It absolutely is. This doesn't make scabbing any less vile, however. All it has guaranteed in this instance is that a bunch of hapless Uber drivers are going to be feeling the backlash. Friends don't let friends scab.
"If you don't actively participate in my exact form of political activism, you're a bad person!"
This is the kind of rhetoric that pushed a ton of people on the fence towards Trump. For some reason, it's a common leftist tactic right now to insist that if you aren't actively engaged in whatever form of extremism the speaker is advocating, you are evil and (propping up the man | part of the patriarchy | oppressing <group> | a literal nazi | etc.). Entirely predictably, this is likely to alienate anyone even slightly to the right of the speaker and push them further right.
Maybe most Uber drivers don't really want to protest in this way. Maybe they agree with Trump. (Probably not, given that it's Manhattan, but who knows.) Maybe they feel like they don't have all the facts and don't want to make a stand based on an incomplete understanding. Either way, attacking them for it is counterproductive for you.
I hate to pick on this quote (I appreciate and suggest people read the rest of your post) but I don't agree with this. A common rightist tactic is to suggest either 1) I was okay with X policy when Obama did something so I have no moral authority to judge it now, or 2) I'm just a liberal whiner, too young, or too weak to appreciate that someone else is in charge so my beliefs are invalid. I am pushed to the left by conservative intolerance just as much as the reverse is true.
Both sides have extremes. I think it balances out. You are following your own proclivities of reasoning, fixating on which messaging you're most enticed by or most repulsed by.
Being called Hitler by "some" after simply being elected, unrelated to any action is definitely useless "Hitler BS".
> but the current reaction by the extreme neo-left is a magnitude of order worse
Drawing parallels to current actions might be hyperbolic or extreme or unfair, but not as dumb - definitely not orders of magnitude.
Maybe I should have inserted more qualifiers, but I deliberately didn't say that. The friends I refer to didn't make the "he's Hitler" arg at or before election time. They lost, they knew it, and they thought about why they lost instead of doubling down on the mistake of picking the Obama global government equivalent on the right. Later on some made those implications by inflating relatively minor actions that fit a pattern they were looking for. I was happy he beat Obomney. Better to let the pendulum swing.
As an example: I am a free market libertarian who agrees with marriage equality, but the means by which 'activists' attempt to engage issues turns me off. For example, harassing Mike Pence at his house -- I found that tactic childish and off-putting and immature (and divisive) as well as ineffective. Those tactics don't create positive change, they promote Balkanization of people who might otherwise be convinced to agree with a reasonable position.
France's violent anti-Uber protests -- regardless of issue, I'm less likely to listen to potentially reasonable positions when they are presented in violent or disruptive ways. In fact, those sort of things make me less likely to consider their views.
When a child screams for chocolate -- that's less compelling than if they ask in a reasoned, mature way, presenting facts and arguments rather than throwing things and parading around the house in perpetual outrage.
There will always be children in the world. Get an invite to gab.ai if you want to see the giant cache of them on the right, literally advocating violence and genocide outright. Unreasonableness is not the partisan issue you make it out to be.
By "activists" "harassing" Mike Pence do you mean when three neighbors put up rainbow flags in front of their own houses? [1]
You are fine with allowing trivial unrelated actions influence your fundamental beliefs of right and wrong?
1. http://supremepatriot.com/2016/12/29/vp-mike-pence-harassed-...
If you're "turned off" by how activism is going, Free Market Libertarian, you should put your money where your mouth is and present a more workable alternative.
There is an intense echo chamber on the far right that you've failed to mention, with similar barriers to entry. They've gone as far as to create a walled-off invite-only social network called gab.ai. They brigade similarly on Twitter, and aggressively block opinions that do not align with theirs. They peddle information that cannot possibly be true, and resort to personal attacks when facts are pointed out to them. I had someone tell me that 50 million people died from heroin overdoses under Obama. That is absurd – it's a full sixth of the US population. But they insisted. "Do your own research" comes hard and fast when contrary evidence is presented.
These views are mindlessly repeated and reshared by the thousands. Anything that signals group membership is adored regardless of evidence to the contrary; anything that conflicts with the group opinion is rejected outright. I've watched these people change the definition of per-capita to fit their narrative, then insist it's always meant that. There is no shortage of echo chamber problems on the right. Look at Breitbart News.
There is a bipartisan communication problem in America. Algorithmic newsfeeds have fractured the audience into distinct groups that no longer communicate with one another. Americans seem unable or unwilling to perform basic searches to fact-check news sources. Pinning it on a political party or subset of the political spectrum IMO reflects a fundamentally incomplete view of the problem.
