Hacker News Reader

Comment by decimalenough | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

> "Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.

yes, the left doing that was pretty bad and I have gotten into many arguments over my left leaning friends over it. But it was largely private companies capitulating to pressure. To compare that to people being abducted and incarcerated by the government without trial or even an actual law being broken is worse.

You do understand why thats worse right?

How many of the conservatives complaining about it would support government regulations preventing people from being fired for expressing controversial viewpoints? AFAIK those complaining are the same people who support ‘at will’ employment and the liberty of religious organizations to impose more or less arbitrarily discriminatory hiring standards. So yeah, in that lax regulatory environment, your employer might decide to fire you if you (e.g.) feel the need to be an asshole to your trans colleagues.

Well for brevity I did trivialize it but I will expand:

The left side got people fired. This is objectively not as bad as getting people disappeared. You can get a new fucking job. You can’t get freedom from detention and you cannot easily return to the country (if at all)

Additionally there is the motivational factor behind both sides:

The lefts argument in policing language was to reduce harm to marginalized groups. You may not agree with it, but that is the rational.

The rights argument is to erase those marginalized groups.

These are extremely different in motivation. Asking you to respect a persons gender identity in professional contexts is far different than forcing someone to not be able to express it on federal documentation.

One side of this was “we want to create inclusive spaces that make people comfortable and if you don’t want to participate in that there is the door”. The other side is “we did not want to participate in that so go fuck yourself and we will do whatever we can to deny your right to express your identity”

“Any attempt to control speech” is an absolutist statement that is absurd in its fallacy. So I can say I can murder you? I can say you’re planning a terrorist attack? I can say you want to kill the president? Of course not. Speech is limited contextually and by law

You're still trivializing. The cancel culture would often follow the people it wanted to cancel to make it hard for them to get another job again.

Also, I'll add that the "there is the door" comment is entirely wrong. There are countless stories of open source maintainers being harassed to make language changes to their code base, master/slave, whitelist/blacklist. The harassers never offered to do the work themselves just demanded it be done for them or they'll keep harassing. These were people matching into someone else's "safe space" to police their private language.

The government disappearing people and dismantling the country is very bad, and nothing good can be said about it. What I'm talking about are the individuals on both sides not formally in power, and their equal efforts to stifle what they see as "bad speech". It's that mentality, on both sides, that led us to where we are.

Harassment is bad. Extraordinary rendition is bad. One of them is significantly worse than the other. And the side complaining about A whilst celebrating B is significantly more hypocritical.

What about the side that complains about A and complains about B, and complains that constant polarizing rhetoric has been ratcheting up to get us from the less bad A to the very bad B?

1) Plenty of "Polarizing rhetoric" has come from the side of the current administration. 2) "Polarizing rhetoric" is not remotely a valid justification of disappearing people.

i think that puts you in case A, harassing people for their speech, in this case, the "polarizing rhetoric" is the speech to be protected

Ah yes, it is the left's fault the right is spiraling the country into despotism. Feeling a lot of "Why do you make them hit you?" energy in this thread.

Because it actually is, in no small part, the illiberal left's fault for going all out to emphasize identity instead of unity, dividing and polarizing the U.S. population.

The illiberal left must be held accountable for their role in the Democratic defeats of 2024, expelled and publicly repudiated, and then the Democratic Party can work on rebuilding trust with voters.

It is everyone who kept on the path instead of saying 'I don't care what you say I'll defend your right to say it'. If you can't allow someone else to say things you don't like you are at fault - it doesn't matter how good hou think you are.

So because a vocal minority 'cancelled' speech in private spheres for a few years, it's the fault of (all?) progressives that the right wildly overreacted and installed facism and government enforced censorship?

By this logic if one member of my family makes you feel unwelcome then its my own fault that you got the cops to beat me up?

There are a lot of people on the "right" who are horrified about how Trump is doing anything and have no clue what they can do about it.

