The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
To me, totally missing the point. Not just "for the right". To many who would consider themselves mostly aligned with left wing politics, myself included, this is just the latest in a long line of media (social and news) driven forced punishment for people guilty of expressing a viewpoint or just generally doing something a bit poor taste in public. It doesn't really matter if they've done wrong. It's not a considered or proportional type of response.
Sure, there are far bigger injustices in the world than someone losing their job, but this sort of thing is wrong because it's for the wrong reason. It's headlines driven HR.
That's ludicrous. You don't do things that make potentially thousands of your coworkers uncomfortable internally just because you want to make a point. Human Resources is a thing for a reason.
Put it on medium and be done with it.
He suggests that Google has a culture of sharing pretty openly and of offering criticism and even commentary on important issues. It would be good to have additional evidence of this to evaluate whether his statement was indeed matched to the appropriate environment.
(I am not and have not been a Google employee, so IDK for sure. I know that at my company, there are indeed particular fora in which this sort of thing could be raised. I can imagine at some companies this would not be possible, so you raise a great question. Thanks!)
I'm all for keeping politics out of the workplace, except for verbal conversations between colleagues. But that's just not the case right now.
Both are obviously incredibly unprofessional, but only one would probably face life-changing punishment in reality. Ideally you set the tone that both are unacceptable, that the only political discussion acceptable beyond interpersonal conversation is the politics of the company's self-interest. Both starting an internal political battle, as as well tweeting externally about an already-started one, should get you fired. But that's only fair if you set that tone and expectation.
Maybe you are unfamiliar with Google's culture. Employees are encouraged to engage in conversations about the culture and values of the company, using mediums like this. Google is not rigid about "work time", preferring that you are productive.
Also, 10 page manifestos to your company are never good ideas.
has everyone forgotten Jerry McGuire?
1) He never insinuated that anyone was biologically inferior just that there is marginal statistical proof that -on average- women prefer to work less hours, and more flexible hours; his "idea" was to promote a culture that adopted this, rather than using hiring quotas, in order to achieve the diversity goal which he also claims to wish for.
That you claim he was calling people "inferior" only shows your own bias.
2) It's not a "Manifesto" that's what gizmodo called it but it was, at best, a memo, at worst, the first post on an internal forum thread hoping to discuss this matter.
Priming your audience with terms like "Anti-diversity screed" and "manifesto" all but guarantee a sizable portion of people will read the document with major prejudice and bias. And that's the kind of thing those of us who value diversity ought to loathe.
We certainly need a whole lot more charity in our conversations on sensitive issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
[[Citation Needed]]
He literally said the exact opposite of this.
Why are you purposefully misrepresenting his views? And if not purposefully, why are you then commenting on a story whose main source (the document) you haven't read?
He was offering a different explanation, based on group averages, of why the industry is unable to reach a 50/50 ratio of male/female engineers. And most of his arguments were based on interests, not abilities.
That's very different from the way it's been mischaracterized as an argument that women are inferior.
Because they're outraged by what they've heard about it and demand that someone (almost without question) facilitate that outrage, correct or not.
I come from a small town where Trump dominated Clinton, and most people I know voted for Trump holding their noses. They considered him to be a less-bad option, and Thiel even said as much in interviews. Yet folks are being smeared for being "complicit" and dragged as if they are Trump, or agree with everything he stands for.
I don't think that's ever happened before, at least publicly. Every candidate I've ever seen has major flaws, and people that lack those flaws and even despise those flaws voted for them anyway. I get that Trump is particularly incompetent, but if voting for a candidate that wins the election is a punishable offense maybe we should rethink our political activism.
He claims that, therefore, we should make software engineering more emotional and people-focused.
The left got pretty hysterical about Bush too (did you know he was a Nazi, just like Trump?). I would not be surprised if being outed as a Bush voter would have been considered career-limiting in SV at the time. What has changed in the time since is a dramatic increase in our ability to discover and record people engaged in wrongthink and let our outrage go viral through social media.
46.6% didn't vote
25.6% voted for Hillary Clinton
25.5% voted for Donald Trump
After the election I saw people, smart people that work in the physical sciences, crying. Yelling that people will be killed now. That they should give up on their careers as it no longer matters.
