Are you talking about Kapernick being cancelled from the NFL by conservative cancel culture and the Vice President's staged NFL walkout to support conservative cancel culture?
it may detract from your central point, but it also explanis why one side of the spectrum won't be willing to contribute to an armistice
(Though I am not sure that the right wing dominates societal discourse like you say.)
[0]: https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/harvard-grad-claira-janover-fi...
Her anger is the problem.
She was going to work with Deloitte, where she will represent her organization in front of clients that regularly sign off on invoices that resemble less a major purchase and more the GDP of a small country.
Imagine that you have a business.
Would you hire such an angry, callous, and impulsive person to represent you in front of clients?
Unless the name of your business starts with "B" and ends with "ank of America", the answer is probably "no".
Folks on the right are saying that she called for stabbing conservatives.
I don't think that's true.
She was using metaphor -- comparing being stabbed to having a paper cut -- and just did it exceedingly poorly.
The metaphor doesn't become clear unless you watch until the end of the video, and I don't know a lot of people, conservative or liberal, that are all that interested in watching the entirety of a video where they are being offered a complementary stabbing, just so that they can get the punchline.
If you post a video of you start off by repeating, over and over, "I am going to $VERB you", then don't be surprised when people interpret your message as, "I am going to $VERB you".
Finally: imagine that we flip her political orientation, and that she recored an angry video where she used a metaphor in which she talks about shooting BLM supporters.
She would likely be in jail.
There is a political difference in how both threats and actual violence are treated in the United States, and it favors the Left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism seem like the obvious counterexamples.
I think the progression is:
1. Make a political statement against an injustice (hashtags, kneeling, etc)
2. Making a lack of support a form of complicity with injustice.
3. Narrowly define what support looks like.
Exact quote from #ShutDownStem website: >> Unless you engage directly with eliminating racism, you are perpetuating it. [0]
Fantastic point. And I would hope those in favor of democracy can accept it. If you choose to support a political party publicly, you can reasonably expect people to engage with you about it. But nobody should be able to coerce you to support any particular party or candidate.
What we are seeing now, is not the freedom to choose a particular stance or cause. We are seeing the mob react with force to a lack of opinion.
You must have an opinion. And it must be the right one.
well, nobody is able to coerce you for not doing anything, but people can still judge you for it, and that may be perfectly reasonable.
Inaction can be as devastating as action. Withdrawing in the face of some injustice is as much of a choice as participating on either front.
It's an overused quote but really all that is necessary for evil to triumph is good people doing nothing. Of course today sometimes the causes are hyperbolic, but nothing is wrong with the principle. If someone is the victim of racism say, and people look away rather than stepping up, that's a failure.
It can be but rarely is.
In the case racism, it isn't. Sitting in my house doing nothing isn't as bad as attacking blacklivesmatter protesters.
The call against inaction is an exaggeration to shame people into action for their side. It's the "if you aren't with us, you're against us" repackaged for the woke.
Just one example:
"I wore these socks, in the past, because the rogue cops that are allowed to hold positions in police departments, not only put the community in danger, but also put the cops that have the right intentions in danger by creating an environment of tension and mistrust. I have two uncles and friends who are police officers and work to protect and serve ALL people. So before these socks, which were worn before I took my public stance, are used to distract from the real issues, I wanted to address this immediately."
Kapernick made a political statement as his place of work
He ruined that 2010-14 dynasty and got his coaching staff and front office sacked. And then he goes for petty provocational crap like representing police as pigs on his socks. This is a guy who grew up in the lap of upper middle class luxury and wanted for nothing.
You can be a reprehensible human being and still have NFL success if you are top-level talent, but not if you are reprehensible and you suck.
I do not support what happened to Kapernick, I don't think cancel culture is any better when disguised as something else. But the scale at which things are happening now is insane.
He does not deserve to be fired for making a political statement. Full stop.
At the same time, he did leverage his employer's platform (the NFL) to make a political statement.
Some sort of disciplinary action in response to that behavior is a legitimate course of action for an employer.
Imagine Kapernick as an engineer working for, say, Instagram.
Imagine that he Tweeted a bunch of pro-Biden memes on his personal Twitter. That seems fine to me.
Now imagine that he wrote, without consulting management, a feature which put a Biden banner at the top of the Instagram website.
That'd be a huge problem, and would merit disciplinary action. Not because he supported Biden, but because he leveraged the company brand and resources to do so, without the support of management.
I think this is where we draw the line, but am also open to other ideas.
As an individual, you should always have that right.
Both the New York Times and Breitbart are purveyors of propaganda for their respective political parties. They literally do nothing but make massively biased political statements, all day long.
Imagine you work there, and you disagree.
You can totally try to change that from within. Fight the system.
Work your way up. And once you have sufficient stature within the organization, you can run, say, an article praising George Washington on the front of the NYT, or a piece condemning him on Breitbart.
But, you, as a journalist, are a public face for your respective brand, and as such, you will likely face disciplinary action for going against the brand image.
It doesn't mean you can't make a statement.
But when you leverage your employer's platform to do so, there are going to be consequences.
Now, if you use your own megaphone, you absolutely deserve protection from being fired!
Build your Twitter/Instagram/Facebook following, and preach as much as you'd like. You built it. It's yours.
That's the reality of being a public figure. You are paid to be part of a brand image.
Tell me where I'm wrong on this. Or where you think we should draw the line. I'm happy to hear other opinions.
Every player standing and holding heart over hand during the anthem is doing the same.