And what is democratic about the fact that majority of people votes for candidate A, yet candidate B becomes the president because... because it's people don't actually vote for president, they vote for someone who counts pro-some party and it's THEY who vote for president in the end. What's democratic about corruption being completely legal (lobbying)? Do you know a single post-USSR country where lobbying is legal? (Hell, how can it be legal at all? there's no distinction between lobbying and corruption, that's the same thing!)
Staying silent generally doesn’t take an act of courage. No one exercises their speech muscles by staying silent.
The true revolutionary act is exercising our right to speech, honestly and frequently.
The important part is not to keep silent.
You can pick any opinion you got from media. Whether it is the whole discussion around autism or the push for DEI. Everything comes down to someone speaking or maybe even shouting.
The unfortunate fact is that people try to see everything through a conspiracy lens and hence miss out voices are still heard - loud and clear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary_actions_for_comme...
> Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that any non-citizens who celebrated Kirk's death would be immediately deported…
> Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated on Katie Miller's podcast and in subsequent Department of Justice announcements that she intended to "target" speech against Kirk following his death as hate speech…
Plus teachers in public schools and universities.
It's amusing on the one hand, considering the hatred their very boss and most of the MAGA types poured on cancel culture and its notions of speech that shouldn't be allowed as hate speech, only to now reveal one more show of whining, gross hypocrisy.
On the other hand it's also deeply worrisome, to see key enforcers of federal U.S. law being so completely mendacious and cavalier about the actual legal part of their jobs in that very same territory.
The path forward at this point is for the left to admit they made a mistake, apologize, and work to negotiate a new set of ground rules.
Punch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletubbies#Tinky_Winky_contro...
Punch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_comments_on_Georg...
Punch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries
Punch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_kneeling_...
Punch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O%27Connor_on_Satu...
But sure, the left invented it.
We had a big discussion about cancel culture just a few years ago, where the left responded to complaints about it by saying: "cancel culture doesn't exist", "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", "free speech isn't hate speech", "you're just saying that because you're a racist/sexist/etc."
In other words: "Our ideology justifies large-scale, systematic application of public shaming for mild noncompliance with our ideology. We aren't going to stop doing this."
A lot of prominent left-wingers simply lack the moral authority to complain. What goes around comes around.
If you, specifically, were complaining about left-wing cancel culture, I'll grant you have the moral authority to complain about right-wing cancel culture as well.
Starting when? Several of the examples are quite recent; there's no point in my life where people of both political persuasions weren't boycotting or criticizing things.
> freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences
This remains entirely true. The First Amendment protects us from government-applied consequences. Being fired for being an asshole by a private employer has always been kosher. Being fired because the FCC threatens your employer with revocation of their broadcast licenses over protected speech has not.
The only one I'd consider recent is US national anthem kneeling.
I'm in my mid-30s. I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11. I have very vivid memories of progressive cancel culture during the late Obama administration and onwards. It very much was not a one-off sort of thing. It was a systematic practice which was systematically justified. The 9/11 stuff died down as 9/11 receded into the past. Progressive cancel culture only started dying down when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
I agree that progressive cancel culture was mostly not implemented with the help of the government. I agree that Brendan Carr overstepped in a way that wasn't a simple case of "tit for tat", and I think he should be fired.
On the other hand, consider Karen Attiah. If you took what she said, but replace "white men" in her statement with "black women", and imagine a white man saying it, he absolutely would've been risking his job just a few years ago. People were fired for far less.
Maybe you agreed with the canceling enough it wasn't noticeable; I cited two specific examples directly related to that day. It was… not a fun time to be anti-war.
Go back a few years and you'll find further prominent examples, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppy_Episode
> On the other hand, consider Karen Attiah.
I disagree with her firing, but there are no First Amendment concerns here. The Washington Post is free, under the First Amendment, to be shitty, even with regards to employment. They canceled her, as is their right, and as our ape evolutionary cousins do despite a lack of language, social media, or political parties. "I don't like you, so I won't associate with you" is deeply ingrained in us.
I was roughly 12 years old when Iraq was invaded. I was sitting in class staring at the clock and waiting for recess. It was a different political era from my perspective, and it feels a little disingenuous that you keep harping on it. It seems to me that there's been significant turnover in the US political power players since that time, so the hypocrisy accusations don't seem to land very well. Remember that Trump gained popularity with the GOP electorate in part due to his willingness to unequivocally condemn Bush & friends for their middle east misadventures.
>"I don't like you, so I won't associate with you" is deeply ingrained in us.
Sure. But when explaining why they fired Attiah, the Post wrote: "the Company-wide social media policy mandates that all employee social media postings be respectful and prohibits postings that disparage people based on their race, gender, or other protected characteristics".
They're applying the exact standard that progressives requested. It appears to me that they are actually applying it in an even-handed way. If I was a journalist circa 2017, and I made a post suggesting that America was violent because of people caring too much about "black women who espouse hatred and violence", in the wake of a black women recently being murdered, then the risk of progressive dogpiling, and my subsequent termination, would've been extremely high. It's not respectful, and it disparages on the basis of protected characteristics. Remember, Al Franken lost his job (even after he apologized!) for things like squeezing a woman's waist at a party.
I think you're a little fixated on the government thing, as cancel culture is generally speaking a non-governmental phenomenon, regardless of who is doing it to who. At least recently in the US.
