Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

nationalreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 110 posts

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#21

Post by dilandau »

alreadydeleted wrote: post #11
sammaeliam wrote: post #2

If this is really the problem conservatives claim it is, there's a simple solution: Get a backbone and delete your social media accounts. Most platforms (unlike HN) provide account deletion functions (though some keep them well-hidden).

Most of us moderates were shamed off social media years ago. I locked myself out of my HN account because I was tired of being flame baited by Woke tyrants. Don't use Facebook, don't use Twitter. This new ideology seems more popular than it is because the sane people have left the internet. Most of us keep quiet about this stuff because any wrong think will end our careers. Congrats, Woke people. You'll never know th…

The silent majority is bigger than any of us think. Angry twitter mobs give misleading impressions. Watching company after company, institution after institution cave to demands from the outraged woke-culture has completely pushed me the opposite direction.

I will never post any of these beliefs online under my real name. But I will vote.

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#22

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Pfhreak wrote: post #18
alreadydeleted wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us moderates were shamed off social media years ago. I locked myself out of my HN account because I was tired of being flame baited by Woke tyrants. Don't use Facebook, don't use Twitter. This new ideology seems more popular than it is because the sane people have left the internet. Most of us keep quiet about this stuff because any wrong think will end our careers. Congrats, Woke people. You'll never know th…

Maybe you aren't a moderate? I mean, you literally are calling anyone who participates in the internet these days insane. That hardly scans as a moderate take.

I don't have any hard data backing this up, but in my experience most moderates who are exposed to the state of discourse on Twitter agree it's kinda crazy.

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#23

Post by asdfman123 »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #8
asdfman123 wrote: post #3

Not being racist seems to be an awfully hard adjustment for some people. Don't worry, a generation or two will die off and it won't seem quite so onerous.

This strikes me as awfully glib. My parents aren't racists and they empathize with the police reforms that BLM is advocating for (so do I). But they were raised with the belief that racism was due to prejudice. To them, racism is judging someone by their skin color / background rather than the actions of that individual. They don't buy into the idea of microaggressions and implicit bias. To many nowadays that makes t…

"We have been taught that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas, lead to racist policies,” Kendi said. “If the fundamental problem is ignorance and hate, then your solutions are going to be focused on education, and love and persuasion. But of course [Stamped from the Beginning] shows that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” Self-interest drives racist policies that benefit that self-interest. When the policies are challenged because they produce inequalities, racist ideas spring up to justify those policies. Hate flows freely from there.

The self-interest: The Portuguese had to justify their pioneering slave trade of African people before the pope.

The racist idea: Africans are barbarians. If we remove them from Africa and enslave them, they could be civilized.

"We can understand this very simply with slavery. I’m enslaving people because I want to make money. Abolitionists are resisting me, so I’m going to convince Americans that these people should be enslaved because they’re black, and then people will start believing those ideas: that these people are so barbaric, that they need to be enslaved, or that they are so childlike that they need to be enslaved.”

https://theundefeated.com/features/ibram-kendi-leading-schol...

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#25

Post by smacktoward »

> The Times can claim that a harsh tone and a small factual error in Senator Tom Cotton’s recent op-ed was the reason the entire paper had a meltdown, but the staffers who revolted initially claimed that Cotton’s argument for bringing the National Guard into cities put black lives in “danger.”

Cotton’s entire argument was that the military should be sent into the cities to crack protesters’ heads, which is something significantly more aggressive than “a harsh tone.”

If I were to take to the op-ed page of the Times with the argument that national stability requires that we send the military to crack the heads of everybody who writes for the National Review, I suspect they would waver somewhat in their commitment to unlimited free speech.

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#27

Post by non-entity »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #10

Anytime someone equates private control of a private platform with an abridging of “free speech” rights I automatically think they have suffered a head injury that has damaged their ability to think and makes them take nonsensical positions. If I flood Hacker News with TIMECUBE truth and they delete my posts are they infringing on my free speech rights? > I am a Knower of 4 corner >simultaneous 24 hour Days >that occ…

Those downvoting this post are evil censors and are dangerous to society.

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#28

Post by naravara »

ihm wrote: post #6

This is absurd. The New York Times opinion section is primarily for right-of-center opinions that support the ruling class. They let in center left and actually left ones from time to time to be able to claim it isn’t. They went a little too far right on this one for their readership. Have you ever seen an op-ed in the Times with a communist perspective on current affairs? To those who think I am being hyperbolic, he…

While the article itself is kind of an exercise in dumb self-pity, and I don't think it hits the mark at all when talking about the Times, I will say I am noticing a pattern of "mind closing" in Leftist spaces over the past year. I think it really kicked into gear with the Democratic primary where a lot of the "New Left" media went into the tank for the Sanders campaign. Being too personally invested into a political campaign (especially a losing one) has a way of shorting out people's analytical brains. There's just a very strong ego-preservation incentive to shut naysayers up and to engage in obviously motivated reasoning to explain away failures, insist there is still hope even when there isn't, and to point fingers and deflect blame. These are all bad for keeping any sense of perspective, keeping an open mind about things, having a movement that can actually assimilate new facts as situations evolve, or be able to talk to people outside who aren't already bought in. It's kind of like a fractional distillation, eventually the heat starts boiling off different groups of people, who might have added vitality or useful intellectual perspective to the movement, until you're left with kind of a burnt-out sludge on the bottom.

Of course, those outlets actually have really small readerships in the grand scheme of things. This dynamic mostly happens in smaller groups chats, forums, subreddits, discords, etc. But these groups do tend to punch above their weight in the minds of journalists because they're big on Twitter, and most journalists/media people spend way too much time on Twitter. I think what might be happening with the NYTimes debacle is people are reading their personal experiences in whatever smaller discussion groups they've been involved in into the Opinion section of the Times. What they're missing is the context that this is largely centrist journalists mad at a breach of standards rather than idealogues who can't just deal with people who disagree with them.

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#29

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

smacktoward wrote: post #25

> The Times can claim that a harsh tone and a small factual error in Senator Tom Cotton’s recent op-ed was the reason the entire paper had a meltdown, but the staffers who revolted initially claimed that Cotton’s argument for bringing the National Guard into cities put black lives in “danger.” Cotton’s entire argument was that the military should be sent into the cities to crack protesters’ heads, which is something…

The problem is that a significant majority of Americans, including almost half of Democrats, agreed in polls at the time that the situation was so bad the military needed to be sent in. It's hard to seriously argue that representing such a mainstream view is so offensive the New York Times shouldn't do it.

Re: Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

#30

Post by aebtebeten »

ihm wrote: post #6

This is absurd. The New York Times opinion section is primarily for right-of-center opinions that support the ruling class. They let in center left and actually left ones from time to time to be able to claim it isn’t. They went a little too far right on this one for their readership. Have you ever seen an op-ed in the Times with a communist perspective on current affairs? To those who think I am being hyperbolic, he…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN