If the other side said it, oh dear. We'd best remove them from their job, their payroll, shun them forever, and make sure they never have power again.
I think the correct approach is to have a conversation, to seek an apology, and to hold the party to being better. Strike one; it's water under the bridge.
Some of us have enough principles to complain even when "our" side does horrible stuff. When a friend does it, I might be more inclined to talk to them in private rather than blast them in public, but that's a mix of "I am more likely to change their mind if I don't antagonize them by making this public" and "I have absolutely no social media presence, so me calling someone out doesn't really make a difference."
> If the other side said it, oh dear. We'd best remove them from their job, their payroll, shun them forever, and make sure they never have power again.
Care to share some examples?
Go ahead and post it yourself, it seems reasonable, yes?
Are we sure about that? There are politicians who have coordinated/enabled things with consequences that would justify capital punishment if someone believes in that as an option. For example, from a raw moral perspective a reasonable person could support executing the entire congressional Aye vote for the US sending the army into Afghanistan.
That would be a terrible mistake, because the incentives don't check out, politics would become a bloodbath when people make honest mistakes, bloody vengeance helps no-one and there is a plausible question around whether the person voting is making a personal decision or just trying to channel their voters. But since it is a superficially reasonable position I assume people would say that sort of thing regularly. To argue it out and learn why it is a bad idea, if nothing else.
While I'd argue for a normal person that posting something like that would just fly under the radar and disappear into the aether of the internet, the same does not apply to someone who heads a large publicly visible company, and who posts publicly on an account associated (implicitly) with that company.
1. Votes come at the end of a process starting with someone calling for action. Has to be a first person to bring the idea up; and Twitter is as good a place for public debate as we have. (If only people could master the longform paragraph, or even essay-length debate and move to somewhere a bit more nuanced.)
2. Reflecting on the "Die slow motherfuckers" for a little while - Tan didn't actually make a call for action. Exactly what that means is ambiguous, and it is without a doubt poor form.
> someone who heads a large publicly visible company
If the board wants to sack him I could certainly see that happening. Although as a practical matter, I don't think this is a sustainable standard. A good CEO is worth their weight in gold, sacking them over being a Twitter troll from time to time seems like a bad call. Musk is an example; both a troll and also a pretty amazing CEO. The right thing to do might be to tolerate the situation unless the pressure gets overwhelming.
On that point we've been tolerating outward displays of political speech from corporations for a while. I'm against it both on principle and because it is typically left-wing-aligned but since it happens I don't see why this sort of political diatribe is needs to be stepped on. Dude has political opinions. We all do.
One benefit I see of it is normalizing the presence of historical out-groups (racial minorities, gender minorities, etc.) that have always existed in society.
But, in practice, the "support" can be paper-thin and the chasing of support from out-groups simply as a means to push profit margins is sometimes obvious and thinly-veiled enough to the point of growing discontent towards the groups that they're ostensibly supporting.
This sort of critique (even if I can't guarantee its accuracy) is a bit more nuanced and feels a little bit less cargo-culty than just left/right.
There exist people who see benefits of any political stances. That is why the stance is taken. Arguing about whether it is a benefit is at the core of politics. For example, Mr Tan probably sees benefit from certain SF supervisors resigning immediately and is frustrated that they don't.
But it is better to keep businesses out of that, I believe we're better off if they are relatively neutral and thoughtless engines to achieve highly specific goals.
> But, in practice, the "support" can be paper-thin ...
1) This situation is also paper thin. I'd bet money that Tan doesn't do anything that would cause the supervisors to die a slow death. Most attack on politicians are.
2) I've had it made quite clear to me in companies I've worked at that if there was a candidate with different skin colour or gender to me they'd be before me in the line for hiring and promotions. That is paper thin support, but it is due to political ideology and I still don't like it. I would like companies to promote equal treatment and be scrupulously neutral on politics.
It's literally illegal to give death threats (not that I think this qualifies as a particularly serious one). But that's the difference between this and your argument with politicians rattling sabres. (Just to make it clear, I don't feel so strongly about the whole situation, but I do think making false equivalences is misleading)
Can we all just like I dunno chill out a bit? Who cares, and how does this affect me?
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/trump-pinata-school/
https://am870theanswer.com/all/la-antifa-group-hangs-trump-i...
https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/donald-trump-effigy-hangs...
https://www.coloradoan.com/picture-gallery/news/2021/01/01/f...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3500960/I-hate-Trum...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fibonacciblue/31620818443
https://www.newsweek.com/protest-trump-doll-guillotine-outsi...
And that's just the last president. If you search, you'll find plenty of similar examples for Obama and Bush too. Going further back than that will probably be harder to find records for, but yeah we have a long tradition of wishing death on our politicians and expressing that quite loudly. And almost all the time, it's certainly legal, whether or not the local community is keen on it varies.
Funny. That makes it sound like USA is the USSR from the childhood jokes about the difference between USA and the USSR.
Your comment would be just fine without that bit.