6 ms·

I don't know the extent to which this is a problem (i.e., I don't want to make this into a "weak man"), but there are some legitimate reasons to be concerned wi

by edbob 6y ago

I don't know the extent to which this is a problem (i.e., I don't want to make this into a "weak man"), but there are some legitimate reasons to be concerned with the replacement and/or minimization of traditional holidays. At least one important motive for the replacement was to create the foundation for violent revolution: "the creation of its own series of holidays all underscored Karenga's premise that 'you must have a cultural revolution before the violent revolution. The cultural revolution gives identity, purpose, and direction.'" [0] It's easy for people to laugh at such concerns when they don't see them as plausible, but when you also have people like Dick Costolo promising shootings and a violent revolution, it's hard to know who can be trusted. When the left spends a year "mostly peacefully" killing dozens of people and burning our cities, it becomes a lot easier to believe that they might want a full revolution. Again, not to say that these concerns are necessarily justified, but that it's very difficult to know whether they are or not. If one prefers to err on the side of caution and criticize Starbucks here, I think that's a legitimate position. (Kind of hoping that someone can give me a good way to debunk these concerns, so I'm just going to ignore any troll responses). [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=Vhgk72OGBRYC&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Vhgk72OGBRYC&pg=PA65#v=one...

majormajor 6y ago
We're moving on quite a bit from the original post here, which was claiming that there was an overreaction to a position that supposedly didn't actually exist outside of this one person. I think it's pretty clear that that position does exist, which your post lines up with ;). However, I think something significant to note here about if it's an overreaction or not is that even these cups are still traditional Christmas colors. We're a really long way away from them saying something like "it's not a holiday season at all," or "the actual holidays are some other time." So if on one side we have a "let's be a little more inclusive of our friends celebrating different holidays" and on the other side we have "let's replace your holidays to help encourage a future violent revolution" it seems to me that they've only taken the babiest of baby steps towards the former, not the latter. (One wonders what the reaction would be if they came out with Hanukkah colored cups - lets not forget that there are non-"replacement"-motivated other holidays out there...)
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  There’s a difference between being concerned about a little cultural erasure and the idea that Christians en masse would choose Starbucks as the hill to die on over that issue. Of course, this is a lot more believable nowadays since we deal exclusively in caricatures but as I said earlier, it was novel at the time.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    I knew Christians in the 90s boycotting Proctor and Gamble products because they were supposedly Satanic. (The company eventually won a lawsuit about this https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/worldbusiness/20iht-satan.4966053.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/worldbusiness/20... ) So, no, none of this was novel to me in 2015... you seem to be reading in the "en masse" part yourself. A substantial number of people believe in this War on Christmas stuff and do let it influence their behavior, including the 2015 cups. You seem to only be willing to accept that it's either just 1 person, or EVERYBODY. I can show you more links if you want, but so far you're not even trying to consider the counter-evidence people have posted here... if you were actually curious, it's easy to Google. But - ironically, considering the claims of your original post - your mind seems made up.
- edbob 6y ago
  Thanks for the honest reply. Sorry for getting off-topic. I'm trying to understand liberal thought a bit better, hopefully without getting flamed out too much. I agree that the Starbucks choice of greeting is a "babiest of baby steps" which is probably why only one person really cared in a country of 300 million. But I really struggle to understand the justification here, and it seems to be related to other Culture War crusades. How is avoiding Christmas inclusive? Everyone knows what country we're in and that most people celebrate Christmas, so why would anybody be offended by saying "Merry Christmas"? This matters because if you don't see it as an "inclusive" move, then it just comes off as a way to snub people who do celebrate Christmas. That is, I can kind of believe that many liberals honestly see these things as "inclusive", but from the outside they actually seem "exclusive". The whole liberal platform is supposedly to tolerate and include, but in practice they seem to hate and exclude about 40% of the country. I just can't see very much of the tolerance and inclusion from my perspective. Sorry if I'm a bit all over the map, but I'm trying to understand, not debate.
chillwaves 6y ago
> killing dozens of people Do you have a citation for that because I have only ever seen research pointing to the opposite. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summ... As far as I know, the body count of police killing unarmed black people far outstrips any body count of BLM protests. > The Post’s data shows police fatally shot 13 unarmed Black men in 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fact-check-how-many-unarmed-black-men-did-police-kill-2019/5322455002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac... > Over the past five years there has been no reduction in the racial disparity in fatal police shooting victims despite increased use of body cameras and closer media scrutiny, according to a new report by researchers at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. ... > Among unarmed victims, Black people were killed at three times the rate (218 total killed), and Hispanics at 1.45 times the rate of white people (146 total killed). https://news.yale.edu/2020/10/27/racial-disparity-police-shootings-unchanged-over-5-years https://news.yale.edu/2020/10/27/racial-disparity-police-sho...
- edbob 6y ago
  Unfortunately I don't see anyone successfully publishing a study critical of BLM when you can get fired merely for mentioning a past study, as David Shor did[0]. I don't think studies are going to change anyone's mind when the allowed outcomes are politically determined. We're limited to collections of news stories. The collections seem pretty broad - the criteria is basically "killed during a BLM protest"[1][2]. PolitiFact goes with 12-19 by June[3]. The Guardian counts "at least 25" by October[4]. (I don't have a count for the past three months). This counting of deaths of course opens the door to all kinds of quibbles over which deaths "count", e.g. it's not possible to prove one way or the other whether this woman in Minneapolis[5] would have been raped and killed without the cover of the rioting. Is this sourcing acceptable to you, or do you really need a proper study? [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-floyd-protests-deaths_n_5ed6475bc5b6079a2ccc0aef https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-floyd-protests-deaths_... [2] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/05/say-their-names-20-people-killed-in-the-george-floyd-riots-n592577 https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/0... [3] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-posts/no-proof-black-lives-matter-killed-36-people-injur/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-p... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill... [5] https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/woman-found-dead-inside-car-in-north-minneapolis-amid-2nd-night-of-looting-fires/ https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/woman-found-dead-i...