There are evil people on both sides, always have been, always will be. It always looks like the other side is more evil than your side because you have a human bias to assume people who agree with your are not evil with a few small exceptions. Because of this bias it is always wrong to try to paint the other side worse than yours.

The important take away: power shifts, it always has and always will. Next time your side is in power how will you recognize where they are doing evil and oppose them. The first is at least something you can partially train yourself to do with great effort - I have no clue what you can usefully do about it though.

The left is loud about the hypocrisy and faults of its own. Whether that's drone striking US citizens, trading on insider info, or taking literal bribes. The left has prosecuted its own far more often than the right.

My whole point is both sides deserve the rebutes and criticism they have earned, and at this moment one side is objectively far, far worse. Which doesn't excuse faults on the left. But it certainly is not the left who has embraced facism and kleptocracy, nor has anyone except the Republican party and their voters caused this.

> There are a lot of people on the "right" who are horrified about how Trump is doing anything

Citation needed

You’re the one trivializing things by putting job loss and prison on the same footing.

Generally i think harvey weinstein should be unemployable in any position of power. if people hear about what he's done and still want to hire him, sure, they can go for it, but they'd probably appreciate knowing about him before doing that.

I renamed my codebase's primary branch to main because someone complained.

versus

I was abducted by ICE agents and shipped to a supermax prison in El Salvador without due process.

> never offered to do the work themselves just demanded it be done for them or they'll keep harassing.

I mean if you've worked much in open source, that is pretty much how nearly every feature request and bug report goes unfortunately.

> Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.

People are being shipped to a Salvadorean mega-prison for having autism awareness tattoos. Law-abiding students who write peaceful op-eds are being disappeared to a facility in Louisiana. Yes it sucks to lose your job, but it sucks a lot more to be indefinitely detained without even seeing a judge.

> "Your side" isn't any better than the other's.

Your argument reminds me of high schoolers that argue the US was just as bad as the Nazis for operating Japanese internment camps. Yes, both were wrong, but one was much, much worse.

The problem with such reflexive absolutism, as I've pointed out many times, is that you end up advocating for the speech rights of people who are advocating for genocide. I shouldn't need to point out that killing people also terminates their speech rights and that advocacy of genocide is thus an attack on free speech.

You do not have to defend the free speech rights of people who are themselves attacking free speech (and free life). In fact, it is foolish to do so.

If you don't feel bad about it you are not a defender of free speech. Eventially a line must be drawn and you have to not allow things. However it should make you uncomfortable no matter how bad thone things are.

Eh, I’ve railed quite a bit against the left. But looking back, we should have fired and deplatformed more aggressively. The social menaces who weren’t fired or arrested went on to become a plague.

Good grief man, deplatforming, chilling speech and all that is how we got into this mess to begin with. Have you learned nothing from the past 10 years?

edit: Holy mackarel, I am this close to accepting the argument that the people on 'the left' need to be treated that exact way you described just so that they can understand why 'the right' feel aggrevied. I simply cannot accept Soviet Union style 'do not employ this man' brand. I feel dirty just thinking about it as an option.

> am this close to accepting the argument that the people on 'the left' need to be treated that exact way you described

Yup, I’ve lost patience with the far left as well. This is in practice happening with e.g. nutters who openly supported Hamas, though as these things always go, the only people actually willing to do this to people go too far both in their metric and treatment. (The left, to its credit, was never deporting people for their views.)

> Have you learned nothing from the past 10 years?

Yes. I spent too much time treating everyone’s views as valid. The paradox of tolerance is real, and if someone insists on being an idiot I’m basically at the point of taking them at their word.

> cannot accept Soviet Union style 'do not employ this man' brand

It’s not. It’s do not put this person in a position of responsibility or visibility. They can make a livelihood. It just shouldn’t be one from which they do harm.

It is possible we are just at different stages of a similar journey. I will take this Sunday to reflect on this.

The thing is, right wingers are very likely to protest over losing jobs. In Covid times, what made the right finally start actually marching in the streets was losing their jobs. They don’t protest over most things, but threaten their livelihood and yeah they’ll come for you.

