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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's the most lurid example of authoritarian behavior by the right and left. Abortion could be used just as well, but it's one sided, the right being the sole authoritarian. Speech involves the extremes of each of the parties.

Intolerance, actually, manifesting itself as authoritarianism.

You're not really talking about authoritarianism at all, you're just making hyperbolic claims about it to set up your usual beefs about free speech.

Taking them apart and laddering them in regard to wrongness avoids the essential binding element - the problem: A desire by significant numbers of people to not be confronted with views that don't fit the way they insist the world is or should be. "I want the world to be what I want it to be and I'm done with having anyone challenge me!" The mindset is this warped belief, similar to the fabulist view that one can will himself to success, that if one simply shuts out inconvenient facts, they disappear.

I don't think that's a very good description of what's motivating the people on either side about whom you're talking, but you're doing your hyperbole think. Complaining about accuracy here is like complaining that Dali isn't a realist.

The zero sum game is the effort, by the likes of DeSantis, to shut the mouths of those with whom one disagrees. Make them disappear. DeSantis passed that unconstitutional "don't say gay" bill and has banned LGBTQ books because he knows - a large voting bloc doesn't want to entertain views about sexuality or gender that deviate from their views. They instead want to shut down those views entirely. If that isn't Orwellian, what is?

I think you are using lazy versions of the terms "zero sum" and "Orwellian," and I choose to honor Orwell's memory by asking for more precision and care in politics and the English language. Hi Hank!

You know what I'm talking about. We all know it. We've all got friends in the C Suite or on boards. You can bust them about the extreme DEI and ESG pieties and they'll in very, very private confines admit to thinking it's moral panic, a religion, or a bullshit scam for consultants to make money. But they sure as fuck aren't going to say that out loud to any friends. To even challenge it is to put one's career at risk.

No, that's hyperbole, and isn't responding to my point.

You have me exactly backwards. I want people to stop telling other people that they may not challenge certain things, that they may not credibly critique certain things without being pilloried or professionally ruined. CRT in schools? By all means. Expose kids to every imaginable idea and let them see if they buy it. Vaccine denialism? Let it rip. There is no greater rebuttal to RFK Jr. than to hear the man's incoherent lunacy on vaccines. Hunter's laptop? Jordan Peterson's shtick? 1619 Project? Transitioning children? All totally fine with me. My view is let it all rip, and - and - let everyone who wants to call bullshit on any of these things rip them to fucking shreds. And any sorts who want to buy into them? Do so. Good for you!

You're not even talking about laws. You just want to live in a world where there are no consequences for what you say?

Extreme ESG/DEI is not a thing among the 60% of businesses in the US that are small businesses. And a huge percentage of those who work in large corporations don't give a fuck about these things.

It's not really much of a thing anywhere, tbh. The story is that it doesn't actually change much of anything.

The majority of the country is in the middle. They'd prefer people stop telling each other what they can and cannot read and fighting about trans people, who make up .0005% of society.

We don't give a fuck about people's strong emotions about their pet issues, or those people, even. But we very much don't like twits telling us we can't drink Bud Light (I wouldn't anyway) because a cross dresser did an ad for it. And we don't want to be told we have to listen to claptrap about inclusion if we don't feel like it.

Sure. Meanwhile, politically, the fraction of the country that feels differently has taken over the GOP as the wedge for its grievances.

The authoritarianism from the left is Huxley - subtle, nudging. From the right, it's Orwell. Statutory, enforced.

I think you keep using the term "authoritarianism" to get a rise out of me. A-ha! Subtle authoritarianism! The kind no one notices! Like Mussolini, but nudging the trains imperceptibly in the direction of being on time.

A venn diagram of the mindset those kids at the US Open and Trump would be a circle in this essential regard... Both live in their own realities. And they insist the rest of us do so as well.

The urge for false equivalence is so strong in you. One cannot imagine Trump every doing what the kids at the US Open did, for so many reasons, but here you insist that they have the same "mindset."