Damore vs. Google: the case for the plaintiff

I relish writing posts like this one because I have absolutely no patience for intellectual dishonesty, and the whole left-ish so-called social justice movement, and so-called diversity and inclusion (D&I), and so-called political correctness (a term that has become one of disapproval, although it didn't have to), as these things have actually been promoted and practiced by left-ish types, have institutionalized intellectual dishonesty to a very considerable extent.  [Follow-up posting on the dishonest dynamic of present-day leftists here.]

One of the basic de facto rules of this bastardized-by-leftish-types form of "social justice" is:

Go out of your way to misrepresent the ideas/arguments of those who challenge the "social justice" orthodoxy.

Another de facto rule:

Make sure, as much as you can get away with, to replace fair argument responsive to what the opponent actually says, with shaming tactics.

Damore says that Google has institutionalized to some extent a culture of shaming and misrepresentation, and based on what evidence I've seen, he's exactly fucking right, and it's the leftish ones who oughtta be ashamed of themselves.

Let's take one example of what the culture at Google instills in its toeing-the-orthodox-line employees:

Former 'Googler' Yonatan Zunger considered it appropriate to chastise Damore thusly:

I’m going to be even blunter than usual here, because I’m not subject to the usual maze of HR laws right now, and so I can say openly what I would normally only be allowed to say in very restricted fora. And this is addressed specifically to the author of this manifesto.

What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas. And worse than simply thinking these things or saying them in private, you’ve said them in a way that’s tried to legitimize this kind of thing across the company, causing other people to get up and say “wait, is that right?”

I need to be very clear here: not only was nearly everything you said in that document wrong, the fact that you did that has caused significant harm to people across this company, and to the company’s entire ability to function. And being aware of that kind of consequence is also part of your job, as in fact it would be at pretty much any other job. I am no longer even at the company and I’ve had to spend half of the past day talking to people and cleaning up the mess you’ve made. I can’t even imagine how much time and emotional energy has been sunk into this, not to mention reputational harm more broadly.

And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.

If you hadn’t written this manifesto, then maybe we’d be having a conversation about the skills you need to learn to not be blocked in your career — which are precisely the ones you described as “female skills.” But we are having a totally different conversation now. It doesn’t matter how good you are at writing code; there are plenty of other people who can do that. The negative impact on your colleagues you have created by your actions outweighs that tremendously.

You talked about a need for discussion about ideas; you need to learn the difference between “I think we should adopt Go as our primary language” and “I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person’s satisfaction.” Not all ideas are the same, and not all conversations about ideas even have basic legitimacy.

If you feel isolated by this, that your views are basically unwelcome in tech and can’t be spoken about… well, that’s a fair point. These views are fundamentally corrosive to any organization they show up in, drive people out, and I can’t think of any organization not specifically dedicated to those views that they would be welcome in. I’m afraid that’s likely to remain a serious problem for you for a long time to come. But our company is committed to maintaining a good environment for all of its people, and if one person is determined to thwart that, the solution is pretty clear.²

I’m writing this here, in this message, because I’m no longer at the company and can say this sort of thing openly. But I want to make it very clear: if you were in my reporting chain, all of part (3) would have been replaced with a short “this is not acceptable” and maybe that last paragraph above. You would have heard part (3) in a much smaller meeting, including you, me, your manager, your HRBP, and someone from legal. And it would have ended with you being escorted from the building by security and told that your personal items will be mailed to you. And the fact that you think this was “all in the name of open discussion,” and don’t realize any of these deeper consequences, makes this worse, not better.

Now, does this sound like a response appropriate to what Damore's manifesto was actually saying, or does it sound more like a lack of willingness to properly engage with Damore's context and replace it instead with strident virtue-signaling?  It sounds a lot more like the latter to me.  What it tells me is that the mentality displayed here is cultivated at Google to such an extent that what really happened is that Google exercised no due diligence/effort to explain to Damore how/where his ideas went wrong, how they present a potential danger of contributing to a hostile work environment, and how he might have the opportunity to correct his errors before it's determined that he and Google aren't a good fit.  (It turns out they aren't a good fit, if the above response to a good-faith presentation of putative science and fact is more or less the "best" that Damore could expect from the company.)

In short: does it sound like this chastisement is written with the aim in mind of anticipating how Damore might respond, or is it basically a one-sided rant?

