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Post by Amadan on Aug 25, 2017 14:23:33 GMT -5
Of your request for research/scholarship regarding the imbalance of faculty in universities That is not what I asked for. I don't think anyone would disagree with the assertion that most university faculties, especially in the liberal arts, are heavily slanted to the left. What I asked you was evidence of discrimination. Of systemic bias against conservative faculty members, such that they are denied jobs or tenure based on their political views. Indeed, the arguments are very similar. Are there fewer women in STEM because STEM is full of raging misogynists trying to keep women out? Or because STEM is inherently unfriendly to women? Or because fewer women actually seek careers in STEM? It's likely a combination of those factors, but your insistence that universities have been taken over by leftists and they keep all the non-leftists out is identical to the argument by some feminists that any gender disparity in STEM can only be because of institutional sexism, without which we'd see 50% of all computer programmers and engineers and nuclear physicists being women. Maybe that is true, but I am skeptical. Do conservatives tend to find academia an unfriendly environment? Probably, but I think conservatives tend to be less interested in going into academia in the first place. I don't know what to make of "I read an article with nice graphs." Illustrating what, exactly? Actually, yes, I think anyone would have fired Damore once he became as big a liability for the company as he did. I think even Pichai secretly agreed with every word Damore wrote, he'd have fired him once he became that big an internal and PR liability. That is a jaw-droppingly ignorant statement, and I do not respect your opinion.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 24, 2017 20:11:32 GMT -5
I really HATE it when you, Amadan, continue to insult me with the "cut and paste" stuff. Those comments are stupid and ad hominem and petty and immature. But whatever.\ I carefully attacked your opinion and not you. I really hate it when you toss off thoughtless kneejerk echoing of the latest dispatches from NR, TownHall, or Dennis fucking Prager. When you add your own experience, analysis, and additional information you are capable of giving insightful opinions, but I do not respect reflexive ideological responses. We had a long thread about this. You know where I stand on the issue. Yes, it's a concern, but it was also entirely within Google's prerogative, as an employer, to fire someone who stirred up a shitstorm on internal and external social media. That would happen to anyone who did that regardless of what opinions they expressed. Did you not read a fucking word I wrote? Have you read nothing I have said over the last year (and more)? Yes, I absolutely think left-leaning academia is an issue. I think a President who doesn't respect the Constitution to be much more of an issue. My answer to this always goes curiously ignored by conservatives: if you don't like the institutions, join them and change them, or build your own. At least you can say this much about the Alt-Right: that is exactly what they are trying to do, rather than just whining about liberal media bias. While I suspect that is probably true, I am going to require you to show your work here. What is your evidence? And by that, I mean evidence that right-leaning liberal arts professors face systemic job discrimination - don't give me a link to some individual's experience, even if it is probably true, because anecdotal evidence is not what I am asking for. .... Sheesh indeed. I am struggling to be charitable here, but I can't be. So NYU, Stanford, and Harvard are a threat to democracy? Facebook, Twitter, and Google, however influential, are not the government. Also note: Facebook, Twitter, and Google may have made some arguable and politicized choices about who they have "no-platformed", but by any reasonable standard, you cannot claim they are just going after a broad swath of political enemies (i.e. conservatives) and shutting down all opposing viewpoints. I may disagree over how offense Damore's essay was or whether or not certain Alt-Right figures, white supremacists, and others of that ilk, deserve