America has just been taken over by a gang of fascist tech boys. They are literally looting the Treasury as we speak. They purging federal govt of 1000s of workers on the basis of loyalty to the addled old clown fronting for the tech boys (for now). This is the biggest, fastest, most unjust, most purely political mass cancelation in US history. And you guys are still droning on about a few disgruntled people who didn't like their DEI training? Seriously? That's what you think is the big crisis of our time?
I'm afraid that you're deflecting. And erecting a straw man argument.
I think we can all hold more than one thought in our heads at the same time.
My history of political activism on behalf of what are traditionally known as leftwing causes is long and, in some circles, well known. I sacrificed my career for them. But even I can see that what Quillette and Pluckrose are talking about is a danger to independent thought and basic principles of liberalism.
Of course the techbros are a clear and present danger. Of course. They are looting the country. Trump and Co. are taking a wrecking ball to everything. Of course that's a huge, frightening problem.
But that doesn't mean that censorship in workplaces and universities, and people being hounded out of their jobs for wrongthink, isn't also a frightening problem.
I wasn't deflecting. I was trying to put the problem in the proper scale. Bad as it is, cancellation on campus, at work (at some workplaces with woke pronoun rules in the HR manual, etc), or online, is orders of magnitude less important than cancellation of essentially the entire federal workforce. I think it is fair to point that out. All hands on deck, damnit! And that includes the Center-Right at Quillette, if they value actual functional democracy as much as they say they do. I've also read some sugary commentary on Quillette re Musk. Clare Lehmann appears to have a crush on him (ick!). And I think Pluckrose is too quick to dismiss some legit views on the Left because she thinks they are reactionary, woke and hasty. Her scolding comment on Musk's rather obvious Nazi salute is an example. There is always a danger that heterodox discourse with the Right, no matter how seemingly rational, will lead to cooptation, dilution or "sane-washing" of patently insane Right wing notions. You can't really argue that the Right in the world today is interested in integrity or intellectual honesty.
On the other hand, I may have had a shot of bourbon before I wrote my post. So there's that. F**k, I'm only human...
I didn't realize that Quillette has written things laudatory of Musk -- yuk, indeed! I confess I've read very little of Quillette -- I just can't keep up anymore. I just looked up and realize I have 17 tabs open on my computer, for articles/essays I want to read, and that doesn't count ordinary news reporting.
Anyway, I agree that we should be careful of dilution and sane-washing. I also think the left is in danger of losing -- hell, as already lost -- many otherwise rational people who are just sick to death of the smug, sanctimonious, condescending sermonizing and hectoring about everything under the sun. They're sick of being told that everything that comes out of their mouths is wrong, is racist, sexist, able-ist, take-your-pick-ist. Ist ist ist! I know I'm sick of it, and I'm on their side.
Although I believe that tons of people voted for Trump out of, indeed, misogyny and racism and abject cruelty, I also believe that many others voted for him just to poke a finger in the eye of political correctness. They weren't voting for policy; they were voting for the poke. It's not a good reason, it's a stupid reason, it's a dangerous reason, but there it is.
So why, then, hand the rightwing a gift on a silver platter? Trans mania is a gift on a silver platter. DEI mania is a gift on a silver platter. There is obviously nothing wrong with the concepts of "diversity," "equity," and "inclusion," but the implementation has been a shitshow. It's performative moral posturing. These DEI "training" sessions smack of nothing so much as Mao- and Stalin-era struggle sessions.
Do any of these people, "good" liberals all, even know what struggle sessions were? No, of course not. Because they're just as blinkered and ahistorical as the MAGAts they deride. They are two sides of the same cuckoo coin. That's what drives me crazy.
I cannot stand by and watch the Dems kill themselves with this bullshit, espcially when so much is on the line. Trump and his fascist cabal are also killing us. Obviously. So why have the Dems helped them do that?? Why do they continue to help?? Where is the self-examination? Where is the considered reflection? I'm blue in the face with trying to explain this to my liberal confrères. They don't get it. They just double-down.
Well, trans and DEI are mostly perfectly acceptable to corporate America from whom the Dems get lots of campaign $$$. You don't have to change the relations of production when you build gender neutral bathrooms, make MTF trans people "female employee of the year" or send everyone to a grueling, grindingly dreary 2 day DEI training. You don't have to raise wages and improve working conditions. You can still ship jobs overseas to cheap labor enclaves. You can still blow tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. In fact, gender ideology and DEI are a relatively cheap distraction from the real, structural problems. wealth inequality, etc. So yeah, that's why the centrist Biden regime went full speed on both. It's why so many universities tripled their "DEI" Admin staff. Because big donors didn't care and it appealed to a certain demographic of upper middle class and rich kids whose parents pay full tuition. And why didn't they back off when it became a liability? Some did, but others had developed a self-perpetuating bureaucratic empire that they were not about to give up. So they fought back, with the help of students too dumb to see how stupid "Queers for Palestine" is.
I agree. Gender ideology and DEI are destructive and need to be driven back into the tiny, unimportant niche they used to occupy. I also think trans may have cost the Dems Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state. Musk poured $$$MMM into PA with the "they/them" ad. Everyone from Center to Left needs to drop trans and DEI like hot rocks but I don't think that will happen any time soon. Cheers.
Totally agree with everything you wrote, especially the part about a distraction from the realities of an often brutal capitalist society.
Virtue signalers don’t actually DO anything to materially improve people’s lives. They think that policing other people’s language, using woke terminology, and capitalizing the “b” in “black” constitutes political activism.