I recommend reading some of the comments that follow, particularly the quality and tone of those who applaud and pile on.  Do they demonstrate a willingness to actually understand Damore's views, or are they really quick to conclude that he must have been promoting the loathsome ideas they attribute to him?  Keep in mind, as you answer this, the general culture of the American left today when it comes to characterizing opposing views they don't like: are they more likely than not to misrepresent - sometimes blatantly and obviously - their opponents' positions?  Are they more likely than not to jump to the conclusion that a debatable point is instead racist, sexist, etc. and therefore beyond the pale of rational argument?

Because that's the pattern I've been observing on the left these past few years now, and it's fucking disgusting.

Now, contrast the righteous rant from Mr. Zunger above with this comment (by James Gillmore), and see whether you think one is making more of an effort at dialogue, understanding and actual empathy than the other:

After having of course read the manifesto and responded to various comments, here’s my response to one of the comments:

“And the answer to the million dollar question is this [i.e. what the young man should have been told, i.e. what would have been far more helpful]:

“Historically [and currently basically everywhere that doesn’t have these policies], it’s been the other way around, where male-dominated work culture has led to a lot of unfair circumstances for female employees. We’re slowly improving, but we aren’t there yet. In an ideal world, such policies wouldn’t need to exist. For now, we’ve deemed the best thing we can do is offset the imbalance of power as best we can and create a welcoming environment as equally as possible for all. Yes, the policies are an unnatural construct for a larger even more unnatural construct: mega corporations, which can no longer be truly accountable for the people they bring on board. The best answer is JUST TO BE NON-DISCRIMINATORY, but since we are so focused on the greed of our ambitions of growth, becoming small and guaranteeing that is not something we care about. The cost is it leaves males wondering if they are now the ones at a disadvantage, and females doubting whether they earned their position. It’s an imperfect system in an imperfect world, but regardless you are here, and you competed against hundreds of thousands of others, so rest assured you’re more than worthy of your position; and if you’re a male, you’re male after all, toughen up, be a gentlemen and look out for the women in your group! You’re a technologist after all, it’s easier than ever to carve up your own path; if you don’t like it you’re free to go.

*the second to last sentence is an imperfect addendum in an imperfect world that will always be loose around the edges; I don’t think it creates any value to pretend it’s something it’s not.”

And a related response to another thoughtful commenter is this:

“My overall response to what you’re saying — and it’s not something I disagree with — is that the degree of response to this young man also must be just. It’s not just “about degree” — DEGREE IS EVERYTHING. What he’s been grappling with isn’t abnormal — and if the only response is over-reactions like what he received from the now-ex-googler who felt it was his job to bring down the hammer, I don’t think we’re gonna make any progress evolving humanity.

“Here’s the thing: when wrongs or violence (real or imagined or virtual) are acted upon someone, you are more inclined to feel for a victim who is a friend. That’s how empathy is developed. But if everyone is enemies (like Zunger just declared), both sides won’t see each other as friends and will have no motivation to understand each other. That’s why this young man doesn’t understand the pain women have gone through in the workplace, and it’s why women and men like Zunger don’t understand his. Not the pain he’s been through likely as a social outcast, and not the obvious pain of being virtually executed as he has been today. It’s shocking that people can’t put themselves in the shoes of said young men, and instead rejoice in his summary execution — especially when that’s exactly what they are asking of said young man. 2 wrongs don’t make a right. In fact, if this was a relationship and real life (not just a blog article Zunger can distance himself from), it’s usually the person who overreacts that ends up being far more in the wrong and having to clean up the mess (if she/he is a brave well-intentioned individual). If you’ve been in any sort of fight with your significant other and overreacted, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

“With no room for dialog, there is no understanding, and no evolution of viewpoints. Things absolutely can’t be black and white. Similar to good music and art being all about nuance to create a mood, to have any sort of effect, nuance and degree are paramount.

“Some people say “well, the line has to be drawn somewhere.” Definitely, there are cases where fighting back to avoid extinction is the only option. This isn’t one of them. Not the way Zunger handled it. And such circumstances are truly rare at the end of the day.

