6 ms·

I think a major point missing in amongst the discussion so far, and one that's causing a lot of crosstalk is whether you should even be apologising at all. For

• oarabbus_ 6y ago
  > Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the kickback against apologising that we're seeing is coming from the numerous public examples of this tactic and the follow-up where any good-faith apology will be used to make a further example of the heretic. Well said. It's just a big witch hunt. If you don't apologize, you're in the wrong; if you do apologize, clearly you are a bad person because you were in the wrong, and the onus is now on you to demonstrate you're no longer that "bad" person. It's guilty until proven innocent and either way you lose. Not to mention how many of these witch hunters have never said or done anything wrong themselves, ever? If you're a saint, then sure, by all means call out people for their wrong doings. But I have a hunch that 99% of progressives would be EXTREMELY uncomfortable if someone said they were going to pull every tweet, post, interview, statement, etc that they'd ever made and scrutinize them for harmful statements. Finally, it's completely biased and partisan. The most famous example is Alyssa Milano, who really brought the Me Too movement to the spotlight, defending Joe Biden because he was "a good man". If you're not their friend, you don't get the same benefit of the doubt. The hypocrisy is unbearable.
  • duckmysick 6y ago
    > It's guilty until proven innocent and either way you lose. One could say it's guilty until proven guilty.
• acjohnson55 6y ago
  > Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands which can then be framed as a perceived wrong. I think a lot of the kickback against apologising that we're seeing is coming from the numerous public examples of this tactic and the follow-up where any good-faith apology will be used to make a further example of the heretic. This is rarely about the apology itself, but about establishing that something wrong has happened to begin with. The fact is, a lot of pretty messed up stuff routinely happens and is simply taken as a given. The apology is simply a marker that some behavior will no longer be considered acceptable. It's hardly even a measure of accountability, unless someone is so egotistical that taking responsibility is personally harmful to them.
  • mainstreem 6y ago
    >This is rarely about the apology itself, but about establishing that something wrong has happened to begin with Feh, don't even give these struggle sessions and the petty tyrants that perpetrate them that much credit. It's about establishing that something ideologically condemned by those demanding an apology has occurred, and nothing more. Morality is secondary to ideological purity among the types demanding apologies. Fuck 'em, I say.
  • textgel 6y ago
    A common tactic seen by progressives during attacks on their victims is to hype up the crime by either making vague claims such as that they "are pretty messed up" and hoping that regular people apply their reasonable measure of "pretty messed up"; to outright lies where they equate the commited heresy with an actual real world wrong. One charming example is this one of Morgan Freeman during the metoo saga where he was "Sexually harrassing a reporter live on TV." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4NnkHXmNEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4NnkHXmNEc
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • acjohnson55 6y ago
• bosswipe 6y ago
  Progressives are widely known for things like increasing the minimum wage, expanding access to health care, or legalizing drugs. I've never heard progressives pushing for forced public apologies.
  • textgel 6y ago
    Willful blindness is a common tactic too; perhaps a psychological extension of the progressive safe-space doctrine but I couldn't be certain. Another one that interests me greatly is the frequent use of the narcissists prayer in debate, have you ever heard it? It goes as follows. That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did... You deserved it. I suppose I'll start the ball rolling. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-comet-dr-matt-taylor-apology-sexist-shirt https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-come...
  • 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
    AFAIK, Cortes is a Progressive[0], and a congressperson, which puts her in a position of power. She encouraged her supporters to create a list of Trump supporters so they can be denied employment in the future[1]. Jennifer Rubin, likely also a Progressive[2], said: “any [Republican] now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society. We have a list.” More than apologies, these two at least, are looking to punish. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez [1] https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/aoc-activists-hint-blacklisting-trump-supporters-after-election https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/aoc-activists-hint-b... [2] https://www.wctrib.com/opinion/columns/4036749-Jennifer-Rubin-Heres-how-staunch-progressives-can-win-the-hearts-of-Never-Trumpers https://www.wctrib.com/opinion/columns/4036749-Jennifer-Rubi...
    • justatdotin 6y ago
      maybe baseless allegations of fraud exceeds the domain of "So you've made a mistake"
• cowpig 6y ago
  > if you're actually dealing with a genuine person or group who you've genuinely wronged then a real apology is warranted A pitfall of this mentality, at least in my experience, is that people I hurt are usually much better judges of whether I hurt them than I am. Something I learned that helped is: you can hurt someone without being wrong. "I regret that my actions had this effect on you," is a good place to start a conversation when I'm not (yet?) convinced I would have done anything differently in hindsight. Often, simply acknowledging that someone has been hurt by my actions, and trying to understand why, has yielded far better outcomes than sticking with my judgment. Both in that they affected party feels better, and in that I get to add a new dimension to my understanding of social dynamics. It often doesn't matter how legitimate someones' complaint is according to my personal worldview; what matters is how the affected feel.
