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E-Pluribus | May 27, 2021

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E-Pluribus | May 27, 2021

When a cancellation isn't a cancellation, Democrats may be over-relying on wokeness as an issue, and the continuing battle over "masculinity."

Jeryl Bier
May 27, 2021
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E-Pluribus | May 27, 2021

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A round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Abigail Shrier: Why Some Firings Aren't Cancellations

While not all “cancellations” look the same, the loss of a job or position is often one of the elements that accompanies the larger backlash. Abigail Shrier examines three incidents from recent years in an attempt to zero in on when the words and behavior of the targeted individual meritted the response and finds that being “cancelled” isn’t always cut and dried.

Perhaps no one’s juvenilia should disqualify her from a job—and the reason isn’t merely that most of us said idiotic things in adolescence—but because that’s as it should be. If we are ever going to test out an extreme idea or hurtful comment, adolescence is the time to do it—a period of identity formation when we require all the feedback we can get. We demand adults behave themselves precisely because we assume this was preceded by beta-testing, a period of adaptive idiocy, when they tore through adolescence’s maze, hungering for affection, altering behavior in response to every dead end, registering each shock of pain. It seems compassionate—perhaps even necessary—to place a black box around statements made in high school and college, particularly where a young person has later disavowed them.

But is there no public statement predating one’s employment so vile as to render someone an obviously bad hire? (The emphasis on public statement seems critical because all social life might end if we did not retain the freedom to explore half-baked or foolish ideas in private with intimates.)  How about a preschool teacher, whose school learns he has commented on social media that he finds small children “sexy?” Or a police officer who is found to have made racist proclamations on social media? Even if these statements predate the officer’s employment, even if he has only ever behaved honorably on the job, his past comments would likely provide sound basis for undermining any arrests he makes, any testimony he gives. His past public comments are relevant because they compromise his ability to do his job at all.

Read it all here.

Thomas B. Edsall: Is Wokeness ‘Kryptonite for Democrats’?

While some question the sincerity of the Republicans’ anti-wokness emphasis, many observers acknowledge its effectiveness nonetheless. Thomas B. Edsall discusses the growing realization among Democrats that the culture war may not be breaking in their direction.

James Carville, the top strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, was succinct in his assessment. He recently told Sean Illing, a writer at Vox:

Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.

“Why not?” Illing asked.

“Because they’ll get clobbered.”

Carville’s answer provides insight into the question of whether, if the left wing of the Democratic Party is backing many policies that are unacceptable to a majority of voters and if some of those policies appear to violate constitutional protections of free speech and the rights of the accused, why hasn’t there been more pushback in both politics and academia?

I asked Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at Brookings and the author of the new book “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth,” about the lack of pushback, and he suggested a series of factors:

  • “The younger generation (wrongly) perceives free speech as hazardous to minority rights.”

  • “The purist side has had more passion, focus and organization than the pluralist side.”

  • “Universities are consumeristic these days and very image-conscious, and so they have trouble withstanding pressure from their ‘customers,’ e.g., activist students.”

  • “The use of social pressure to manipulate opinion is a powerful and sophisticated form of information warfare. Anyone can be dogpiled in minutes for any reason, or no reason.”

  • “Activists have figured out that they can have disproportionate influence by claiming to be physically endangered and psychologically traumatized by speech that offends them.”

Read it all at The New York Times.

Hannah Gal: The Gathering Resistance to the Stigmatisation of Masculinity

At Quillette, Hannah Gal examines the growing disinclination to accept cultural trends that blur distinctions in male and female traits and behavior. Recognizing and working with long-recognized general differences in boys and girls should not be dismissed as kowtowing to invidious stereotypes but rather as a realistic approach that will provide the most appropriate basis for educating and socially developing the youth of today.

There is now a growing international movement of men and women dedicated to resisting the anti-masculinity narrative. YouTube channels and podcasts for men and boys such as Order Of Man and The Art Of Manliness boast massive followings and provide a formidable global support network, while prominent dissident academic figures like Camille Paglia have called for greater acceptance of masculinity within society. Male students are suing their universities for anti-male discrimination, while a growing number of men express their discontent about unfairness in the workplace as women are prioritised in the name of satisfying equality quotas.

Inevitably, parents have become prominent players in this effort. Stories have emerged of parents’ angry letters to schools and petitions. Some have resolved to remove their children from school altogether. Homeschooling is experiencing a steady rise, reaching a staggering 11 percent in the US, and concerned parents have begun to establish action groups such as Parents Defending Education and Bettina Arndt’s Mothers Of Sons initiative. Dedicated channels have been set up so that individuals can report incidents of boys being shamed at school. These clashes between parents and the educational establishment are no longer relegated to the fringe. When parents discover, for instance, that a school is making their sons face their female peers and apologise on behalf of their sex for crimes of which they are personally innocent, they are understandably angry and are finding ways to express their anger in various online and media fora. In this way, awareness of the systematic stigmatization of masculinity is growing.

