It’s OK if you treat your employees like rented mules, but whisper “diversity”, and you are boycotted?
Steve
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LOL Put politicians in charge of the state funds. What can go wrong? Just give it a few years and they will be running to the Feds to bail them out.
Andy
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# The Cruelty Is the Point
As noted here from time to time, the Shiny-land “traditional family values” of the Puritanical, punishment, culture.
Steve
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Yup. Like the railroad “JCs” just did, use the government to avoid having to change their business so employees are treated like human beings.
Steve
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Diversity, per se, is not evil but implementations of diversity can be, like quota systems. I was in Silicon Valley from 1985 though 1990 when the quota system was starting to be used to implement “civil rights.” It was reverse discrimination and I feared it would end badly, It has.
The Captain
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As someone still in that industry I’d disagree that it has “ended badly”.
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I worked in broadcasting starting in the. ‘60’s. There was not a minority face or voice to be found; not in the engineering section, not on the sales team, not in the front office, and certainly not on the air.
Long about the 70’s the FCC started to get antsy about the lack of minority representation in media, and we had to figure out how to change that. Yes, we were given absolute quotas , with some, but not a lot of flexibility.
(Westinghouse, the parent company, was a large defense contractor and the govt required better diversity.)
We complained some, but we did change our hiring practices. Some hires were bad, some were good, and overall the industry changed. When I left the business in the 90’s we had minority salespeople, managers, engineers, and on-air talent.
It didn’t “end badly” at all. And for a significant segment of the country it opened up an entire industry which previously had the doors firmly slammed shut.
(PS: Oprah was one of those “diversity” hires. It didn’t work out for her as a news anchor, but I hear she did pretty good in another role.)
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Hitler had studies done on Jewish intelligence levels. He found the evidence he needed.
Irony
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End well? End badly? Obviously we have different points of view.
The Captain
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Ok. How has it ended badly for Silicon Valley?
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That is obvious, Denny is no longer working there. He could have been a contender.
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For America. On the brink of civil war,
The Captain
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Not sure if “woke” is what is doing that though. But I’d agree we are on the brink. I’d say we came very close to a government take-over ~2 years ago frankly. An inside coup. “Woke” might be part of what is upsetting some people off but I’d say that is the Franz Ferdinand. (i.e. killing an inconsequential duke did not start WWI, it was simply the last straw). The gutting of the middle class is the real culprit here. “Woke” is just channeling their anger in a different direction for political purposes. And yes, it can be very dangerous. So much so that I’m glad I’m in tech, all family members have passports, and that I could flee if needed with them.
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Here on the ground actually IN the country in question rather than an ocean away, I’m having a hard time finding the brink of civil war. Perhaps you could help me find it. I’m sure it’s easier to see from your side of the Atlantic.
–Peter
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Peter, I agree we’re on a brink. There are militant groups ready to start some serious crap. I’m not kidding. And they follow a certain past-leader. They tried to over-turn an election already and many still believe the lie over that election. It might not be the “warfare everywhere with tanks, guns and planes” but it would be an over-throw just the same.
So maybe not brink of civil war in the traditional sense. But we came close, and still at risk, to losing our democracy.
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No, we’re not. Not even close. Some parts of the media and populace talk about it. A lot. But they are wrong.
We’re already seeing law and justice prevail over chaos and war. If those who talk about and advocate for open war actually try to start a war, they will fail miserably.
I suppose that even attempting to openly fight with weapons would be considered by some to be a civil war. I don’t - at least not when that attempt has a vanishingly small chance of succeeding.
There are two factions who get a lot of press right now. But it is not democrats vs. republicans. They are actually two different factions within the economically stressed. One group (generally, but not exclusively people of color) are those who are sometimes struggling to survive. The other group (again, generally but not exclusively whites) are slightly higher on the economic scale, but feel that their economic future is not what it should be.
An important consideration is to be sure NOT to look at the leadership of these groups as actually part of the group. Those in visible leadership most often do not personally share the economic outlook of the groups they purport to lead or represent. Instead, they are simply using those groups as a base to garner money or power (or both) for themselves. There are virtually no poor or oppressed individuals actually serving in Congress or State houses. (I haven’t done an exhaustive search on the backgrounds of all of these folks, so there might be an exception here or there.) You pretty much can’t be poor or oppressed and still have the ability to run for significant elected office.
The important thing in all of this rambling is that these groups are not a majority in the population. Even combining them, they are not a majority of the population. The majority just wants to live their life in relative peace and safety. If either of these two factions get too far out of hand, the actual majority will temporarily unite in a plurality and push them back into their little corners. That is happening as we speak. The last three elections (two mid-term and a presidential) have had the highest voter turnout in the last 100 years. The real average Joes and Janes are getting tired of the dangerous talk (and action). They are getting into the voting booth to vote the dangerous people out of office. That process is far from complete, of course. But it is happening.
As to those who think they can step outside of the law and take matters into their own hands - they are facing justice in the courts. Violent incidents of all types are being handled by the justice system, not by more open fighting.
Did we come close to losing our democracy? Perhaps, although not as close as some want to think or scare you into thinking. More importantly, we are stepping further away from that brink on a daily basis, both in the voting booth and in the court room.
On the other hand, you are not wrong. Our democracy is not something to take lightly. We - all of us - need to protect it. If we do not, we certainly can lose it. Some guy, a couple three centuries back, said that already. We have a democracy, but only if we choose keep it. Part of choosing to keep a democracy is gracefully accepting that our personal ideas, and even the ideas of an organized group, are not always the ideas that will prevail in the general public. That is part of the bargain when accepting a democracy. You need to accept both winning and losing. When you win, don’t think that all of your ideas are right forever and ever. Keep looking forward for new ideas. When you lose, don’t think that you are wrong forever and ever. Come up with better ideas for next time. Or convince more people that your ideas are good ideas.
Yes, I’m a bit idealistic here. But I think we need to be on occasion. It’s OK to put on the rose colored glasses every once in a while to keep up your hope for the future. But then you need to take them off and work to make the future you want happen.
–Peter
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Who would have thought that white supremacists would be putting their money to work to promote white supremacy?
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I’d hate to see the old fat guys have to get out of their Lazyboys. But to die for the right for bigotry might be worth them putting on their trousers and standing up right. If nothing more we’d all get a good laugh out of the “civil war”.
Reminds me of my home town when the town drunk was finally put in a nursing home. He tried to burn it down. The judge looked at him in his wheelchair and said, “what am I supposed to do with you”?
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Sad news tonight in the NYT. Ye has been banned by Twitter for posting a swastika. I say we collect money to send meds.
Just for the record, historians agree that the American Revolution wasn’t started by “a majority” of colonists. In fact, most break up the population into 3 roughly equal sized segments: those advocating revolution, those who didn’t care much one way or the other, and those who were unabashedly in favor of remaining with Britain.
Ben Franklin’s son, for instance, was “Royal Governor of New Jersey”, and that caused a life-long rift with his father, who was (obviously) with those wanting to break away.
Tens of thousands of loyalists, er, Loyalists fled to Canada after the war, mostly Nova Scotia but elsewhere too, which helped with the national attitude after it was already decided. But anyway, it doesn’t take “a majority”, it takes a sizable enough cohort, surely, and I doubt this is that, but there are a lot of crazies out there who somehow think things will be “better” if we just get rid of government and people who, well, aren’t crazy.
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