“The young man wrote a manifesto after all — that means he was open to dialog. In the above link I propose what he should have been told. Catch-22 or not [i.e. the commenter I was responding to pointed out that the manifesto writer put Google in a position of a catch-22, for if they now fired him, that only proves his point that Google isn’t truly inclusive], he can be assertively told why things are the way they are — and actually, there is no catch-22. There’s a reason these policies exist. I agree that a giant cancerous mega corp needs them. So they should simply be able to explain it to said young man. If they can’t, or their unofficial representatives can’t, without overreacting, that’s a problem. If they don’t understand how young males may struggle getting it, that’s really on them and a problem that may in fact be bigger at this point in time.

“Overall I didn’t find Zunger’s response very well thought out, but just a way to jump in a pool of automatic validation and be the hero where one wasn’t really needed — since after all Google does have these policies in place and is willing to act on them; I’m sure said young man will be fired. And no, I don’t think that the young kid or man deserves this sorta smackdown. It’s not right. I’m sorry, it’s just not. No matter, if it’s some manipulative catch-22 ploy by said young man [because said young man is struggling in the workplace because of his actions toward the opposite sex and the negative response from his superiors, and was manipulating to flip the script in his favor, as the commenter I responded to was guessing].

“If Google can’t come up with something to do with him, they’re lacking in imagination and just proves my point that giant centralized corps are on the outs. The young man isn’t Geoffrey Dommer and instead requires guidance. That level of engagement unfortunately is something you rarely find in society. What you get primarily is asshole patriarchal figures like Zunger Games. Keep that in mind when you think of young men — it’s not like the world is brimming with guidance for how to be a “modern man,” while the world is still figuring it out. [in essence, empathy is required at all levels to live up to the pursuit of inclusivity]

“Just take a moment and imagine this was your son. All of 23 years old and possibly social awkward. Imagine him younger, say 10 — where do you draw the line? Now, imagine he’s on the spectrum — after all, we are all on some sort of spectrum as nobody is a master of every circumstance. Would a profile picture that shows he clearly is autistic or has aspergers change things?

“What would you allow to be said to your son in this situation? Imagine your son is 10 and comes to you and says: ‘Mommy/Daddy, why do the girls get to go to the free after school tutoring program, but I don’t and I’m the one who’s failing?” What would you tell him. And at what age does it become unacceptable for him to even ask? Too much power has been given to said young man. He’s likely an insecure young man who just arrived in a workplace with these policies (even if that was 5 years ago), and has known no other. To cast him out as a social reject is bad policy. He will act out like a child you don’t truly engage.

“He’s not alone in the question he had — even for man in their 20s or 30s. Lots of men are wondering this same thing, especially as the world does evolve to incorporate these policies. We aren’t talking Don Drapers coming from a place of status like Zunger. We aren’t talking the scary men in positions of power that women feel psychological acts of violence from. All of this must be considered to have the most effective biggest picture thinking, and grow young men of the future who truly and innately get it. Who don’t feel an entitlement to the workplace over women. Who view women as equals.

“We’re creating the world as we speak, and there are no hard and fast rules (at least not on a public stage). So it’s detrimental that we’re as inclusive and cooperative as possible in ALL circumstances, rather than assume our point of view is so right that it justifies enacting virtual/psychological acts of violence towards another. That’s precisely the pain women feel based on previous work conditions (and current). If nothing else, Zunger made it ok to treat people like that when you feel justified.

“People every day feel justified in actions, only to either realize they’re wrong, or for everyone else to realize it. That’s the “catch-22” of allowing for such harsh over-reactions — you’re not always going to be “right.” If there is a “rule,” it should be that you should always leave room for error and to be wrong. Degree is important, process (how you go about things) is important. I’m sorry, this isn’t the process. It’s just not.

“Let me know your thoughts on what I proposed the response should be. Perhaps we can craft that together.”

---

So that’s the latest. I urge everyone to think with as big of a picture as possible when discussing this. This isn’t somehow some easy obvious topic, like Zunger indicated, conveniently allowing him to skip over it. If it was, this wouldn’t be happening. Manifestos wouldn’t be going out, you wouldn’t be hearing about it all year in the tech press. The policies wouldn’t exist in the first place. This is an opportunity for the tech world to really champion some challenging issues while showing the world both sides can come to a collective solution.

Lambasting either side isn’t the way. It makes zero sense for said young man to write the most thoughtful assessment he could come up with, and to be shutdown so harshly with zero explanation, given what I’ve pinpointed out about growing understanding men of the future. He truly doesn’t get it. And the other side truly doesn’t get that he doesn’t get it. Nobody gets anything because there is no communication. Everybody is enemies. Nobody is friends. Nobody has any natural motivation to empathize with the other side and understand their pain.

