Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

You are, intentionally or unintentionally, dodging my point.

"Shrillary" elicits 44,900 hits.

Yes -- I got your point. But you left that barn door open... I figured you'd write me back something sarcastic.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

"Shrillary" elicits 44,900 hits.

Yes -- I got your point. But you left that barn door open... I figured you'd write me back something sarcastic.

I have no idea whether you get my point (and have intentionally dodged it again, as you often do), or just don’t understand why the number of hits you get for Shrillary has absolutely nothing to do with my point.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Why not pay attention to both?

You accuse me of flagging the left wing cancel people and ignoring the right. It appears you're doing exactly the same thing in reverse. You assert despite Graham's essay (and he's a fuckload smarter and levelheaded than you or I will ever be) and numerous similar ones that cancel culture doesn't exist.

Well, you do complain about the left wing and ignore the right. You always have. When you're called on it, you say, I hate both sides, and then you go back to complaining about the left.

I don't think I have said that cancel culture doesn't exist. What I think is,
1) We live at a time of polarization across different dimensions, where there is less of a sense of common ground and where different people are more likely to have fundamental disagreements about basic principles. I think what you call "cancel culture" is a manifestation of what happens in discourse when people understand that they have fundamental disagreements about basic principles and that their disagreements are unlikely to be bridged by an exchange of views.
2) Also, compounding this, we live in a time with an awful lot of bad faith in discussions of public affairs. There is a lot of racism, but no one admits to being a racist. The President lies all the time, but doesn't admit that he lies. His supporters understand that he lies and see it as an appropriate and necessary response to, well, something. Debate only works with someone who is debating in good faith.
3) Social media has changed the way the ongoing debate works, in a bunch of ways, including driving the polarization above. Also, anyone can and does publish their views.
4) What you call "cancel culture" comes from an amorphous combination of a bunch of different things, some of which are new and some of which are not new at all. But "cancel culture" as a concept is so undefined and loose that I don't see what it adds. When you talk about "cancel culture" you are generally talking about the views of unspecified people somewhere to the left of you. As above, if you're pushed you'll pay lip service to the idea that there is some sort of cancel culture on the right, but you say that begrudgingly and you pretty much drop it as soon as you're not being called out on it. You do not identify or quote anyone whose views are a part of cancel culture, instead calling them morons and crazy and making up things that they might say, which makes it all the easier to rebut them.
5) A key part of complaining about cancel culture is dismissing other people's speech in a general way instead of dealing with the specifics. This was one criticism of the Harper's letter -- for example, that it seemed to generically refer to the J.K. Rowling contretemps in a way favorable to her without really reckoning with what other people were saying in response to her. Kevin Williamson made Rapoport an example of "cancel culture" even though the widely reported facts suggest something else was going on.
6) Because of 2), 4) and 5), complaining about cancel culture is what you do if you get caught expressing views that perhaps were once non-controversial but are now problematic. Maybe Kevin Williamson thinks that it's not a problem that Bon Appetit was discriminating in favor of white staff, but he doesn't want he really thinks, so instead he turns Rapoport into a victim. You can't tell me that Williamson read the NPR article he cited and thought he was representing what it said -- there is doubtless some degree of bad faith there. But if it's not clear what "cancel culture" is, it's pretty easy to say that Rapoport (or Bari Weiss, to take another recent example) are its victims. And many of the people who complain about "cancel culture" seem more interested in making sound like a horrible problem than in making sure that the concept isn't being abused to hide what was done by people like, say, Rapoport, which detracts from their credibility.
7) The people who do 6) are the people who are acutely aware that their views are slowly losing support, which is to say: conservatives. When free speech is suppressed in the streets of Portland, or by sending Michael Cohen back to prison for meeting with a book publisher, or by the White House's use of NDAs, or by J.K. Rowling's lawyers, no one needs to pretend to be the victim of "cancel culture."
8) Related to 7), you can't get "canceled" if you aren't someone to start with, so a key part of complaining about cancel culture is protecting the prerogatives of people who have no problem being heard (J.K. Rowling, Charles Murray, Andrew Sullivan) from criticism by people who don't have the same status. "Cancel culture" is egalitarian, while complaining about cancel culture preserves old hierarchies.
9) Related to 8), many of the people who are ostensible victims of "cancel culture" do not seem to have been harmed in any cognizable way. Charles Murray and J.K. Rowling have no problem being heard. Bari Weiss chose to leave her job to do something else. Dave Chappelle is not hurting for outlets. None of them really want to answer their critics, nor to do they like be criticized. But they have in no way been "canceled."
10) Meanwhile, the people who complain the most about "cancel culture" seem to have a highly selective concern for the principle of free speech. This is exemplified by Bari Weiss and J.K. Rowling, but also by the Kevin Williamsons of the world, who never made it to Matthew 7:3-5. And you, honestly. If "cancel culture" is not really silencing people like Rowling, it's very hard to escape the conclusion that the whole thing is a way of disagreeing with what people on the left are saying without actually engaging with them on the substance. Which would be ironic if it weren't sad.

I'm not sure whether cancel culture exists, because I've never seen a compelling definition of it that could be tested. How can one tell if any single episode reveals cancel culture? But "cancel culture" definitely exists, a bogeyman to be used to defend unpopular speech from the left, a concept sufficiently malleable to be deployed in all sorts of different circumstances and sufficiently nebulous that there's no way to disprove it.

"Cancel culture" is like Keyzer Soze -- you spin up a big story using whatever facts and names you have in front of you, and if someone tries to question it -- poof, and it's gone.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I have no idea whether you get my point (and have intentionally dodged it again, as you often do), or just don’t understand why the number of hits you get for Shrillary has absolutely nothing to do with my point.

I didn't miss your point. It's impossible to miss it. You're accusing me of doing what I'm finding fault with others for doing.

I missed "Shrillary" in the first go around. I was doubling down on the previous response I'd offered thinking it would elicit a more amusing exchange. I mean, if you're going to say "I remember" and use the example of punching "two words" separately into google where "cancel culture" is one set of words within quotes, you're kind of giving me an easy out. I figured you'd reply with, "You're an ass." But you're Earnest Flower these days. I get it. I am chastened.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

A side point to all this discussion of free speech that I think is fascinating is how discussions of progressive scholarship are used to telecast class.

If one can talk about things like intersectionality and critical race theory and seem open to the concepts, he telecasts that he went to the sort of school where these things are taught. He also telecasts he works in a job where he makes enough money to be able to mentally engage these concepts.

It's a way to signal one is well read and a bit affluent. I've scored points by having read White Fragility last year. Little would anyone know I did it in reply to a thread here.

There's definitely a herd mentality at work here, and an abuse of language. You hear these new words adopted and used in pieces, or in conversations, and it reminds me a good bit of the corporate lingo people use to look smart, to create barriers to entry that make it seem like they're engaged in some complex thinking that's actually quite pedestrian.

I wonder how many people nodding along with DiAngelo and telling others to read that book are doing so because they're thinking to themselves, This is what people who are well thought of, who are considered enlightened and successful, think. Trump people would never treat these concepts seriously or run in circles where they're considered. Definitely a lot of peer pressure at work.

I think anthropology departments need to develop a curriculum in Herd Mentalities and Social Climbing. Then someone could write a book, Upper Middle Class White Insecurity.

What you say about intersectionality is also true about quantum physics and Austrian economics and Bayesian probability. All are sophisticated concepts that explain the world around us, and familiarity with them will suggest time spent in higher education which is generally seen as a net positive and a class signifier. But you have singled out intersectionality and looked past quantum physics and Austrian economics and Bayesian probability, probably because you are skeptical that it adds value to understanding our world, and by talking about insecurity you are implying that people who talk about intersectionality do not really believe it, but are talking about it to look good to other people. In the stories you tell, only people on the left are motivated by peer pressure.

ETA: Another corollary point regarding this free speech debate is that cancel culture might only exist to protect bogus theories. That it may have stemmed from a need to protect that which crumbles in the face of skepticism. Trump lies all the time, so he needs to employ cancel tactics constantly. I think a lot of the "academics" behind some of the far out gender studies realize their work is more narrative than hard science, and don't want it subjected to the buzzsaw of the scientific method.

This is certainly true of complaints about "cancel culture," which rely on the idea that it is everywhere to get past the problem that if you look closely you often can't find it. Bennett got fired for not reading stuff he was editing. Bari Weiss left her job after her boss left. Rapaport got fired for a lot of discriminating against people, not an Instagram post. And so on. Some people would rather complain that their right to free speech is being suppressed than answer for what they've done and said.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Well, you do complain about the left wing and ignore the right. You always have. When you're called on it, you say, I hate both sides, and then you go back to complaining about the left.

