Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

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Paul Graham grew up in a time when rich middle-aged white men with no relevant experience or credential could spout off about whatever topic they wanted, including pseudo-intellectual racism/misogyny, and everyone would be forced to listen to their nonsense unable to respond with more than an eye-roll for fear of reprisals. (For that matter, when Graham grew up those powerful white dudes could beat people up, sexually assault people, etc. with no consequence.)

Now when they spout similar nonsense, such dudes are publicly criticized, and the criticism deeply shocks and distresses them, to the point that whiny white/male supremacist grievance has now entirely taken over a whole US political party, which is trying to outlaw public criticism of white/male supremacist ideology.

Edit: Disclaimer to satisfy rayiner: I am a 6'2" married 36-year-old straight white male homeowner with 2 kids and a car.

Edit #2: Folks may enjoy https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham...

> the criticism deeply shocks and distresses them

This is a really good point. It's frustrating, though predictable, to see people arguing about the precise threshold of "harm" to which speech should be held in the comments here when the harm done to most people Graham seems to be defending amounts to "someone was mean to me on the Internet."

And - yeah! That sucks! People being mean to you on the internet sucks. But until people like this are defending every target of KF/ED/4chan/etc hate mobs just as vehemently, I'm not really interested in treating them like they're neutral, rational parties.

This is a pretty shocking fairytale version of the past.

I don't think you lived in the past. Racist jokes were told by teachers in school to their class. Minorities in work environments would be told racist jokes by white dudes to their face and they had to laugh at them or be fired. White dudes could basically say whatever they want, as long as it wasn't about another white dude (or their families). The past was probably more shocking than you realize it was.

I am a 35 year old straight married white male homeowner and businessowner who identifies as reasonably right-wing and I endorse this comment.

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