Liberals, progressives and conservatives of note sign open letter to end cancel culture. (Noam Chomsky/J.K. Rowling/Gloria Steinem/David Brooks etc.)

[Buyetyen]

I don't think I've ever heard Tucker Carlson's voice. I'm happy to leave it that way.

It's not just that he had a vicious racist as his main writer - and I cannot believe no-one who worked with him noticed - Carlson's reputed to have quite the personal history in that regard too: just he's managed to keep any really bad stuff off the record.

You're not missing anything. He sounds exactly like he looks.

However you want to look at it, racism surely benefits some people from the group not discriminated against. Therefore in aggregate, the non-disadvantaged group benefits.

Hence the insistence on making it about white grievance instead of actual, you know, policy. While it's no wonder white people don't like to think about the fact that we got to inherit a broken system, said brokenness is still there as evidenced by the pile of bodies and racist excuses. The insistence that racism hurts white people too is nothing more than a distraction to take the conversation away from BLM. It needs to be said more often: anyone who believes that BLM is exclusionary against everyone but black people has deliberately chosen to believe that.

 

[Revnak]

Reparations is a loaded term.

Why? What historical event or abuse makes you feel slighted by the term reparations? Have you been insulted on the basis of not getting reparations, owing reparations?
To my knowledge it’s hardly loaded at all, used for victims of the Holocaust and internment and has been brought up by Civil Rights activists since reconstruction. Nobody has been attacked or abused on the basis of reparations, there has been no reparations Jim Crow.

 

[Seanchaidh]

And literally everyone else's detriment. A less qualified candidate getting a job

What if who is qualified to begin with is also a product of racism? What if keeping some people poor and desperate and willing to accept a worse deal to be employed also has an effect on the price of some goods and services, particularly those goods and services which have relatively competitive markets?

 

[tstorm823]

What if who is qualified to begin with is also a product of racism? What if keeping some people poor and desperate and willing to accept a worse deal to be employed also has an effect on the price of some goods and services, particularly those goods and services which have relatively competitive markets?

That's still bad, it's just shifting the bad part a step. I know you're implying some grand conspiracy to keep people desperate and profit off them, but I don't think anyone who's worked in the jobs your talking about could possibly argue that the poor and the desperate do better work than the free willed and self-motivated. Oppression does not make a prosperous society.

 

[Gergar12]

Even if canceling is a valid tactic, how many health insurance companies have been canceled, how many arms companies, how many neoliberals like Bill Clinton who took out a rule that stated you had to charge people low prices for drugs if you used government research/ R&D for drugs.

It's great your canceling celebrities and random people with no economic power, but even people like John Bolton haven't been canceled despite the Iraq War.

Yet Noam Chomsky has been canceled, Cenk Uygur has been canceled by MSNBC, and youtube has cut funding to ANY show that does news because advertisers wanted it including various progressive shows.

The social progressives concerned with racism, but not with economic injustice don't make for good electoral politics.

 

[Agema]

And literally everyone else's detriment. A less qualified candidate getting a job doesn't lift that one person up in a vacuum, and it sucks having sucky coworkers and sucky employees and sucky people taking care of you as a customer. A sucky white person getting a position in place of a better black person is going to drag down more people than the one it lifts up.

Not necessarily. Not as good is different from incapable or inadequate.

For your "in aggregate" claim to hold up, you have to assume society as a whole experienced a net 0 change having swapped people around based on race in spite of competence. And I'm not inclined to see it that way; when you push someone down like that, the whole of society is taken down a bit as well.

Ah, but how do people actually appreciate value? Plenty of studies suggest most appreciate it in relative terms more than absolute. It's not that you're paid $100k a year, it's that you're paid $2k or $20k a year more than that guy. Hence also why frequently countries have histories of the elites protecting their interests from their poorer countrymen at the expense of national development: sure, they could pay more taxes, increase human development of the poor to raise their opportunities and increase growth, but they'd rather jealously protect their elevated social status. There's some quotation from the US I can't remember fully which goes something like that even the lowliest white people had the comfort of knowing they were better than all the black people.

