Objectively intelligent.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

When people still revered Enlightenment views, they would listen to a person say something they didn't like and respond by ignoring it or explaining why they thought it was flawed.

This is a comical view of history.

HUAC. Korematsu. Office of Censorship. Palmer Raids. Espionage Act. Jim Crow. Comstock Laws. Alien & Sedition Acts.

Since our birth in the Enlightenment, the US has jailed people for speech that opposed the President, slavery, wars, the union, or the government in general, and for speech that advocated rights for women and minorities, unions, anarchy, communism, socialism, pacifism, alliance with France, or any number of other things. I kind of expect this sort of persecution is relatively low today compared to prior periods.

Likewise, colleges have a long history of firing faculty for all kinds of nonconformance or "deviancy", ranging from unacceptable religious or political views or memberships to things like getting pregnant, being homosexual, or discussing evolution in class.

If you want to advocate that there is some special kind of cancel culture out there today get me metrics - mine some data. Are people being arrested or jailed in greater numbers than in prior periods? Are laws on the books of some sort that weren't there before? Are faculty being fired in greater numbers than in whatever heyday of enlightenment thinking you want to posit? Has there been an increase in lynchings? And if you do find some numbers, make sure you compare and contrast so-called Christian or Catholic schools (where there is a very strong movement now for doing things like firing gay people) and Secular private or state schools.

I think you need to read more of the 1619 Project.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

This is a comical view of history.

HUAC. Korematsu. Office of Censorship. Palmer Raids. Espionage Act. Jim Crow. Comstock Laws. Alien & Sedition Acts.

Since our birth in the Enlightenment, the US has jailed people for speech that opposed the President, slavery, wars, the union, or the government in general, and for speech that advocated rights for women and minorities, unions, anarchy, communism, socialism, pacifism, alliance with France, or any number of other things. I kind of expect this sort of persecution is relatively low today compared to prior periods.

Likewise, colleges have a long history of firing faculty for all kinds of nonconformance or "deviancy", ranging from unacceptable religious or political views or memberships to things like getting pregnant, being homosexual, or discussing evolution in class.

If you want to advocate that there is some special kind of cancel culture out there today get me metrics - mine some data. Are people being arrested or jailed in greater numbers than in prior periods? Are laws on the books of some sort that weren't there before? Are faculty being fired in greater numbers than in whatever heyday of enlightenment thinking you want to posit? Has there been an increase in lynchings? And if you do find some numbers, make sure you compare and contrast so-called Christian or Catholic schools (where there is a very strong movement now for doing things like firing gay people) and Secular private or state schools.

I think you need to read more of the 1619 Project.

By the way, here's a "cancel culture" issue as old as the hills - https://religionnews.com/2021/02/19/...lgbtq-members/

So who is being cancelled, the people being kicked out of the denomination because they're praying with gay people or the people who felt they had to leave the congregation because that gay couple was joining?

This has been replayed so many times over so many issues over so many years.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm not confused and you haven't been unclear. You're: (1) refusing to recognize this cancel silliness as a phenomenon; and, (2) trying to shift the discussion from one about its negative impacts to a discussion about minorities not being represented adequately in newsrooms.

As to 1, you've failed. To argue there is no such thing as cancel behavior is to deny reality.

"Cancel culture" is a phenomenon of some sort, but we are disagreeing about what it is. I appreciate your efforts in this post to try again to articulate what it is you object to. But.

It's a left and right phenomenon.

You say this, but most of the people who use the term are complaining about the left and ignoring the right, and you yourself keep drifting into your complaints about "wokeism" and the left when you talk about it. You don't drift the other way. You obviously can use the term "cancel culture" however you want, but you can't change the fact that a great many people are using it not out of an even-handed commitment to free speech, but in a bad faith way to score points against the left.

Also: what Paul Waldman says.

It comes down to this:
When people still revered Enlightenment views, they would listen to a person say something they didn't like and respond by ignoring it or explaining why they thought it was flawed.

