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In a rather well-timed yet coincidental counterpoint to Why we're Losing the Internet to the Culture of Hate, Milo Yiannopoulos over at Breitbart brings us this:
A warped currency today governs popular culture. Instead of creativity, talent and boldness, those who succeed are often those who can best demonstrate outrage, grievance and victimhood.
Even conservatives are buying into it. Witness, in the days since Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon was announced as Donald Trump's campaign manager, how establishment stooges have bought into the worst smear-tactics of the left. As with the left, nothing is evaluated on its quality, or whether it's factually accurate, thought-provoking or even amusing: only whether it can be deemed sexist, racist or homophobic.
Campuses are where the illness takes its most severe form. Students running for safe spaces at the slightest hint of a challenge to their coddled worldview. Faculties and administrations desperately trying to sabotage visits from conservative speakers (often me!) to avoid the inevitable complaints from tearful lefty students.
In this maelstrom of grievance, there is one group boldly swimming against the tide: trolls.
Trolling has become a byword for everything the left disagrees with, particularly if it's boisterous, mischievous and provocative. Even straightforward political disagreement, not intended to provoke, is sometimes described as "trolling" by leftists who can't tell the difference between someone who doesn't believe as they do and an "abuser" or "harasser."
Yeah, you knew I wouldn't let that kinda SJW nonsense slide without comment.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:39PM
Absolutely? "Only Sith and Buzzards deal in absolutes." Qui Gon Jinn, Jedi Master.
The issue is not about free speech. It is about being an ass. And technically, being an ass means having no sensitivity to context.
An instance: Once upon a time, a German University invited an American Philosophy professor to give a talk. Students occupied the lecture hall, blocked access, and the professor was not able to speak. Censorship? Maybe. But context means that details matter.
The professor was Peter Singer, a well-known advocate of animal rights, and proponent of Utilitarianism. His talk was to be making an argument for euthanasia for those born with severe defects, with the idea it would be cruel to prolong a life that held no prospect for happiness, and only promised more pain. With provisos, philosophically this in an argument an ethicist could make. So why did the students shut him down?
Germany. The policy of eugenics did not only mean the termination of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and Communists, it practiced the killing of the mentally or physically deformed as well. There is a great scene in "Life is Beautiful", where a mother is complaining about a homework problem given to her child, calculating the cost of keeping a developmentally retarded person alive versus terminating them: "How they can expect a child to do math this complicated!" For Singer to attempt to give a talk on this topic, in post-Nazi Germany, bespeaks a complete lack of understanding of context. Political Correctness? Damn right, you do not give a speech like this in Germany, it is too soon, and many never not be.
Of course Singer complained, accusing German students of not having sufficiently learned the value of free speech in academia. I was just wondering why he was such an ass.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:20PM
Ar, you're your own contradiction. Without free speech, you couldn't say such foolish shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:42PM
Ha ha, Buzz! Made you listen! Be more careful in the future.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:49PM
Well, you know, I was going through all my replies and you were in there, so I thought what the hell...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @11:43AM
So because a philosophical argument made some Germans uncomfortable, they took it on themselves to decide that nobody should be allowed to hear the argument?
Yeah, Germany is full of authoritarian assholes. Some things never change.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:32AM
So because a philosophical argument made some Germans uncomfortable,
Just don't get it, do we? No, not a matter of discomfort. A matter of moral responsibility. Germans are better at this than Americans, though at great cost. They are ashamed at having accepted such arguments in the past, and now will not stand to have anyone make the same argument again, having seen first hand where it goes. Context, ass. Or as realtors say, location, location, location. We see your location, ass.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:42PM
Germany, it is too soon, and many never not be.
So the feelings of a bunch of teens, who have never had anything bad happen to them, are more important than humans rights and correct medical care for the most vulnerable demographics?
I am sorry, but fuck you. This is the same thinking that the Nazi's used to dismiss this same societal group to unimportance. Feelings never trump Human Rights, I would not change that opinion even if the coddled teens were replaced with Holocaust survivors.