It's a little disingenuous to go "I only have the vaguest memories of cancel culture around 9/11" and "I have very vivid memories of progressive cancel culture during the late Obama administration", in that case. I, similarly, have few memories of paying for health insurance when I was in middle school.
> They're applying the exact standard that progressives requested.
Maybe! But describing him as a "white man" is accurate, as describing Obama as a "black man" would be uncontroversial. If you start talking about white/black men as monolithic groups, you start getting into trouble.
> I think you're a little fixated on the government thing, as cancel culture is generally speaking a non-governmental phenomenon…
I am, because the people who whined incessantly about that phenomenon are now weilding governmental power to do the same thing, in a way that is clearly far less acceptable legally.
where's the room for a firm set of beliefs and moral framework, or perhaps a principled stand against or for something by this dogshit logic of yours?
The only important thing is to get them votes and followers then? The conservatives can fuck off just as hard as the radical left if that's all that matters.
Tit-for-tat is a moral framework.
I'm no fan of democrat progressive culture, but if the crap you describe is what passes for a bottom line in the conservative camp, then it's garbage either way.
This current executive branch is weighing in and using its influence to try to control speech. It's not "you'll get disappeared by secret police for what you told your coworker in confidence" levels of control, but that it's happening at all is alarming. I worry that they have no problem trampling on the first amendment and that it seems like no part of the government is going to restrict them from it.
Not if you aren't brown. But if you are... well you can easily get caught up in an "immigration" "sting"
https://x.com/SecRubio/status/1967784061721776521 revoking visas
Karl Popper said,
“But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
We can't be suicidally principled.
You are conflating the expression of an opinion with the opinion itself.
Generally, the point people are getting fired for making is that the very circumstances of Charlie Kirk's murder are precisely the circumstances he advocated for. I don't find it hypocritical to draw attention to that irony. I do, however, find it hypocritical to fire someone for expressing dissent about the opinions of a man who literally became famous for directly asking random people in public to enter into arguments with him.
He never advocated murdering people over political disagreements. He disagreed with banning guns, but even the people who advocate banning guns don’t usually openly advocate banning bolt action hunting rifles.
The sentiment here is to cheer and laugh at a premeditated murder. If you want to rationalize it, whatever. It’s no use trying to have a discussion with someone who cheers and laughs at a man getting murdered for having discussions.
Lots of people criticized Donald Trump's proposal of a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on", and rightfully so in my opinion. Do you think the irony would be thick if some of those people were murdered by Muslim terrorists?
He merely intimated that trans people's lives are less valuable than others and that black people and women are incapable of intellectual equality with whites and males. A debate about whether that is an indirect encouragement to violence is a valid one.
And to be very, very clear: ambivalence at his departure from earth is not equal to ambivalence of the manner.
I was happy Rush Limbaugh died of skin cancer. I was not happy Charlie Kirk died of murder.
False.
> A debate about whether that is an indirect encouragement to violence is a valid one.
Lying about what other people say and mischaracterizing those statements as an incitement to violence is itself an incitement to violence. Stop lying and stop inciting violence!
But he said it. So you're either wrong and he meant it, or you're defending the words of a disingenuous sack of... Well, let's say "lies". That bad faith provocateur act has no role in decent society.
His speech was legal and despicable. He was not a good person. He may have believed himself to be a Christian, I don't know his heart, but he was not Christ-like.
I have yet to see anyone express that opinion. I've seen plenty of dark jokes, and even more comments calling him out for saying that the second amendment is worth a few deaths, but I haven't seen a single person say they're glad he was murdered.
I tried to look up the supposed 30k tweets that have been collected by the site used for organized harassment, but it doesn't seem to be openly published, counter to their promise.
Many Americans are waking up to realize that a large number of people they considered friends and colleagues would revel in their death if they let their political opinions be heard.
I would 100% fire someone for celebrating murder. Sorry, call me old-fashioned, but I believe in hiring people of integrity, and I will fire you if I find out you don't have any.
Freedom of speech requires freedom from government consequences. I have freedom of speech still if you say "I don't like your speech"; I don't have it if the cops say "I'm arresting you for your speech".
> I would 100% fire someone for celebrating murder.
And you can. You can also skip their birthday party. But "I'm glad so-and-so is dead" largely can't be a reason to, say, lose your drivers' license, social security benefits, or government employment, because the First Amendment applies to government specifically.
Facebook, Google, the grocery store, etc. have never been subject to the First Amendment.
(People can, and do, get fired for espousing Charlie Kirk's beliefs, too. That's free speech/association for you.)
Unless I'm mistaken, that's not happening. If it is, it's wrong and should be corrected.
But it's clear that with the emotional tension of the situation, ABC wasn't about to get itself in legal trouble over a second-rate, late-night show host.
So, while the FCC may have been threatening, we have a legal system designed to prevent such over-steps of power, should they occur. It seems pretty clear ABC wanted no part of the storm that was brewing.
Even Ted Cruz is able to see it. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kwzgrwdd0o
And Vance is trying to play it off as a joke now: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5521172-vance-fcc-carr-ki...
> we have a legal system designed to prevent such over-steps of power
That legal system recently immunized the President from the protections.
If you disapprove of how Padilla was treated, that's fine, just be honest about why he was detained: not for the content of his speech, but his attempt to prevent another from speaking.
There's nothing complicated about this. Padilla isn't being treated any differently from anyone else. Freedom of speech does not entail freedom to prevent others from speaking.