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'Til Tomorrow
Tell that to Greg Patton, or the various people who used the word “niggardly” and were accused of being racist. Even in cases where someone has objectively done nothing wrong, but someone else’s ignorance has led them to feel offense, that’s apparently all that matters in the end. To quote one of the offendees, “I was in tears, shaking [...] It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."
I think if you look at cases like Roseanne Barr and Megyn Kelly, for example, you could easily argue that their apologies were not deemed deep or humiliating enough to save their jobs. Although Kelly spending a full hour of her show being scolded for racial insensitivity over her comments sure seemed like prostration to me.
Kelly made her comments in a dumb way, but she was alluding to the idea that white kids in the 80s who dressed up like Michael Jackson for Halloween because they admired him weren’t racists if they used makeup or some other device to make their skin look more like his (pre-vitiligo). They were just kids trying to look like their idol. That’s a true statement, and one that should be fair game to discuss without fear of losing your job. But people have gotten themselves so whipped up into a frenzy that any discussion near that topic will just get twisted into “so-and-so condones blackface!”, and then it’s game over. Again, shutting down conversation rather than encouraging it.
I’m sorry, but mean words and mean actions are not on the same level, and you don’t need to be a right winger to believe that. In fact, most of your responses seem to try to paint me as some right-wing nut because I’m not regurgitating the progressive talking points, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I am generally a very liberal person who is still appalled by some of the positions espoused by the far left, especially on issues like this.
The world is tough. People will say and do things you don’t like. But for some reason an entire generation of parents decided that things like certain kids earning trophies while others didn’t was cruel and excluding, and that no child should ever have to hear anything that might rattle their fragile ego. It’s pathetic and absurd, and these kids need to grow the fuck up and learn to tolerate situations and points of view that are uncomfortable to them. That’s real life, get used to it.
No, of course the bully isn’t at fault. That’s patently absurd. The bully was an asshole, but the fragile child who decided to seek out a gun and end their life rather than hear one more mean thing said to them is the one who’s at fault. They grabbed the gun, they pulled the trigger. If they weren’t mentally ill then they at least had some serious problems with perspective and critical reasoning if they concluded that shooting themselves in the head was preferable. Shame on the parents for not toughening the kid up or failing to recognize that they were so fragile that they couldn’t safely interact with a normal cross section of children, so they needed to be given special care instead.
Yes, they have wronged them. But should the punishment be worse than if they’d punched the person in the face instead? Today it is.
Yes, that was my whole point. Laws were changed to overrule the mob “justice” imposed by people in the south. The same type of “justice” that you apparently applaud when it aligns with your values. My point is that mob tyranny is always bad, even when its intentions are good. Sure, stoke awareness and vote with your wallet and lobby your representatives where appropriate, but leave the virtual pitchforks at home.
I don’t get your point. It was bad then and it’s bad now, regardless of the races of the people affected. It’s bad in principle and should be opposed on principle.
Bullshit. What do you think the whole “safe space” argument is about on college campuses? It’s about people being butthurt over being exposed to contrary ideas, which is, you know, kind of the entire fucking point of going to college.
The far left demands that you use their approved words and never use their blacklisted words to talk about certain issues, and they will paint you with the most horrible names in the book if you don’t comply. It’s militant groupthink, and it’s antithetical to the core principles of free speech. This is the “woke” crowd that moderate liberals can’t stand, and which outright scare people on the right.
To remind you of the words of the “victim” of the professor’s use of the word “niggardly”: “It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid.” In other words, she was offended, so the professor’s behavior was by definition “wrong“. Other opinions are irrelevant. This is the kind of batshit anti-intellectual perspective that’s being normalized by the far left, and it makes our children weak and pathetic while scaring off more moderate voters.
And who gets to decide when an idea has been fully considered, and when it belongs on the ash heap? I’m sure that many well-intentioned people thought that atheism and the heliocentric solar system were fully considered and discarded as options centuries ago, but they were wrong.
Sure, there are ideas that just about anyone with a functioning brain would reject as obviously stupid and not worthy of further consideration. But the moment you start trying to make formal distinctions, you risk throwing babies out with the bath water. The only truly safe and fair course is to allow all expression.
That may be true for right-wing propagandists, but that’s one hell of a brush you’re trying to use to paint everyone who doesn’t agree with you on this subject. For me it’s a matter of principle — mob “justice” is always wrong, no matter who it’s directed at.
Wow.
