Misguided militancy does seem increasingly common on campus. Very tenacious fuckers who view compromise as losing, in my experience. Not leftists, not liberal in the classic sense, more just a culture of the disappointed middle class that doesn't know how to use its anger productively, and weaponizes whatever trends and language they can to get their way.
However, there's lots of good stuff going on at the same time :) . It's easy to forget that, since the bad tends to hit Twitter and the Times.
As I watched the conniption fits unfold last week, I couldn't find it in me to get worked up about it anymore. Behavior like that is beneath contempt. My experience suggests more and more people are noticing
I don't know anything about the Wesleyan controversy, but the reaction to the NYT op-ed seems to prove the point. If there were no threat to open discourse in our culture, nobody would care about that op-ed at all. Most of us would not even know it was written. Why are journalists *so threatened* by this idea? Why is there so much vitriol? Do these people really not see the contradiction, or is there just so much pressure to say the right thing publicly they won't let themselves consider what's staring them in the face?
The incident in the article is bad, same with the one involving Charles Murray. Part of it is 'kids will be kids', part a willingness to indulge kids too much in the short term while losing sight of the big picture, imo.
My theory of the internet, though, is it works on a backlash^n model, where each wave triggers a counter-reaction, and the NYT piece over-corrected. They were insinuating there should be free speech without accountability or criticism ("without shaming ..."), and that's dumb. There's an inability there to separate the wheat from the chaff, the good-faith criticism of 'cancel culture' from the bad.
Yes. Here's my anodyne reply on Twitter to one Adam Davidson who's spent that last few days railing against that editorial: "This is not complicated. There are any number of *legitimate* policy debates—e.g. how much affirmative action, where, and for whom; or trans people in sports and prisons; or criminal justice reform—that many people are afraid to opine on in certain settings. That fear helps no one." That anyone who actually *lives* in this country could disagree with that is insane. And of course, when those who feel censored take their revenge in the privacy of the voting booth, these same people are shocked, shocked.
Yes the Argus incident was very important. (and BLM seems to have had some integrity problems of late).
Campus papers have deteriorated nationwide. They want to be the mini-me of the NYT/Atlantic/Slate and are thus unreadable in their sure-footed following of their betters. They want the admiration of the "NPR tote bag set" (that's so funny). They want other people in media to see them as cool and smart and that other thing you said. But if I want the full monty I can read the NYT, not my campus paper.
I did a thing. I wrote abt the need for libraries to care abt the white working class in an academic journal. I wasn't attacked, I was just ignored and low metrics....which in academia is like being shunned. That's ok for me where I am. I don't care abt being cool and I was tenured long ago, ...but for a person on tenure track they need broader academe to vote them in the club. And right now that "broader academe" is not admitting those who don't fall in line. Krupskaya would be so proud. [source on Krupskaya & Soviet libraries as tools of the state meant to indoctrinate as well as educate: Richardson, John V., Jr. “The Origin of Soviet Education for Librarianship: The Role of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Lyubov’ Borisovna Khavkina-Hamburger, and Genrietta K. Abele-Derman.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 41, no. 2 (2000): 106-128.}
You've touched on this many times: the lol nothing matters posture. These things do matter, for all the reasons you've outlined. It's a pathology in media culture that's worsening an already life-threatening censoriousness in broader American culture. And pretending something doesn't matter that much--whether campus climate or inflation trouble or whatever--is deeply insulting to normal people who aren't trying to Be Cool, to whom these things matter a great deal.
You are talking about people who don't have the mental capacity to grasp the obvious fact that just because Putin isn't a good guy, it doesn't automatically mean Zelensky is. Of course, that includes the US congress too.
I'm just cynical enough to notice that when junior staffers at the NYT wanted a senior reporter involved with the News Guild fired, the editors were glad to comply; and now that he is gone, suddenly the editorial board signals that it's no longer interested in catering to the political positions held by those junior staffers.
One of the big problems with these college brouhahas seems to be that people graduate from them with the idea that as workers, they will have some real moral authority over their workplaces. They do not realize that at college, they are customers -- and people will put up with way more from customers than they will ever put up with from employees. Activist employees who don't realize this act as useful idiots who only increase the employers' power over the workers.
Thanks again, Freddie. A DSM entry is the perfect way to describe this stuff.
I've been left-of-center my whole life. By all accounts, I should be raging against Republicans every day. But for some reason, these woke censorious Mean Girl liberals piss me off more. I mean they viscerally upset me and send me into a white hot rage. It's the haughtiness of it all I think, the attitude that says "I'm so superior that I know what's better for you than you do."
What made them like this? Was it just Trump's victory that broke their brains? Or was it the nature of online echo chambers in general (particularly Twitter)?