These people obviously have bought into something along the lines of "literally Hitler". And if you really believe that, then his supporters are "basically Nazis". And given how Nazis are portrayed (and not just them, anyone involved in Germany's WWII effort is labeled a Nazi regardless if they were), anyone remotely like them forfeits all rights.
So it's not about disagreeing on any particular issues. It's that in their mind, the US just elected a monster and there's no excusing it.
This makes sense if you believe he's literally an evil monster. Just saying "politics!" doesn't give people a free pass to think or do anything at all.
The reactions captured on video seem to indicate some serious psychological issues with these people.
All this was easily predictable before the election. How is this flaming pile of garbage not worth crying about? Are you seriously suggesting that any of this is normal?
Trump is a liar but also emotionally honest; people knew what they were voting for when they "held their noses" and that's no excuse
They were sick of Republicans getting battered by the media and their opponents. Every time the Republicans put up a "nice guy" the media skewered them along with their Democratic opponent. Think Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney. All decent guys, completely dismantled by their opponents and the media and turned into evil men during their campaigns.
My friends voted for Trump because he was a straight up brawler. The guy didn't back down, he didn't apologize, and was a flame thrower.
Clinton tried and tried to go after him and everything fell flat. He went after her, labeled her "crooked Hilary" which his base ate up. He talked about her husband being a rapist and how she allowed it and they went nuts about that. Nothing was off the table and it kept her completely off balance, she had no comebacks for most of his attacks.
The media went after him and what happened? He punched back - repeatedly and they were unprepared for him. Called him a joke, derided him, tried to bring him down. He just kept coming back and countered with something they weren't reporting on, or the polls being way off, or any other number of issues. The media were so unprepared to deal with him, even more so now that he's been elected. In one election, he completely dismantled the MSM and convinced half the country they couldn't be trusted. How many times a day do you hear the term "fake news" now? Trump started that. Now the media can't get away from it and now it's a part of our political lexicon. CNN is no longer a reputable news organization because Trump called them out repeatedly, their reputation is in tatters because of him.
The Republican base ate him up and loved the fact they finally had a candidate who played in the mud and never tried to be the "nice guy" and fought the media and Democrats with everything he had. It's not that they knew what they were getting, it was more about pushing back the Liberal ideology, and feeling like they had someone who would fight for them.
I don't remember anyone speaking of Dole, McCain, or Romney as evil. Frankly, Donald Trump has said crappier things about McCain than anyone on the Democratic side ever did. Romney did get slammed on his statement that some percentage of the population was freeloading.
CNN is as reputable a news organization as it ever was. It may well be in worse odor with the Republican base because of Trump's statements, but I don't think it was ever that popular with them. And let's face it, Fox News has a 25-year investment in depicting Hillary Clinton as bad. If we're going to talk about CNN saying bad stuff about Dole, we should probably go back and think of all the folks who pushed the notion that Hillary Clinton arranged the death of Vincent Foster.
Romeney had the intimidation factor of a house plant.
this statement makes virtually no sense to me. They didn't like Clinton's politics, but instead of voting for Bernie or a third party candidate, they voted for someone they didn't like? That kind of logic completely escapes me.
>> CNN is as reputable a news organization as it ever was.
I'm not sure how they can be. It's one thing to have a political slant to your reporting. It's quite another to tow Democratic party lines, publish fake or purposefully misleading stories to hurt Trump, and 90% of the stories you run about him are negative. That's not journalistic integrity, it's a running tirade about him and his administration.
How much does CNN hate Trump? 93% of coverage is negative
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/23/how-much-doe...
You can say Fox News reporting has a conservative slant and I won't argue that fact. Even their reporting on Trump during and now after the election has had an air of pessimism about it. They ran very few, if any positive stories about him during the campaign, and many of their more moderate commentators still hedge their support of him and his policies.
>> Hillary Clinton arranged the death of Vincent Foster.
I've followed the Clinton's since the 90's and have heard various conspiracy theories about them, but this is the first time I've heard someone talk about Hilary arranging Vince Foster's death.