This was recognized, properly, as the mechanism by which bad ideas were pushed aside in favor of good ideas.

Today, there is a thinking, left and right, that the proper response to an idea one doesn't like is to claim one is a victim (words as weapons mentality) or one is offended, or triggered, ...

There was no golden age when everyone revered Enlightenment values. You are confusing what you learned about the scholarly consensus about the First Amendment in law school with the rest of human history. There have always been many people who heard speech they didn't like and did not respond by explaining why they thought it was flawed.

What is different now is social media. In the Enlightenment, printing presses were expensive. Most people couldn't dream of getting published. Now everyone can have a Twitter account. I have two.

When debate is a structured, elite contest, you can expect Enlightenment debate. When anyone can argue, not so much. What you are lamenting, I think, is mostly the coarsening of dialogue that happens when technology gets cheaper and everyone can participate.

... and that the next appropriate move is to seek to destroy the person who said the offending thing.

The word "destroy" is hyperbole, hyperbole you have resorted to because you can't figure out what you want to say. Let's go back to Matt Yglesias, who was the first example you gave of a moderate who was "taken out". No one is trying to "destroy" Matt Yglesias. No one even asked him to leave Vox. He decided he'd rather be a solo shop, a decision he made before when he left The American Prospect to blog on his own domain.

You are constantly, hyperbolically overstating the effects of your "cancel culture" -- the number of victims, and the extent of their victimization. It makes it impossible to take your claims seriously.

Part of the problem is that your description of "cancel culture" isn't about the people actually doing the "canceling." Let's pretend that there are people out there who are so upset about what Matt Yglesias wrote at Vox that they thought he should be "destroyed." Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. The only people who can "destroy" his career there are the people who run Vox. Let's pretend they told him to leave because of a bunch of angry tweets. Depending on what you pretend, that's either reasonable or it's not. If it's not, the fault is not with the people who expressed stupid views on Twitter. They don't have agency. The fault is with the brass at Vox.

If you want to try to persuade me that a lot of companies are too sensitive to public criticism and act too quickly to let people go because of a public fuss, maybe a Justine Sacco or Will Wilkinson, I'm with you. But that's not a "culture" problem. That's a management problem. There are very specific people making very specific decisions. It's the same kind of weak leadership that gives you "zero tolerance" policies. But "cancel culture" as a concept absolves those people of their responsibility by diffusing ownership to the whole culture. Yes, Will Wilkinson was the victim of a right-wing hit. That wasn't the culture -- that was a few bad people trying to get him fired, and lousy leadership at the Niskanen Center making bad decisions.

This is degenerate behavior. It is a dressed up version of "honor society" one might see in the bowels of Appalachia where that sort of idiocy persists. It is excused because the practitioners of it are usually emotional and lack the talent to dismantle what they don’t like with a cogent counter argument. The wink and nod from those of us who are smarter but sympathetic to cancel behavior is an unsaid, “Well, they overreact because they’re angry, and they haven’t had the advantages that would gift one the ability to express himself with a tight, logical counter.” (I’ll even admit having had an affinity for the “Radical Chic” of the bleating classes myself... it’s raw emotion and feels more real than rational, well considered, well crafted discussion.)

It is not okay. And these people who practice it, left and right, are knuckle draggers. They deserve no respect. BUT, that does not mean these dimwits should be cancelled as they would seek to cancel. It means their silly views should be shown to be such. The way the previous system, incorporating Enlightenment views, operated.

I'm not triggered or angry about the cancellation mindset. I believe them, simply, offensive.

They are not logical or thoughtful. They are Robespierres, Torquemadas. You don't countenance these shouters. They've debased discourse. They go in the bucket with the QAnon folks. Temporary infections of the public square accruing from a moral panic taking hold in the midst of a pandemic-induced national nervous breakdown.