to be banned from a given platform for their opinions alone, but we are not talking like anything remotely approaching a purge of all conservatives or a silencing of Republicans, or Catholics, or even the Alt-Right in general. This is in no way comparable to the President wanting to literally shut down media that says mean things about him. Wait... wait.... you're not bothered by the fact that Trump wants to shut down CNN because he doesn't have the legal authority to do so? Would you have been bothered if Obama had wanted to outlaw Christianity? I mean, he obviously wouldn't have had the legal authority to do that, so that would totally not have been any cause for concern, right? As for Google and Twitter, the last I heard, they do cannot do anything they please with regards to this sort of censorship. I am pretty sure neither of them can shut down CNN, for example. The only thing they can do is terminate your account, and block any links to your website. Which can be pretty powerful, but it is not at all the kind of censorship we're talking about. I am not shaking in my boots about Trump, any more than you are quivering in terror of Twitter. You are using words and phrases without seeming to know what they mean. The fact that we have checks and balances that limit a President's power does not mean it is not cause for concern when a President clearly desires to do away with them, and has substantial political support for doing so. Google does have checks and balances - lots of them. Competitors. Public pressure. Profitability. Government regulation. You may not be happy with the effect they are having, but arguing that Google is omnipotent while the President is harmless is... a remarkable argument, to say the least.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 24, 2017 18:58:23 GMT -5
You cannot breed Down Syndrome out of the population, because it's not a heritable defect. It's a random event. So if you want to eradicate it, you have to find a cure. If you don't want it in the population, and you don't have a cure, you must keep killing every unborn child with the defect. I am absolutely not against curing Down Syndrome. I'm also not saying Iceland is a terrible place because women choose to abort an unborn child with Down Syndrome. I'm saying it seems that if a country has a 100%, or approaching 100%, kill rate for fetuses with Down Syndrome, then there is apparently pressure on pregnant women to 1) have the testing done 2) kill their fetus if the test is positive It is the pressure that is evil. Down's Syndrome may not be bred out of the population, but other congenital birth defects can be. Down Syndrome can, however, be nearly eliminated. Call it eugenics - that's my point. Eugenics isn't a terrible thing in itself. You obviously see it as terrible if it involves abortion, but what if we had in utero technology to cure Down's Syndrome in a fetus. Would it be terrible then? It would still be eugenics. I agree that pressuring a woman to have an abortion when she doesn't want one is evil, but you haven't provided any evidence that this is happening. I mean, you're suggesting that in Iceland, of all places, probably one of the most feminist/progressive countries in the world, women are being pressured to have abortions against their will? I offer an alternative theory: absent misguided religious pressure against aborting a fetus that is very likely to have a short and unpleasant life, very few women would choose not to abort.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 24, 2017 17:51:51 GMT -5
You know, people say "eugenics" like it's a bad thing automatically. It's not. We've been practicing eugenics for thousands of years with crops and livestock, and I don't see why we shouldn't do it with people.
If we can breed horrible congenital birth defects, diseases, and other disabilities out of the human race, why shouldn't we?
Obviously there is a moral dimension to that question, and that's why we get movies like Gattica and the deaf and autistic communities likening wanting to cure deafness or autism with genocide, and while most of those concerns are bullshit, that doesn't mean there aren't real concerns. But the fact that there are concerns does not mean we should just reflexively shy away from the idea.
