12-20-2016, 01:56 PM
CNN posted an article reviewing The year in harassment: 2016 sunk lower than rock bottom. It opens...
Seems like an article worthy of inclusion in the Sick Society thread.
CNN's opening lines are true enough. Online and offline. Red and Blue. The Obamas gave us years of tolerance and acceptance. The trend might well have peaked with one particular week and one particular cartoon.
![[Image: flags.jpg]](http://www.polyticks.com/photo/flags.jpg)
I have often said that Reagan had some ideas that were right for his time, and have since been taken way beyond the point of reason. If the flags cartoon was right for its time, perhaps transgender bathrooms took things way beyond the point of reason. When one's values are on a roll, it is tempting to roll with them, to push while the pushing is good. Tempting, perhaps, but not necessarily wise.
Excessive aggressive tolerance has resulted in a response of excessive hate.
(Aggressive tolerance???)
I don't know how long the current mood of hate will naturally sustain itself. I don't know if Trump and/or his more deplorable followers will celebrate their victories by taking them way beyond the point of reason. I'll just repeat my warning against linear thinking, the notion that the trend of the moment will result in inevitable triumph. In the long term, the founding American ideal of equality has been ever so slowly suppressing strong elements of prejudice and privilege that are also very much part of our culture. I'd like to think nothing basic has changed to alter this long term trend.
But there is no doubt that this is a moment of vitriol.
Quote:2016 will be remembered as the year that Donald Trump, a reality TV star and real estate mogul with zero political experience, was elected president. But it will also be remembered as a year of heightened, vicious online harassment.
No one was safe from the vitriol. Black celebrities, Jewish journalists, white college students. The trolls latched on to the most minute of things and ran with them -- spewing racist rants and death threats with abandon.
Seems like an article worthy of inclusion in the Sick Society thread.
CNN's opening lines are true enough. Online and offline. Red and Blue. The Obamas gave us years of tolerance and acceptance. The trend might well have peaked with one particular week and one particular cartoon.
I have often said that Reagan had some ideas that were right for his time, and have since been taken way beyond the point of reason. If the flags cartoon was right for its time, perhaps transgender bathrooms took things way beyond the point of reason. When one's values are on a roll, it is tempting to roll with them, to push while the pushing is good. Tempting, perhaps, but not necessarily wise.
Excessive aggressive tolerance has resulted in a response of excessive hate.
(Aggressive tolerance???)
I don't know how long the current mood of hate will naturally sustain itself. I don't know if Trump and/or his more deplorable followers will celebrate their victories by taking them way beyond the point of reason. I'll just repeat my warning against linear thinking, the notion that the trend of the moment will result in inevitable triumph. In the long term, the founding American ideal of equality has been ever so slowly suppressing strong elements of prejudice and privilege that are also very much part of our culture. I'd like to think nothing basic has changed to alter this long term trend.
But there is no doubt that this is a moment of vitriol.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.