America has just been taken over by a gang of fascist tech boys. They are literally looting the Treasury as we speak. They purging federal govt of 1000s of workers on the basis of loyalty to the addled old clown fronting for the tech boys (for now). This is the biggest, fastest, most unjust, most purely political mass cancelation in US history. And you guys are still droning on about a few disgruntled people who didn't like their DEI training? Seriously? That's what you think is the big crisis of our time?
I'm afraid that you're deflecting. And erecting a straw man argument.
I think we can all hold more than one thought in our heads at the same time.
My history of political activism on behalf of what are traditionally known as leftwing causes is long and, in some circles, well known. I sacrificed my career for them. But even I can see that what Quillette and Pluckrose are talking about is a danger to independent thought and basic principles of liberalism.
Of course the techbros are a clear and present danger. Of course. They are looting the country. Trump and Co. are taking a wrecking ball to everything. Of course that's a huge, frightening problem.
But that doesn't mean that censorship in workplaces and universities, and people being hounded out of their jobs for wrongthink, isn't also a frightening problem.
I wasn't deflecting. I was trying to put the problem in the proper scale. Bad as it is, cancellation on campus, at work (at some workplaces with woke pronoun rules in the HR manual, etc), or online, is orders of magnitude less important than cancellation of essentially the entire federal workforce. I think it is fair to point that out. All hands on deck, damnit! And that includes the Center-Right at Quillette, if they value actual functional democracy as much as they say they do. I've also read some sugary commentary on Quillette re Musk. Clare Lehmann appears to have a crush on him (ick!). And I think Pluckrose is too quick to dismiss some legit views on the Left because she thinks they are reactionary, woke and hasty. Her scolding comment on Musk's rather obvious Nazi salute is an example. There is always a danger that heterodox discourse with the Right, no matter how seemingly rational, will lead to cooptation, dilution or "sane-washing" of patently insane Right wing notions. You can't really argue that the Right in the world today is interested in integrity or intellectual honesty.
On the other hand, I may have had a shot of bourbon before I wrote my post. So there's that. F**k, I'm only human...
I didn't realize that Quillette has written things laudatory of Musk -- yuk, indeed! I confess I've read very little of Quillette -- I just can't keep up anymore. I just looked up and realize I have 17 tabs open on my computer, for articles/essays I want to read, and that doesn't count ordinary news reporting.
Anyway, I agree that we should be careful of dilution and sane-washing. I also think the left is in danger of losing -- hell, as already lost -- many otherwise rational people who are just sick to death of the smug, sanctimonious, condescending sermonizing and hectoring about everything under the sun. They're sick of being told that everything that comes out of their mouths is wrong, is racist, sexist, able-ist, take-your-pick-ist. Ist ist ist! I know I'm sick of it, and I'm on their side.
Although I believe that tons of people voted for Trump out of, indeed, misogyny and racism and abject cruelty, I also believe that many others voted for him just to poke a finger in the eye of political correctness. They weren't voting for policy; they were voting for the poke. It's not a good reason, it's a stupid reason, it's a dangerous reason, but there it is.
So why, then, hand the rightwing a gift on a silver platter? Trans mania is a gift on a silver platter. DEI mania is a gift on a silver platter. There is obviously nothing wrong with the concepts of "diversity," "equity," and "inclusion," but the implementation has been a shitshow. It's performative moral posturing. These DEI "training" sessions smack of nothing so much as Mao- and Stalin-era struggle sessions.
Do any of these people, "good" liberals all, even know what struggle sessions were? No, of course not. Because they're just as blinkered and ahistorical as the MAGAts they deride. They are two sides of the same cuckoo coin. That's what drives me crazy.
I cannot stand by and watch the Dems kill themselves with this bullshit, espcially when so much is on the line. Trump and his fascist cabal are also killing us. Obviously. So why have the Dems helped them do that?? Why do they continue to help?? Where is the self-examination? Where is the considered reflection? I'm blue in the face with trying to explain this to my liberal confrères. They don't get it. They just double-down.
Well, trans and DEI are mostly perfectly acceptable to corporate America from whom the Dems get lots of campaign $$$. You don't have to change the relations of production when you build gender neutral bathrooms, make MTF trans people "female employee of the year" or send everyone to a grueling, grindingly dreary 2 day DEI training. You don't have to raise wages and improve working conditions. You can still ship jobs overseas to cheap labor enclaves. You can still blow tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. In fact, gender ideology and DEI are a relatively cheap distraction from the real, structural problems. wealth inequality, etc. So yeah, that's why the centrist Biden regime went full speed on both. It's why so many universities tripled their "DEI" Admin staff. Because big donors didn't care and it appealed to a certain demographic of upper middle class and rich kids whose parents pay full tuition. And why didn't they back off when it became a liability? Some did, but others had developed a self-perpetuating bureaucratic empire that they were not about to give up. So they fought back, with the help of students too dumb to see how stupid "Queers for Palestine" is.
I agree. Gender ideology and DEI are destructive and need to be driven back into the tiny, unimportant niche they used to occupy. I also think trans may have cost the Dems Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state. Musk poured $$$MMM into PA with the "they/them" ad. Everyone from Center to Left needs to drop trans and DEI like hot rocks but I don't think that will happen any time soon. Cheers.
Totally agree with everything you wrote, especially the part about a distraction from the realities of an often brutal capitalist society.
Virtue signalers don’t actually DO anything to materially improve people’s lives. They think that policing other people’s language, using woke terminology, and capitalizing the “b” in “black” constitutes political activism.