement because they realize it has no threat to them. The targets are a scapegoated white-majority america who have the same struggles as everyone else. Your misconception is that BLM or the woke movement are doing anything to address the real roots of inequality rather than the appearance of it. BLM is a pack of slogans. It's not sophisticated enough to tackle real problems. They've given their donations to the democratic party, knowing that they have no legitamate leadership or process to bring about real change. The democratic and republican parties are both corrupt instituations that exist to enrich their own elites. How is this going to bring about racial equality? How are ideologies like systemic racism which inform its followers to view all encounters in the lens of racism, and that we should all act in accordance to the idea that racism is inherent in all of us, going to bring about net good change in society? These ideas are absolutely backwards and will drive us backwards from the hard-fought progress of the past. Racism is an issue, but it's improved drastically from the past. Entrenching the idea of racism into all encounters can only deepen the issue of racism. It erodes the idea of the individual, the American, and places racial identity foremost as to the quality of your personhood. If you only read some of what's been written as the foundational teachings of this movement - the origins of systemic racism, writings like White Fragility, the bare insanity is there to see - it has zero contact with reality. And these ideas are coming to life by humanities students and activists. The value of the Evergreen story is that the pattern has emerged across the country and spread like a virus into higher education and soon into private corporations. Evergreen is a dying college now. No parent wants to send their child to an institution which places merit far below sexual or racial identity. Yet the administrators cling on, doubling-down on decisions representing an inverted ideology. The same thing, if the ideas of this movement are taken to their logical conclusion, will happen all across America in its knowledge centers.
spopejoy 6y ago
> The far-left radical progressive movement is different and has greater power and momentum than anything we've seen in the past two decades. Huh. So let me get this straight, the relentless war on drugs started by Nixon 50 years ago that has incarcerated the most people on the planet, is now being eclipsed by cancel culture in terms of overall destruction of human lives? The massive wealth transfer via securitization of loans, junk bonds, sovereign debt, CDOs, and QE2, resulting in the worst economic inequality arguably in history, doesn't make you lose sleep, but an economically insignificant amount of cancel-culture firings is going to REALLY fuck things up?
- sinker 6y ago
  You seem to have inferred some things I didn't write or intend. Read my comments further down.
- dang 6y ago
  Can you please not use HN for ideological flamewar? It's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for. It doesn't look like you've been in the habit of posting like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729204, so that's good, but it's also dismaying to see such things beginning to appear from a solid account. It's possible to make your substantive points without that, so please do. I realize that stresses, emotions, and important causes are at top of mind right now. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - spopejoy 6y ago
    Noted, and happy to abide to the best of my ability. I'm confused by the phrase "ideological flamewar" though and would like to clarify: flamewar is the issue right? E.g., flamewar over GPL would be equally undesirable. Tone and constructiveness, etc. Asking because the topic at hand is inescapably ideological, based as it is on an opinion piece and not "news", and the comments are equally so. (Enragingly so, which is what gets me into a tizzy).
    - 6y ago

by sinker 6y ago

camtarn 6y ago

"If you express nuance ... There is no room for thought or reason in this movement unless it points to a narrative that white men are evil oppressors." The irony of this juxtaposition - bemoaning lack of nuance, then immediately following it with an utterly un-nuanced broad-brush statement - is quite impressive.

sinker 6y ago
Sure you can nitpick, but the point still stands. This movement isn't about equality or inclusion. It's an opportunistic power grab that exploits people's sense of good will. Read the Evergreen University story or listen to Bret Weinstein, a former evolutionary biology professor at Evergreen, on his recent appearance on Joe Rogan. This is a movement that operates on fear, paranoia, and coercion under the guise of equality. Without fear and coercion, it has no legs whatsoever.
- awb 6y ago
  A bunch of folks came out looking like idiots at Evergreen. A bunch of people have died under police brutality. And the list of grievances goes on.. People are sensitive to different things. But there is some irony in all the outrage about outrage culture. I'd be more upset at the folks in power that make the decisions than the folks on Twitter pressuring them.
  - sinker 6y ago
    The folks in power are literal corporate overlords and the political elites in bed with them, draining the value of the labor and knowledge class who provide the wealth for this country. These are the same people going along with movements like BLM and the woke movement because they realize it has no threat to them. The targets are a scapegoated white-majority america who have the same struggles as everyone else. Your misconception is that BLM or the woke movement are doing anything to address the real roots of inequality rather than the appearance of it. BLM is a pack of slogans. It's not sophisticated enough to tackle real problems. They've given their donations to the democratic party, knowing that they have no legitamate leadership or process to bring about real change. The democratic and republican parties are both corrupt instituations that exist to enrich their own elites. How is this going to bring about racial equality? How are ideologies like systemic racism which inform its followers to view all encounters in the lens of racism, and that we should all act in accordance to the idea that racism is inherent in all of us, going to bring about net good change in society? These ideas are absolutely backwards and will drive us backwards from the hard-fought progress of the past. Racism is an issue, but it's improved drastically from the past. Entrenching the idea of racism into all encounters can only deepen the issue of racism. It erodes the idea of the individual, the American, and places racial identity foremost as to the quality of your personhood. If you only read some of what's been written as the foundational teachings of this movement - the origins of systemic racism, writings like White Fragility, the bare insanity is there to see - it has zero contact with reality. And these ideas are coming to life by humanities students and activists. The value of the Evergreen story is that the pattern has emerged across the country and spread like a virus into higher education and soon into private corporations. Evergreen is a dying college now. No parent wants to send their child to an institution which places merit far below sexual or racial identity. Yet the administrators cling on, doubling-down on decisions representing an inverted ideology. The same thing, if the ideas of this movement are taken to their logical conclusion, will happen all across America in its knowledge centers.

spopejoy 6y ago

> The far-left radical progressive movement is different and has greater power and momentum than anything we've seen in the past two decades. Huh. So let me get this straight, the relentless war on drugs started by Nixon 50 years ago that has incarcerated the most people on the planet, is now being eclipsed by cancel culture in terms of overall destruction of human lives? The massive wealth transfer via securitization of loans, junk bonds, sovereign debt, CDOs, and QE2, resulting in the worst economic inequality arguably in history, doesn't make you lose sleep, but an economically insignificant amount of cancel-culture firings is going to REALLY fuck things up?

sinker 6y ago
You seem to have inferred some things I didn't write or intend. Read my comments further down.
dang 6y ago
Can you please not use HN for ideological flamewar? It's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for. It doesn't look like you've been in the habit of posting like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729204, so that's good, but it's also dismaying to see such things beginning to appear from a solid account. It's possible to make your substantive points without that, so please do. I realize that stresses, emotions, and important causes are at top of mind right now. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- spopejoy 6y ago
  Noted, and happy to abide to the best of my ability. I'm confused by the phrase "ideological flamewar" though and would like to clarify: flamewar is the issue right? E.g., flamewar over GPL would be equally undesirable. Tone and constructiveness, etc. Asking because the topic at hand is inescapably ideological, based as it is on an opinion piece and not "news", and the comments are equally so. (Enragingly so, which is what gets me into a tizzy).
  - 6y ago