> right wingers are very likely to protest over losing jobs

Everybody protests over losing jobs. Currently, the MAGA crowd is busily putting itself out of work, so this really only comes down to taking action in the cities.

When I see the left's recent brazen devotion to "winning" and "sticking it to the other side", sometimes it feels like Democrats have started acting like Republicans.

And it turns out that wasn't sustainable.

I know it's glib and coarse and lacking in nuance but when I hear American conservatives complain about the ways of the liberal countrymen I can't help but think, "That's how you guys sounded for a long time. Now they're doing it, lo and behold: everyone loses."

If you get fired for saying something stupid, you might want to consider the notion that you deserve not to have a job. They’re called consequences, and if you don’t like them, remaining silent is free.

Put otherwise, it’s very possible that your livelihood is trivial.

This is just asinine. Consider the same argument flipped around:

"If you get deported for saying something stupid, you may want to consider the notion that you do not deserve to live in the US. They’re called consequences, and if you don’t like them, remaining silent is free."

Both arguments are ridiculous because they present no evidence as to whether someone deserves a job or a visa stay.

Consequences as “asinine”? Let’s agree to disagree.

No, I'm not going to disagree with your empty statement; there's nothing there to even take a stance on. The problem with your original position is that there are real differences between A) getting deported for saying there are too many civilian casualties in Gaza, B) materially supporting Hamas, C) getting fired because you have a secret twitter account where you're overtly racist, and D) refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding then getting sued and becoming a media spectacle.

Your argument can be used to support consequences for every single one of these scenarios because it's just "maybe when a bad thing happens it was deserved". Sure, yeah, sometimes people deserve things and sometimes they don't, but pointing this out is a useless addition to a conversation.

They got themselves fired. People who wrote things didn't get themselves disappeared to a holding site in Louisiana.

By the same logic the students got themselves vanished by not strictly following the rules of the visa ( one example, student had a dui ). It is not better, but the moment you erode basic speech protections it spills over to a lot of other areas.

Very refreshing to finally see people on HN call out the ridiculousness of the "both sides" arguments when it comes to this topic.

Extremism on any side is bad, period. 'But they are worse' is sort of moot point and most people don't care about details, you simply lose normal audience and maybe gain some fringe.

Telling your employer you were a dick is extremism?

You really don't see a problem with this? I consider myself more on the left, but this practice has always seemed highly antithetical to liberal values to me.

If somebody in their off hours says something assinine, and telling (some might call that "snitching to") their employer in a public forum like Twitter (in a clear attempt to get a social media frenzy going to ultimately get them fired) is a good thing, then wouldn't it logically follow that an employer should not only be permitted but actively encouraged to monitor employees 100% of the time so they can fire them if they ever step out of the corporate line? Amazon does this to many low-level employees just on-the-job and most people think that's creepy and unfair, I can't imagine extending that to off-hours as well. At a minimum wouldn't it follow that it would be great for employers to set up a snitch line so anybody could (even anonymously) call to make reports on people? Is that a world you'd want to live in?

On the next line, let's say the person is fired from their job for a gross tweet. Should they be able to get a new job after that? If so, how does the previous history get erased so the prospective new employers don't see it and avoid them (this very type of thing is by the way, a huge problem for formerly incarcerated people especially felons). Add in that there was no trial, no standard of evidence, no due process, just a swinging axe from an executioner. Should this person (and often their families) just be relegated to extreme poverty the rest of their lives? Blacklisted from employment like the communists in Hollywood were?

In a free country, private employers should be allowed to choose who they employ, with very narrow exceptions for discrimination based on race, religion, etc.

In a free country, citizens should be allowed to read what other citizens write in public.

Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that?

IMO the real issue isn’t that employers can make decisions based on this stuff. It’s that employers are far too big. If we had 20 Amazons, getting fired from one of them wouldn’t be such a big deal.

I think you're missing the basic distinction between private parties and government.

Private parties (including companies) largely have freedom of association. There are (theoretically) protections in "commerce" against a company discriminating against a person or group based on "innate" factors (such as skin color or gender).