 

[tstorm823]

Ah, but how do people actually appreciate value? Plenty of studies suggest most appreciate it in relative terms more than absolute. It's not that you're paid $100k a year, it's that you're paid $2k or $20k a year more than that guy. Hence also why frequently countries have histories of the elites protecting their interests from their poorer countrymen at the expense of national development: sure, they could pay more taxes, increase human development of the poor to raise their opportunities and increase growth, but they'd rather jealously protect their elevated social status. There's some quotation from the US I can't remember fully which goes something like that even the lowliest white people had the comfort of knowing they were better than all the black people.

Ok, but all of that is dumb. I'm sure you would agree, that just wanting to be above someone else is a terrible mindset and an even worse analysis of reality. The person who cuts of their nose to spite their face doesn't benefit from it. That's the point of that expression, that damaging yourself to hurt someone else is dumb. Which is essentially what I'm saying. White people acting racist have hurt everyone just to keep someone else down. That doesn't make me the beneficiary, that just makes me relatively less of a victim of their behavior. You don't tell a victim who was relatively less of a victim that they're actually being helped because they don't have it the worst.

 

[Zeke davis]

Even if canceling is a valid tactic, how many health insurance companies have been canceled, how many arms companies, how many neoliberals like Bill Clinton who took out a rule that stated you had to charge people low prices for drugs if you used government research/ R&D for drugs.

It's great your canceling celebrities and random people with no economic power, but even people like John Bolton haven't been canceled despite the Iraq War.

Yet Noam Chomsky has been canceled, Cenk Uygur has been canceled by MSNBC, and youtube has cut funding to ANY show that does news because advertisers wanted it including various progressive shows.

The social progressives concerned with racism, but not with economic injustice don't make for good electoral politics.

Alright, fuck it. Don't refer to canceling say what you mean.
Because how in the hell can you cancel a publications. Bitching at them will get either filtered or tackled by security or the special interests groups.

*Beat* Isn't basically what happened with Engel for example?

 

[Gergar12]

Alright, fuck it. Don't refer to canceling say what you mean.
Because how in the hell can you cancel a publications. Bitching at them will get either filtered or tackled by security or the special interests groups.

*Beat* Isn't basically what happened with Engel for example?

Cancel as in we fire those people, and or ostracized them.

 

[Buyetyen]

Cancel as in we fire those people, and or ostracized them.

With that definition you're not wrong. If cancel culture were dangerous in its ability to ostracize, it's doing a really shitty job and going after what really amounts to low-hanging fruit, and even then not very well. An internet hate mob is an awful thing, I'm glad we're all in agreement on that, but there are also plenty of "cancellings" where the internet is giving itself just a little too much credit because a month later we're right back where we started.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Ok, but all of that is dumb. I'm sure you would agree, that just wanting to be above someone else is a terrible mindset and an even worse analysis of reality.

It makes absolute sense if what you are concerned with is power and control. Military readiness is relative, not absolute. The power to control politics and the economy is relative, not absolute. The history of ruling classes is a history of those who have jealously guarded their wealth and power and eliminated so far as they could any serious competition.

It is not 'dumb' at all; it is pragmatic.

That's still bad, it's just shifting the bad part a step. I know you're implying some grand conspiracy to keep people desperate and profit off them, but I don't think anyone who's worked in the jobs your talking about could possibly argue that the poor and the desperate do better work than the free willed and self-motivated. Oppression does not make a prosperous society.

They don't need to do better work, just more efficient with respect to pay.

I know you're implying some grand conspiracy

The fact that it actually isn't a grand conspiracy is an even worse indictment of capitalism, frankly.

 

[Breakdown]

Why? What historical event or abuse makes you feel slighted by the term reparations? Have you been insulted on the basis of not getting reparations, owing reparations?
To my knowledge it’s hardly loaded at all, used for victims of the Holocaust and internment and has been brought up by Civil Rights activists since reconstruction. Nobody has been attacked or abused on the basis of reparations, there has been no reparations Jim Crow.

Reparation carries implications of guilt, wrongdoing and defeat, for example a defeated nation paying reparations to the victors after a war. If you tell people they have to pay reparations to other people, they'll say "I'm not paying, because I haven't done anything wrong".

 

[Revnak]

Reparation carries implications of guilt, wrongdoing and defeat, for example a defeated nation paying reparations to the victors after a war. If you tell people they have to pay reparations to other people, they'll say "I'm not paying, because I haven't done anything wrong".