And anyone who tells someone they shouldn't abort a baby that's going to be born to nothing but pain and suffering and live a short agonizing life, because God loves babies and maybe the doctors are wrong? That person is evil.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 24, 2017 17:44:25 GMT -5
I agree it's apples and oranges. That's why I was being facetious with regards to Trump putting a journalist in jail. The concept is concerning, but it's never going to happen! He's a blowhard. And we have checks and balances. Except, apparently, in the case of these big, left-leaning tech companies. And I do think this issue of social justice warrior clamping down on free speech IS a problem way more on the left than the right. It's been happening for years on university campuses - microagressions? Guest conservative speakers? What about the recent example of American Airlines investigating two of their employees because Leah Dunham Tweeted a complaint that she overhead the two employees having a PRIVATE conversation about transgender people which upset Ms. Dunham. Seriously? They were investigated about a private conversation??? I'm sorry, but the slippery slope is getting waaayyyy too slippery. I would love to see concrete examples in recent days of right wing institutionalized (school, university, company) censoring or clamping down on free speech. I'm not aware of anything near the numbers or significance of the examples I and especially Rob have just given. I love bashing SJWs as much as the next non-SJW, but to say that Lena Dunham or campus SJW chapters are a greater threat to free speech than the President of the United States making it very clear that he'd loooooove to find a way around those "checks and balances" is head-in-the-sand idiocy. (Do you have the teeny-tiniest doubt in your mind that if Trump could get away with ordering CNN shut down, he'd do it? Because if you do, you should maybe be more aware and wary like you keep claiming he is encouraging people to be.) You're asking for examples of right wing institutions clamping down free speech in comparable numbers, which is a convenient condition since no one denies that universities in general tend to be left-leaning. Conservative academics and conservative universities are vastly outnumbered by liberal ones, so of course when suppression of free speech occurs on campus, most often the instigators are liberals. And this is concerning, and I have been a participant in many threads where I've agreed that SJWs and liberal academia in particular is off the rails. But they can't bring about a Reichstag. Trump can. And while no, I do not think Trump is literally Hitler, or close to being Hitler, yes, I am seriously at the stage where I think we may be facing historical inflection points that could take us in that direction if certain things happen just so. I.e., I'm not dismissively laughing off the idea that Trump could essentially end the Republic. Do I think it's likely? No, at this point I think it's very unlikely. Let's say 10%? Kind of like an asteroid hitting the Earth - we can't spend all our time obsessing about it or acting like it's going to happen, but at the same time, even a remote possibility is dire enough to take seriously.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 24, 2017 17:33:57 GMT -5
Cassandra, the administration is not "right-wing". Trump is not "right-wing". Trump's blowhard statements are not anywhere near as damaging or concerning as a giant tech company's (Google's) actions which reach into the vast majority of our households, privacy, behaviors, etc. And Trump has raised important issues about the bias in mainstream news, which for the public, is actually a good thing to help us be more aware and more wary of what we're reading. I don't agree with Trump a lot of the time, and I am disappointed at some of the things he's done, but the MSM HAS been unfairly biased against him in many instances, and in many instances has exaggerated or misrepresented the facts in order to make him look bad. When you find a journalist whom Trump has jailed for faithfully reporting the news or even an opinion piece, please let me know and I will join you in your concern and outrage. Don't hurt yourself reaching, there. Trump isn't right wing because he doesn't have a coherent enough position to be any of wing. But "bias in mainstream news" - oh yeah, the big, bad Liberal Media. Do you think Trump has actually made people more "aware" of anything, when he labels basically every news agency that reports negatively on him "Fake News"? Is a crowd chanting "CNN sucks! CNN sucks!" thoughtful commentary on CNN's reporting, or is it a crowd that would go burn CNN to the ground if Trump told them to? As for Gab, it was basically set up as a Twitter alternative for the Alt-Right, on the (probably correct) assumption that they were too vulnerable to getting booted off of Twitter. They have been trying to create a number of alternatives to "traditional media" lately, everything from replacing Firefox with Brave to replacing Twitter with Gab to replacing Wikipedia with Infogalactic. Basically, any company they consider "converged" (i.e., taken over by SJWs/liberals) they want to supplant. Now they are talking about finding an alternative to Google. (Heh, good luck with that.) Unsurprisingly, like any social media platform, it's not like you're necessarily going to find the deep end of the cesspool as soon as you set foot in it. I'm sure most of the conversations are pretty banal and innocuous. 