It's one where the Democrats are already seeing massive electoral losses precisely because of their attachments to woke ideology. Historically the last time this happened a center left champion, Bill Clinton, emerged to slay the PC dragon by metaphorically killing Sista Souljah and literally killing Ricky Ray Rector, banishing the beast back to the ghetto of college campuses for thirty years or so. I imagine the crackup this time will be equally catastrophic.
Sometimes I find culture war conversations tiresome, but at the same time I simply find free speech to be an incredibly important issue. It honestly kills me how many seemingly smart people tut tut at any acknowledgment that conversation and journalism are incredibly stifled right now. I saw takes (from people I know IRL, not just randos on twitter) about how basically, as long as you're a good person, you have nothing to worry about. It reminds me of the (mostly) conservative response to the Patriot Act-sure we've lost rights, but we're on the good side, it won't affect us. And the yawn in response to Snowden's surveillance expose--we're all tracked anyway, but they'll never come for us. I could go on, but I'm genuinely perplexed how easily people have rolled over for all this.
I blame "the customer is always right" mindset we in American hold more important then any constitutional right.
In my youth I worked for a insufferable German, in his restaurant making said food.
The thing I loved about him was if customers were being rude or beyond stupid, he'd tell em off. 'The sauerbraten is sour?' "Can't you read?"
In a world of Yelp and Google reviews that sadly isn't possible anymore.
These kids aren't students, they are customers and they are always right. For the price they are paying I don't blame em, but this all will get worst unless the core issue isn't challenged.
It's not "just college." Many of the places we're seeing this craziness are the places that educate that cliched "future leader." It's a very dangerous situation to allow these students to throw tantrums like toddlers and get their way, which is what it strikes me they are doing. It does not bode well for letting them be in charge of the nation one day, especially given the outsized role this country plays in the world. If we were a tiny country with no influence, this ridiculousness would be one thing, but given what we are, for the worse, it is completely unacceptable.
I definitely take your point, but I would just point out that it’s a very Twitter-centric complaint that maybe misses the bigger picture. Just speaking as a not-on-Twitter normie (relatively speaking), it seems to me that the bigger story is not the push-back, but the piece itself. What represents the liberal establishment “cool kids,” if not the NYT editorial board? I was very encouraged to see the piece, and I think it signals a positive trend, overall.
Misguided militancy does seem increasingly common on campus. Very tenacious fuckers who view compromise as losing, in my experience. Not leftists, not liberal in the classic sense, more just a culture of the disappointed middle class that doesn't know how to use its anger productively, and weaponizes whatever trends and language they can to get their way.
However, there's lots of good stuff going on at the same time :) . It's easy to forget that, since the bad tends to hit Twitter and the Times.
I wonder if these idiotic controversies lead to a defunding of universities
As I watched the conniption fits unfold last week, I couldn't find it in me to get worked up about it anymore. Behavior like that is beneath contempt. My experience suggests more and more people are noticing
I don't know anything about the Wesleyan controversy, but the reaction to the NYT op-ed seems to prove the point. If there were no threat to open discourse in our culture, nobody would care about that op-ed at all. Most of us would not even know it was written. Why are journalists *so threatened* by this idea? Why is there so much vitriol? Do these people really not see the contradiction, or is there just so much pressure to say the right thing publicly they won't let themselves consider what's staring them in the face?
The incident in the article is bad, same with the one involving Charles Murray. Part of it is 'kids will be kids', part a willingness to indulge kids too much in the short term while losing sight of the big picture, imo.
My theory of the internet, though, is it works on a backlash^n model, where each wave triggers a counter-reaction, and the NYT piece over-corrected. They were insinuating there should be free speech without accountability or criticism ("without shaming ..."), and that's dumb. There's an inability there to separate the wheat from the chaff, the good-faith criticism of 'cancel culture' from the bad.
Yes. Here's my anodyne reply on Twitter to one Adam Davidson who's spent that last few days railing against that editorial: "This is not complicated. There are any number of *legitimate* policy debates—e.g. how much affirmative action, where, and for whom; or trans people in sports and prisons; or criminal justice reform—that many people are afraid to opine on in certain settings. That fear helps no one." That anyone who actually *lives* in this country could disagree with that is insane. And of course, when those who feel censored take their revenge in the privacy of the voting booth, these same people are shocked, shocked.
Yes the Argus incident was very important. (and BLM seems to have had some integrity problems of late).
Campus papers have deteriorated nationwide. They want to be the mini-me of the NYT/Atlantic/Slate and are thus unreadable in their sure-footed following of their betters. They want the admiration of the "NPR tote bag set" (that's so funny). They want other people in media to see them as cool and smart and that other thing you said. But if I want the full monty I can read the NYT, not my campus paper.