by edbob 6y ago

majormajor 6y ago

We're moving on quite a bit from the original post here, which was claiming that there was an overreaction to a position that supposedly didn't actually exist outside of this one person. I think it's pretty clear that that position does exist, which your post lines up with ;). However, I think something significant to note here about if it's an overreaction or not is that even these cups are still traditional Christmas colors. We're a really long way away from them saying something like "it's not a holiday season at all," or "the actual holidays are some other time." So if on one side we have a "let's be a little more inclusive of our friends celebrating different holidays" and on the other side we have "let's replace your holidays to help encourage a future violent revolution" it seems to me that they've only taken the babiest of baby steps towards the former, not the latter. (One wonders what the reaction would be if they came out with Hanukkah colored cups - lets not forget that there are non-"replacement"-motivated other holidays out there...)

throwaway894345 6y ago
There’s a difference between being concerned about a little cultural erasure and the idea that Christians en masse would choose Starbucks as the hill to die on over that issue. Of course, this is a lot more believable nowadays since we deal exclusively in caricatures but as I said earlier, it was novel at the time.
- majormajor 6y ago
  I knew Christians in the 90s boycotting Proctor and Gamble products because they were supposedly Satanic. (The company eventually won a lawsuit about this https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/worldbusiness/20iht-satan.4966053.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/worldbusiness/20... ) So, no, none of this was novel to me in 2015... you seem to be reading in the "en masse" part yourself. A substantial number of people believe in this War on Christmas stuff and do let it influence their behavior, including the 2015 cups. You seem to only be willing to accept that it's either just 1 person, or EVERYBODY. I can show you more links if you want, but so far you're not even trying to consider the counter-evidence people have posted here... if you were actually curious, it's easy to Google. But - ironically, considering the claims of your original post - your mind seems made up.
edbob 6y ago
Thanks for the honest reply. Sorry for getting off-topic. I'm trying to understand liberal thought a bit better, hopefully without getting flamed out too much. I agree that the Starbucks choice of greeting is a "babiest of baby steps" which is probably why only one person really cared in a country of 300 million. But I really struggle to understand the justification here, and it seems to be related to other Culture War crusades. How is avoiding Christmas inclusive? Everyone knows what country we're in and that most people celebrate Christmas, so why would anybody be offended by saying "Merry Christmas"? This matters because if you don't see it as an "inclusive" move, then it just comes off as a way to snub people who do celebrate Christmas. That is, I can kind of believe that many liberals honestly see these things as "inclusive", but from the outside they actually seem "exclusive". The whole liberal platform is supposedly to tolerate and include, but in practice they seem to hate and exclude about 40% of the country. I just can't see very much of the tolerance and inclusion from my perspective. Sorry if I'm a bit all over the map, but I'm trying to understand, not debate.

chillwaves 6y ago

> killing dozens of people Do you have a citation for that because I have only ever seen research pointing to the opposite. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summ... As far as I know, the body count of police killing unarmed black people far outstrips any body count of BLM protests. > The Post’s data shows police fatally shot 13 unarmed Black men in 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fact-check-how-many-unarmed-black-men-did-police-kill-2019/5322455002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac... > Over the past five years there has been no reduction in the racial disparity in fatal police shooting victims despite increased use of body cameras and closer media scrutiny, according to a new report by researchers at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. ... > Among unarmed victims, Black people were killed at three times the rate (218 total killed), and Hispanics at 1.45 times the rate of white people (146 total killed). https://news.yale.edu/2020/10/27/racial-disparity-police-shootings-unchanged-over-5-years https://news.yale.edu/2020/10/27/racial-disparity-police-sho...

edbob 6y ago
Unfortunately I don't see anyone successfully publishing a study critical of BLM when you can get fired merely for mentioning a past study, as David Shor did[0]. I don't think studies are going to change anyone's mind when the allowed outcomes are politically determined. We're limited to collections of news stories. The collections seem pretty broad - the criteria is basically "killed during a BLM protest"[1][2]. PolitiFact goes with 12-19 by June[3]. The Guardian counts "at least 25" by October[4]. (I don't have a count for the past three months). This counting of deaths of course opens the door to all kinds of quibbles over which deaths "count", e.g. it's not possible to prove one way or the other whether this woman in Minneapolis[5] would have been raped and killed without the cover of the rioting. Is this sourcing acceptable to you, or do you really need a proper study? [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-floyd-protests-deaths_n_5ed6475bc5b6079a2ccc0aef https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-floyd-protests-deaths_... [2] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/05/say-their-names-20-people-killed-in-the-george-floyd-riots-n592577 https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/0... [3] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-posts/no-proof-black-lives-matter-killed-36-people-injur/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/aug/07/facebook-p... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill... [5] https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/woman-found-dead-inside-car-in-north-minneapolis-amid-2nd-night-of-looting-fires/ https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/05/29/woman-found-dead-i...