4chan isn't all porn and rape jokes either. Getting back to celaw's latest dutiful parroting of spoon-fed talking points, Google's extensive reach is a legitimate privacy issue, and while the Alt-Right's motives for being suspicious of Alphabet Inc. may be suspect, they're not wrong to point out that the way many people (myself included) have essentially most of their social media presence, online accounts, passwords, and cloud storage all tied one way or the other to a small handful of big companies is certainly cause for concern. Especially if you are a "controversial" person, it behooves you not to be in a position where one Google engineer can lock you out of all your accounts with little recourse for recovery. That said, being "controversial" in this context usually means things like advocating the deportation of all Jews back to Israel, organizing harassment campaigns against online feminists, running Neo-Nazi sites, and other dickish behavior. While it certainly falls under the protection of the First Amendment, private companies do have a right to implement "No Nazis" policies or even "Don't be a dick" policies, with "dick" being defined according to their own subjective criteria. If you fear you might wind up being in that category, take precautions accordingly. If too many people think Twitter is being capricious and arbitrary and politically slanted in what they allow and what they don't, then they will take their business elsewhere. There is a counter-argument (helping you out here, celaw, so you don't have to find a copy/paste at TownHall) which is the same counter-argument to the principle of unlimited "freedom of association" (calm down, Don, we aren't Venezuela yet!): if one business, or a collection of businesses who are all in agreement, have effectively formed a monopoly that makes it nearly impossible to do business without them, then saying "Take your business elsewhere" is effectively saying "Don't do business unless you cede near-governmental levels of authority to these private enterprises." At some point an Internet platform can become essentially a public utility. But it's ironic that suddenly it's conservatives who are worried that Twitter is being too quick to ban trolls; if it was liberals getting the boot for spewing hate for Trump, you'd be all "Yeah, that's what you get for being a dick." Rob mentions Gab's claim that "other major social-media platforms have hosted ISIS activity, and child-porn rings, facilitated drug dealing, and carried live streams of murder, torture, and other crimes." What that fails to address is the fact that in pretty much every such instance, those things got shut down as soon as the host became aware of them.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 18, 2017 20:00:38 GMT -5
Happy? No, I'm not happy. I hate it that there are people as ignorant and cruel in the USA, in the world, as these white supremacist clowns. But Christ, it's like people are just suddenly waking up and realizing these people are out there. These same sorts of wannabe Nazis won the right in court to march on Skokie in 1977. And they chose Skokie because they knew who lived in the area (lots of Holocaust survivors). They ended up holding a rally in Chicago, which turned violent, mostly with rocks and bottles being thrown, if I recall correctly, though there were hundreds of cops there to enforce the peace. And I'd note that there's also a very obvious--imo--lack of consistency from both ideological sides here. Is it horrible what this scumbag did? Absolutely. Should he and his ilk be condemned? Absolutely. Did Trump fail in this regard (initially, at the very least)? Again, absolutely. But much of the outrage train for all of this--imo--is made up with people who would bend over backwards to argue that attacks like the one in San Bernadino were committed by lone wolves, or the like, people who backed Obama when he refused to label the Fort Hood shooter a terrorist. And those who are now trying to make this guy in Charlottesville into a lone wolf---if not a victim, which is truly ridiculous--were singing the opposite song in the above cases. Do you disagree? Of course these losers have always been around. But in the past, they were treated like fringe losers, especially by the political establishment. Even politicians who might have secretly had some sympathies for them would at least publicly disavow them, even with the weak tut-tutting noises you're making. Now, we have a President who can't even bother to do that. It's not that people are waking up to the fact that there are neo-Nazis out there. It's that people are waking up to the fact that there are neo-Nazis out there, and there are factions of the government, including the President, who are willing to ride that tiger. As for comparisons with the various jihadist terrorists we've had - I, for one, did