I nearly snorted my coffee when I read
If you wanted to worry about the voter with subconscious racist attitudes carefully hidden even from themselves, you shouldn’t have used the words “openly white supremacist KKK supporter” like a verbal tic.
One of the best reads I've had since the election started.
Originally shared by Stop Crying Wolf.
This is what we’ve come to. This, if nothing else, emphasises one of the major problems facing society today. You Are Still Crying Wolf is Scott Alexander’s latest blog post over at Slate Star Codex. Scott Alexander, easily the most intelligent blogger I follow. Scott Alexander, a practicing clinical psychiatrist. Scott Alexander, one of the most thorough and rigorous bloggers I’ve seen. Scott Alexander, who’s epic blog posts typically get hundreds of comments and intelligent discussion. Scott Alexander, on the political left, was for Clinton, Stein, or Sanders and against Trump …
… and yet had to turn off comments on this post because of a fear of the comment backlash for the crime of intellectually demolishing toxic false narratives.
This is what we’ve come to.
When we can’t honestly discuss important issues, narratives, facts, and falsehoods for fear of being shouted down, verbally abused, and denigrated with all manner of pejoratives then we are struggling with a climate of stifling political correctness. Such an environment drastically inhibits our collective ability to solve big, complex problems by not only preventing the problem from being discussed but often preventing the problem from even being mentioned.
This is one of the major factors, a major cultural factor, influencing politics and cultural evolution throughout the western world today. It gives rise to utter moronic absurdities of huge numbers of people believing that half their fellow citizens are racist, sexist, homophobe bigot idiots. What is most shocking to some is that this toxically divisive rhetoric is not driven by the usual far-right actors one might expect, but by the far-left. And the media is not only complicit but acts as fuel for the fire.
It has to stop. History offers us important lessons for what happens when speech is suppressed, regardless of the mechanism. The longer the suppression, the harsher the backlash.
Relevant quotes:
When does the rhetoric spouted by the media cross the line to the equivalent of shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater?
Political correctness is enforced not to keep you from saying offensive words. Nobody wants to say offensive words. Political correctness is enforced to keep you from thinking ideas that fall outside the parameters of the dominant orthodoxy.
The alternative to discourse is physical conflict. The purpose of discourse is so that we can let our ideas die instead of us dying.
It’s pathetic. I don’t even add sources for the quotes out of fear that the source might be judged with pre-existing baggage leading to the dismissal of the entire piece.
This is what we’ve come to. This, if nothing else, emphasises one of the major problems facing society today. You Are Still Crying Wolf is Scott Alexander’s latest blog post over at Slate Star Codex. Scott Alexander, easily the most intelligent blogger I follow. Scott Alexander, a practicing clinical psychiatrist. Scott Alexander, one of the most thorough and rigorous bloggers I’ve seen. Scott Alexander, who’s epic blog posts typically get hundreds of comments and intelligent discussion. Scott Alexander, on the political left, was for Clinton, Stein, or Sanders and against Trump …
… and yet had to turn off comments on this post because of a fear of the comment backlash for the crime of intellectually demolishing toxic false narratives.
This is what we’ve come to.
When we can’t honestly discuss important issues, narratives, facts, and falsehoods for fear of being shouted down, verbally abused, and denigrated with all manner of pejoratives then we are struggling with a climate of stifling political correctness. Such an environment drastically inhibits our collective ability to solve big, complex problems by not only preventing the problem from being discussed but often preventing the problem from even being mentioned.
This is one of the major factors, a major cultural factor, influencing politics and cultural evolution throughout the western world today. It gives rise to utter moronic absurdities of huge numbers of people believing that half their fellow citizens are racist, sexist, homophobe bigot idiots. What is most shocking to some is that this toxically divisive rhetoric is not driven by the usual far-right actors one might expect, but by the far-left. And the media is not only complicit but acts as fuel for the fire.
It has to stop. History offers us important lessons for what happens when speech is suppressed, regardless of the mechanism. The longer the suppression, the harsher the backlash.
Relevant quotes:
When does the rhetoric spouted by the media cross the line to the equivalent of shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater?
Political correctness is enforced not to keep you from saying offensive words. Nobody wants to say offensive words. Political correctness is enforced to keep you from thinking ideas that fall outside the parameters of the dominant orthodoxy.
The alternative to discourse is physical conflict. The purpose of discourse is so that we can let our ideas die instead of us dying.
It’s pathetic. I don’t even add sources for the quotes out of fear that the source might be judged with pre-existing baggage leading to the dismissal of the entire piece.
You Are Still Crying Wolf
I am disturbed that a person would with-hold the truth to manipulate opinion, and then claim moral high ground.
It is the way such things are, and that disturbs me.
The joke as I see it is he had been prepared to say all this beforehand it might have had people in the right positions think about it and then act in ways which could have helped his cause more than harmed it.