imminentviolet

It depends. If you consider political experience (especially extensive political experience) to be a marker of corruption and ingrained hypocrisy, political inexperience can look good by comparison. There seem to be enough people sufficiently cynical these days to see it that way.

>If you still voted for him, you either liked that sort of blatant Nixon southern strategy 2.0 type of bigotry; or you're dismissive of it as a problematic attribute in a leader for this country.

Ok, but neither of those are irrational, they are judgements based around premises that are different than yours. You can argue whether those premises are rational, or ill informed or whatever, but then you're basically just wading into the usual swamp of political discourse - these issues haven't been definitively resolved and just dismissing the whole stance out of hand by calling it irrational doesn't get you anywhere. You're effectively just venting.

Nobody ever said that the memo was perfectly conceived or written. If you're saying he overstated his case in the passage you quoted I would probably agree. But the standard for inviting a conversation is not a perfectly formed argument from the get-go, a standard like that would make it impossible to have a conversation at all. So I'm still not clear on what exactly he wrote that would earn him exile and banishment in the judgement of a reasonable person open to having a discussion on the topics he raised.

You don't have to show that Google is actually succeeding in it's efforts to bring in "diversity" and equalize representation among it's workforce to match the general population to question the premise that the purported effort is based on. You don't even have to show that they are making a serious effort. Most likely they aren't. It's very likely they know full well what kind of people are likely to make valuable contributions to the company and they are probably not eager to jeopardize that.

If that is the case, then as far as I'm concerned, you don't even have to show that there is a real harm to the purported victims (as Damore sees them), it is enough to question what the big charade is based on. Are the premises that this supposed diversity push is based on valid? If not, what exactly are we doing here?

The idea that only professional politicians should be admitted to office would've incensed the left 10 years ago. These days, because Trump made it in instead of say, Jon Stewart, the left is suddenly very pious about political office.

If those are the only variables, logic would say yes.

What's the problem with scrutiny? If these policies are based on premises that aren't true, wouldn't it be better to discard them in favor of policies that are based on premises that are true? How would we do that without a discussion?

Regardless of what you think about Trump, he distinguished himself enough from the rest of the field that he became the only viable choice for enough people at the right stages to push him through. Apparently your lofty rationality isn't developed enough to see that. What does rationality even mean in this context? I'd love to know where you draw the line between a rational choice and an irrational one when it comes to voting.

In what way is it dumb if the alternatives looked even worse?

Feelings have nothing to do with it. Maybe it is actually the case that some people were given an unfair advantage in the hiring process and don't belong there. The way to examine that possibility is to examine the process and have a discussion about what is fair and proper, not shut down the conversation and exile anyone who brings it up. By the way this is exactly what is happening from the other side: white males are supposed to be unfairly advantaged. I don't hear your side denouncing those sorts of arguments on the basis that it might make some of those white males feel bad to bring up the argument.

So he went out of his way to make it clear that he's not referring to individuals when he talks about averages and you still take it personally. What would be good enough for you, short of killing the entire discussion?

The kind of soft discrimination that you're complaining about is a fact of life. Any industry who's life blood consists of relatively immature young men is going to have this kind of problem. What people like you are proposing is complete upheaval of basic behavioral tendencies to accommodate a few special cases. What exactly do you even want? Are you sure you know? If you want a social work atmosphere full personable people get into sales, tech is not the industry for you. That goes for men, women and everything in between.

So what? I feel an "alienating atmosphere" at snooty high end boutique art galleries where people sip Champagne and talk about the nebulous genius it took for someone to throw feces at a picture of the Madonna, or whatever. They are attracted to each other and to the subject they are interested in. Sometimes you just don't belong, for whatever reason, even if you're totally drawn to the subject. That's life. Grown ups are supposed to learn to cope with it, not whine like children.