That’s all it would take for said young man to get why the policies are in place, and not end up writing a manifesto that frames women as less fit than men in the workplace. And if not him, at least the next young man.

Doing what Zunger did, as heroic as it might seem, just perpetuates a world where nobody is motivated to understand each other. What he has done creates enemies. And yes, there’s a place to draw the line, but degree is absolutely everything. I suggest to people who side with the young manifesto writer to seek to understand the psychological violence women feel is and has been enacted upon them throughout history by men assuming they are unfit, and I suggest to the women and men who don’t seem to understand this young man to recognize he’s not coming from a place of power like a CEO, he’s likely insecure, young, introverted and the only work world he has ever known is where there are policies which seem to put him at a disadvantage. (And also think of him as if he was your struggling child and Zunger just did this to him). In other words, he doesn’t recognize his own power/value. Neither side does.

Just maybe this young man could be a convert if he was talked to another way.

Lastly, the problem of the people of planet earth is simply that they retaliate too easily. If we don’t evolve past that, we’ll destroy the planet. Especially given how fast technology has evolved in the recent stint of peace that we take for granted.

Now, this comment sounds like basic common sense, i.e.: what about Damore's context?  Should that be taken into account a lot more before firing him?  And is it Google & Zunger's assumption that Damore is not amenable to correction where that may be warranted?  And is such an assumption an honest one?

I think the linked medium thread captures in a nutshell, at the level of metadata as it were, the way the left-ish quasi-egalitarian SJ/PC/D&I [sic] crowd tends to conduct itself in (sorry excuses for) debates.  The pattern repeats itself all over the place in the news.  They smeared Prof. Wax as a racist for her "bourgeois values" argument.  They smear Trump and his supporters all the time as racists, sexist, etc., and most often where they have no clear warrant in doing so.  I think it's all quite fucking shameful and anti-philosophical.  Now, are they open to correction wherever that is much warranted?  Well, there's the free-will answer - they ultimately have it within them to stop being such epistemically-unjust pieces of shit - and then there's the "what is the prevailing culture of leftish doctrine and practice nowadays" answer - i.e., they seem pretty steadfastly committed to remaining epistemically unjust pieces of shit for the foreseeable future, alarm bells ringing and all.

I think that if indeed it's Mr. Zunger's post more than Mr. Gillmore's (the latter's) that represents the mentality in Google's HR, then Google deserves every PR hit from this that it gets.  Zunger's rant may have the surface appearance (to the less discerning) of being solution-oriented, but it's not.  Whatever benefit Damore might have gotten from it is drowned out by the negativity of it and the jumping to various conclusions about him that have the actual function of being mean-spirited and destructive rather than constructive.  Gillmore's post is quite clearly more solution-oriented.

So basically the gist of today's leftish so-called 'diversity and inclusion' movement amounts to this: if you don't toe the line and accept the orthodox assumptions, if you challenge those assumptions (pointedly or otherwise), if you speak your mind as classic rules of free and open dialogue would encourage while presenting what is not obviously bad evidence that runs counter to the orthodox narrative, if you are basically intellectually honest in the process . . . that's not going to help you.  You are likely to be misrepresented, shamed, canceled, unplatformed, smeared, piled on, and generally treated with epistemically-unjust disrespect.  If you're a white male, you're likely to be told that you're coming from a standpoint of privilege and that you fail to empathize with those less privileged, and those telling you that will see no irony in any of this.

One of the virtues that many people see in Trump is his willingness to treat this horseshit for what it is: to call out those who engage in it as the ones who should be shamed for their dishonesty.  When Trump says he has no time for political correctness (sic), what he's actually saying is that he has no time for a culture of systemic dishonesty masquerading as being politically correct.  Damore wasn't being dishonest or disrespectful.  I can't say the same for Google or Zunger.

And that's really what all this comes down to.  Is the predominant intellectual culture of today's left (especially the further left you go) honest and respectful?  No, it is not.  It encourages scumminess toward those who don't toe the line, whatever their reasons for not assenting.  The pattern repeats itself so much and so often as to be unmistakable.  To bring up yet another example on top of the gobs of them already linked in this blog's postings: David Horowitz, ex-New Leftist.  Did his leftist former friends and colleagues treat his 'apostasy' with honesty and respect, or with malice and logically-slipshod/lazy or outright groundless shaming?  The latter(, of course).