The Right are hopeless. And they're open about desiring to cancel people. They admit wanting to limit people's freedom. The Left pretends to value free expression, but it increasingly desires an intolerant deference to orthodoxies many of which don't withstand even cursory skepticism.

I don't think I have said that cancel culture doesn't exist. What I think is,
1) We live at a time of polarization across different dimensions, where there is less of a sense of common ground and where different people are more likely to have fundamental disagreements about basic principles. I think what you call "cancel culture" is a manifestation of what happens in discourse when people understand that they have fundamental disagreements about basic principles and that their disagreements are unlikely to be bridged by an exchange of views.

I agree. We've a war of bullhorns.

2) Also, compounding this, we live in a time with an awful lot of bad faith in discussions of public affairs. There is a lot of racism, but no one admits to being a racist. The President lies all the time, but doesn't admit that he lies. His supporters understand that he lies and see it as an appropriate and necessary response to, well, something. Debate only works with someone who is debating in good faith.

Agreed on Trump. Not agreed on the racism point. Some people hold different definitions of racist. That's a semantic dispute for many.

3) Social media has changed the way the ongoing debate works, in a bunch of ways, including driving the polarization above. Also, anyone can and does publish their views.

Agreed. I liked early adopters of internet media. Many great sites filled with great content. Decent writing. Then along came social media, and now we've the dumb rabble crowing from every corner. The idiocy of crowds, the world's greatest advertisement for a return to monarchy, on permanent display.

4) What you call "cancel culture" comes from an amorphous combination of a bunch of different things, some of which are new and some of which are not new at all. But "cancel culture" as a concept is so undefined and loose that I don't see what it adds. When you talk about "cancel culture" you are generally talking about the views of unspecified people somewhere to the left of you. As above, if you're pushed you'll pay lip service to the idea that there is some sort of cancel culture on the right, but you say that begrudgingly and you pretty much drop it as soon as you're not being called out on it. You do not identify or quote anyone whose views are a part of cancel culture, instead calling them morons and crazy and making up things that they might say, which makes it all the easier to rebut them.

Cancel culture is a terribly loose concept. But I think you nail it in your first statement. It's what you get when words are turned into rocks. People don't exchange them. They hurl them without concern for truth, in the hope those words harm the other side.

Regarding your comments about me, reread my opening comment. I see no reason to engage in atta boys here about how the Right is filled with cancel culture morons. It's obvious. No one need tell you a group of religious loons who seek to tell people what they can and cannot do in the bedroom is also in favor of cancel culture. But from the Left, which typically stood for free exchange of ideas, the emergence of cancel culture is a terrible development.

5) A key part of complaining about cancel culture is dismissing other people's speech in a general way instead of dealing with the specifics. This was one criticism of the Harper's letter -- for example, that it seemed to generically refer to the J.K. Rowling contretemps in a way favorable to her without really reckoning with what other people were saying in response to her. Kevin Williamson made Rapoport an example of "cancel culture" even though the widely reported facts suggest something else was going on.

Right. I agree, but there must be some generalization to address a thing so obvious and real but amorphous. But I offered you a list of professors subjected to cancel witch hunts. Hundreds, I believe. What say you to that?

6) Because of 2), 4) and 5), complaining about cancel culture is what you do if you get caught expressing views that perhaps were once non-controversial but are now problematic. Maybe Kevin Williamson thinks that it's not a problem that Bon Appetit was discriminating in favor of white staff, but he doesn't want he really thinks, so instead he turns Rapoport into a victim. You can't tell me that Williamson read the NPR article he cited and thought he was representing what it said -- there is doubtless some degree of bad faith there. But if it's not clear what "cancel culture" is, it's pretty easy to say that Rapoport (or Bari Weiss, to take another recent example) are its victims. And many of the people who complain about "cancel culture" seem more interested in making sound like a horrible problem than in making sure that the concept isn't being abused to hide what was done by people like, say, Rapoport, which detracts from their credibility.

Discriminating against people is not expressing a view. Rowling expressed a view. Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen Professor who criticized an asinine event in which white students were asked to leave campus for a day and ultimately had to resign, expressed a view. The Yale professor who had to resign for having had the temerity to tell students flipping out about Native American Halloween costumes to get a grip, was expressing a view.

The list of people punished for merely holding views is lengthy. That's indefensible. It's dumb. It's Trumpian, authoritarian.

