Cancel Culture Doesn't Excite

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Can you link the thread here please when you're making it?

I'll PM it as well.

It might just be me lecturing a stuffed cat. With no video to distract the viewer with overwhelming cuteness.

When it's an economic war of all against all you'll then see natural antipathies heightened rather than decreased, and TBH at present it seems like were doing unusually well at keeping the veneer of civility, even with as much economic damage and uncertainty as Covid has given us.

I have read that COVID triggered economic downturn might lead to a 1930s type of global depression which lead to massive civil unrest. IStrangely notice Burma's military, the IRA, PLO, Bangladeshi militants are all on the move suddenly, It's like the clock is turning back.

Yes we all know how thin the veil of civility was in 1929 and how nobody expected that in 10 years the entire world would be drawn into a world war.

Esteemed subscribers and readers,
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as editor of this magazine for the last five years. However, I must ruefully inform you that I am hereby stepping down from the position and terminating my connection with this enterprise.

I speak from sorrow, not resentment. I am proud to have assisted in transforming this publication from a glorified blog into the mighty national print bimonthly and intellectual powerhouse that it is today

Alas, it seems that a free and independent intellect has no place at a left journal anymore. Diversity of opinion, once a fixed and immutable ideal, has fallen by the wayside, the ideology of conformity having taken its place. Unless one’s thoughts are Socially Just, they are considered unworthy, even appalling. Every day, we see stories of a new hideous injustice. A white person is politely discouraged from doing a rap about the school library. An article about hamentaschen has its headline changed. An esteemed political scientist is called a “racist as*hole” (and even more unspeakable names) on Twitter, merely for declaring that imperialist atrocities have an upside. A professor is condemned for uttering a racial slur. A comedian is heckled about his history of sexual misconduct. A publishing company questions whether an author’s work has intellectual merit. A company requires its staff to attend a one-day seminar on “treating colleagues respectfully.” A perfectly decent man is told his perspective may be biased. The Woke Mafia never sleeps.

No longer can one explore ideas freely. There was a time, reader, when the important questions could be posed and discussed in a civil manner. Questions like “Was the 19th Amendment wise or unwise?” and “How do we know phrenology wasn’t onto something?” Now, even to pose these questions is considered an affront, something unwoke and discreditable. The discourse has been debased to the point where even to ask whether some people ought to be placed in cages for the rest of their natural lives, or whether there is something kind of fishy about people who look different from one’s self, is considered a “cancelable” offense.

Yes, reader, I am among the canceled. I never thought it would happen to me. I thought my commitment to facts and reason would keep me safe. But nobody is safe from the mob. The Robespierres of social media conduct literal electronic beheadings.

My own case has been an extreme example. I am sure the reader has seen it. Tweet after Tweet, a barrage of relentless mockery and scorn. “Nathan Robinson is a f*****g imbecile who knows nothing about architecture.” “dude f**k nathan j robinson seriously.” “lol at a guy who dresses like this calling himself a leftist [insert photograph].” My inbox overflows with subject lines like “hey cumstain” and “important factual correction to your piece.” I find myself trapped in Orwell’s nightmare.

What has distressed me most is the lack of support from colleagues. Drawn from the Millennial and Zoomer generations, they are unaccustomed to norms of free speech and open debate. When I wished to publish a 7,000 word article by an abusive misogynist defending his conduct, I was told that this was a “horrible idea” and pelted with questions from subordinates like “why the f**k would you do that?” and “please please can we talk about this?” The New York Review of Books snagged the essay instead. An opportunity missed, for reasons of pure political correctness. When I recommended publishing an open letter by an esteemed intellectual that posed as a defense of neutral speech principles but was clearly intended as an attack on the left, fellow editors had the gall to suggest the piece needed “specific examples” and “research.” Yet again, a rival magazine scored clicks that were rightfully ours. Yet again, the cancelers triumphed.

I can take it no longer. I cannot work under these conditions. I am told that certain forms of speech by a magazine editor are frowned upon, such as the statement “you will all come into the office, pandemic or no.” Intolerance reigns supreme: I am even asked to refer to people the way they would prefer to be referred to—that is to say, my very words are being crafted for me by others. An ideology of forced equality has created demands of me such as “eliminate gender pay disparities” and “try not to publish anything racist.” Finally, I understand what Solzhenitsyn must have felt during those years in the gulag.

