Comment by thu2111
5 years ago
This is what the guy is talking about.
You're on the left. Your current political pet issues aren't something you're willing to debate - instead you're announcing that anyone who disagrees with you is a "threat".
A person playing the devils advocate arguing for limits on immigration
Limits on immigration aren't a "devil's advocacy" position, they're the de-facto standard around the world for obvious and common sense reasons.
This is why the modern left is so awful. You take something that every single place in the world does and describe it as being basically the same as clubbing someone over the head. You refuse to even attempt to engage with the vast majority who think your position is nonsense.
This is why "social cooling" happens, if we accept the use of that term. It is a problem created by people like you.
> This is why the modern left is so awful.
That is a huge, unhelpful generalization. I am pretty far to the left and I consider immigration a perfectly reasonable topic to debate. Most everyone in my circle of friends feel the same way. The 'cancel culture', as it were, is just a subgroup of the left. And frankly, there is a cancel culture on the right, too.
> The 'cancel culture', as it were, is just a subgroup of the left. And frankly, there is a cancel culture on the right, too.
Yes. On this I will agree with you strongly. Both varieties of cancel-culture are essentially the bulwarks of the false dichotomy of American politics - serving as backstops to try to keep people in the middle, which itself is a controlled position.
You're to the left of that. There's actually a lot more to discuss out there, and out to the right of it, than many people realize. For example, broad agreement on rights for workers to a fair wage, benefits, etc. - you'd be surprised how popular that is with the modern American right, when you can get them out from the GOP paradigm and weak, unhelpful talking points.
People seem to have really grabbed on to me supposedly holding the view that “debating immigration is offensive and therefor off limits”.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough (which is likely; English is not my first language).
This sub-thread started with an ancestor complaining about people being afraid to discuss certain topics because people are too easily offended, this was expressed as a bad thing:
> The only thing worse than people who are offended by everything is having to be afraid of offending over-sensitive people.
The comment keeps going by pointing out that adults should be able to handle these “offensive” topics and debate them like adults.
A grandparent pointed out that there is truth in this point of view, but this is often used as a critique on “the left” which is unfounded since “left-leaning folks [...] _do_ engage with many people whose experience and world view are very different from them”.
I then point out in my comment above that I agree and—further—being insulted and angry when these topics spring up is perfectly natural:
> A number of people have full rights to be insulted when points are raised on a number of subjects.
I think a lot of people have taken the view that since I think being offended when debating the rights of disenfranchised people I must be for shutting down all debate about it. And while I think that is the right thing to do in certain cases I certainly don’t think that nobody is allowed to debate immigration on a public forum.
My point is that—depending on your stance—people might get offended and angry as you are debating this. It might be theoretical to you, but it might be very real to some people in the room. If your stance is really brutal you shouldn’t be surprised if some people—who may have their or loved once lives threatened by that stance—want to “cancel you”. To reiterate, my point is that it is not a bad thing if some people are afraid to voice their opinions in a public forum, when their opinions are threatening to disenfranchised people.
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Sounds like we could probably have a fascinating discussion. I get so tired of the same old tired name-calling and finger-pointing that most people count as political discussion. My Facebook is filled with posts from both sides which do nothing more than hurl insults at the other side.
Nobody actually wants to talk about issues. Bring up anything specific and everyone just goes silent. It's boring, and a bit offensive. People with so little imagination do us all a disservice by expressing it so strongly.
>This is why the modern left is so awful. You take something that every single place in the world does and describe it as being basically the same as clubbing someone over the head. You refuse to even attempt to engage with the vast majority who think your position is nonsense.
And painting those you call "the left" with such a broad brush, and ignoring that there is great diversity of opinion within that artificial, amorphous group is "basically clubbing someone over the head" and refusing to engage with them, even though study after study shows that (at least within the US, and likely across much of the world) we have much more in common WRT the kind of society we want than we do differences.
Those that create conflict from those differences (as you appear to be trying to do) are, if the goal is to create a better society for everyone rather than just satisfying oneself that he/she is right and "they" are wrong, are taking entirely the wrong tack.
Instead, let's celebrate the stuff we have in common, use those more prevalent commonalities to humanize and bring those of us who disagree about the differences together in a positive mode, rather than a dismissive, adversarial one.
Yes, the left is a broad spectrum with many varied positions within it. But this article is about the very specific phenomenon of people feeling they can't express their views on social media, and the number one reason for that by far is the very specific slice of the left that viciously attacks anyone who publicly deviates from their very specific set of acceptable policy issues.
The people on the receiving end may well be on the equally amorphous right, or they may be more classical leftists who are more concerned with workers and unions than identity politics, it doesn't really matter. In the end cancel culture is not, in fact, a bipartisan thing - it is virtually always about the same small set of topics and the same people with the same views doing the cancelling.
It's a serious issue, which is why we are seeing more and more discussions of it. It would be great to celebrate that which we have in common, and I'd love to see more of that, but ultimately it's hard to celebrate differences when those differences are being used as justification for "cancellation", something which can have a very negative consequences for those concerned. The whole problem is people who don't respectfully disagree and use rhetoric comparing disagreement to physical violence as a justification.
I wish more people on the left took the time to familiarize themselves with the work of Harvard researcher/professor George Borjas that has probably done the most rigorous work into the impact of immigration both pros and cons and considering all affected.
His op-ed in politico from 2016 is a good introduction to the issues he tries to tackle:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto...
There's a palpable lack of self awareness in the comment you're responding too because there is an implicit non-recognition of the very real concerns that immigration presents to people that are hurt by immigration. I'm one of the people that benefits from immigration, but I'm not blind to the fact that some people in the country do not benefit from immigration. Those people and current immigrants are my neighbors and future immigrants are my future neighbors. It's important to consider how immigration impacts more than just current immigrants like myself and future immigrants.