The media used to be the check on the government, now they're firmly on its payroll. When that happens, you lose all credibility. When you can't trust the news being reported to you to be unbiased, and not filtered through a political lens or some ideological slant, then it's no longer news, it's an agenda - which is exactly what I saw and experienced all through the election cycle and even now several months afterwards, with no signs of abating.
I'm not in a bubble. I've been an independent voter since I was 18. I read both conservative and liberal news sources and then have to sort them out to try and determine where the truth lies. It's exhausting, but it keeps me honest.
I didn't say Trump ruined CNN, they did that all by themselves when they cast their lot with Clinton and after she lost, they've since doubled down trying to oust Trump, outing them even further as partisan hacks.
I would, however, consider firing someone who voted for Trump because of their lack in critical thinking skills–if such skills are relevant to their job.
The difference is in the employer's motivation. Say you've hired someone with a medical condition as a truck driver. As it turns out, they tend to randomly fall asleep at the wheel every few weeks. If you can't find a job where it's safe for them to do so, you will probably have to let them go. That doesn't mean that you harbour ill will towards them, or that you seek to punish them for this behaviour (that they have no control over). It only means that it's a bad fit.
But, to be honest, there are certainly people who wish others to be fired based on their vote. But that isn't actually a new phenomenon: it's the basic reason behind the principle of the secret ballot. If people voluntarily let others know how they voted, all the usual mechanisms of social feedback will kick in: Because people feel that a vote for Trump has and/or will harm themselves or others, they will treat the people who did it with the same sort of retribution they would inflict on someone they saw littering, or hitting their dog, or any number of actions they consider harmful.
The right uses the state to censure.
The left uses people and popularity to censure.
To fight the dictators I can simply join a militia and fight a civil war.
But how to I fight people? I'm not popular, I'm not cool, I'm not socially connected. I am no one. How do I maintain my rights when those depriving me of them are everyone else?
If I'm targeted by the populist mass, where is my recourse?
I'm lucky that I live in a country where I could just study and pass a test to be a public servant, where I'm guaranteed a job and won't be fired based on public outrage. But what about others?
(All these people whining about "facts" being censored and none of them are using facts of their own..)
The state says there are no gays, therefore if you discuss being gay with people you will be arrested for propaganda.
Ring wing censorship comes from the state, left wing censorship comes from peers.
Sorry that people don't react with perfect civility to your uncivil attempts to create an ethnostate. That doesn't make you a victim.
> your uncivil attempts to create an ethnostate
"Identity politics" better describes such a thing. Tell me, would you describe the actions of historical fascists as "not perfect civility" as well?
> That doesn't make you a victim
What strawman are you projecting here?
Republicans control the US government through what most on the left consider illegitimate means. The way they hold power is decidedly anti-democratic. They've gotten to a point where they control the day to day narrative and don't even have to listen to opposing viewpoints as they govern.
Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick just said this:
> "People are happy with their governments at their state level, they're not with the city," said Patrick, a Republican, in an interview with Fox Business Network. He was responding to a question about gubernatorial races.
> "Our cities are still controlled by Democrats," he added. "And where do we have all our problems in America? Not at the state level run by Republicans, but in our cities that are mostly controlled by Democrat mayors and Democrat city council men and women. That's where you see liberal policies. That's where you see high taxes. That's where you see street crime."
Ignoring that crime scales with population everywhere, people live in cities, cities are centers of production for most states, cities are generally healthier than suburban/exurban/rural areas, and cities are absolutely not happy with republican state governments, this comes on the heels of a series of anti-city legislation at the state level. The Texas legislature has been actively undoing liberal policies in Austin for no reason other than ideological disagreements. We apparently can be overruled at any time by rural legislators from hundreds of miles away.
Suppression is censorship in aggregate. It's not exactly "your opinion is harmful so stop talking" but it sure feels like it, and has the same results. The aggregate form happens to be easier to hide because it is more abstract.
Classic quote by Republican strategist Lee Atwater:
> You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
P.S. The dichotomy of state vs private censorship among parties is a false one. I've seen multiple references to a contemporary "red scare" in this forum today. It concerns me that if I were to bring up Russian collusion and election interference I might be shut down as a fear-monger when the concerns are completely valid. I also understand the Republican viewpoint of states suppressing opinion when it comes to things like affirmative action, political correctness, etc. There's too much noise right now for anyone to take anyone else seriously. Hard to imagine that ending anytime soon.