But let's not forget about the source of what Google HR, the Demo-rats, the mural-erasing San Francisco school board, the Rand-bashers, the Sowell-ignorers, the Title IX kangaroo court managers, the 'diversity and inclusion' hypocrites, the rent-controllers, the race-hustlers, the #MeToo abusers/Swetnick-believers, the biological-males-in-women's-sports activists, CNN/MSDNC/NYT, the illegal immigration incentivizers, the suspiciously eager gun-grabbers, and the rest of the sorry bunch & enablers have been up to: All of this is egged on and made possible by the fundamentally, systemically dishonest Academic Left who've squandered every benefit of the doubt by this point.  (Let's not forget the hubris that leads them to the notion that those who disagree with them are invariably intellectually and morally inferior - and to their tailoring their response to uncomfortable triggering arguments/ideas accordingly, typically by characterizing them as worse than they are or were ever intended to be.)  If you suspect that someone like Damore is much more a victim than an offender in this affair, you would possess way more common sense and decency than this bunch of loathsome losers.

[Addendum: Is there a case in all fairness to be made for the defendant?  Well, how about this for fairness: Google gets just as much of a fair hearing as they gave Damore - which is to say, jack shit.  Got a problem with that?  How about this to boot: its CEO is a doubletalking, chickenshit appeaser who damn well oughtta know better what is required of treating people with basic decency and respect, as opposed to giving into blatantly obvious illogic and smears.  Treating Zunger and Gillmore even so much as on par with one another = Asshole.  [Alternatively: the cases for the defendant and plaintiff were already pretty much made by Zunger and Gillmore, respectively.  In the linked thread Zunger was cheered on by lesser, sloppy minds even though it's clear to any careful and honest observer which of the two had the upper hand in justice.  Zunger's case is roughly about as "good" as we can expect from the Google side (and note how one-sided it is while purporting to be fair-minded), and under Gillmore-like scrutiny the Google/Zunger case is despicable - and deep down every person of justice knows it, which is why so many are alarmed and pissed about this.  The NLRB having made an Orwellian-style determination in Google's favor changes none of this; it is out of its depth on the fundamental matter of justice/fairness here and it's sad to see "social justice" illogic spread into taxpayer-supported agencies.]]

[Addendum #2: Heterodox Academy carries out an analysis of the data/studies about the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis that the powers that be at Google were too cowardly, dishonest, and PC-whipped to conduct.  And to further contextualize, this critique of Damore's argument tries to be fair/charitable, and for the most part it is, but I don't think entirely.  (It's definitely better than Zunger's anti-charity bullshit.)  But whether it's entirely fair is pretty much neither here nor there in this context.  What this critique represents is something that Google didn't seem to even attempt before firing Damore without further inquiry, i.e., actually present a substantive critique.  And while this critique isn't presented in a format that gives the critique-ee (Damore) a chance to respond, revise, reconsider, relent, etc., Google certainly had a moral obligation to give him that chance, in the spirit of fair and honest dialectic or exchange of ideas in the common pursuit of truth, but can one reasonably conclude that Google did so?  Or is the reasonable conclusion that it was being chickenshit, dishonest, etc.?  You have my verdict on that.]

Why are Trump/GOP assholes re LGBT+ rights?

If there's anything the GOP obviously has a poor track record on, it's LGBT+ rights.  (Another would be too much blindness to real racial injustices, and that includes their hypocritical support for (predictably?) failed big-government "drug-war" policies that have disparate racial impacts.  Not that this vindicates the left all that much; they're the ones hypocritically pointing out the failures of big-government policies in only this one area, immediately crying racism whenever an "unarmed black teenager" is killed by police (e.g.), etc.)

From what reporting I've been seeing, the Trump administration is arguing in front of the Supreme Court against standard Civil Rights protections for LGBT+ people.  Here's something I find revealing in this context: while there's no shortage of Fox News links on any number of Google News topics, there aren't any on this subject, not on the first two pages of results, anyway.  If Fox News isn't reporting on it, chances are good that the activities involved are really too shameful for them to direct its audience's attention that way and to really air the Cultural-Political Right's laundry on this.

