Comment by zahlman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zahlman | Hacker News Reader

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I was talking with a friend about this and came to the conclusion that people in certain lines of work should be held to a higher standard when it comes to situations like this:

* government officials (as you say), members of federal agencies, civil servants etc.

* journalists

* healthcare workers and emergency services personnel

* educators

There may have been more on my list, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment.

All of these are places where a mindset that glorifies or justifies political violence and death seems like it would be an impediment to actually doing the job properly, which is the only thing that would make me accept "cancel culture". Others may be morally unjustified in "crossing the line", but should not lose their jobs for it.

For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone. The "stochastic terrorism" argument is especially insidious: it attempts to launder "speech" into "violence" (and thus justify "an eye for an eye" etc.) by hand-waving at some vague notion of, basically, extremely non-imminent incitement. The idea is that convincing a wide audience of people to have a more negative impression of a group stochastically increases the number of members of that group that will die to violence. But none of the dots are ever actually connected in this argument; and taken seriously and applied even-handedly, it would make basically any form of political discourse impossible.

Initially, I thought Matthew Dowd's comments (I had very little exposure to them) didn't fall into that category — that they were simply made in incredibly bad taste. But I looked up some more of the transcript and, yeah, I can't excuse that. Certainly he wasn't as aggressive about it as, say, some Bluesky users. But part of it does fundamentally boil down to making the "fuck around and find out" argument, and "finding out" is just not supposed to involve being shot and killed.

This is fundamental for me; see e.g. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/svuBpoSduzhYjFPrA/elements-o... .

> For me, the line is drawn where anyone proposes that anything a person said justifies or excuses killing someone

It's really difficult. How do you apply this to government worker? Some are actively involved in killing people, foe example the military, (some) police, the judiciary in some jurisdictions, politicians. In places with a judicial death sentence it's acceptable to decide that someone deserve to die.

I spoke too briefly in spite of myself. Consider standard exemptions to apply: war combatants, people actively threatening your life, etc. I personally oppose the death penalty, but not strongly enough to deny other jurisdictions the right to impose it.

> There may have been more on my list, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment.

I remember now:

* HR personnel, those responsible for enforcing codes of conduct, etc.

It's funny, because government officials, journalist, healthcare workers, and educators are exactly the kind of people Kirk attacked as a podcaster, and generally have been the primary targets of the MAGA right. Podcasters are apparently not high enough on the trust ladder to be held to a higher standard for what they say.

We are at a place where the president of the united states gets to mount an insurrection and pardon people who beat cops with the American flag then claim the opposition is "fostering violence"; gets to claim that educators are "grooming and indoctrinating kids", that journalists are the "enemy of the people", that government officials are the "enemy within". While those people on the left are expected to summarily disarm their rhetoric because they are in positions of trust. Sure but what about: gestures toward the president of the united states.

Or what about, I don't know, the world's richest man, Elon Musk? He has so much power and therefore responsibility. Why isn't he expected to speak with prudence and responsibility? He's on Twitter spouting off about how the left is "the party of murder" before anyone even knew anything.

AOC, Bernie, and Zohran are often labeled "radical left socialists", but they offered nothing but calls for peace and calm from them. Meanwhile Musk was calling them murderers! No one is going to fire him for that rhetoric!

So if you're going to demand accountability for words from people in positions of trust -- which to be clear I agree with -- let's be honest about the fact that some people are put in higher positions of trust, and some people should be, but for some reason (money/power) are not ever, never, not once held to account for what they say. So maybe if we want to actually change something as a society, we should stop doing the same thing, and instead hold people at the highest echelons of power responsible for the things they say and do.

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