7) The people who do 6) are the people who are acutely aware that their views are slowly losing support, which is to say: conservatives. When free speech is suppressed in the streets of Portland, or by sending Michael Cohen back to prison for meeting with a book publisher, or by the White House's use of NDAs, or by J.K. Rowling's lawyers, no one needs to pretend to be the victim of "cancel culture."

Are you suggesting that there is a loss of support for the view that people should be able to express ideas, even bad ones? Dude, whether you're a conservative or a progressive or a libertarian or whatever, that should never be out of vogue. When we reach the point where it's okay to say, "Some views should not be stated, even if reasonable," the Country Is Done.

8) Related to 7), you can't get "canceled" if you aren't someone to start with, so a key part of complaining about cancel culture is protecting the prerogatives of people who have no problem being heard (J.K. Rowling, Charles Murray, Andrew Sullivan) from criticism by people who don't have the same status. "Cancel culture" is egalitarian, while complaining about cancel culture preserves old hierarchies.

You have it a bit backwards. None of the canceled professors were famous. The famous - the really famous like Chapelle, or in media circles, Sullivan - are big enough to not give a fuck. I agree their carping about cancel culture sounds a bit odd given they're immune to it. But I welcome it. We need people like Sullivan to speak about it on Maher. We need people like Chapelle to mock it mercilessly. Those people are of the elite mindset. They are the enlightened -- above the crowd, next level thinkers. They do not adhere to the radical chic of the moment or the frivolous academy of McIntellectuals forming around it.

9) Related to 8), many of the people who are ostensible victims of "cancel culture" do not seem to have been harmed in any cognizable way. Charles Murray and J.K. Rowling have no problem being heard. Bari Weiss chose to leave her job to do something else. Dave Chappelle is not hurting for outlets. None of them really want to answer their critics, nor to do they like be criticized. But they have in no way been "canceled."

Murray and Chapelle have more than answered their critics. They do not give a fuck. Not a single fuck. Rowling and Weiss strike me as huge whiners.

10) Meanwhile, the people who complain the most about "cancel culture" seem to have a highly selective concern for the principle of free speech. This is exemplified by Bari Weiss and J.K. Rowling, but also by the Kevin Williamsons of the world, who never made it to Matthew 7:3-5. And you, honestly. If "cancel culture" is not really silencing people like Rowling, it's very hard to escape the conclusion that the whole thing is a way of disagreeing with what people on the left are saying without actually engaging with them on the substance. Which would be ironic if it weren't sad.

I think many of the extreme left who get behind cancelling are just dumb. I've read their crazy explanations of why they're allowed to do what they do, and all the social justice stuff. I agree with many of the goals, but the people behind it? Lots of dumb people over there. Full of sentiment, rage, whatever... But not too bright. "But power dynamics!" Please. Kill me. Intersectionality is a great example. It's a goofy way of saying things are related and inform and compound one another. Um, no shit? That's a whole topic? Really?

I'm not sure whether cancel culture exists, because I've never seen a compelling definition of it that could be tested. How can one tell if any single episode reveals cancel culture? But "cancel culture" definitely exists, a bogeyman to be used to defend unpopular speech from the left, a concept sufficiently malleable to be deployed in all sorts of different circumstances and sufficiently nebulous that there's no way to disprove it.

There must be a laddering of thought, placing the circumspect thinkers, the relativists, above the crowd. What is afoot today is not a smart set of Thomas Paines overtaking a crowd of royalist Edmund Burkes. It's not even Vidal vs. Buckley. It's more a cage match of idiot mobs. On the right, nihilist liars provide the intellectual support. On the extreme left, frivolous academics of the "soft sciences" provide the intellectual support.

Much is said about "elites" controlling this country. I see very few.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

What you say about intersectionality is also true about quantum physics and Austrian economics and Bayesian probability. All are sophisticated concepts that explain the world around us, and familiarity with them will suggest time spent in higher education which is generally seen as a net positive and a class signifier. But you have singled out intersectionality and looked past quantum physics and Austrian economics and Bayesian probability, probably because you are skeptical that it adds value to understanding our world, and by talking about insecurity you are implying that people who talk about intersectionality do not really believe it, but are talking about it to look good to other people. In the stories you tell, only people on the left are motivated by peer pressure.

I'm not telling a story. Intersectionality is almost entirely defined with the exact word. It's a repackaging of the obvious (to any person actually paying attention to how the world works) into a pseudointellectual theory.

