1) Become professional adult journalist 2) Opine/report on controversial subjects 3) Receive criticism online 4) Claim your "life has been destroyed" by this criticism despite the institutional backing of your employer, the New York Times
Taylor Lorenz is circulating the manifesto of a new group called "Coalition Against Online Violence" which defines "violence" as harsh criticism online. This is becoming the new standard in the media industry, and its intended effect is to stifle criticism against public figures
If you are this traumatized and disconsolate from your adult professional choices, that's unfortunate and hopefully you have mental health resources available. But using it as a battering-ram to stigmatize as "violence" all criticism of you, a public figure, is totally absurd
Journalists rushing to defend Taylor on the ground of "empathy" are missing the point. This isn't a matter of having empathy for her personal issues. It's that she's publicly using those issues to advocate a new concept of "violence" that's becoming the norm in the media industry
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Recurring issue with Clubhouse chats is that they almost inevitably evolve into a discussion of "woke-ism" (understandably so given the ideology's cultural/political ascendance) but there's seldom anyone in the room who identifies enough with the ideology to give a defense of it
I actually started a new room trying to remedy this very issue, and sure enough it's expanded into a large multi-racial discussion of "Wokism." Pretty fascinating
It's international too which is doubly interesting: US, Egypt, UK, Jamaica, Sweden
Marijuana is legal in New Jersey as of today. Massive blow to suburban police forces who I can personally attest often had nothing better to do than strenuously investigate petty marijuana offenses
NJ has an absurd glut of police jurisdictions, so in many areas police were notorious for filling their time with vigorous pursuit of marijuana-related "crime" -- legalization really does upend the entire enforcement and revenue-generation model for a large number of departments
It boggles the mind how heavily certain municipal police departments / courts relied on marijuana enforcement for generating revenue. Corrupt to the core. Not long ago they never could've imagined legalization was even possible. Keep them in your thoughts & prayers
Federal officials leak that Roger Stone, Alex Jones, and Ali Alexander are being criminally investigated for the "influence" they "may have" exerted on the Capitol mob. Looks like prosecutors are toying with how far they can go with "sedition" charges washingtonpost.com/local/legal-is…
"Creative" would be one word for it
Again -- the reason the term "insurrection" has been pushed so relentlessly is that it connotes temporal continuity of the alleged "threat," justifying everything under the sun in perpetuity, including constitutionally-dubious federal sedition investigations
Rush Limbaugh was a pioneer in that he correctly identified a vast untapped audience for news analysis that ran counter to hegemonic liberal consensus: but instead of using that as leverage to challenge the system, he became a prong of one political party
One working thesis: the Limbaugh model is gradually becoming obsolete, in the sense that funneling cultural discontent strictly into the power centers of one political party is becoming less and less viable
Of course you'll still have podcast bros and such who are proudly arch-partisans -- but none of them are going to ever have the kind of medium-specific dominance that Limbaugh had
Bill Clinton once famously exhorted, "I feel your pain." The rising breed of politician increasingly exhorts to the public to instead feel THEIR pain, and if you don't, you are maliciously victimizing THEM
Because the "emoting" is always ultimately a power play, even if unconsciously. It's intended to place primacy on their "experience" for the purpose of demanding compensation, whether it be via cultural cache or various political outcomes
It's thus appropriate that the impeachment trial currently underway is mainly predicated on the "lived experience" of members of Congress who claim they were so profoundly victimized by the MAGA goofball riot
Congress has turned into some kind of bizarre public psychotherapy session where elected officials compete amongst one another for who can exhibit the most overbearing narcissistic personality disorder nypost.com/2021/02/04/how…
AOC is on the floor of the House saying that anyone who questions the claims of "survivors" -- because everyone in Congress is apparently a "survivor" now -- is guilty of exacerbating the "trauma" of ALL "survivors" everywhere in the country. Again, this is insanely manipulative
Pelosi gave AOC a special 60-minute order to allow "space" for members of Congress to publicly express their emotions and "lived experience" on the floor of the House. That is what's occurring right now