At least for me, usually the extreme image for the right is a dictatorship, and the left, academics, popular people and their twitter mob.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
The far left and far right have similar policies but for different reasons.
The far right will censor to ensure that nobody questions the regime. But the far left will censor to ensure nobody questions the idea of the day. Which is functionally equivalent to a social regime.
> The far right will censor to ensure that nobody questions the regime. But the far left will censor to ensure nobody questions the idea of the day. Which is functionally equivalent to a social regime.
Ok, I see. Your politics boil down to what you can say or cannot say in public without being publicly criticized.
That's why you had Snowden and Jill Stein throwing soft support to Trump, telling their followers that the previous election was a choice between Goldman Sachs (who apprarently clinton represented) and freedom from banker rule (which apparently trump represented), and why you have Bernie supporters now attacking minority centrist candidates, who would be a challenge to him in democratic primaries.
It's pretty standard for any revolution, to be able to come together to kill the status quo without necessarily needing to agree on what would come next.
That's just a truism. The extremes of the political spectrum are, by definition, not the mainstream that defines the status quo.
Other than the fact they have the same short term goals, they're totally different.
If your political ideology allows you to think that 'people who disagree with me about policy but agree with me in principle are still bad people and deserve as much righteous indignation as I can muster from others' then no, the virtue of your particular policy positions do not distinguish you in any meaningful way. That attitude is how the Republican party manages to churn out bulllshit platforms year after year
If Trump and the republican congress's healthcare policy were put into effect, millions of people would lose their health insurance. I know how shitty it can be to go about health insurance with a chronic illness. I expect thousands of people to die if this policy were put into place.
What the fuck does it mean to disagree with me about policy but agree with me in principle, in this case? Am I supposed to ignore the fact that political decisions impact the material lives of actual human beings? Am I supposed to play polite with politics that will harm people I care about because it's more important to agree in principle than to agree on actual concrete policy?
People who complain about how close-minded it is to be vehemently against Trump and by corollary people who put Trump into power never mention actual policies and how those policy differences actually impact people. It is always vague statements about politics in the abstract.
Politics in the abstract is never the reason for anything.
>The left uses people and popularity to censure.
I think that's only because of how our country's electorate has evolved. The left would be happy to use the state to censure, and the right would be happy to use people and popularity to censure. You could find examples of both sides using populism or legalism to advance their agendas.
>To fight the dictators I can simply join a militia and fight a civil war.
You say that pretty casually! To me that sounds almost as daunting as being targeted by a populist mass.
Getting fired over a creepy manifesto that you chose to make public isn't censorship, and not a threat to your "rights".
What rights were deprived from the author exactly? Did I miss a story where he got arrested?
You can perhaps say there are exceptions to views to be tolerated, but we're letting those exceptions become bigger and bigger. It's a dangerous trend, and if it continues, the idea of Freedom of Speech could be gone, even if the Government doesn't explicitly suppress it.
He hasn't been silenced though, if anything his voice carried far further than intended.
I'm not sure Google did the right thing here. The argument that this is the precise sacred cow he was talking about is strong.
But it isn't censorship. His speech wasn't abridged. He isn't in jail. There is no freedom from reaction, nor is there a freedom from outrage. If he had sent out a racist tirade, dropping racial epithets, would you still say his right to free speech was infringed when he got fired?
> In contrast, Mr. Hastings, a supporter of Hillary Clinton ...
From my PoV, the fact that Hastings has received no backlash for supporting Clinton after Trump won, is a sign that right-wingers/conservatives/Trump supporters are more tolerant of the opinions of left-wingers/liberals/progressives/Clinton supporters than the other way around.
That being said, Clinton was pretty tepid and corrupt, not openly offensive and terrifying the way Trump is. Unless you're REALLY desperate you can't honestly say supporting one or the other is the same.
Basket of deplorables...
