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[sebastian_dangerfield]

Please stop it. There is no war over free speech. If you're going to take the debates occurring on campuses of fairly liberal schools as a war, then you're not a serious person. The Bill Mahers of the world who have been personally butt-hurt for staying stupid shit and facing pushback have inflated this issue so far beyond what it is that they seem ridiculous constantly talking about it.

If you're trying to drag in instances when people say awful racist shit and have their shows taken away or their advertisers boycotted, as you've probably guessed, I'm not your guy.

And as you already know, none of that is a First Amendment issue.

Pushback is fine. Career execution is not. Internet mob reactions are not. And of course it's not a first amendment issue. But free speech isn't free if there's a mob of lunatics crying for a hanging whenever they hear something they don't like. And it goes far beyond campuses and Maher and Charles Murray. It also works from both sides, as in the case of Kathy Griffin.

The response to any speech you dislike should never be, "I am going to destroy that person!" That's dangerous, and on a continuum with Trump's attempts to silence journalists.

As you already know, this is not a Due Process issue.

It's a hysteria issue. In the case of Roseanne, the punishment was appropriate. In the case of Aziz Ansari, it was outrageous. In the case of Chris Hardwick, it's pretty obviously a hanging first then trial scenario.

This is scary and the sign of a deeply fucked up mentality which thinks, "I am aggrieved, so I have a right to destroy anyone worth accusing, without full vetting of facts."

The instances of #metoo accusations that have resulted in people having to go away forever that are based on nothing do not exist.

Oh, so all we need is a scintilla of evidence, enough to accuse, to convict. That's not dangerous, or Trumpian, at all.

If you're talking about the fringe and what they want and acting like this somehow represents everyone on the left and an actual push for zero tolerance laws, you are either being intentionally misleading to try to feed your false equivalency or you're an idiot.

I made it clear I do not view the views of people here as progressive. I do not think progressive are the entire Left. But they are eating all the media coverage at the moment.

Pure garbage. This country was done when we instituted slavery, wrote all of our laws to protect it, then wrote all of our laws to protect Jim Crow, and then fought in every possible way against any civil rights. That resulted in assholes moving away and bubbling themselves off so that they wouldn't have to interact with people who aren't like them, which carried over into whole news channels and sources which feed the fears that isolation (and the legacy of slavery) created. The fact that capitalism is completely unchecked combined with the existing reality that white people own everything (including the laws, the lawmakers, and the fact finders and courts) and have the power to essentially act with impunity is why things are the way they are. You can add to that male and heterosexual power dynamics.

I actually agree with most of this. Where I diverge is in regard to the progressive notions that we have to counter bad old rules with bad new rules.

I favor aggressive efforts to ensure the playing field is not stacked to favor any group. I think we should ruthlessly work to destroy all systems and hierarchies that serve discriminatory purposes. But those are negative rights. I'm telling the state it cannot shoot and jail people as it has. I'm telling municipalities they cannot use fines to place the poor in permanent debt servitude.

What I'm not doing is offering any progressive plans to further interfere in the system. We all owe each other a duty to ensure nobody's being preyed upon, but that's where the duty ends. After that, eevryone's on his own.

What we are experiencing now is the extreme pushback of white people realizing that they are no longer supreme in the way they thought they were. They are doing everything they possibly can to hold on to their power, including, taking away people's ability to vote, packing the courts with assholes who support them retaining their power, legislating so blatantly in favor of themselves that it's comical, policing in a way that favors white people's tender sensibilities such that non-whites face death based on white fears, etc.

What that is, more accurately, is a status quo acting to protect itself. It's a lot more than white people. In any complex society like ours, the tyranny of tired ideas, of outmoded business models, of stagnant hierarchies, prevails. They are very sticky things, and people reflexively bristle against change that knocks them off the pedestal. There's a lot of racism involved in the current backlash, but this is just a beginning. There's a broader cataclysm coming as automation and globalization work on us. The full armies of Luddites haven't even appeared yet.

And keep in mind, racism always spikes in times of economic instability. Stupid people need an "other" on which to pin blame. Historically, this presages a war or collapse.

This is a long way of saying, this moment is a lot more complex than a race issue. And I'm not saying this to deflect. I'm saying this because to view it as caused exclusively by racism is myopic. It's much bigger than that. But you know that.