think Obama was wrong not to clearly label them terrorists, though at least you could say his motives were benign. It certainly wasn't because he didn't want to offend supporters among fringe Islamic groups. But you're really reaching to find an equivalence here in leftist hypocrisy - yes, I agree a lot of leftists are too weak in their response to jihadists, but even so, jihadists aren't freaking people out because they aren't marching openly in the streets, calling for Jews to be killed, and having the President condemn "violence on both sides." Do I think we should be freaked out by the possible rise of a Brownshirts movement that could take over the U.S. government? It seems not much more likely than the rise of an active ISIS movement in the U.S. But one remains an extremist cell network being relentlessly pursued by the FBI and universally hated by everyone outside their group, while the other is coming out into the light of day and showing itself to comprise a surprising number of "disaffected" American voters, with enough covert sympathy to make the White House reluctant to flat-out condemn them. I still retain my hardcore free speech position - I think Nazis should be allowed to march, and illegal to punch. But damn you make it hard because you sound like a lot of mainstream Germans probably did in the 20s and 30s. "That Hitler and his brownshirts, such unpleasant fellows! Tsk tsk. But why are you so concerned with him when there are communists to worry about? And you can't say the liberals aren't being violent too. You'd be better off ignoring him than taking his nonsense about 'blood and soil' seriously." I'd also support the right of ISIS supporters to march in the streets and shout "Death to America," "Kill all the Jews," and "We want Shariah law." And I'd loathe them too, and be happy to see them named and shamed on social media. And be appalled if the White House response was to complain about Islamophobes contributing to the violence.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 18, 2017 13:22:57 GMT -5
Back to my question - how do we deal with these people? Large tech companies like Google and Paypal have decided to kick them off. Is that a good thing? Is it beneficial to force them underground where their plans and discussions are more hidden? And is there a slippery slope here? Where tech companies can censor speech they find morally repugnant? In general, I have no problem with companies exercising their right to refuse service. Yes, there is potentially a slippery slope, if say, Google and PayPal start refusing service to anyone who's not politically aligned with them, but I don't really think "Won't host Nazi websites" is going too far down that slope. I mean, if someone walked into a restaurant wearing KKK robes, and the restaurant manager said "GTFO," would you be worrying about slippery slopes?
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Post by Amadan on Aug 18, 2017 12:08:40 GMT -5
Call them whatever you desire and if they self-identify as "Nazis," all the more reason to do so. But they're still not equivalent to the actual Nazis of WWII, which is my point. I do think I get what Rob is saying. I get what he's saying, but it's a stupid and pedantic distinction. We're using "Nazi" to mean "People who hold Nazi beliefs and wish to further a Nazi agenda," and Rob is using "Nazi" to mean "People who were members of the National-Socialist German Workers' Party in World War II." Yeah, most of these modern Hitler cosplayers haven't killed anyone, and contrary to some of the more overheated rhetoric on Facebook, I don't think we can or should literally treat them the way we treated Nazis in World War II (i.e., as enemy combatants who are fair game for shooting on sight). They are still exercising their right to free speech so "punching Nazis" is illegal. But they're still fucking Nazis and I find all this limp-wristed tut-tutting because they aren't real Nazis to be some pretty sad shit. If you want to dress up like a Nazi and play Nazi, I'll regard you as a Nazi until such time as you learn some fucking sense and human decency. If the government tries to put you in jail for your Hitler cosplaying, I will, on principle, disagree, but I sure won't be contributing to your legal defense fund. And if someone punches you for being a Nazi, I will, in principle, agree that it shouldn't be legal for them to do that. But I probably will contribute to their legal defense fund.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 18, 2017 11:59:24 GMT -5
Does no one else see the irony in anti-fa wearing Che-shirts? I do. But on the memorials issue - I think taking down or moving Confederate statues is sensible, since they're basically commemorating the defeated leaders of a rebellion, and maybe more importantly, they were erected in the first place as an explicit "Fuck you" to blacks and Northerners by people still wishing the South had won. I mean, Germans and Japanese can commemorate their war dead and give respect to leaders who fought honorably for a dishonorable cause, but they don't put statues of Rommel or Yamamoto up in town squares. But other statues? FDR, Washington, Jefferson? Yes, they were all flawed individuals. At what point do you just say no historical statues? Name a single American President who didn't do something Don doesn't like. Name a single historical figure who didn't hold some view that would be considered politically incorrect today.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 17, 2017 19:26:32 GMT -5