  • ponker 6y ago
    "I'm sorry you felt that way" is considered worse than a non-apology by the current leading apology extractors.
    • npatrick04 6y ago
      I agree with you, but he didn't say the word "sorry". Check out "Thank You for Arguing" by Jay Heinrichs. It covers the same basic steps, but recommends to exclude the actual apology part. It's also a great book for other reasons.
  • nomdep 6y ago
    That only works of you know you are dealing with people rariobal and with good intentions. We human tend not to be thos things when acting in large groups.
    • ZainRiz 6y ago
      It also requires the recipient to know they're coming from a sincere person with good intentions. If that perception isn't their, it comes across as a very different message ("I'm sorry you don't have a thick enough skin")
• nxmnxm99 6y ago
  There are striking similarities between modern progressivism/wokeness and various church clergy throughout the ages. I'm glad you made that connection.
  • textgel 6y ago
    I honestly feel it needs to be described in such terms; the idea definitely isn't my own, I remember the ah-ha moment when the internalised-misogyny/toxic-masculinity = original-sin link was pointed out to me and the more aspects of it that I look at the more it aligns.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • colechristensen 6y ago
    I say this repeatedly, the west largely abandoned religion because people found the ways adherents acted towards others to be inexcusable... it was a failed attribution though because religion didn’t make people like that and getting rid of religion hasn’t gotten rid of the behaviors. We still have people praying loudly on the corners for all to see (Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.) We still have people persecuting others for their beliefs, we still have people ready to fight holy wars. It is a very human behavior, and it is easily exploited and in an emergent way exploits itself in whatever way is convenient in any age. It is clear to me that there are very smart people and very stupid people stoking the flames on this human vulnerability that so few people care to notice.
• nicoburns 6y ago
  I consider myself a progressive and honestly I think you have a point. I think it comes from a good place (it's a reaction to a history of things simply being brushed off, ignored and not addressed), but it's ultimately not a good way of dealing things. I think the happy medium is where people are held accountable for their actions (ideally apologising for them if they really have done something wrong, which often times they have even if the response to that is overly vitriolic), and then allowed the space to make amends and move on with their lives.
  • textgel 6y ago
    With a bit of luck it does seem some of the more reasoned voices are winning out, at least in some of the areas I've seen, and rationally I know this stuff didn't appear out of thin air so time will tell but I'm hoping to see a more back-to-the-roots approach continue to grow.
• inopinatus 6y ago
  The "progressives" you're referring to aren't progressive. They're reactionary authoritarians, hijacking the ideals and preferences of whatever group they're attached to. You can find them in all forms of debased public discourse and lowbrow populism, with a history going back millennia, and uniformly distributed across the political spectrum. No-one called the Spanish Inquisition progressive. I hold a very special loathing of anyone that weaponizes process in order to control others. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity".
  • textgel 6y ago
    This is a a good point; and one I wish I could give you a decent response to as this problem is such a big one and one that I've seen hit plenty of groups I once subscribed to, and evidently from history quite an old one too however I'm at a loss on what the correct response to the phenomenon is. The cheap response is to whine about "no true scotsman" but I'd love to see ideas on how to prevent groups actually getting corrupted in this way; it's probably in the "how do we create world peace" level of problems but the cycle is getting very wearing!
    • colechristensen 6y ago
      It’s not as hard as you make it up to be, you simply have to instill values in the population which promote diversity of thought, independent thought, and recognition of moral signaling behavior. The major problem with the left leaning political spectrum in america is a somewhat blind authoritarian “respect” for “diversity” where what counts as diverse is rather restricted and generally doesn’t include disagreement on the subject. The key missing ability is getting people to empathize with each other and not to confuse radical ideas which one finds abhorant and moderate ideas one finds disagreeable. A cheap way to make this much easier is to ban labels like political party, gender, etc. If you stop sorting people (and yourself) into bins it becomes a whole lot more difficult to be so polarized as you aren’t dividing the world into us and them by dealing with a new human one by one.
  • will4274 6y ago
    Tomato tomato. The members of the inquisition called themselves the inquisition, so we call them the inquisition. Today's progressives call themselves progressives so we call them progressives.
• shirakawasuna 6y ago
  > Progressives are widely known for their enthusiastic use of forcing people into public apologies for perceived crimes against the faith or for not acquiescing to unreasonable demands "widely known" You're interpreting your ideological position as normative and factual.
  • textgel 6y ago
    Please refer to my response at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25087153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25087153