[…]

These issues are of particular importance within an all-boy environment, argues Knowland. “Many of [these institutions] are embarrassed to exist,” he adds, “and they need to think hard about why that is … People need to put boys in touch with the past and the traditions about what it means to be a man, rather than rubbishing them and leaving them with some of the main pillars of their identity, as one of the Eton boys put it, just crushed to dust.”

Read it all.

Around Twitter

USA Today retroactively censors an opinion piece:

Twitter avatar for @ChristianaADF
Christiana Holcomb @ChristianaADF
.@USATODAY published our client Chelsea Mitchell’s opinion about the unfairness she experienced being forced to compete against male athletes. But after backlash from the woke mob, editors unilaterally changed Chelsea’s words & called them “hurtful language.” 1/3
Image
5:49 PM ∙ May 26, 2021
4,070Likes1,724Retweets
Twitter avatar for @ChristianaADF
Christiana Holcomb @ChristianaADF
What was the "hurtful language" that editors deleted from Chelsea's opinion piece three days after publication? The word "male." 2/3
5:49 PM ∙ May 26, 2021
2,686Likes555Retweets
Twitter avatar for @ChristianaADF
Christiana Holcomb @ChristianaADF
USA Today violated its principles to appease the mob. This blatant censorship violates the trust we place in media to be honest brokers of public debate. Chelsea’s experience & viewpoint matters. That’s why we’re posting her original piece here adflegal.org/blog/i-was-fas…. 3/3
adflegal.orgI Was the Fastest Girl in Connecticut. But Transgender Athletes Made it an Unfair Fight.It’s discouraging that the federal district court has decided that these experiences—these lost opportunities—simply don’t matter.
5:49 PM ∙ May 26, 2021
4,348Likes1,301Retweets

Jesse Singal highlights a Boston Globe story about a black student subjected to highly questionable “counselling”:

Twitter avatar for @jessesingal
Jesse Singal @jessesingal
One black teen was pressured "to attend an overnight retreat... where white adults asked [him] to wrestle out his emotions on a gym mat with them [to] help him purge his trauma from experiencing racism"
bostonglobe.comInside the unlicensed counseling that led Boston students to allege emotional abuse - The Boston GlobeAn independent investigator wrote in a report released this week that students described the “Re-Evaluation Counseling” sessions as “weird, uncomfortable, and cult-like.” But the report barely scratched the surface of students’ experiences.
9:12 PM ∙ May 26, 2021
371Likes63Retweets
Twitter avatar for @jessesingal
Jesse Singal @jessesingal
2/ What if education departments hiring quacks without any real qualifications to engage with adolescents on the most personal, intense issues is... bad? What if... we should extend this logic beyond this one particularly colorful outlying example?
Image
9:17 PM ∙ May 26, 2021
226Likes14Retweets

Andrew Sullivan ran across a new term, presented without comment:

Twitter avatar for @sullydish
Andrew Sullivan @sullydish
New word: "whiteliness."
Twitter avatar for @ConceptualJames
James Lindsay, can define Critical Race Theory @ConceptualJames
Demonstrably true. https://t.co/v3j2y4faN8 https://t.co/BDl0vcT7Qp
4:06 PM ∙ May 27, 2021
38Likes6Retweets

Twitter is finding its moderation practices under increasing government scrutiny in India:

Twitter avatar for @AP
The Associated Press @AP
Twitter says it is worried about the safety of its staff in India and called for the government to respect freedom of expression. Police visited Twitter's New Delhi office over its labeling of a tweet by a governing party spokesman as “manipulated media.”
apne.wsTwitter urges Indian gov’t to respect freedom of expressionNEW DELHI (AP) — Twitter on Thursday said it is worried about the safety of its staff in India and called for the government to respect freedom of expression, days after Indian police visited its office in New Delhi over its labeling of a tweet by a governing party spokesman as “manipulated media.”
2:43 PM ∙ May 27, 2021
316Likes153Retweets

More from India Today:

Twitter avatar for @IndiaToday
IndiaToday @IndiaToday
Govt counters Twitter on new digital rules, says Twitter seeks to undermine India's legal system. @Rahulshrivstv with more details | #6PMPrime with @gauravcsawant
Image
12:40 PM ∙ May 27, 2021
124Likes45Retweets

Jonathan Turley on Facebook’s about face on the Wuhan COVID-19 lab leak theory:

Twitter avatar for @JonathanTurley
Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley
I do not know if the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab. Yet, it is probably more important to understand how a little free speech escapes from Facebook. The fact is that it did not escape. It was a controlled release...
jonathanturley.orgFacebook: People Will Now Be Allowed To Discuss Whether Covid-19 Originated In Wuhan LabRead that headline a couple times. There was a time when such a headline would only appear on The Onion, but it is true. Facebook has long banned anyone who discussed the evidence that a worldwide …
2:23 PM ∙ May 27, 2021
337Likes127Retweets
Twitter avatar for @JonathanTurley
Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley
...Facebook and other companies have turned a rolling ocean of free speech on the Internet into a swimming pool of censored and managed expression. So rejoice, Facebook will now allow us to discuss whether China is responsible for the release of this virus . . . for now.
2:24 PM ∙ May 27, 2021
315Likes89Retweets

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E-Pluribus | May 27, 2021

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