Thread by @SignsofSpring

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci A condescending, dismissive, Band-Aid solution to a discrimination problem. Well done, Becky. 🙄

That's an answer you give to a troubled teen whose friends are being mean to him, not to a grown man who has been held down in inescapable poverty for years or decades.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci I've been wondering where this "heart of darkness" stuff was coming from on social media - the Nazis, the hatemongering MRAs, etc - and I just got my answer, didn't I?

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci "Ho, ho, ho, ho ... everything's working out fine for us, so there is no real problem. Now please go away, and stop bothering the respectable people, because you're really spoiling the mood."

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci When that's the kind of response one of the "respectable" people can give just to a mention that the problem exists, then the great un-answered question is exactly how the marginalized person is supposed to work his way through the system.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci When his legitimate concerns and yes, complaints, are being put on mute by anybody with any status, at all, what sort of dialog is taking place and how can he hope to see his concerns addressed, at all?

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci And let's look at you two. As female academicians, you're beneficiaries of affirmative action, something set up to help supposedly marginalized people, yet your response to the report of somebody else's marginalization is to tell him to take that out of here.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci Those little favors the system did for you came at somebody else's expense, but you're going to respond to the report somebody gives you of what was done to his life by handing him a telephone number and telling him to go away? Seriously?

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci OK, at this point I can see where all of those angry white males came from and why the Alt-Right has been taking off. Under the circumstances, any attempt to argue against it is a lost cause.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci What I've been running into has basically been a giant food riot, and I've been trying to get the rioters to calm down at a time when calm is the last thing they need to be. A futile effort, and a morally ambiguous one at best, if this is how privileged people like you think.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci People like me are never going to succeed in teaching humility to people like you, Becky, but people like Richard Spencer just might.

I guess we need to stand to one side and let history (and the Alt-Right) teach people like you a harsh lesson.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci Certainly, they won't be doing so out of noble motives, but they might end up serving the greater good in spite of themselves.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci One other thing - Dr. Becky refers to her children in her own personal description, so when she claims that I was just assuming that they existed, based on her "one tweet," she's being dishonest.

I "assumed" that they existed because she said so, and I took her at her word.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci Something that I would not be inclined to do, again.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci Dr. Becky just started playing the "damsel in distress" game, showing exactly why I've been doing these frequent unrolls. She showed a screenshot of the tweet in which I mentioned Spencer, offered a vague complaint that I was making her nervous and then protected her tweets.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci So, for the record, let's remember what I said and what I did not.

I didn't say that I'd go marching with Spencer, the Proud Boys or whoever. I just said that I was done arguing with them. That if they got aggressive, my response to that would be - nothing.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci Throwing up one's hands and saying "I'm done, I'm out, I'm giving up on making any effort to make a difference at all in this case" is not an aggressive act under any sane definition. It's a statement that one is going to be passive.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci But you know what is aggressive? Doing what Becky just did, and trying to rally the mob to get somebody's tweets false-flagged.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci She was willing to go there, just to keep her own privileged status from being questioned. That's the kind of person she is - and that's the kind of person this society respects.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci Why would I be anything other than passive? This society isn't worth caring about, any more. I've been slow to learn that, but tonight, I finally did. I finally saw the futility of trying to reason with people and make common cause with them.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci That's a strategy to use in a society in which the people basically mean well and are basically trying to do the right thing, however imperfectly. In a society like that, somebody like me would have a role to play and I'd be happy to play it.

But we don't live in one of those.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci We live in one in which "respectable" people live to see what they can get away with. Such a society can never be redeemed, because it doesn't want to be. A sensible man, on recognizing the moral bankruptcy of his own society, must accept that its time has passed.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci That its end is not merely inevitable, but desirable. I guess that what I learned tonight is that we're there, and that I should have seen this much sooner. I guess I couldn't, because it was too sad a thought to take.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci I might not like thugs very much, and probably shouldn't, but whether I like it or not, sometimes they're needed. When the time comes to tear down the old civilization and build a new one on its ruins, they're a lot more useful than easily winded mathematical physicists. Like me.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci Even ones who've branched out into Engineering. No, I'm historically literate enough to know what dark ages are like, and we're headed toward one. The usual role of a bookworm (even a big one) in an era like that is "easy prey."

It has to come, but I'm not looking forward to it.

@BeckSamBar @BonnSci The unroll:

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1177089…

Archived copies:

archive.is/1MfwN

web.archive.org/web/2019092606…

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