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Comment by coffeedoughnuts | Hacker News Reader

that would require a coherent definition of what "wokeness" is. From my perspective it's a catch-all term which in most contexts could be replaced with "the left" or "social-justice-warriors" or "young people"

In the context of this thread, it's being used to describe people who want to fight for the formation of a union and against racial discrimination in the workplace.

If someone is on the other side of that argument it must be for one of two reasons; either they are anti-union (which, as a personal belief it is their right to be, but they don't have the right to limit others from forming a union) or they are pro racial discrimination in the workplace.

If I met someone that was either of those things, I would lose some respect for that person. Apologies for the "cancellation".

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> If I met someone that was either of those things, I would lose some respect for that person. Apologies for the "cancellation".

To me, this is the entire problem with the current discourse situation in the US. Everyone keeps focusing on people instead of arguments. Everything is about labeling people and what they are, so they can dismiss or embrace them, and people are rarely that one-sided.

Even here, I don't see people arguing for or against unions, everyone is arguing about whether Vogt is a "good person" or not, and ultimately that doesn't matter. If he's against unions, I disagree, I like unions. That doesn't mean he's a terrible person, presumably he has other opinions that form his personality, and I can hopefully evaluate those on their merits.

Ok, but you do need to be accountable for your opinions. If you’re talking about the need for redemption that I 100% agree that people change and need the opportunity afforded to them to be able to change.

But if Person A asks Person B for help fighting discrimination and Person B says ‘nah’ then my opinion of Person B will change. I don’t feel I’m wrong for that.

If Person B then goes and makes a podcast calling out Person C, D and E for doing the exact same thing then Person B can expect quite a few others to change their opinion of them also

Okay but so what? Why do I have to have an opinion of PJ Vogt? I can have an opinion about whether I like his podcast or not, but what he does in his workplace concerns his coworkers.

Beyond a vague "we should condone X and condem Y because we want to encourage X-doers and discourage Y-doers", there's no reason for us to care what PJ Vogt does, and even this level of condemnation seems way overblown to me for someone that just decided not to help someone else out (not even hinder them, just not help them).

If people showed half the passion about holding their politicians accountable as they do for random people who did stuff in their lives, society would be in a much better place. I wonder if these pitchfork crowds are at least partially a reaction to people feeling powerless to effect actual change via the democratic process. Sort of the old joke about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlight because "this is where the light is".

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