A big part of her campaign strategy was to generalize from a few actual white supremacists and paint everyone who opposed her as a deplorable sexist Nazi white-supremacist who couldn't stand the idea of a woman President.
That kind of McCarthyism is always a threat, but it was doubly dangerous in the current environment, with leftist groups declaring that violence was justified against anyone they thought fit that description.
> racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic
> ... irredeemable
Sorry, are you unaware of any people who've been attacked by Trump supporters? Really? Besides the obvious politicians (Senator Ben Sasse, for example), there are viral incidents like these: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/11/2...
Putting aside the question of why she felt she was being discriminated against, that's a story about a woman who said some nasty things.
Is that the worst of it?
Hardly comparable to what's been done to Trump supporters.
But back to the matter at hand. You seem to be arguing that Thiel faced particular abuse for being a Trump supporter, given the example of Reed Hastings calling him out after Trump secured the Republican nomination (the GP comment [0]). I think it's worth pointing out the pre-conditions in this situation: Thiel, a known conservative, is allowed to serve on the board of directors for one of the biggest institutions (Facebook) in one of America's most famously liberal enclaves [1]. When it's revealed that he's a Trump backer, the liberals, who far outnumber those of Thiel's mindset in his peer group, threaten to kick him out. And let's be fair, Thiel is by far not the only example, as similar liberal outrages have been inflicted upon conservatives in other liberal enclaves, such as Hollywood.
But that's exactly what happened to the Clinton-supporting members on the board of directors for Hobby Lobby and the NRA. Oh wait, no such Clinton-supporting members exist. At least that we know of. If those conservative institutions could even tolerate a Clinton-suppporting board member in the first place, I imagine those Clinton-supporting members would face the same kind of backlash from their colleagues that Thiel faced from his for supporting Trump.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968956
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nearly-all-of-silicon-v...
May I assume that you also don't know of any?
Search for "fired for supporting Trump" or "Trump supporters assaulted" if you'd really like a list.
Here, I'll just mention what I consider the most egregious example:
In San Jose, a leftist mob attacked people leaving a Trump campaign event, while police stood aside and watched. "The only people arrested the day of the rally, Dhillon added, were those who attacked police officers."
http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/15/san-jose-new-allegatio...
There have been worse events, including kidnapping, torture, murder and attempted murders, but in that case the police seem to have been accomplices.
OK, just try to list ones that you think are important examples.
> In San Jose, a leftist mob attacked people leaving a Trump campaign event, while police stood aside and watched
OK, here you go:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/man-accused-of-assaulting-...
http://www.lex18.com/story/35275736/transylvania-university-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack-sente...
> There have been worse events, including kidnapping, torture, murder and attempted murders, but in that case the police seem to have been accomplices.
OK. Yeah, I guess if police are covering things up, then there are all manner of awful events that we don't really know about.
I consider the organized attacks by companies, protestors, and other groups, some with the tacit approval of the government, to be worse.
> Do you have any examples of people punished for supporting Clinton? I'd be interested to hear about them; I'm not aware of any.
I'm not particularly interested in getting into a link-fest fight that will ultimately stall at a No-True-Scotsman appeal. I took issue at your apparent complete obliviousness of violent attacks originating from the right-wing. Are any of the incidents I've mentioned sufficient for you and all those awful incidents you have in your head but can't be bothered to find the links to?
Oh what the hell. Here's another one for you: "Couple charged with assault in shooting, melee during UW speech by Milo Yiannopoulos"
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/couple-charge...
Oh, I guess that doesn't count as a "mob", because apparently when members of one group of protestors shoots another protester in the stomach, police swoop in and shut everything down. Do you imagine that if the police weren't there, that the right-wing protesters (including the ones carrying and firing guns) would have amicably resolved things?
I don't expect to find scores of examples of angry right-wing mob action. The winning side tends to have less reason to protest or lash out. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are aware of angry anti-Obama protests and retaliation that happened back in 2009. But let me know if you are equally oblivious of such incidents and I can search the news archives for you.