But largely, people and companies have a wide degree of latitude about what they are and are not allowed to do.

The government, on the other hand, (theoretically) is largely not allowed to stop people from saying things or associating with each other, and when these prohibitions are in effect they're subject to both documentation and review. This is "theory" because the government has done lots of shady things.

The government, similarly (and theoretically), is bound by a variety of procedural constraints, such as due process, right to see an attorney, right of the attorney to request your presence, right to a trial, etc.

There's a categorical distinction between:

I, a private party, am offended that I face consequences of offending someone else when I would prefer not to face any consequences.

and

I, a private party, am abducted by the organization in this country with a monopoly on violence and which interprets all laws, and I vanish with no recourse from anyone.

I don't understand where you think I've missed that distinction.

I mostly agree with you.

> Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that?

If the employer happened to see it, then yes I think that's well within rights. But I think having some random stranger see something and actively campaign against the employee to their employer is a little bit different. It's not illegal, nor should it be, but there are plenty of things that are legal but still not good behavior. I would consider this under that umbrella.

OK, it's bad behavior. Now what? That means nothing.

Harassment can be punished by the law. So that is the "now what".

No, freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can engage in serious harassment of people, their workplace, or their children or family.

The scenario being discussed is employers looking at employees’ public statements, or third parties telling employers about those public statements. I don’t think that’s anything close to harassment.

No actually. It is never just that.

The question was about "to get a social media frenzy going".

And this is never just an employer randomly looking at a tweet, for which they are almost never going to do anything about it. Most employers don't care.

Instead, the much more likely scenario is mass points of harassment, stalking, and death threats targeted at people's friends and family, when such a "social media frenzy" happens.

You cannot ignore the actual mostly likely result of your advocacy. And when you just say that this is all "free speech" you are doing disservice to the massive amount of illegal harassment that these internet mobs cause.

You do not control the mob, yet you are response for its harm anyway if you try to start one.

The topic was someone telling your employer about something bad that you did.

All of this stuff goes hand in hand. If you are getting a "social media frenzy going", to get someone fired, you are also response for when that social media targets someone's friends and family with stalking, harassment, and death threats.

You cannot pick and chose the consequences of your social media frenzy. It all happens at once, and you don't control the mob. And you are at fault for all of the consequences of that hate mob.

The topic was someone telling your employer about something bad that you did.

Through the process of " getting a social media frenzy going".

Regardless of your motivation, when you gather up a social media frenzy, you can't control the mob. It just ends with everyone being harassed en mass by the mob.

And you are still responsible for the consequences of that internet hate mob, if you use it.

Should we encourage bad behavior? I tend to think not. Agreeing it is bad behavior is a critical step! Now we can start discouraging it

Why should we make an exception based on religion but not on political viewpoint? That is logically inconsistent. There's nothing special about religion.

The historical answer is because Congress wanted to be sure that employers could fire Communists for being Communists.

Of course, that's not my view. I think political affiliation should probably be protected, but it needs to be very narrow. You shouldn't be able to be fired for being a Republican. But if you post "Gay people should be executed," you shouldn't be able to hide behind "I'm a Republican, that's a political view!" any more than you should be able to hide behind "I'm a Christian, that's a religious view!"

But if it is political/religious view? I don't quite understand how we can draw a line here. In general, belonging to a religion or political movement literally means that the subject has a set of certain explicitly stated views.

There is, however, something special about political viewpoint.

I agree the pervasiveness of at-will employment and the gig economy, when combined with the way our economy is set up to require employment for survival, are a problem.

You can’t win with these people. They don’t care if they aren’t personally impacted. The “sjw boogeyman” that could theoretically impact their cushy livelihood matters more than the very real right wing government that exists right now and is disappearing people.

But as long as they can still say the n word on twitter and call of duty everything will be okay. Who cares about those disappeared people anyway, they weren’t even citizens

I am terrible at following the news, so just for clarification: are you talking about deportations? Or is there something else going on?