The Congress is chock-full of selectively attentive cowards who refuse to do the right thing when it comes to (a) ending federal cannabis prohibition (consider, e.g., the callousness and willful cluelessness involved toward medical cannabis users), and (b) updating the Civil Right act to include the same protections for LGBT+ people.  These are such no-brainer issues that it's not hard to figure out what the "right side of history" position is.  (Although see my tentatively-proposed position as a libertarian below.)  And it's GOP politicians who (on average, of course) are more toxic on these issues than those across the aisle.  (It's just too bad that the Demo rats bring so much credibility-destroying toxicity to just about any issue; see below, for example, on their anti-libertarian attitudes toward Christian bakers.  And good luck getting them to couch their arguments for weed legalization in the language of freedom rather than racial equity or [their perennial addiction] tax revenues.)  While it's believable that a Democrat-controlled Congress would do the right thing on these issues at some point in the not-distant future, I have a hard time believing that a GOP-controlled Congress would ever get around to doing so (unless they faced severe political repercussions for their shameful inaction).  [Edit: on a related note, would states like Texas ever have gotten around to repealing their sodomy laws (which are premised on the patently evil idea that people's lives are the state's and not their own to dispose of) on their own accord, absent SCOTUS intervention?]

If it were merely about the right of a baker to refuse baking a cake for a same-sex wedding, then we have an apparent clash of deep constitutional values.  (I say it's "apparent" because I don't see any warranted presumption that a business "open to the public" must do things that violate the religious convictions of the business-owner.  Also, the libertarian principle involved becomes more clear-cut when "bake my cake, bigot" morphs into "wax my balls, bigot.")  I don't see what clash of deep constitutional values is involved in the right of a business to fire someone on the basis of their sexual preference or gender identity when there are other relevantly-similar protected classes under prevailing law.  (Again as a libertarian, I say the presumption should be in favor of the right of a business to discriminate as long as it openly advertises its bigotry.  But I'm tentatively saying that it's a presumption, and that context matters in reasonably delimiting the scope of property rights.  No doubt some asshole business-owners would abuse this presumption to the maximal extent if given the chance....)

If you don't think anti-intellectualist, anti-liberal strains of religious dogma don't have something to do with this, then I would urge a look into attitudes toward LGBT+ rights in the Bible Belt.  Just because those attitudes aren't as shitty as they were a few decades ago, doesn't mean they still aren't shitty.

Have a look at Trump's shameful, anti-evidence behavior and policies (which go beyond the usual distractions associated with Trumpspeak) in this and some related areas.  Not only isn't he friendly toward LGBT+ rights as advertised, but he's also clearly blanket-Islamophobic. (From what I can tell, you might as well treat his and Pamela Geller's views on Islam as interchangeable).  (And while we might treat his 2016 campaign-season proposal to ban all Muslims entering the country as the usual casual-relationship-to-truth Trumpspeak which had little to zero chance of ever being implemented, along with his quickly-abandoned campaign-season proposals to kill the families of terrorists and bring back torture of terror suspects, the sentiment behind it is unquestionably Islamophobic.)  It isn't just a matter of the usual blustery things he says, but what he has done policy-wise.

And whether or not it affects his policy decision, when Trump contradicts himself from one time period to the next, as he has done most obviously on the cannabis-legalization issue, and doesn't explain himself, then that is evidence of bad faith and/or cynical pandering.  "It's just Trumpspeak" doesn't help when he unaccountably contradicts himself.  (Likewise, "Trump's saving grace is his ridiculous/unhinged/dishonest opposition," while quite arguably true, doesn't transform him into a non-asshole.)  (Likewise, one doesn't have to be one of these toxic-af radical trans activists - too toxic even for many on the "progressive" left - to recognize how transphobic and/or downright ignorant of transgenderism so many on the Cultural Right are; "God created two biological sexes" won't erase the distinction between sex and gender, for example.  How about this: there's plenty of toxicity to go around on this subject, coming from any number of directions.)

I'd just like to know, what these GOP people think is the upside to upholding (whether actively or by omission) the putative right of businesses to fire people for being gay, given their not upholding the right to do so in the case of biological sex, race, or religion.  And the philosopher's question: just how far, exactly, are they willing to go on this, before even they get ashamed and disgusted with themselves?  (My first philosopher's question for leftists would be: just how egregious, exactly, does a distortion or smear of Ayn Rand have to be, before even the leftists start calling foul?  They've been real lowlifes on this subject, as it is....)  Something specific, please.