They are not winning. They are simply causing a lurid spectacle. Like Trump Nation. But they are doing damage. The winds change. And god help us when the Right is in power again. Their use of cancellation will destroy any remaining reverence for the Enlightenment value of free and open expression and debate.

Rereading this passage, what's clear is how your rhetoric appeals to elite values ("talent to dismantle," "those of us who are smarter," "the advantages that would gift one the ability to express himself with a tight, logical counter") in protest against the idea that ordinary people ("degenerate," "Appalachia," "knuckle draggers") get to participate in public debate. You leave things "unsaid," but they are "emotional." And so on.

You're right about the right's basic hostility to Enlightenment values. It's a real thing. You see it in all the bad faith arguments. It's a different problem than "cancel culture." So what's the answer?

PS: I'm not advocating "free inquiry" here. I do champion that, but the term I've preferred and used is "free expression." And there's a difference. And you know it.

No, I keep using the stilted term "free inquiry" because you used it. I'll drop it. But "free expression" doesn't capture what you're on about. Andrew Sullivan, for example, faces no threat to his ability to express himself. What upsets you, I think, is that New York Magazine got tired of his voice and moved on. What you are really complaining about it is "editing".

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What you are really complaining about it is "editing".

Seems close to universally true about complaints about "cancel culture."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

By the way, here's a "cancel culture" issue as old as the hills - https://religionnews.com/2021/02/19/...lgbtq-members/

So who is being cancelled, the people being kicked out of the denomination because they're praying with gay people or the people who felt they had to leave the congregation because that gay couple was joining?

This has been replayed so many times over so many issues over so many years.

Here's a fun one, brought to you by social media.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Here's a fun one, brought to you by social media.

Is he wrong about Welsh, though?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Is he wrong about Welsh, though?

Now that he's been cancelled, I guess we'll never know.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Here's a "cancel culture" Rohrshach test, courtesy of journamalism expert Bari Weiss.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Here's a "cancel culture" Rohrshach test, courtesy of journamalism expert Bari Weiss.

Is one of the questions on the test "Faculty of a certain ethnicity make me uncomfortable and so should be fired from my university"?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Is one of the questions on the test "Faculty of a certain ethnicity make me uncomfortable and so should be fired from my university"?

It's truly shocking to watch the cancellation of Neera Tanden. Just for being brown while tweeting.

Oh, wait, that's being done by the cancel-culture-warriors, isn't it?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Is one of the questions on the test "Faculty of a certain ethnicity make me uncomfortable and so should be fired from my university"?

Elizabeth Spiers has my proxy.

Not sure why that person feels so butthurt that Smith apologized to the black student who had security called on her. To me, that's a huge tell.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Elizabeth Spiers has my proxy.

Not sure why that person feels so butthurt that Smith apologized to the black student who had security called on her. To me, that's a huge tell.

good point on the rapping.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

good point on the rapping.

Wait a minute, you’re from Detroit, home of one of the great white freestyle rappers. To the extent your point is limited to the inappropriateness of rapping a Smith library staff presentation, then agreed. It would be like rapping the color commentary to a New England prep school squash match or . . . I don’t know, something else really really white.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Wait a minute, you’re from Detroit, home of one of the great white freestyle rappers. To the extent your point is limited to the inappropriateness of rapping a Smith library staff presentation, then agreed. It would be like rapping the color commentary to a New England prep school squash match or . . . I don’t know, something else really really white.

Everyone from Warren can rap, but she ain't from the 586.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Wait a minute, you’re from Detroit, home of one of the great white freestyle rappers. To the extent your point is limited to the inappropriateness of rapping a Smith library staff presentation, then agreed. It would be like rapping the color commentary to a New England prep school squash match or . . . I don’t know, something else really really white.

I know white rap is a fascinating subject, but the cancel culture world moves fast. Why aren't we now talking about CPAC removing Young Pharaoh from their Cancel Culture themed conference?

Is CPAC not going to let any anti-Semites speak? Because that will really decimate their ranks.