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

Resignation Letter

bariweiss.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 716 posts

Re: Resignation Letter

#561

Post by blisseyGo »

> "Rooting people out to be more inclusive" - Paging George Orwell

As someone who had to create this second account because I feared stating my politics on my mail account which linked to my work would get me cancelled, I can sympathize with her a bit.

However, I also think she's herself played part in creating the very culture she's complaining about. She claimed to be a "conservative" but she's far from that. Listening her on the Joe Rogan Podcast, she's a liberal on majority of the issues. She seems to be masquerading as a "conservative" imo.

Kind of reminds me of how Tulsi Gabbard was cancelled by the left, the media, censored by Google and smeared by Hillary as a "Russian asset". That's only when Tulsi complained. She never complained when conservatives had been screaming about censorship, media bias and "russian asset" smears for the past 5 years. Seems like people only wake up when the mob comes for their own head.

Re: Resignation Letter

#562

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

stale2002 wrote: post #519
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Sure, you can find some on the left whose speech It is not just some though. It is a whole lot of people. Or, at least, this is what it is in online discourse. The overwhelmingly loud voices of the intolerant drown out anyone who is even attempting to be nuanced. But perhaps that says more about online discourse than it does about any left vs right debate.

>But perhaps that says more about online discourse than it does about any left vs right debate.

By Jove! I think you've got it!

Btw, any time I used to try to contribue to bona-fide conservative, right wing media (e.g. redstate), my account would be cancelled as soon as I asked any question that indicated I might be not completely bought into the nominal worldview of the medium. I hate whataboutism, but let's not pretend that this sort of thing is the preserve of the left/progressive part of "online discourse".

Re: Resignation Letter

#563

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

acituan wrote: post #558
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Journalism is not our fact gathering apparatus. Well then what is? I used to live next door to a journalist - by which I mean someone who went out into the world (haiti, israel/west bank, US immigration policy) and asked questions and collected facts. They didn't always get everything right, and their work seemed to encourage a deliberate sort of fence-sitting with respect to the issues and places that they covered,…

Absolutely what your neighbor did is crucial, but it is not a waterfall process. The problem space of "gathering facts" is virtually infinite, means relevance decisions has to start while deciding on what to gather more facts on. It is an iterative process that says "based on these facts we found, we investigated for these further facts and here why it all was important to promote them to public attention".

Absolutely, but my point is the original claim of "journalism is not our fact gathering process" is just wrong.

Sure, there's a frame problem in journalism just as much as there is in AI, and sure, journalists play a (possibly outsized) role in finding contemporary suboptimal solutions for it. But even with that being the case, somebody has to go out and get information for us to talk about, argue about, rage about, call for more information about etc. etc.

That's what (good) journalists (reporters) do.

"Facts all come with points of view" (Talking Heads, early 1980s)

Re: Resignation Letter

#564

Post by rukittenme »

badrequest wrote: post #554
rukittenme wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> oh my god. the HORROR. People call you names! It is a horror when a private political opinion can get you fired, de-platformed, and removed from society.

If your political opinion is private, how does it ever surface in a way that leaves you vulnerable to these consequences?

In the same way a gay person can be outed without ever explicitly coming out to their peers. There are social queues that people can pick up on.

To enumerate a few:

1. Lack of participation in political events. "Silence is violence". Having a private opinion is suspicious.

2. Participating in activities which are a-political but have political consequences. For example, going to a church or a gun range isn't a political statement but it can be interpreted as one (with all the baggage that comes with it).

3. A lack of "tribal knowledge". Political tribes have their own set of facts and theories which influences their view of the world. Acknowledging facts from other tribes (political or not) can out you (either as an outsider or as non-committal).

4. And, of course, racial, social, or sexual characteristics can be used to make inferences about your beliefs. My sister, for example, was spit on at a protest at her university. Partially, because she didn't participate but also because she was a "white bitch". This was said by a (presumably) white woman. This happened three years ago.

Re: Resignation Letter

#565

Post by [deleted] »

joshuamorton wrote: post #187
CJefferson wrote: post #15

Speaking as someone who absorbs American media externally, there does seem to be a disconnect looking in. About 40% of the America seems to still support Donald Trump, under most polls. It certainly isn't true that 40% of the media supports Donald Trump. As an external viewer, it's easy to imagine no-one was ever going to vote for Donald Trump, no-one ever supported him, and no-one supports him today, but that's clea…

Which media do you watch? The largest cable news network is staunchly pro-trump.