Listen, this is not theoretical. In my realm, we had people getting in trouble for otherwise benign speech, because someone's feeling matter more than basic.common sense. The pendulum has swung pretty hard not because sjw bogeyman, but because it has gotten to the point people skilled in ignoring corporate idiocy had enough AND the chronic complainers were demanding increasing superpowers.

"Getting in trouble" at work and being disappeared are so freaking different that there is no discussing it. If you cannot see a difference, you are blind.

Hmm. Allow me to offer a counter perspective. You are arguing for a complete dismissal of someone's point of view, because you perceive the presented argument to be not an appropriate comparison. However, your response is that the conversation should be shut down and not address the points given. I do not think anyone in this thread is arguing it is not happening. Some of us are actually saying that there is a quite a slippery that we were taken down on. If it helps, it did not start in 2018 ( although some tactics did escalate in that period ).

And, I might add, in US, your work is not just your work. It is your healthcare, your network, your family's wellbeing. If you do not see why some of us consider it an issue, you, if you allow this blatant repetition of your phrase for a specific effect, are blind.

What sorts of trouble and benign speech are you talking about?

Are these people in your realm being picked up off the street by the police, drugged, put into an airplane, and then being dropped into the ocean over international waters?

Or are these people having the things they've said repeated widely, perhaps out of context, to other people, who then decide "sheesh, maybe I don't want to hang out with / work with this dude." ?

who did that happen to?

Or did you mean

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/455751-engineer-claims...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights

Thanks for proving his point...

This strikes me as someone on the left complaining that they fucked around and now they are finding out. I don’t mean this in a malicious way but the lack of self reflection and perspective is staggering.

One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you.

The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

It's odd that one ban operates within the constraints of freedom (the freedom to associate requires the exercise of the freedom to not associate), while the other does not. It's almost like there's a categorical distinction.

It's utterly pointless to say that the starting point is the same, when one is an utter sabotage of all of society's rights and values... While the other is people affirming those rights.

>(The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

As one of the 'Free Speech folks', I'll bite.

I absolutely condemn the administration rounding up someone like Mahmoud Khalil if the only thing he did was speak a rallies. If you look up Uncivil Law's video on Mahmoud Khalil Deportation, he is saying the same thing.

Now, let's flip this around. Where are all my left wing friends willing to condemn the investigation into Trump for his Jan. 6th speech? Are you willing to join us now?

The speech isn't why he would go to prison in a just world (that would be Georgia, the fake electors, and the toilet paper documents), and the impeachment that was a consequence of the speech is always a purely political trial. Someone can be impeached for any reason and no reason whatsoever, that is unfortunately how the system is designed. Two kinds of justice, with a few batshit SCOTUS rulings that make a criminal president unprosecutable as long as 34 senators are willing to go to bat for him.

It's not his speech that gave him trouble with the DOJ (before he dismissed all charges against himself), it's all the other parts of his conspiracy to steal the election.

Notice how none of the talking heads on TV were in legal trouble over their speech on the matter.

Every one of the cases against him had a bit more to it than 'well he said some bad words', the same way that a conman doesn't go to prison just for saying some bad words, or the same way that a war criminal gets a noose, despite simply saying words - giving orders.

Wrong.

Yesterday the House January 6 Committee unanimously voted to recommend that former President Donald Trump be criminally prosecuted, for charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an act of Congress, and, the most serious, insurrection. A congressional criminal referral of a former president is unprecedented, and if Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Department of Justice decide to prosecute Trump, they will have to address a formidable defense: that Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, no matter how irresponsible or how full of lies about a “stolen” 2020 election, was, after all, a political speech and thus protected by the First Amendment.

Prominent legal scholars—and one lower-court judge—have rejected that argument, countering that Trump’s speech, in which he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” was sufficiently inflammatory to permit criminal prosecution.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/january-6-...

When Congress' January 6 select committee asked the Justice Department to prosecute Trump in connection to the Capitol riot

>https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-january-6-criminal-ind...