As a registered Republican, I can only imagine what my reaction as a Democrat would be upon hearing of attacks on Obama supporters. I would hope that my reaction would not be to assume that such attacks were coordinated by Senator McCain/Governor Palin, or use such incidents as a sweeping indictment against the Republican party. It's been several hours since you claimed that there were "so many" anti-Trump attacks and yet you've still only been able to come up with that one link from the Mercury News. Save yourself the effort, I can think of several incidents in which Trump supporters were harmed, but I'm not the one who was ignorant of such incidents nor do I deny that such incidents, whether they involved angry words or actual violence, were considerably harmful to the victims.
But -- looking at the most recent election cycle -- it's hard to ignore that the most direct examples of a party's leader sanctioning violence comes straight from Trump himself, which is why a lawsuit accusing him of inciting violence has been allowed to go forward:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/3/trump-campaig...
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/both-sides-blame-tru...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/03/th...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/get-him-out-racial-t...
Again, not a mob action since campaign attendees far outnumbered the protesters, meaning that a few punches could put an end to the protests before things descended into a riot. I don't think that makes the situation better.
So, are you now aware of attacks against Trump opponents?
Of course there were actions by crazy individuals on both sides. That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about people punished by organized groups and the powerful. I'm talking about Google firing people and the police ignoring mob attacks.
And you still haven't mentioned any such things.
I agree Trump's rhetoric was dangerous but he hasn't acted on it, as far as I know.
The police chief/city officials ignoring mob attacks based on politics is indeed a huge problem. If I'm reading the example you posted correctly, and the most recent update [0], a judge has so far dismissed claims against the defendants who would have the power -- e.g. the mayor and police chief -- to tell police to not protect Trump supporters. Did police officers intentionally decide to harm Trump supporters? I suppose the court case will examine that, though it's worth noting that Trump was endorsed by the nation's largest police union [1], so the thought of police being part of a conspiracy to hurt Trump would be pretty surprising.
In case you were unaware of Democrat-supporters who were either fired, or were threatened to be fired, for their support of Democrats, here you go:
- https://www.aol.com/2013/01/18/utah-terry-lee-forensics-fire...
- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/was-employee-laid-off-for-voting...
- https://www.mediaite.com/online/fired-for-voting-ohio-woman-...
- http://www.salon.com/2017/01/20/newt-gingrich-wants-to-fire-...
- http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/09/news/economy/siegel-email-em...
For your own pro-Trump files:
- http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/10/boss-tells-pro-trump-em...
[0] http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/15/judge-wont-throw-out-t...
[1] http://www.npr.org/2016/09/18/494451660/the-nations-largest-...
I'm sure there's challenges to being a left-leaning person in rural Georgia. But moving to rural Georgia isn't necessary, or really even an option, for people seeking economic mobility.
But it can really screw up people's lives in that short period of time, and scares everyone into not sharing any potentially controversial views in public nowadays, which I find disconcerting living in a country that's supposed to hold Freedom of Speech as one of its highest values (yes, I know freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, but the consequences have gotten extremely severe, career ending in a lot of cases, for statements that are sometimes taken out of context).
I'd rather people see these statements they dislike as an opportunity to engage in discourse and try to change these people's minds, instead of swift retribution, often without examination of how guilty the people in question actually are, just being told they're guilty by some random person they like on the internet is often enough to get them to jump on board.
It's especially concerning considering a lot of these people turning their shame button up to 11 consider themselves to be religious people, and most religions tend to espouse not letting yourself get swept up in hatred and casting stones at others. I'm not particularly religious, but I still don't think it's a healthy mentality to have, and I've had to ignore and heavily filter my social media in order to not see this presented to me every day, and even then I still get a lot of it shoved in my face (I can only imagine what all a person who actively looks for these things must see).
The Two Minutes Hate seems more and more appropriate the more I reflect on it. Here's a quote about it from 1984:
"The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."
"Outrage of the Day" is appropriate because what else can fill the mundanity of your life? The trouble is they accumulate and you inevitable form judgements, courtesy to the echo chambers (I'd like to see a new word echosystem!) This also makes it harder to introduce new ideas because the 'right' opinions and argument trees are already set.
I don't see social media as good/bad, but my observation of it is making me wonder if I'm turning into a reluctant Luddite.
https://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-17/how-the-in...
