I'm not from the USA, does the FBI usually throw in grenades when arresting people for insurance fraud? If not, then perhaps other lower-quality social-media websites such as Reddit/Twitter might be more receptive to your comments?
The article was about heresy which he defined as a factually correct statement that will destroy your life if stated. It wasn't about being an unpleasant person with unpopular opinions.
PG is implying that the phenomenon of getting shunned for having said something right-wing on Twitter is new/different enough that it implies some shift in societal attitudes. I'm arguing that it is not, and the 1985 equivalent would be a progressive being shunned for being, let's say, pro-gay-rights in small-town Missouri. The mechanism changes with technology, but the cause has not changed since Hester Prynne at least.
We're not conflating, we're providing context. Western culture had/has a sickness of violence and intolerance that decades of activism is chipping away at. Some people perceive this activism as "intolerance to heresy" when to others it's "intolerance to intolerance."
I'm not in an oppressed group, and I've done my fair share of foot-in-mouth. But my sympathies are with the ... subaltern..., not generally with people claiming to be treated as heretics because they got censured (not censored) for using their public or corporate positions to pick on people or support picking on people.
Yes, there are excesses. I don't support them. But I'm glad I'm living through an era where it's becoming less acceptable to be a prick in public.
Are you talking from a US/European perspective? Being gay was entirely open and mainstream in the 90s/2000s. Although I'm not sure what that has to do with heresy which was the topic of the essay.
I don't think you need to put "heresies" in vague quotes. He's defined it quite clearly as factually correct statements which will destroy your career and social life if stated.
The article was about heresy which he defines as something which is factually true, not generic notions of free speech.
If I can respectfully say something here: you're making sweeping statements about people based on their race etc. It's going to be difficult to make persuasive arguments if that is your debating starting point.
I consume a wide range of media every day and I've never seen a bill that "restricts voting access for people of color". It's an extraordinary claim so you would to need provide strong evidence, rather than being dismissive.
> I consume a wide range of media every day and I've never seen a bill that "restricts voting access for people of color".
Bills that restrict voting rights in America along racial lines are all over the news, even outside of America. That leaves only two possibilities. Either your range of media isn't as wide as you think, or you are in denial. You've already dismissed another commenter’s response, so I'm leaning towards the latter.
If said bills are so well-known and all over the news, why not just link to one? This is HackerNews, if someone says "____ exists and it's a problem" and someone else politely asks "which ____ are you referring to?", the appropriate thing to do is to just reference the thing in question - we don't need to get pedantic about the range of one's media consumption.
It's because the bills in question don't actually explicitly restrict people of color from voting, they just make voting a little less convenient (i.e. a bill that you have to show a photo id to vote, for example, and a person of color might be statistically less likely to have a photo id than a non-person of color)
The reason I (and I assume other commenters, but I don't presume to speak on their behalf) don't care to dig up sources for you is because it's a waste of time. There are only two possibilities: either you're in denial, in which case there's nothing I can present to you that you won't also be in denial about; or you're not, in which case you can just search for it yourself (e.g. “bills that restrict voter rights in America”). Things that are all over the news are also generally easy to find.
Forming conclusions about racism requires interpretation. Every time I trust one of you to be genuinely curious about the issue I’m disappointed, and here I am again, disappointed. Not particularly surprising though.
Ezra Klein and John Oliver aren't news, they're entertainment personalities like Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson. Though if they're a big part of your information diet as it is, I don't really see this being a fruitful conversation. /r/politics tends to accommodate to that kind of viewpoint a little more, I'd suggest moving the soapbox over there :)
John Oliver is more prone to histrionics, but Ezra Klein is genuinely insightful and thoughtful. He’s really a much better/more truthful journalist than joe Rogan or tucker.
You're hinting that most accusations of heresy come from the right (evangelical christians), rather than the left. This almost seems absurd to me, as someone who consumes a wide range of news media every day.
I presume you refer to the avoidance of examples in the article. Your comment suggest he was correct to do so. Some people will be desperate to disprove that modern heresy exists, and highlighting forbidden opinions would help negate the entire article.