Call them whatever you desire and if they self-identify as "Nazis," all the more reason to do so. But they're still not equivalent to the actual Nazis of WWII, which is my point. Okay. They do not drive Panzers. Duly noted.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 17, 2017 19:12:52 GMT -5
Oh, please. I'm not much of a bandwagon poster. I picked at the point with which I disagreed--still do--nothing more. You know, I'm watching something of a shitstorm on my FB the last few days. People are actively scouring their FB friends in search of closet Trump supporters, are unfriending and/or blocking ones they find (how they can be certain on their assessment is beyond me). Others are going father, getting rid of friends who are not speaking out strongly enough against Trump, are not part of the fables "resistance." They're free to do this stuff, to be sure, but I'm not going to be coerced into emotive, hand-wringy, end-of-the-world statements, simply to satisfy people who apparently can only accept agreement on something if the expression of such meets their arbitrary standards. I don't do that, and I'm certainly not asking you to join us in ritual condemnation of Trump. But you really do seem compelled to nibble at whatever is the weakest anti-Trump argument you can find just so no one mistakes you for being on the bandwagon. You're starting to drift across the line from "iconoclast" to "apologist." You know, I've never been fond of the argument that Trump (or any other President) enables extremists by being in office. But there really is a dirty, particularly noxious reactionary element that's emerging into daylight since Trump was elected, and I don't think it's entirely coincidental. Is Trump personally responsible for the worst elements of the Alt-Right? No, but damn, he sure needs his arm twisted to offer even the most mealy-mouthed disapproval of them. Does that embolden and empower them? When the Daily Stormer is praising him for exactly this, I have to say yes. Uh, really? They wear Nazi symbols, they spout Nazi ideology, but they aren't Nazis? Okay, fine - almost all real members of the National Socialist Party are dead, and the few who aren't are old, old men. But that's an awfully fine hair you're splitting. I am not equating every single member of the Alt-Right, or every protester in Charlottesville, with Nazis. But the ones who dress like Nazis, walk like Nazis, and talk like Nazis? Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable calling them Nazis.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 17, 2017 14:06:59 GMT -5
I imagine his in not a racist free heart, but I also don't think he supports the hard line evil that is happening in white nationalists.
Talk about damning with faint praise. "He's probably not personally a Nazi."
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Post by Amadan on Aug 16, 2017 13:12:20 GMT -5
Speaking of words, I do wonder what happened to the Social Injustice Warriors of The Colline Gate who were so hot and bothered about snarky IT guy losing his job for talking smack about his employer and how "unfair" he was being treated by the mean ol' corporation because he didn't have much use for diversity. That story has been pushed deep in the bowels of the news hole because hardcore racists, the kind that don't couch their hate and rage behind pretty words and education, have oozed out of the shadows and into the light of day attacking, beating and killing those who oppose them. Suddenly the defenders of freedom and the neo-liberals/conservatives got nothing to say. I get it. Their fantasy football drafts are coming up and they're trying to prep for that. Priorities. Well, you've got me on ignore, right, so how would you know what I have or have not been saying? (Newsflash: I don't check CG every day nowadays. Also, I don't do FF.) Now, nt won't see this (because he has me on ignore ) but I actually agree with pretty much everything he said in this thread. Not that it has a damn thing to do with Damore or Google. But gosh, I'm sorry I didn't log in to add my assurances that I do in fact despise Nazis quickly enough to suit you.
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Post by Amadan on Aug 16, 2017 13:06:57 GMT -5
I'm glad the GOP leadership and AG Jeff Sessions have been strong in condemning these acts, and I hope Fields is prosecuted for both murder and domestic terrorism, but Trump...I have no words. Not feeling so tingly over him anymore? Sigh. I guess I should offer something other than snark, but I'm just kind of aghast that you've been steadfastly pollyannaing your way through every other gaffe, blunder and atrocity he's committed, but somehow this finally shakes your faith? Well, I'm glad there is a line somewhere. Now please don't ruin it with a "But Clinton."
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