[deleted]

Re: Resignation Letter

#566

Post by deanCommie »

amscanne wrote: post #279
enraged_camel wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Can't anyone there see past the current insanity and think? "To be inclusive, we have to get rid of her"? Don't they even hear the words coming out of their own mouths? This confuses a lot of people, but the explanation is simple: it is the Paradox of Tolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Namely, not tolerating someone, who themselves espouse intolerant views and give voice to intolerant ex…

Unfortunately, there does seem to be a massive lack of consistency on which intolerance to tolerate. Since we’re talking about Bari Weiss, Israel serves as a good example. While the left is typically critical of Israel and their “racist”, “apartheid” state, they generally have very little to say about their overtly anti-Semitic neighbor states. I’m sure there’s lots of criticism to go round here, but whoever is talki…

Because it is a universally accepted undisputed fact that all of Israel's neighbors are anti-Semitic to various degrees from "problematic" to "would eagerly initiate a new holocaust if tried".

Everyone agrees on this, and that it is a problem.

But there is no consensus on Israel. The two most common stances are "Israel is an apartheid state, and commits repeated human right violations" and "Israel is a beacon of democracy in an otherwise troubled region, and should be supported unconditionally regardless of their action".

I actually find the latter stance much more problematic. Because they make it seem as if the only alternative to supporting Israel unconditionally is to allow it to be wiped off the map by their enemies.

Maybe I'm naive, but I feel like there is a way that Israel could coexist with Palestine in peace, while still defending its integrity.

Re: Resignation Letter

#567

Post by deanCommie »

> It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

Tom Cotton is a senior leader of the ruling party in government with actual powers to trigger and support the kind of violent action his Op-Ed called for. He has power, influence, ability, and his political position is supported by ~40% of the country.

Alice Walker is none of those things, and the percent of people that believe in the lizard Illuminati is somewhere below 40%.

These two things are not like the other.

> the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”;

It...was? The Soviet union was a horrendous system that murdered millions, and was embedded to the core with systemic anti-Semitism.

Yet, when it comes to gender equality they were DECADES ahead of the United States. That's a fact.

It should have been HUMILIATING for the United States to allow the Soviet Union to have the moral high ground on ANY subject.

Instead they just categorized "But you're lynching negroes" as Whataboutism, and a distraction tactic, and continued to lynch negroes.

> the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned;

need to know the details of this...

> and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Bari only cares about genocide when it's her people. Typical Conservative.

Re: Resignation Letter

#568

Post by Traster »

notmyfriend wrote: post #495
TeaDrunk wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's politicizing a totally nonpolitical issue. She was totally fine until she live-tweeted public insults about her co workers during a company meeting. If it were not for her politicizing the issue she would be immediately fired.

You could have made that point if they had not just purged the leadership of the opinion section because they dared to publish some republicans opinion piece. When even international press criticise what they did at NY Times it you know you have a problem.

Firstly, the leader of the opinion section resigned, and secondly, it wasn't because of a republican opinion piece - of which there have been hundreds, but because the editorial standards of the Op-Ed section repeatedly fell short of the standards they claimed.

Re: Resignation Letter

#569

Post by Latty »

rukittenme wrote: post #516
achileas wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're against people expressing their opinions in response to your own?

I think the OP argued pretty explicitly that a well researched comment, that violates the orthodoxy, is down-voted until it is removed from public discussion. I'm not sure how you can come to the conclusion that he's "against others expressing their opinions".

The opinion that someone isn't worth listening to and choosing not to amplify their words is an opinion like any other.

The whole cancel culture thing stems from people who believe that they don't just have freedom of speech, but rather the right to force others to listen.

If a community dislikes what you say and chooses to make that content less visible in response, that's perfectly reasonable. You are not being censored, you are being rejected.

Re: Resignation Letter

#570

Post by kgermino »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #492
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of us who think that the "Paradox of Tolerance" is mistaken, rather than truth. It may sound reasonable, but it is used in practice to define ideas we don't like as intolerant, and then exclude those who hold those ideas. If you look around, those on the left aren't showing themselves to be paragons of tolerance. They are nearly as narrow-minded as the right, just with different in-groups and out-gro…

[flagged]

> Right/conservative political philosophy is fundamentally not.

> Conservatives believe that even if we are all human, we do not all have enough in common to be able to form a cohesive, coherent society. Conservatives believe that there are good and bad people and that they can identify and assign people to each group.

You're assigning beliefs and motives to other people's actions.

Looking beyond the internet groups (which are a whole other issue on both sides) I know plenty of conservatives, including some people who voted for Trump. Not a single one of them has the beliefs you're assigning. They all fundamentally believe that people should be treated equally regardless of their race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, viewpoint, etc. They believe that the differences among people makes our society great and that everyone should be welcome/included.

They often disagree about the best way to achieve an open, inclusive, successful society but the end goal is the same.

Assigning a belief or morality to other people and then ostracizing them for it is part of the problem, not a solution.

Post reply on HN