I do not encounter people trying to impress me with Hayek. Most of those people are weirdos who tend to talk amongst themselves. As to quantum physics, those people would likely find me not too smart, as I'd be out of my depth a few minutes into conversation on that topic.

People who are into the soft sciences, and particularly into all the "waves" of social movements, are often navel gazing. Nothing wrong with that. But anthropology is a nerf science, if it can be called science at all. It's not the subject area where someone's going to impress the shit out of you. The best one can do in a conversation on that stuff is steer it toward philosophy, politics, or economics. Then you can at least attempt to deal with somewhat concrete concepts.

This is certainly true of complaints about "cancel culture," which rely on the idea that it is everywhere to get past the problem that if you look closely you often can't find it. Bennett got fired for not reading stuff he was editing. Bari Weiss left her job after her boss left. Rapaport got fired for a lot of discriminating against people, not an Instagram post. And so on. Some people would rather complain that their right to free speech is being suppressed than answer for what they've done and said.

Right. Now deal with those professors. Those very specific professors.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The Right are hopeless. And they're open about desiring to cancel people. They admit wanting to limit people's freedom. The Left pretends to value free expression, but it increasingly desires an intolerant deference to orthodoxies many of which don't withstand even cursory skepticism.

Oh really? Can you name someone on the Left who desires an intolerant deference to an orthodoxy that doesn't withstand cursory skepticism? What's the orthodoxy? Since you are broadly characterizing something like half of the political spectrum, this shouldn't be much of a challenge for you.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Oh really? Can you name someone on the Left who desires an intolerant deference to an orthodoxy that doesn't withstand cursory skepticism? What's the orthodoxy? Since you are broadly characterizing something like half of the political spectrum, this shouldn't be much of a challenge for you.

The left is actually remarkably good at calling out its own in order to maintain a high standard of integrity.

The right, meanwhile, believes there is no amount of bigotry, censoriousness, authoritarianism, or downright derpiness that won't go away if one just stonewalls enough.

I'd offer examples, but obviously we don't do that here. Sebby has established that being tethered to reality is not an expectation on this board.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Oh really? Can you name someone on the Left who desires an intolerant deference to an orthodoxy that doesn't withstand cursory skepticism? What's the orthodoxy? Since you are broadly characterizing something like half of the political spectrum, this shouldn't be much of a challenge for you.

Not only did I name one, I named thousands of them. You're still ignoring every one of the professors on that list. For each one of them, you have untold numbers of students and colleagues who supported removal or censure of those professors.

The orthodoxies are numerous: Hyper-sensitivity to even slight offenses (microaggressions) must be tolerated. Demands for changes to things like "patriarchy" and reversal of "power dynamics" must be treated seriously (no eye rolls, no questioning). Belief one is of a certain sex makes one as much a member of that sex as being actually born of that sex (no equivocations allowed). If one is not antiracist, one is racist. Women must be believed regardless of dubiousness of claim (and even if brought forth by Michael Avenatti). 1619 is the truth and the history you heard before is not. All things must be seen primarily through the lens of gender or race. Identity politics is righteous and necessary.

The list of beliefs of this new amorphous religion goes on for a lot of text. But in a nutshell, it comes down to this: We, the historically aggrieved, own this moment, and we are entitled to have it, and you must listen.

Bollocks. Where your case holds water, I'm all ears. Where it's shite, fuck off.

And there's a whole lotta shite out there right now.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I didn't miss your point. It's impossible to miss it. You're accusing me of doing what I'm finding fault with others for doing.

I missed "Shrillary" in the first go around. I was doubling down on the previous response I'd offered thinking it would elicit a more amusing exchange. I mean, if you're going to say "I remember" and use the example of punching "two words" separately into google where "cancel culture" is one set of words within quotes, you're kind of giving me an easy out. I figured you'd reply with, "You're an ass." But you're Earnest Flower these days. I get it. I am chastened.

Is it really still necessary for me to mention that you’re an ass each time? I mean, I could put it in my signature line, but then it would step on those Minnie Riperton lyrics.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I agree. We've a war of bullhorns.

Uh, no, that's not my point. The bullhorn metaphor suggests that people are talking but not listening. My point is that people across the political spectrum are less likely to agree on basic principles.

Agreed on Trump. Not agreed on the racism point. Some people hold different definitions of racist. That's a semantic dispute for many.

Again, you are missing my point, even as you illustrate it. The people who define "racism" narrowly often do not believe that "racism" in the broad sense is a problem worth talking about, but they do not say that bluntly, for the most part. From the perspective of people who think it's a big problem, these other people pay lip service to opposing "racism" while not engaging in good faith. Possibly they understand full well that they are not as interested or committed to the issue as others, but they don't want to say that. The semantic debate hides a larger debate, with the operative word being hides.

At any rate, don't let the example of racism distract from the bigger point. Bad faith is absolutely rampant in political debate, largely (IMO) because the conservative movement understands that it is a minority and that a lot of what it wants is unpopular.

Agreed. I liked early adopters of internet media. Many great sites filled with great content. Decent writing. Then along came social media, and now we've the dumb rabble crowing from every corner. The idiocy of crowds, the world's greatest advertisement for a return to monarchy, on permanent display.

OK, granddad.

Cancel culture is a terribly loose concept. But I think you nail it in your first statement. It's what you get when words are turned into rocks. People don't exchange them. They hurl them without concern for truth, in the hope those words harm the other side.

Thanks for the compliment, but you are no closer to a definition of cancel culture that will explain whether a given set of facts is an example of cancel culture or not.

Regarding your comments about me, reread my opening comment. I see no reason to engage in atta boys here about how the Right is filled with cancel culture morons. It's obvious. No one need tell you a group of religious loons who seek to tell people what they can and cannot do in the bedroom is also in favor of cancel culture. But from the Left, which typically stood for free exchange of ideas, the emergence of cancel culture is a terrible development.

I still don't know what you think cancel culture is, or who you think "the Left" is, for that matter, so it's hard to tell to what extent I might agree.

Right. I agree, but there must be some generalization to address a thing so obvious and real but amorphous. But I offered you a list of professors subjected to cancel witch hunts. Hundreds, I believe. What say you to that?

Yes, you sent that as the first of a list of three documents, of which Williamson's article was the second. I opened it and I read the first case. Did you? How could you tell what happened or what the best critique of the professor was? I don't doubt that there are some poor complaints against professors who didn't have it coming. (Thanks, Bari Weiss.) But if a document like that doesn't help you figure out which complaints are meritorious and which are not, what's the point? So I moved on to Williamson's article which, for its flaws, at least cited to a source (the NPR article) and provided a link so I could see more about the facts at issue.

Discriminating against people is not expressing a view.

Yes, exactly my point. If you read the NPR piece, you will see that there were a lot of complaints about how Rapoport did his job, including that he paid white staffers for work that he asked other staffers to do for free, and also that he posted stuff on social media that people found insensitive. Citing that piece, Williamson claims him as a victim of "cancel culture." Similarly, Bennett got fired after he mismanaged the op-ed page into a damaging controversy by soliciting a piece that did not meet the Times standards, failing to read it, and then responding to criticism by telling people that they needed to be exposed to the piece he hadn't exposed himself to. No one thinks Bennett got canned because of his own views or expression. "Cancel culture"? I don't think so, but Williamson sure does.

[QUOTE] Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen Professor who criticized an asinine event in which white students were asked to leave campus for a day and ultimately had to resign, expressed a view. The Yale professor who had to resign for having had the temerity to tell students flipping out about Native American Halloween costumes to get a grip, was expressing a view.

OK, hold it right there. I am a little familiar with both the Evergreen State and Yale disputes. Without agreeing or disagreeing with your view of the student complaints in each, it's pretty obvious to me that both disputes were intrinsically about what a college should do about speech on campus. Evergreen State had an annual event that then was changed, and there was a debate about it. Yale was sending guidance to students about costumes *on campus*. Campus speech has its own weirdnesses, not necessarily defensible, but also not necessarily indicative of what is going on in the larger culture.

The list of people punished for merely holding views is lengthy. That's indefensible. It's dumb. It's Trumpian, authoritarian.

Here's a big point of disagreement between us. I don't see a long list of people "punished? for merely holding views. Everyone you mention doesn't really seem to have suffered.

Are you suggesting that there is a loss of support for the view that people should be able to express ideas, even bad ones? Dude, whether you're a conservative or a progressive or a libertarian or whatever, that should never be out of vogue. When we reach the point where it's okay to say, "Some views should not be stated, even if reasonable," the Country Is Done.

No, I'm suggesting, for example, that on some level Williamson does not have a problem with Rapoport preferencing whites in his running Bon Appetit, but he knows that if he makes that argument, it won't fly. So he has to turn Rapoport into a free-speech victim. As you described, Bari Weiss's writing is boring, but she has a knack for being provocative. It helps her career much more to play the victim of lefty thought police than it does to just move on to something better for her talents and interests.