"These views" Can you list another? I started that list with the calling the opponent Hitler example.
I would appreciate a cite on "change the definition of per-capita", not because I don't think some "expert" made that assertion... it looks very similar to the similarly meaningless def of "unemployed" some use.
Couldn't agree more with your last paragraph.
But further than that: I've seen persistent allegations and slurs against the Jewish faith (many in pre-prepared image form), advocation of literal genocide, celebration of alleged bills that would make it legal for people to use motor vehicles to strike and kill protestors, and calls for those protesting legally and peacefully to literally be rounded up and imprisoned by police because a small group of unrelated individuals committed acts of vandalism or violence. The excuse? "If they're not stopping them, they're supporting them". These were not isolated incidents. I personally witnessed hundreds of voices repeating the latter talking point on a single local news station's Facebook page, in a single night.
The current US National Security advisor Michael Flynn allegedly accidentally retweeted one of these. According to news reports, it read "Not anymore, Jews".
Further down the abyss, speaking more to rhetorical depravity: I've watched pro-Trump posters in private Facebook groups post pictures of themselves pointing firearms at the camera in response to disagreements over fact. There was also a disturbing pattern of posters sifting through the public profiles of others for pictures – essentially peoples' family photos – altering them to appear pornographic or otherwise offensive, and then reposting them in public. One even literally offered to sell a stranger's child in to slavery, on their personal Facebook page, using a picture of them, "because that's what the Muslims would do". I saw attempts to get people fired from their job due to a Facebook political disagreement.
I really believe that there are intrinsic issues with social media that are feeding this crisis: a demand for instantaneous engagement often at the expense of even a few minutes of thought, a "real names" policy on Facebook that sabotages efforts to deflect/prohibit personal attacks in discussion groups, a comically understaffed/underresourced reporting system that I've seen people on all sides try to weaponize against those that disagree with them, algorithmic news feeds that people have voluntarily handed over their information-seeking ability to, and notifications that allow asynchronous debate to escalate into what people perceive as intrusive interruptions. Many unfortunately don't know how to turn these off, and react in anger.
It's no way to communicate and no way to live.
On the flip, shouldn't we all be willing to accept that some of the things we think can't be true are true? History has all kinds of examples.
Arguing that's it's other people who are really making this mistake makes no sense because you made the arg.
Still looking for the cite on "the definition of per-capita".
This is using images of a senator's children and proposing a hypothetical rape of them in service of a political goal, which is so blindingly reprehensible that it's hard to even type out: https://twitter.com/ChristiChat/status/826182267978407936.
Everything you said is also true of Hitler comparisons – anyone with the resources to make that allegation can make them. The only argument I've made is that valid counterexamples exist to your claim that the left is an "order of magnitude worse". Asserting this is not judging individuals by their actions. This is demonizing a large group that you have defined, based upon on equally-hackable individual actions you have observed.
There is no credible evidence of your assertion that the left is somehow rhetorically worse. That's the only claim I'm making: that the hypocrisy is not provably asymmetric. I have not outlined a personal standard of evidence.
The echo chamber comments were prompted by the statement that "the neo-left is an [order of magnitude] worse". There is, in fact, staggering depravity on the right if you look in the right (cough) places.
You seem to be saying not "that kind of leftish rhetoric didn't push people towards Trump", but "there's also rightish rhetoric which pushed people away from Trump".
Which seems true to me, and totally worth bringing up. But the bit you quoted also seems true to me, and your post doesn't parse as disagreement with it.
Maybe living in NYC is very expensive, they are poor, and they need money.
This is a political opinion, and the context definitely matters. This wasn't a strike for higher wages, this was a strike to back a political stance.
How would you feel if the cabbies went on strike because we allow Muslims to vote? Would you so vehemently blast people that want transportation to continue functioning in the interim in that case as well?
Strikes are always political. The point of a strike is to say "you need us" and a HUGE proportion of taxi drivers are Muslim. Their family, friends, the people who keep their family and friends safe risking their lives helping the US military in their home countries were all screwed by this.
They wanted to strike to say 'if you ban Muslims, it doesn't JUST mean the US is now run by weak cowards. It means you won't be able to find a taxi because we won't help you. You need us'. The goal was that plenty of Trump supporters missed their flights because of it and had to think about it -- the services they rely on are run by the people they are attacking. Not sure it happened, but at least they tried.
And the "Trump supporters missed flights", yeah so did people who were flying home to see loved ones, didn't support Trump, or didn't care.
(In this case, they dislike Hoffa's collaboration, but nobody started calling for the dissolution of unions.)