teddit

reading the Canceling of the American Mind and the intro outlines how both the political left + right have built rhetorical defenses that avoid actual debate.

the left’s: complex, layering personal attacks to block any criticism

the right’s: simpler, dismissing experts, journalists and Trump critics

both rely on what the authors dub "The Great Untruth of Ad Hominem,” which is that “bad people only have bad opinions.” 

we see this happening across the board with the H1B debate: calling someone a billionaire, big tech, indian, white, MAGA, second generation, etc. to refute their points.

society as a whole argues for power and status using identity politics. seemingly everyone is guilty.

/ted | exploring the onchain frontier | surfing @ venice, ca | eating @ gjusta / gjelina

I dunno, I feel like holding people accountable for their shitty actions is probably a good thing, and the term "cancel culture" was invented to trivialize and discount legitimate calls for accountability.

I have yet to see any examples of someone who was actually "cancelled" who didn't fully deserve it, and the popularization of actually calling out bad behavior has seemed to be a clear net win for society.

Bad employers overreacting to some perceived PR threat doesn't seem the same as activists making sure Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, etc are unable to keep working.

The accusations of bad behavior are important, and the follow up investigation is important as well. People who are improperly accused of misbehavior might face some short term negative consequences, but it seems like it usually gets sorted pretty quickly. I guess to me a true "cancellation" means a long term negative impact.

Yes, there are bad actors making accusations, and bad actors who fail to properly investigate accusations, but if anything I think there's still a massive accountability gap. There are a number of high profile individuals with known records of sexual assault or other criminal activity, and no one seems to care.

Focusing on the false positives while ignoring the false negatives seems like it just empowers predators.

I'll check out the book though, thanks for the recommendation 😄

the book also doesn’t love the term “cancel culture” but uses it because it’s recognized and used by all

the book captures a lot of cases of cancellation (eg losing job) that seem undeserved, but given you put cancellation in quotes i’m not sure what qualifies in your book.

good read regardless.