Why do people voice personal political views at work? Is this a California thing?
Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
11–20 of 138 posts
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#12As someone who is in no way a part of Silicon Valley: does anyone really care how fiscally conservative or liberal you are? I always thought it was the social issues that caused the problem. Whether it's misrepresenting statistics to justify sexism or saying that some people deserve less rights because of their sexual orientation.
It may have been the social issues at one point, but the Marxist influence is so significant that there's no longer any real separation between social and economic issues on the left. In their minds, economic disparities breed social inequities and vice versa. They may be right in principle, but it doesn't leave a gray area or room for common ground.
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#13The ultimate irony is that many conservatives will hesitate before commenting on this here, because people don't want to be on the receiving end of a torrent of downvotes.
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#14Everytime I read one of these viewpoints I hear: 'I think others should be descriminated against and for that I am getting descriminated against? How dare they descriminate against my right to descriminate!'
Don't you think you are being a bigot when you prejudge all conservatives as wanting to discriminate against others?
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#15Everytime I read one of these viewpoints I hear: 'I think others should be descriminated against and for that I am getting descriminated against? How dare they descriminate against my right to descriminate!'
The reduction of conservative beliefs to "discrimination of others" is a lot of the problem here. Conservative politics is a broad space. Sure, there are racists and misogynists among them and they get a lot of publicity, but there are also people who believe that all human beings are equal and that something like laissez-faire capitalism leads to a more just and prosperous society for everyone. They might be mistake…
John Kelley, white house chief of staff, just said that the Civil War happened because of a failure to "compromise" on human bondage.
If you support Trump, you explicitly support white supremacy, and thus make any work environment hostile.
Full Stop.
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#16The ultimate irony is that many conservatives will hesitate before commenting on this here, because people don't want to be on the receiving end of a torrent of downvotes.
You can downvote?
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#17Why would you not expect your co-workers to take a MAGA hat as a personal attack? The MAGA platform is associated with explicitly barring some of them from the country. Remember that even some green card holders were briefly barred from reentering. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769#Green-ca...
What if you don't have the hat but don't favor liberal immigration policies? Would expressing this political stance be taken as a personal attack?
If so, that level of "we must stamp out the heresy!" is generally associated with more extreme religious types, not supposedly rational open-minded people. And that's where the danger lies: once you stop permitting the expression of contrary views, your ability to argue against them will atrophy.
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#18Ignoring for a moment the moral judgement of whether conservatism is "right" or "wrong" ...
I imagine this is probably how closeted gay people felt for a long time, and still do outside of places like the Bay Area. It's poetic justice. The playing field will probably wobble back and forth for a little while and white conservative men will learn to play by the new rules - claiming victim status is as good a place to start as any.
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#19Everytime I read one of these viewpoints I hear: 'I think others should be descriminated against and for that I am getting descriminated against? How dare they descriminate against my right to descriminate!'
Shaming people for their opinions is a terrible tactic in a democracy. In a dictatorship it works amazing, just shame them, jail them if they persist or make them disappear if they're really stubborn. The problem with shaming people for their opinions in a democracy is that they will keep them secret all the way to the voting booth and take their revenge for the shaming there, and then everyone is surprised when candidates holding those ideas win. Maybe, if they were allowed to share their opinions publicly without being ostracized they wouldn't feel so strongly about them and they could easily be debated and proven wrong. What you're creating by shaming them is a huge hostility and a feeling of unfairness, and it just makes their will to their opinions stronger. Just some thoughts.
Another point, most of our grandparents were by today's standards homophobes, racists and misogynists, should we be shaming them too? How about people living in isolated parts of the country or other countries where these opinions are still popular? When I was growing up as a kid in Syria, I remember talking to people who were totally into islamism, if it weren't for my tolerant parents, I could be holding the same beliefs today. Here's another reason for not shaming people for their opinions, most of our opinions we hold for accidental geographical or parental reasons. Shaming people for where they were born or who they grew up with has a name for it, what could it be? Discrimination.
Re: Divided We Code: Undercover Conservatives
#20The ultimate irony is that many conservatives will hesitate before commenting on this here, because people don't want to be on the receiving end of a torrent of downvotes.
Anyone who cares about downvotes is a shallow idiot. I can think of more serious consequences, but caring about getting greyed out on HN is not one of them.