You have it a bit backwards. None of the canceled professors were famous. The famous - the really famous like Chapelle, or in media circles, Sullivan - are big enough to not give a fuck. I agree their carping about cancel culture sounds a bit odd given they're immune to it. But I welcome it. We need people like Sullivan to speak about it on Maher. We need people like Chapelle to mock it mercilessly. Those people are of the elite mindset. They are the enlightened -- above the crowd, next level thinkers. They do not adhere to the radical chic of the moment or the frivolous academy of McIntellectuals forming around it.

Again, let's set academia aside. When you talk about "cancel culture," you talk about well-established people like Sullivan and Chappelle. They aren't being canceled and they don't need the help.

Murray and Chapelle have more than answered their critics. They do not give a fuck. Not a single fuck. Rowling and Weiss strike me as huge whiners.

Great, so there's no problem then.

I think many of the extreme left who get behind cancelling are just dumb. I've read their crazy explanations of why they're allowed to do what they do, and all the social justice stuff. I agree with many of the goals, but the people behind it? Lots of dumb people over there. Full of sentiment, rage, whatever... But not too bright. "But power dynamics!" Please. Kill me.

For the umpteenth time, not sure who or what you are talking about, and I don't understand why you think it adds something to any conversation to say stuff like this.

Intersectionality is a great example. It's a goofy way of saying things are related and inform and compound one another. Um, no shit? That's a whole topic? Really?

"Intersectionality" captures the same real phenomenon that "synergies" does in the business world, no?

There must be a laddering of thought, placing the circumspect thinkers, the relativists, above the crowd. What is afoot today is not a smart set of Thomas Paines overtaking a crowd of royalist Edmund Burkes. It's not even Vidal vs. Buckley. It's more a cage match of idiot mobs. On the right, nihilist liars provide the intellectual support. On the extreme left, frivolous academics of the "soft sciences" provide the intellectual support.

Much is said about "elites" controlling this country. I see very few.

You could take your own step towards changing that by posting about people whose views deserve respect and a response. Or, you could just keep ranting about the mob. Your choice.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Not only did I name one, I named thousands of them. You're still ignoring every one of the professors on that list. For each one of them, you have untold numbers of students and colleagues who supported removal or censure of those professors.

If it's that easy, name one. I didn't see that in the thing you linked -- what did I miss? I was literally looking for the details who said what, etc., and you're right that it was untold.

The orthodoxies are numerous: Hyper-sensitivity to even slight offenses (microaggressions) must be tolerated. Demands for changes to things like "patriarchy" and reversal of "power dynamics" must be treated seriously (no eye rolls, no questioning). Belief one is of a certain sex makes one as much a member of that sex as being actually born of that sex (no equivocations allowed). If one is not antiracist, one is racist. Women must be believed regardless of dubiousness of claim (and even if brought forth by Michael Avenatti). 1619 is the truth and the history you heard before is not. All things must be seen primarily through the lens of gender or race. Identity politics is righteous and necessary.

I don't know of anyone who believes any of your "orthodoxies," which is to say you are twisting the views of other people with whom you disagree in order to make them seem ludicrous. The reason I asked you for specifics is to try to get you to respond to actual things people are actually saying.

For one example, people who talk about the patriarchy are, in my experience, usually using that as a shorthand for the very real and well understood history and presence of gender inequality, expressed and perpetrated through different power dynamics. It's like the broad definition of "racism" -- it's a term that a captures a complex set of phenomena usefully if you want to have certain conversations about what to do with them. If you are going to roll your eyes at that, it raises a pretty strong presumption that you are hostile to efforts to do anything about the problems, and that your complaining about "orthodoxies" is a mask for a hostility to more gender equality. Not a rebuttable presumption, so go ahead and rebut it if you want to. But in my life, I see a lot more evidence of persistent gender inequality than I do of harm from some notional orthodoxy about demands for change to the patriarchy.

The list of beliefs of this new amorphous religion goes on for a lot of text. But in a nutshell, it comes down to this: We, the historically aggrieved, own this moment, and we are entitled to have it, and you must listen.

Yes, that must be very hard for you if what you don't want to do is listen.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

https://www.nas.org/storage/app/medi...uly-2-2020.pdf

[Tyrone Slothrop]