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.
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.
Only half joking. After a certain time, most people get tired and afraid of constant paranoid vigilantism and start searching for protection. Any protection.
And whoever gained positions of power from the previous tumult, will seek immunity from further revolutionary tumult, which is easiest to achieve by suppressing the worst Robespierres and ossifying the new structures.
From an outside perspective, it is striking how much the woke wave is waning compared to 2020. Trump is gone from Twitter, so a constant irritant has been removed, and people are starting to having a bit of a hangover. Plus the new rulers of the nest need a bit of calm for political business as usual.
The ongoing self-recrimination in the media over the mass insta-dismissing a year ago of all COVID19 lab leak discussion—despite zero new evidence[1]—being one prominent example of the above, of course.
[1] I don't mean to imply that I don't believe in the theory. On the contrary, I was amazed and alarmed to see how a year ago even stating that SARS-CoV-2 being accidentally leaked from the Wuhan labs was not impossible was censored by social media as "disinformation" and denounced by regular media as already having been "debunked", as opposed to a reasonable hypothesis worthy of exploration. My point is that, as far as I know, there is zero new evidence available today to support the reasonableness of said hypothesis versus a year ago. The only difference is that Trump is no longer in the White House.
The major difference I see now is that a number of major US media networks reported that the US intelligence community views lab leak as a feasible scenario now, one of their two main ones.
Alexi McCammond's tweets as a 17 year old were made in 2011. She had already publicly apologized for them in 2019.
James Gunn's old tweets were from 2011.
Josh Hader's social media posts were from 2012, while in high school.
Hartley Sawyer's tweets were from 2014.
Where is that line?
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?
Mostly really awkward attempts at being sexually active. Surely some of it cancelable. Just like most other 17 year olds.
(Is suffering indoctrination shameful? And, as you say, that is not unique to 17 year olds.)
“I am so sorry to have used such hurtful and inexcusable language. At any point in my life, it’s totally unacceptable.” Backlash against her initial comments seem to be that she characterized her tweets as insensitive rather than using the word racist, which seems important but certainly pedantic.
What she said in 2019 when it first came out was
https://twitter.com/alexi/status/1197290613701513217
> Today I was reminded of some past insensitive tweets, and I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended. I have since deleted those tweets as they do not reflect my views or who I am today.
"some past insensitive tweets" as a euphemism for racist tweets
"I am deeply sorry *to anyone I offended.*" (my emphasis with asterisks) => sorry if you were offended
So when it first came out, she gave the least amount of effort necessary to make it go away. Only when it threatened her plum new job did she offer anything simulating genuine remorse.
yes
> However how should she have worded the appology?
"I am deeply sorry" would have been good. Or, "I am deeply sorry for < some variation of "what I said" or "my racist tweets">".
I'm don't agree with
> the former is a direct apology and admittance of wrongdoing towards another on her part
When I read "sorry to anyone I offended", it is not an unconditional apology. She is not apologizing for what she did. She is apologizing *to those she offended*.
Which is to say she is apologizing not for what she did but for the offense she caused.
There is a crucial difference there. The former is taking responsibility for what she said. The latter, at best, makes no comment on whether or not what she said was wrong; at worst, makes a comment that what she did was not wrong but that she is only sorry because people took umbrage with it. From her words alone, we know she thinks what she said was "insensitive" and that she is apologizing to those that are "offended". If she's only acknowledging that her words are insensitive, it makes that sense she's apologizing directly to and only to those that she offended, which is why she would qualify her apology as such. This is not a statement that acknowledges that her words, in and of themselves, were wrong.
In that regard, she may not be avoiding an apology in the absolute terms, but more importantly, as in all other cases where people only apologize for the offense, she is not (at the very least directly) acknowledging that what she did was intrinsically wrong, she is merely responding to the outrage.
So you might say
> I would guess she was genuinely sorry
and you could be right, but when I read what she wrote, that does not come across.
This
> the former is a direct apology and admittance of wrongdoing towards another on her part
does not come across at all when I read
> I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended.
To get that kind of interpretation, I would have to do some mind reading instead of taking her words for what they are.
The only line is to scrub everything you have ever written with your real name off the internet. Someone will get offended by your writing and, eventually, you will lose your job and be exiled.
Also, solidarity for palestinians is pretty widespread among progressives and left-wings in general. I think a push to cancel him for this entry would more likely come from right-wing, pro-Israel groups if anything.
> If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others.
It’s really hard to read stuff like that and not feel attacked as a Jewish person. I know it’s an old post and people change, but I don’t want people walking away from this thread thinking someone lost their job for merely being critical of Israel. That just feeds the cycle of distrust and makes it harder to discuss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon
So yeah, doesn't really seem like a case of progressives eating-their-own
It's hard to feel any sympathy when that chicken comes home to roost.
How is this any different than today?
If not, if we consider historical examples like these as failures of past societies, then things "not being any different than today" suggests our society is also failing.
So, yes, in the context of my post the Galileo example is a good example IMO.
Cancellation, back then, was largely top-down, driven by kings and popes. The current form of cancellation emerges from below, pressuring larger organizations to fire people and denounce them. And as I have mentioned elsewhere in this, those calling for cancellation derive increased status when their attempts succeed.
It's a bit more equivalent to witch hunt mania than papal disapproval.
It's the same playbook, repeated across millennia and societies. The Soviets in 1930s-40s played it out too, with chilling adroitness. They didn't call themselves religious (quite the opposite), but you can easily know the pattern by its fruits.
A chilling lesson for today.