Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

These are interwoven. Just this week, the 5th Circuit ruled that the Biden admin was likely violating the First Amendment by leaning on social media companies to squelch certain speech. In the case of what DeSantis is doing in FL, there is no doubt - he is acting as an authoritarian, banning free expression.

If we all just accept that by "authoritarian" you mean "interested in restricting expression" then, sure, whatever. The point I was making is that you are using the word "authoritarian" in a different way than the rest of the English-speaking population, which causes friction for the rest of us in trying to understand what you are saying.

Also, the Fifth Circuit's decision is a little loopy. I don't believe the Biden Administration was coercing anyone by asking social-media networks to abide by their own rules concerning misinformation and disinformation. (I certainly don't think the Biden Administration is "authoritarian" -- you do, but because you are doing violence to that word.)

I think it absolutely is because what I see at the extreme poles is delusion, religion. MAGA thinks they're in a fight for the soul of America. Their counterparts on the extreme left believe that the country must be reinvented down to its plankings. Neither is at all realistic or living in anything close to reality.

Your profound commitment to both-sidesism is so, so tiring. For one, when you talk about MAGA, you are talking about the dominant faction in the GOP, and its likely presidential nominee in the next election. When you talk about the extreme left, you're talking about a couple of hemp enthusiasts on Twitter. Equating the two sides is myopic, but you insist on your hobby-horse myopia.

It is absolutely not hyperbole. Behind the scenes, most people roll their eyes at the ESG and DEI compliance nonsense, and all the idiot virtue signaling of corporate America. They think it's a fad. And they'll tell you so over drinks. But they genuflect dutifully because he who does not can get himself in a career pickle.

I just said that ESG and DEI isn't really changing anything, and you seem to agree ("idiot virtue signaling"). The number of people who get in a "career pickle" over this stuff is pretty small.

No. I want to live in a world with reverence for facts. Where people who offer facts are not pilloried, from either side. Where kids in FL or anywhere can read and learn about LGBTQ issues. Where a person can assert as we all now know that a virus started in a lab and not be silenced or ludicrously deemed, by a coven of narrative-fixers in govt and media, as a racist.

Who is "silenced" as a racist, and how? It's not like there's a shortage of people pushing the narrative that COVID started in a lab.

I do not defend the sorts like Alex Jones. Those people should be mocked and abused for stating the grotesquely false. But if you don't find the squashing of the Hunter laptop story disturbing, or worse, the letter, offered with knowledge of its falsity, by 50 ex-intel officials, calling it Russian propaganda, you don't really care much about freedom of expression.

How did the government "squash" the Hunter Biden laptop story? We have all heard far more about that story than it merits. It's the opposite of squashed. And why are you trying to silence the 50 ex-intel officials -- you authoritarian! They are just trying engage in speech about a vital issue of the day, and you want to silence them!

That's just not true. These things have created a society in which certain silly pieties are compelled to be observed.

We have always lived in that sort of society, because that's what people are like. It's just the silly pieties in vogue keep changing.

And if you think I'm wrong, look up how lucrative DEI consulting has become in the past decade. And this ESG nonsense has cost real people real money, and burdened the bottom lines of corporations for no defensible reason.

My point is that it isn't changing much, and you don't seem to disagree. You are just butthurt that people are making money telling corporations how to sound more inclusive.

My company has paid money to DEI consultants. We did it in response to demand from employees. We didn't spend a lot of money, and I can't point to any way in which it has changed anyone's behavior. No one in the company has ever been in a "career pickle" for anyone relating to DEI. I know that doesn't fit into you preferred narrative at all, so I'm sorry if that is squashing your speech.

ETA: A school I attended just lost a bunch of money over "inclusion" policies. Donors got into a battle, pitted themselves at the extremes of right and left, nobody in the middle was heard, and who lost? The kids.

OK. So what's your point? We should all be blessed with a better class of donor.

As have their doppelgangers on the left in the Democratic party.

Who is the MAGA-doppelganger on the left who has taken over the Democratic Party as a wedge for their grievances? Names. You are just so full of shit with this both-sidesism that you say things that are patent bullshit. The GOP and Democratic Party are fundamentally different in important ways, and this is one of them. The Republican Party is led by a grievance-spouting reality-TV star, and the Democratic Party is led by Joe Fucking Biden, who wouldn't know a grievance if he tripped over it and who has been a Senator or Vice President for something like half of his life.

Were it only so nudging, Mr. Sunstein. But it's not. It's a silly new form of religion, just like MAGA.

I know you like saying ridiculous things for effect, but I don't even understand what you are saying here.

I can. I saw him do it on January 6, and many times before and after. There are about 500 hours of him throwing tantrums and insisting someone hear his grievances about his election loss and how he was treated in office. Yes, climate change is real, and Trump's claims of election theft are false, but a tantrum is a tantrum.

The reason we're talking about the kids at the US Open is not that they threw a tantrum, it's that they disrupted the US Open. You wouldn't have even noticed, or cared, if they threw a tantrum somewhere else. You so desperately want to "both sides" Trump and those protestors that you are saying truly stupid things.