Yeah but the US government, who would be paying, did do them wrong. I don’t see the issue here.

 

[Kwak]

 

[Hawki]

View attachment 371

I care about both.

Also I care about punctuation and capitalization, and therefore, the image is terrible.

 

[tstorm823]

It makes absolute sense if what you are concerned with is power and control. Military readiness is relative, not absolute. The power to control politics and the economy is relative, not absolute. The history of ruling classes is a history of those who have jealously guarded their wealth and power and eliminated so far as they could any serious competition.

First, you need some history lessons, because there are tons of occasions where those with power literally funded their competition.
Second, you need to get outside sometimes, because they vast majority of people help those with less power and wealth all the time.
It's only a sick mind that puts someone else down for the satisfaction of being above them, and like, that's not even most racists. Most racists aren't getting out a calculator to make sure they've got more power and respect points than other races.

It is not 'dumb' at all; it is pragmatic.

It is dumb, it's not pragmatic, and most importantly it isn't real. The legacy of racism in America is not something as stupid or on the nose as a bunch of white people thinking "I hope black people never get equality so that I have someone to feel cooler than." That's just the delusion of someone who wants any excuse for a class rebellion, and a race was is good enough for you. But that's just not reality, dude.

They don't need to do better work, just more efficient with respect to pay.

Better work for the same pay is more efficient with respect to pay.

The fact that it actually isn't a grand conspiracy is an even worse indictment of capitalism, frankly.

So you think there's a ruling class deliberately holding people down to exploit them, but also it's not the people it's just the system. Riiiiight.

 

[Silvanus]

Second, you need to get outside sometimes, because they vast majority of people help those with less power and wealth all the time.

This is absolutely, entirely false. I don't even know how somebody paying attention could come to this conclusion.

Better work for the same pay is more efficient with respect to pay.

Uhrm, more efficient for the employer, yes.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

That's still bad, it's just shifting the bad part a step. I know you're implying some grand conspiracy to keep people desperate and profit off them, but I don't think anyone who's worked in the jobs your talking about could possibly argue that the poor and the desperate do better work than the free willed and self-motivated. Oppression does not make a prosperous society.

You can argue it doesn't make it morally prosperous but it sure as hell makes it rich. Greeks gave us formal philosophy and logic because they could spend their days learning and in debates because all the labour was unpaid and done by slaves. Similarly so for any other society where the rich are left to pursue science, arts and politics whilst everyone else has to labour for survival or involuntarily. It's not a conspiracy, it's literally the pursuit of profit and the division of difficult labour across human society.

And frankly,

but I don't think anyone who's worked in the jobs your talking about could possibly argue that the poor and the desperate do better work than the free willed and self-motivated

What do you think the Labour movement was about, if not to give people the means to motivate themselves and have freedom where before they were economically suffocated? Greater profit margins are not dependent on productivity alone, but in huge part by minimising cost. No cost can be minimised as effectively to inflate profit margins as unpaid or low-paid labour. It's why all your shit is made in China and why you get to buy it. Even Fordism raised wages so as to extinguish the fire from union activism and to create more demand for products that still maintained a minimum wage gap to maintain profitability.

 

[tstorm823]

This is absolutely, entirely false. I don't even know how somebody paying attention could come to this conclusion.

Go hang out with something like Habitat for Humanity and get back to me.

Greeks gave us formal philosophy and logic because they could spend their days learning and in debates because all the labour was unpaid and done by slaves.

You think that made them richer? Why? Why is a class of people arguing with each other all day your idea of prosperity?

 

[Buyetyen]

What do you think the Labour movement was about, if not to give people the means to motivate themselves and have freedom where before they were economically suffocated? Greater profit margins are not dependent on productivity alone, but in huge part by minimising cost. No cost can be minimised as effectively to inflate profit margins as unpaid or low-paid labour. It's why all your shit is made in China and why you get to buy it. Even Fordism raised wages so as to extinguish the fire from union activism and to create more demand for products that still maintained a minimum wage gap to maintain profitability.

This. Capitalists like to pretend they are the apex of human thinking and reason but they're just as fallible as the rest of us. They still make short-sighted, selfish decisions all the time. In fact, the system actively rewards them for doing so. I mean, how many banksters went to jail for ball-tapping our economy a decade ago?