Here is some other ink that has been spilled on the topic as well:

>Trump impeached for 'inciting' US Capitol riot https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55656385

>Trump ‘lit that fire’ of Capitol insurrection, Jan 6 Committee report says https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-lit-that-fire-of...

>Trump incites mob in violent end to presidency | CNN Politics https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/donald-trump-capitol...

So I will ask again, Do you condemn all those who called for Trumps prosecution for his Jan 6th speech?

I still call the charges and prosecution of Mahmoud Khalil as a first amendment violation, why will you not join me?

Or, do you believe that Trump incited the Jan. 6th riots? If so then the same fact pattern holds for Mahmoud Khalil.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/04/30/p...

> One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you.

Many people have been fired / expelled / and many more silenced by those examples. If you can't tell the truth about your side (from how you're writing I assume you think in sides) then there's no point saying it.

> The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

I haven't heard about this. Who has been sent to a Salvadoran gulag for speech?

There's been a lot in usian news about people having been deported because of things like tattoo of the logo of some spanish or other soccer club.

Here's one case where the deportation seems to be based mainly on having worn sports branded merch and a hoodie, and some supposed anonymous snitch, which the state has agreed was an error:

https://www.newsweek.com/kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia-deport...

they agreed it was an error, to send him to that particular prison, not out of the country in general.

he is an illegal and his deportation defense in 2019 was he feared for his life from a "rival gang" indicating he was in the MS-13 gang that the feds and judge found him to be part of.

he's not just some "father", as the left leaning news likes to portray. he participated in human trafficking and himself admitted he was a gang member.

it seemed that the left did not care about vetting when gang members were coming into the country.

...but now they're being deported, it seems vetting is crucial (which is being done, but you're not always privy to (or aware of) the information)

and "anonymous snitch" is quite derogatory. you do know how evil MS-13 is right? listen to yourself.

they chop people up without blinking an eye. the fact someone risked their life to "snitch" saved so many people. this isn't playground shit.

He's not illegal, he had protected status.

What precisely changed between the granting of that protected status and his arrest that warranted the change of status?

It's borderline insane to call Newsweek "left leaning".

'His attorneys claimed, and ICE later confirmed, that the only verification came from a form filled out by the Prince George County Police Department, which based his membership on the fact that "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique" – a group based out of Long Island, New York.'

The state has confirmed to the press that it doesn't have any evidence of the claims you're making.

MS-13 is less evil than the Biden and current Trump administrations, who are guilty of genocide. I think you're part of an attempt to distract from that and other crimes, as well as the ongoing turmoil in the financial system.

Is wearing an "autism awareness " tattoo considered speech?

I agree that at-will employment is a problem. So is a lack of safety nets. Do you know who supports at-will employment and a lack of safety nets?

If the past decade is any indication, nothing has stopped the long list of cancelled right wing grifters, racists, and various other flavors of fools and bigots from finding gainful employment and signal boosting and platforming among like-minded people who do exercise their right to associate with them, despite their behavior.

For (allegedly) being so persecuted and silenced, it's weird how so many of them have so much more power, reach, and wealth than ever before.

Perhaps getting booed at in the last college campus they held a rally at is not quite the yellow star, or the mark of Cain that they convinced you it is.

If the argument is that it's not a big deal because it doesn't even work, then why collectively are we even bothering? Either it works and is something for reactionaries to fear and is effective social pressure, or it's a bunch of ineffective sound and fury that gives cover to your right wing aunt to tell stories about how "someone she knows" got fired for telling a joke. If it works, then let's own it completely, with all its flaws. If it doesn't work, then why bother at all? If it doesn't even work, then why try to defend the practice? Do we want it to work? Do we want it to be an effective form of social control?

In the past decade, the left got so cancel-happy that "cancellation" by the left-wing activist crowd lost pretty much all of its weight among anyone who isn't an ideologue. In 2016-2018, if you got canceled, you would have a very hard time finding any white-collar job afterward.

Well what did they do to get called out?

This is called "victim blaming".