I desperately hope this is not, in fact, the prevailing sentiment of half the country. But to be convinced, I could really use examples of right-wing politicians affirming that LGBT+ people, the non-Christian religious , and people who can't afford their own living expenses are welcome in society.
0: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/the-tru...
On a side note: The article mentions alt right people complaining that a lot of SV companies' cultures are left leaning, which I think bizarre. There are plenty of industries that lean far right, in fact, unless the company is a non-profit or is in the public sector, in my experience the typical company culture is more right leaning than left. In most companies outside of SV, diversity programs are almost non-existent or just something that is briefly mentioned on the careers page.
The fact that Google or other SV companies have robust diversity programs and have cultures that lean left is an anomaly and freaking out that you aren't included in these companies' diversity programs or that you feel on the outside of the company culture screams of entitlement and ignorance of the actual reality that minorities and women face in the rest of the job market.
Is it legal in the US for someone to judge a person’s political beliefs or a declared support for a candidate in a performance review? I can imagine that even if the answer is ‘no’ that things might be different on a public board where it is less ‘performance review’ and more ‘public face of the company’, but the idea of judging someone professionally on the basis of their personal politics at the ballot box seems a little disturbing to me.
But you're right that executives are often treated differently, and board members even more so (since they're not just management - they're not employees at all). But I believe that under federal law political views are not currently a protected status, so it would not necessarily be illegal to fire someone for their political beliefs. Though this might seem odd, it is perhaps a behavior that is sufficiently deterred by the fact that it would be very bad for business in many cases. Remaining employees could be upset by it, customers and potential customers could be alienated, and legal challenges could be mounted under various theories.
Another reason that this could be less common that might expect, given that it's legal under federal law, is that some states are not at-will employment states (like California is), so it's generally harder to fire employees in general.
This is not in any modern sense "left" (please don't bother pedantically bringing up "classical liberalism").
Just a dash? Just a smidge? LOL. That's not the Silicon Valley I moved to in 1999.
No disintermediation and bitcoin here. No way.
In many other ways SV is clearly skewed left.
Europeans might disagree and say that all Americans are on the right.
With no economic components I'm genuinely curious what you consider the "American sense" of the left, in the sense of actual policy. Pro-choice, I guess?
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
The economic components were maybe 1/3 of her platform, and not all of her economic positions were incompatible with free markets.
But by American standards, her platform was well left of the average politician.
(Though I suspect, had she been elected, she would have ignored the platform and governed as a corporatist.)
Again, only if you entirely discount her economic positions, which are the core positions of any "left" figure.
You're free to paint with however wide a brush you wish, and your other comments in this thread leave little doubt that you'll retain your opinion regardless of how this exchange turns out. But simply because the Democratic party is the "more PC" corporate capitalist party, and the Republican party is the "less PC", does not mean that either of them represents anything remotely resembling economic left interests.
The Swedish left is regarded by everyone else as utter madness. See how the media covered their refugee policy a few years ago.
When somebody says, "Everybody at my company is a leftist!" they're not talking about people who read Marx and support trade unions. They're talking about culture.
Conservatives and Republicans fought decades to enshrine the power of corporations and the 1%, and to undermine any worker autonomy. I have to roll my eyes at all this. I guess Damore found out the hard way that he's not part of the biologically IQ superior clique he thought he was part of.
The comment in question was not referring to IQ of males or females in any way.
So I am not sure where your accusations regarding IQ come from.
Considering the balancing of these interests (which most people consider to at least sometimes conflict) is the core issue of politics, such a belief would actually render politics useless. You could just appoint the top 10 CEOs and wait for the trickle-down wealth to wash over the masses.
If this were Hobby Lobby or Chick Filet, and an employee wrote an "pro birth-control screed" on their company discussion board, and was promptly fired, many of the people on the right standing up for the Google engineer would currently be defending the rights of big business to fire who they want, and attacking the fired employee for lacking awareness and common sense to know his audience, and to keep his politics out of his work environment, etc.
But that's a bit of a cold comfort, since so many of the left are doing that exact same thing now. And do the exact opposite in cases where the situation is the inverse.
Basically, most people are hypocrites.
How do we get past this garbage? I wish I knew.
