It's not that long ago that workers discussed so much politics that they got together and had shootouts with their employers.
Up until 1860 or so, most people across the world were working on farms. And most of those people were at best sharecroppers, if not serfs or slaves. Something tells me there wasn't a lot of freedom going around :-)
Sure, but said Facebook employee has a greater chance of having action taken against him for wearing a MAGA cap than for wearing an Antifa shirt. Of course Facebook have all rights to do so since they're a private corporation but that sort of thing is what GP was talking about.
What has always confused me about this discussion about say, a left leaning bent at Facebook or whatever is that this has always been the norm in virtually every conservative place, which is like 90% of provincial small towns, from which all the liberal and creative people have to run away in the first place.
(But admittedly, this is spoken as someone who mostly has exposure to more liberal workplaces - so I'd be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.)
I go to work to do my job and get a paycheck, ideally without drama. I don't give a day's ass about your MAGA hat.
And even common words can get very negative associations over time. Sometimes language has to change because of that. It's a pity, especially if you like the specific term, but that's life.
Of course there are idiots on Twitter that debate the semantics of the name - but those are largely teenagers and young adults.
Because on both sides of the barricade, there are partisans that interpret everything as dog whistling. Whether it is "Black Lives Matter" or "It's OK to be white", same thing.
On social media, no one would bat an eye at the quote "white people are trash". The quote "black people are trash" is (correctly) an instant ban. If Sarah Jeong wrote that she "loved being cruel to old brown people", she would not be working for the NYT. Take any socially accepted joke about white people, and replace white with any other race to make it no longer socially acceptable.
There is a different standard applied to white people than other races. That's an objective fact.
You can argue that this is justified due to differences in societal power, which is not an unreasonable argument at all, but to deny that it exists is willful ignorance.
The reason that "it is okay to be white" is so effective is that it does have poignancy to young, impressionable white people who inhabit an online world filled with vitriol directed at them, so when you then call it a "racist" statement, it only serves to alienate them and drive recruitment to the alt-right. The correct response to "it is okay to be white" is not "that's a racist statement that you can't say" but "yes, obviously, moron".
White nationalism is really just the dumbest shit ever, but this complete and utter refusal to understand the root causes of the movement only helps them. It is, quite literally, what the terrorists want.
But whatever, enjoy your day.
Do you see how absurd this kind of reasoning is?
Do you mean this quote?
He meant the silent white supremacists, who protested quietly (with long guns, and who afterwards were pretty proud of themselves that they haven't mowed people down despite having been hit by bricks).
There's a 207 page long review assembled by a commission about the events, and it found no peaceful pro-statue protesters.
Thought Experiment #2: If you were a manager and your team was as a chaotic, unqualified, and had the turnover that the WH has, what do you think would happen?
If they were good people they would've called the nazis out and kicked them out of their march, or refused to march with them. Instead they marched with the nazis.
[1]https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-ho...
This is a pathetic attempt to absolve trump of his clear racism and dog whistles to extremists. If he assumes wrongly it's okay to say whatever he wants? That points even more directly to a dog whistle. Shame on whoever wrote that as a defense.
Joining up with a bunch of white nationalists to march in support of a statue of a man who is famous for waging a traitorous war against the United States in support of the institution of slavery doesn't make one a "very fine person", indeed quite the opposite.
While you may not believe trump is a racist sending dog whistle after dog whistle to white nationalists those white nationalists seem to think so: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/12/politics/white-supremacists-c...
You're referring, I think, to the folks in the Women's March who joined the march but had a past of making anti-semitic comments. Those people did not show themselves to be anti-semites during the march, so the folks marching with them would not have known to disengage or call them out at the time (though they were widely called out afterwards, if you care to look into it). Contrast this with the folks trump called good people - the entire point of that march was to push nazi rhetoric, and the folks who joined them knew that, even if they don't self identify as nazis.
See the difference?