If a bigot acts like a bigot then gets outed, that's their own fault. They're not victims.

We’re talking about people having their lives judged by thousands of people online based on a 5-second video from someone with an agenda.

There’s no way for them to clarify, no way for them to “have their day in court,” apologizing just makes the mob smell blood. The only point is revenge and sadism, there’s no redemption, no point other than pain, pure and simple.

People are complicated and I don’t want a video of me on a bad day edited and then posted online for everyone to see.

You're assuming bigot. This is where you're going wrong. It could be anyone for anything, even if the thing was fine to do 5 years ago - and maybe is fine again now - and it was done 15 years ago.

Precociously exclaiming "Well, personally I don't like horrible people!" isn't likely to be relevant above quite a young age.

I say the same to people who assume everyone going to an El Salvadorean jail is guilty. They're the same person as you, just in the other tribe.

Oh bugger off with your both sides horsewash

Everything is a flip side of the same coin if you abstract away from all the important details.

Oh the right say that some things are bad? Well the left say that some things are bad too!

These lazy equivalencies only breed cynicism and give intellectual cover to the Trump administration’s executive power grab. By all means criticize the left as much as you like. But the specifics are important. The current administration’s deportation of green card holders without due process isn’t somehow a mirror image of whatever excesses of left wing ‘cancel culture’ you may be upset about.

This false equivalency, if you honestly believe it, is shallow at best.

The ‘left’ has identified speech that is likely used to belittle or negate someone else’s existence and will appropriately label it as hate speech. Any structural changes to make these words frowned upon have taken years to get into place; people were allowed to adjust (and the length of time to do so is ridiculous in its own right), and what little change has happened did so in a way where the people who must change are barely inconvenienced. There have been few legal repercussions for the use of hate speech by anyone with a modicum of power. Sure, you could identify a few, but there are a ludicrous number of flagrant violations of any such laws (which are few) which go unpunished. The ‘left’ here being any sane member of society which has publicly pointed out that certain words are singularly incendiary.

Meanwhile, the grifters of this ‘right’ have conned the honest conservatives into believing that DEI is a term of hatred against conservatives. The ‘right’ has identified that they wish to say whatever without punishment and are structurally creating a cost for using inclusive language in any official capacity. The grifting part of the ‘right’ also doesn’t mind breaking any semblance of stability for everyone else. The ‘right’ here being the near-narcissistic people who have happened upon positions of privilege and believe that they are superior, have earned it, and that only those similar to themselves should ever attain such a position in the future.

But no, you have reduced your observation to ‘two sides are banning words.’

Good luck in that case ;)

Reminder to anyone triggered by a “both sides” comment:

just like you, we are all aware of how the sides are different, it is valid to be more annoyed by the ways they are the same

> it is valid to be more annoyed by the ways they are the same

Is it? One side has a vocal minority who took defense of minorities to the point of harassment and was ultimately rebuffed. The other side controls the government and is enthusiastically renditioning legal residents to prisons and defying the constitution and courts to keep doing it.

To be more upset about both sides being imperfect than the injustice of irreversible deportations to foreign prison seems ... absurd.

all parties are beneficiaries of the institutional structures that allow for a party to do those things

so the things you are bothered by and demand everyone to prioritize are actually solved by addressing the underlying mechanisms, as opposed to simply trying to propagate your preferred party's numbers

something... both sides... might actually be into. if the other party is afraid of the opposition party doing the same thing to different people, then there might actually be overwhelming consensus to change the thing that a "both sides" person is trying to point out

I'm making no demands. Only pointing out an absurd false equivalence.

Change to the polarizing system would be great. I doubt that will happen by softening protests to obscene injustice. Rather it's likely to reenforce the shifting Overton window further into authoritarianism and kleptocracy.

To break the two party system we need things a large portion of the populous has been (falsely) taught are bad for them: same day primaries, ranked choice voting, making campaign bribery illegal, unwinding corporate personhood, etc. Can you guess which side is most attached to the system of political machines and the lies that reinforce them?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com