I did a thing. I wrote abt the need for libraries to care abt the white working class in an academic journal. I wasn't attacked, I was just ignored and low metrics....which in academia is like being shunned. That's ok for me where I am. I don't care abt being cool and I was tenured long ago, ...but for a person on tenure track they need broader academe to vote them in the club. And right now that "broader academe" is not admitting those who don't fall in line. Krupskaya would be so proud. [source on Krupskaya & Soviet libraries as tools of the state meant to indoctrinate as well as educate: Richardson, John V., Jr. “The Origin of Soviet Education for Librarianship: The Role of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Lyubov’ Borisovna Khavkina-Hamburger, and Genrietta K. Abele-Derman.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 41, no. 2 (2000): 106-128.}
You've touched on this many times: the lol nothing matters posture. These things do matter, for all the reasons you've outlined. It's a pathology in media culture that's worsening an already life-threatening censoriousness in broader American culture. And pretending something doesn't matter that much--whether campus climate or inflation trouble or whatever--is deeply insulting to normal people who aren't trying to Be Cool, to whom these things matter a great deal.
You are talking about people who don't have the mental capacity to grasp the obvious fact that just because Putin isn't a good guy, it doesn't automatically mean Zelensky is. Of course, that includes the US congress too.
I'm just cynical enough to notice that when junior staffers at the NYT wanted a senior reporter involved with the News Guild fired, the editors were glad to comply; and now that he is gone, suddenly the editorial board signals that it's no longer interested in catering to the political positions held by those junior staffers.
One of the big problems with these college brouhahas seems to be that people graduate from them with the idea that as workers, they will have some real moral authority over their workplaces. They do not realize that at college, they are customers -- and people will put up with way more from customers than they will ever put up with from employees. Activist employees who don't realize this act as useful idiots who only increase the employers' power over the workers.
Thanks again, Freddie. A DSM entry is the perfect way to describe this stuff.
I've been left-of-center my whole life. By all accounts, I should be raging against Republicans every day. But for some reason, these woke censorious Mean Girl liberals piss me off more. I mean they viscerally upset me and send me into a white hot rage. It's the haughtiness of it all I think, the attitude that says "I'm so superior that I know what's better for you than you do."
What made them like this? Was it just Trump's victory that broke their brains? Or was it the nature of online echo chambers in general (particularly Twitter)?
The "real world" that these students are going to enter is one where political correctness is overwhelmingly unpopular.
https://hiddentribes.us/
It's one where the Democrats are already seeing massive electoral losses precisely because of their attachments to woke ideology. Historically the last time this happened a center left champion, Bill Clinton, emerged to slay the PC dragon by metaphorically killing Sista Souljah and literally killing Ricky Ray Rector, banishing the beast back to the ghetto of college campuses for thirty years or so. I imagine the crackup this time will be equally catastrophic.
Sometimes I find culture war conversations tiresome, but at the same time I simply find free speech to be an incredibly important issue. It honestly kills me how many seemingly smart people tut tut at any acknowledgment that conversation and journalism are incredibly stifled right now. I saw takes (from people I know IRL, not just randos on twitter) about how basically, as long as you're a good person, you have nothing to worry about. It reminds me of the (mostly) conservative response to the Patriot Act-sure we've lost rights, but we're on the good side, it won't affect us. And the yawn in response to Snowden's surveillance expose--we're all tracked anyway, but they'll never come for us. I could go on, but I'm genuinely perplexed how easily people have rolled over for all this.
I blame "the customer is always right" mindset we in American hold more important then any constitutional right.
In my youth I worked for a insufferable German, in his restaurant making said food.
The thing I loved about him was if customers were being rude or beyond stupid, he'd tell em off. 'The sauerbraten is sour?' "Can't you read?"
In a world of Yelp and Google reviews that sadly isn't possible anymore.
These kids aren't students, they are customers and they are always right. For the price they are paying I don't blame em, but this all will get worst unless the core issue isn't challenged.
It's not "just college." Many of the places we're seeing this craziness are the places that educate that cliched "future leader." It's a very dangerous situation to allow these students to throw tantrums like toddlers and get their way, which is what it strikes me they are doing. It does not bode well for letting them be in charge of the nation one day, especially given the outsized role this country plays in the world. If we were a tiny country with no influence, this ridiculousness would be one thing, but given what we are, for the worse, it is completely unacceptable.
I definitely take your point, but I would just point out that it’s a very Twitter-centric complaint that maybe misses the bigger picture. Just speaking as a not-on-Twitter normie (relatively speaking), it seems to me that the bigger story is not the push-back, but the piece itself. What represents the liberal establishment “cool kids,” if not the NYT editorial board? I was very encouraged to see the piece, and I think it signals a positive trend, overall.