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best," Trump said. "They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
So your point is that instead he stated that the Mexicans that are arriving next to you are bringing drugs, crime, and are rapists.
Ah but among all the criminal rapists selling drugs... some might be good people.
Got it.
DONALD TRUMP: When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically.
The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.
Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people.
It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably— probably— from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast.
Even if those opinions are really horrible opinions, political correctness is still bad, because social isolation just makes the problem worse. Sure, you can't engage every crazy idea with a detailed rebuttal. But it's much more effective to befriend or relate to the person on other points, develop mutual respect, and through osmosis you will both understand each other a bit more, and each temper your views.
This is how families work. Hopefully you don't (hypothetically) hate your aunt because she occasionally says something that sounds racist. Maybe she has done many wonderful things in her life, and so you just kind of accept it as part of the complexity being human. You don't have to believe the statements are good, but you also don't have to obsess on them to the point of defining her by the statements.
The other reason political correctness is bad is because the rules are arbitrary enough, and the punishments are arbitrary enough, that you are never quite sure when they are going to turn against you. For a while it was politically incorrect to say "black", but now that's normal again and "African-American" is a bit more awkward[1]. There was no grand vote or decree to change it... it just changed like a fashion.
I honestly don't see how someone who travels at all could be one of the enforcers of political correctness. People in other countries say politically-incorrect (in the American sense) stuff all the time unless they have been trained otherwise.
[1] The median black family here has a lot more history in America than the median white family, so it seems a bit insulting to add a qualifier before "American".
The opinions are there, you just chose to not see them.
I suspect a big part of the reason people don't bother is because it's an exercise in futility - they could do it, but it is a fair amount of work to list out a decent set of topics that should be discussed, along with reasoning for why, but then the person who asked for it, who likely truly believes they are doing so with complete sincerity and an open mind, isn't likely to actually consider them anyways.
For example, I could ask you to "unpack" this statement:
> A MAGA hat is(!) just another way of saying "Mexicans are rapists", which was part of the whole MAGA launch.
Such a seemingly simple "truth", provided one is unaware of (or "ignores", in real time conversational discussion and thinking) the incredibly complex neurological processes (and the model they are based on, and the lineage of the data in that model) that occur within the subconscious human mind, before completely transparently popping simple answers and "truths" up to the conscious process, often accompanied by some(!) data to quickly form a "good enough" post-hoc-rationalized explanation for the "logic" (it isn't - subconscious heuristics don't run on logic) upon which the "truth" (heuristic prediction) is based.
To test whether this theory may have some validity, you could try to unpack your statement into a purely logic/reason based statement that ~proves that it is ~true. I predict (we shall see if my prediction is correct, based on your response, or lack of response) that not only will you not be able/willing to do it, but if you did, before too long you would realize that many of the supporting perceived to be first-principle "facts" you'd instinctually want to use in your proof, have a bit of a magical quality to them...like, you know that they are true, but if you sit down and really examine them, you'll find that they aren't actually true (always true, with no exceptions), and also that you don't really know where they came from, or how they got into your mind (and tagged as facts) in the first place.
I suspect you'd have no problem "seeing" how this approach could work on people who hold racist and similar beliefs, but in my experience there is a significantly lower likelihood of you being able to see the effectiveness of this technique if the shoe is on the other foot...if instead it is your mind's attention and considerable processing power, being pointed at itself. It seems like there is some unseen process that disallows actions like this (which is a rather fun and interesting philosophical question to ponder: assuming there is such a guarding process, what is the nature of it, and where did it come from).
Does someone saying "MAGA" also equate to them saying "The Fed should lower interest rates", just because Trump said that one time?
You have to be careful to differentiate an association made by political opponents of "MAGA".
That's not at all what people wearing MAGA hats want to represent, and the fact you can't understand that is exactly the problem you guys have in the USA and why Trump will probably be reelected
I think that might be the takeaway for me: modern companies have over-optimized for political correctness. I wish more companies would be honest about their politics and that of their employees.