“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” And hey, great news, now we have every line written by every man, woman and child automatically captured and archived forever in an easy to search dossier. Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview…
This is why anonymity is so important on the internet.
If only there were some genius programmer guy who has been saying that for the last 30 years
The main thing I find odd about that person's blog post ( https://web.archive.org/web/20210601160519/https://www.kamau... ) is that it also doesn't really make any sense mechanically. The first five paragraphs are all comments on how it must be difficult for a progressive Jew to simultaneously support progressive values and Israel > If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasin…
> I wonder what the author was thinking when he was writing it as it doesn't make much sense to me. Quite possibly not much. As someone who has hundreds of blog posts under his belt from a similar time period, a lot of it is just about churning out posts. Start with a thesis, write five or more paragraphs with little planning, do a quick scan for errors, then hit publish. I suspect we're looking at someone who's havi…
> My blog is no longer up and running, and maybe that's now a good thing.
Instead they can just troll you over some random wikipedia edit war you were in 13 years ago... you can take your blog offline but not Wikipedia. :-/
One of the reasons I use HN is because of the No Political or Ideological fights rule (because I know I can't stop commenting from time to time even though I'd rather live a life without this crap). I wish rules were here to be enforced, not as guidelines hardly anyone follow.
You don't have to start a fight to discuss something. Just treat politically-adjacent discussion it as if it were a classroom situation.
I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two. Further based on the other comment to this post he was quite an activist. Fighting for rights of the racially oppressed and in minority. He went against white people and Israel? He is not racist. He is just anti majority dom…
> I don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two. People are having a hard time distinguishing between the two because he had a hard time distinguishing between the two. Saying "If I was a {memberOf(someOrganization)}, I'd be concerned about how {adjective} I am," is call…
> women's innate biological tendency towards neuroticism What the actual... Are you serious right now? Men kill women and other men at much, much higher rates than women kill men or other women. What does that say about the the "innate biological tendencies" of men?
It's universally acknowledged that men are more violent than women.
It is not universally acknowledged. Case in point, during the 2016 campaign, people asked if a woman could be trusted with the nuclear codes, but no one questioned whether a man could be trusted with them.
Pretty sure he was not chief diversity officer 14 years ago but I agree it should have been "If I were an israeli...".
Even then... do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering? Or every Chinese person for their governments treatment of the Uighur/Tibet/etc? Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.
Pretty sure he was not chief diversity officer 14 years ago but I agree it should have been "If I were an israeli...".
Even then... do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering? Or every Chinese person for their governments treatment of the Uighur/Tibet/etc? Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.
> do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering?
Not bloodlust, but partial responsibility. 'Tis the nature of democracy.
She also called her comments "deeply insensitive". How bent out of shape are you going to get over what a 17 year old says? "Sorry you're offended" is much closer to accurate. I'm nothing like 17 year old me and if you asked me to take present day responsibility for that person I would tell you to toss off. How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today?
> How much did you do at 17 that you aren't proud of today? Not that much . For sure I made some mistakes, as I continue to do, but I'd stand by what I did at 17. I didn't (for example) write down plainly racist statements and then publish them on the internet. I didn't do anything comparable to that. What were y'all doing at 17?
Do you believe racism is an incurable ill, or in any way related to ones lived experiences and education? I have met (and still know) plenty of people that are varying degrees of racist, and the majority of it involves some pretty fundamental ignorance. In some cases people are outright indoctrinated into racism. I have no idea if this particular person was desrving of cancellation or forgiveness, but I can personally imagine someone at 17 writing racist sentiments, and genuinely repenting and growing out of that. I can imagine someone at 25, or 35 doing the same. I can appreciate it is hard to imagine that a person can change their world view, yet it certainly happens all the time.
Wow, 14 years ago. I hope the current progressive correct-thinkers realize the takes they make today have to hold up over a decade from now, otherwise the next wave is going to cancel them.
He was not canceled by progressives. Equating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism is generally an anti-progressive stance in the US. This is progressive principles being morphed into a weapon to be used against progressives.
At least one of the sources in this article, the Washington Free Beacon, is financed by a right-wing activist.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. That said, firing him, like they did with Damore would have been more consistent. Because everyone is under arbitration agreements that always benefit the company, vs the courts where you might have a shot at justice, they have no incentive to do that. As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy wou…
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” And hey, great news, now we have every line written by every man, woman and child automatically captured and archived forever in an easy to search dossier. Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview…
>Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding
Perhaps but i don't feel they deserve the benefit of the doubt.