Has anybody's mind been changed at all through this whole ordeal? Or are we just going to sail through another historic moment of cultural reckoning with our comfortable beliefs firmly intact and affirmed the whole way through?
Depends on the workplace, doesn't it?
Why would that matter? Every workplace has an expectation for you to get along with your colleagues.
it's unhealthy, but I suspect we're going to keep doing it.
That being said, it's never a good idea to get on a soapbox about politics at work (or anywhere really). It doesn't make a difference in your listeners opinions and only gets people with opposing views aggravated. Best to just think about the issues and vote come election.
It's easy to circumvent the legal issue, just have a vague code of conduct and claim the employee broke said code of conduct.
certainly not a slam dunk case, but he may have some reasonable basis for a case.
The difference, presumably, is that people inside Google are already talking about all kinds of other political issues on internal message boards. They want to believe they're different, that they're in a new kind of enlightened environment where politics can be discussed by reasonable people without danger.
But this is ridiculous. It's easy to talk about things for which there's wide agreement. You don't even notice those things as politics. It's only politics when you disagree.
I don't suppose the human beings at Google are any better at talking about this stuff than any other human beings. If they want their workplace policies to reflect that, then fine! But there are a whole bunch of implicitly accepted leftist positions that they shouldn't be talking about, either. That's the hard part, because, again, they don't even notice those positions as politics.
Here are some Google executives saying exactly this:
Just as Uber and AirBnb are slowly revealing why we had hotel and taxi regulations in the first place, this Google case shows why our grandparents established those old-fashioned ideas about politics in the workplace.
In most circumstances it's perfectly legal to do so. Exceptions include states with specific laws that protect political affiliation (which includes California) and federal government employees.
Really? Leave it up to the media to decide what he was fired for afterwards?
> it's never a good idea to get on a soapbox about politics at work
Many companies actively encourage this, when it comes to left-leaning politics.
I honestly don't care. Anyone who sends a company wide memo is asking for trouble. The news throws so much stuff that you are expected to get "outraged" over. It's not healthy to absorb it all.
Looks like we might go nuclear with North Korea real soon, if that happens, none of this will matter.
He didn't.
Politics used to be a gentleman's game. Sure, you argue and huff and puff over bills, and the opposing parties viewpoints, but at the end of the day - you found compromise. The last decade or so? No such thing. Politics is now a bloodsport. Total victory is the only option.
- Different viewpoints? Not allowed.
- Compromise? Not allowed.
- Rational discourse? Not allowed.
- Don't believe what I believe? Your're a racist, bigot, homophobe, xenophobe, misogynist.
The Liberal ideology that has dominated politics for the last decade is now eroding, the Republicans own Washington DC right now and its rather off putting to the people who used to be in power. The whole Google issue just highlights that this isn't going to end anytime soon - but it sure didn't start with Trump, and it sure didn't just "land on Silicon valley's doorstep" this past week.
I think the larger question is when is rational discourse going to return? Google had an incredible opportunity to create a forum to discuss the issues the author brought up. Instead, they had a knee jerk reaction, based on the current environment, and fired the guy. They would rather deal with a lawsuit, a ton of backlash and a social media furor I haven't seen in a while, instead of having an open dialogue on what happened and why this guy believes what he believes. Can him, put him the box and label him an evil person and let's move on.
Nobody wins, and nothing is gained.
Another wasted opportunity.
Sad and depressing this is where we are as a country.
I don't have a solution.
And let's not pretend like the split between left and right in the US is somehow the shared responsibility of both sides. It's no coincidence that both the "reality-based community" as well as "alternative facts" are terms coined by the right.
There are literally dozens of lists on the web of actual, proven, indisputable lies of the current President. From crowd sizes to "even the liberal media calls it the greatest speech ever held on foreign soil". To insist that both sides are the same, and that therefore the best course of action is somehow in the middle, is ridiculous.
Totally, except for the economic stagnation, widespread malnutrition, common alcoholism, kleptocratic gerontocracy, almost every way, and the actual arrests of dissidents.
Oh, and losing a war in Afghanistan also doesn't seem to be in Twitter's immediate future.
Nailed it.