As a left wing publication it is plausible a stifling “regressive left” culture took hold but based on what I have read here it was probably him or maybe both.

Either way spoiled privileged people like him is a major reason why wonderful principles are being thrown in the trash.

Socialist cancelled by wokes at his own magazine was the post I thought I was going to write and wanted to write upon learning about this story. Ah well.

Editor of top US medical journal put on leave amid outcry over racism podcast

When I first heard about I thought this was another example of woke overreach. My goodness saying you are offended being called a racist is now a fireable offense in elite of the medical world. But then they promoted the podcast saying no doctor is racist thus handing the wokes a gift on a silver platter. Arguing that you can not discuss racism in a conversation about racism, WTF?

IMHO the idea that all white doctors are racist is just as offensive as saying no doctors are racist. The problem is the the first is becoming mainstream thought in elite circles and beyond. The other problem is comments like the above “prove” the wokes are right. Of course it does no such thing but in the real world they put anti wokes on the defensive if not leaving them defenseless and give the wokes good reason to be cocky.

Doctors and researchers flooded Twitter and the journal’s inboxes with demands for explanations and complaints pointing out that racism very much exists in healthcare. The Institute for Antiracism in Medicine, a Chicago advocacy group, circulated a Change.org petition that now has more than 7,400 signatures.

Now a small subset of scholars, including McLemore, are taking their protest a step further. At least 10 doctors and researchers, including some who have previously published their work in JAMA, have publicly declared that they will not submit manuscripts to the journal until it addresses its failures. They say they no longer trust that JAMA has the knowledge and sensitivity to evaluate research on racial disparities, and want to see it diversify the mostly-white staff that selects which issues deserve JAMA’s enormous spotlight. Their boycott is an unusual move that could put them at great professional risk.

In medical research, few gatekeepers are more prestigious or more synonymous with the establishment than JAMA, which oversees a network of 13 journals. It is the independently operated publishing arm of the American Medical Association, the country’s leading physicians’ organization. With more than 293,000 subscribers, its flagship title claims to be the most widely circulated medical journal in the world. For clinicians and researchers, getting published in JAMA can be a ticket to securing a new job or getting promoted.

“People’s careers have been made by a single publication in JAMA — that’s how important it is,” McLemore, a professor who studies reproductive health and health inequities, told BuzzFeed News.

At least 10 doctors and researchers, including some who have previously published their work in JAMA, have publicly declared that they will not submit manuscripts to the journal until it addresses its failures. They say they no longer trust that JAMA has the knowledge and sensitivity to evaluate research on racial disparities, and want to see it diversify the mostly-white staff that selects which issues deserve JAMA’s enormous spotlight. Their boycott is an unusual move that could put them at great professional risk.

this asian would trade places with those lucky sons any day o' da week.

True brother...one doesn't have to sell their soul

Simon & Schuster has said that it will not be distributing a book by one of the police officers who shot Breonna Taylor, after a small publisher whose books are distributed through S&S announced the book to widespread criticism.

The Fight for Truth: The Inside Story Behind the Breonna Taylor Tragedy is by Sgt Jonathan Mattingly, a Louisville, Kentucky, officer who shot Taylor and was wounded in the raid on her home in March last year. The book is being published by Post Hill Press, a small independent that specialises in “conservative politics” and Christian titles, and home to authors including far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and the embattled Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.

Mattingly is still employed by the Louisville Police Department and was the first officer to enter Taylor’s apartment after midnight on 13 March 2020, as part of a narcotics investigation. Mattingly fired at least one of the six shots that hit Taylor, according to an FBI ballistics report, but not the one that killed her.

In September, he was cleared by a grand jury, alongside another officer who fired the lethal shot, Detective Myles Cosgrove.

Earlier on Thursday, S&S said in a statement that it had no editorial control over titles released by the smaller publishers for which it provides distribution. Hours later, after widespread criticism and campaigns to complain to S&S head office, the publisher issued a second statement distancing itself from Mattingly’s book.

“Like much of the American public, earlier today Simon & Schuster learned of plans by distribution client Post Hill Press to publish a book by Jonathan Mattingly,” the publisher said. “We have subsequently decided not be involved in the distribution of this book.”

Yes I'm sure the Taylor family will be really impressed by a cop trying to make money from killing their daughter while she was asleep. Really high morals and ethics you expect from the force