[Addendum: An extension of the philosopher's questions: for those who aren't outright assholes, just how far, exactly, do their colleagues on their own side of the aisle have to go in being assholes, before the non-assholes start calling the assholes out?  (Or: how far, exactly, does the non-called-out asshole behavior have to go, before those failing to call out the assholes start becoming assholes themselves?  Something specific, goddammit.)]

[Addendum 10/12: Some common sense reasoning requiring little to no mental gymnastics in either (left/right) direction: Sexual orientation and gender identity are in the same category of 'immutable characteristics' that make sex, race, and religion protected classes under the Civil Rights Act.  How much, exactly, ahem does one need to read into the Civil Rights Act to see that it is about protected classes based on immutable characteristics and not only about those classes concretely enumerated in the Act?  Congress refuses to do the right thing here, after all....]

Chomsky, Dershowitz, and Taba

In 2005, notable adversaries on the Israel-Palestinian situation, Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz, debated the subject at Harvard. (TRANSCRIPT)  These are perhaps the most formidable opponents from each side on the issue, and once you cut through Dershowitz's abusive "Planet Chomsky" B.S. in the debate, they end up essentially in agreement on one thing: The Taba Summit was a laudable basis for a two-state mideast peace solution.

So . . . if these two adversaries can agree on that, then what the fuck is the holdup?  Huh?  I don't know what's more ridiculous, the stalling here or the stalling on the legalization of bud.  They're both obviously no-brainers.  If you will it, it is no dream; am I wrong?

"Checkmate, asshole."

"Checkmate, Israeli right wing; you're even more of an asshole than me."

Brian Leiter and Ayn Rand

This oughtta show up plenty high in the relevant Google search results.  Ain't the budding information age fun? :-D

(It's a bit unfortunate that I have to push yesterday's inauguration day / Ultimate Cliff countdown post downward in order to undertake today's trash-disposal responsibilities, but that's life.)

For those of you possibly out of the loop: Brian Leiter, Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values at the University of Chicago, blogs at Leiter Reports, the most widely-viewed philosophy blog on the internets.  (He bragged recently about getting some 11,000 hits a day there - a total that well exceeds what this here measly blog gets, although the audience for this one has been growing at a very fast exponential pace in recent months.  Gee, I wonder why?)  More than any other philosophy blog on the internet, Prof. Leiter's blog propagates news, information and opinion of interest to the nation's (and the world's) ideas-merchants and their students, which impacts the future course of the intelligentsia, which in turn impacts the direction of society-at-large.  How well does Prof. Leiter fulfill his obligations in this regard, as a public-intellectual figure?

For those who follow his blog - for me, it's a necessary part of keeping tabs on the goings-on in the intellectual world, although more on the order of janitorial duty (cleaning out the toilet, say) - he has only nasty things to say about Ayn Rand, a figure who - 30 years after her passing - continues to exercise a growing influence on American public life.  The latest incident, posted earlier today, continues that pattern, this time linking to that amateurish Salon piece which I discussed a couple days ago.  Now, I don't really know how much Prof. Leiter keeps up on this here blog if at all (although if he doesn't, that would indicate a failure to fulfill his intellectual obligations, given that the highest responsibility of philosophers is to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge).  His one public acknowledgment of this here philosopher was nearly two years ago in the comments section of another philosophy blog, referring to this here philosopher as "a deranged Ayn Rand fanatic," with no supporting evidence or argument - just a flat one-sentence assertion.  I say all this because I am in no position to divine whether or not Prof. Leiter is trolling yours truly with the latest bit of anti-Rand nastiness.  Whether he is or not, he only digs himself deeper in the eyes of history.

Prof. Leiter already has a well-earned reputation for conducting himself in arrogant, abusive, bullying ways in his blog and perhaps elsewhere, but his treatment of Ayn Rand in particular is well beyond the pale of minimally decent discourse.  This is part and parcel of his characteristically nasty treatment of almost anything and anyone right-of-center politically, including conservatives, libertarians, the capitalist economic system, or proponents of Americanism.  (It's abundantly clear to regular watchers of his blog that Prof. Leiter does not particularly care for this country.)  In this respect, he's a virtual self-parody of the leftist, anti-American, anti-capitalist, young-mind-polluting academic of right-of-center lore.  Were this nation's right-wing media aware of this Leiter entity (as they should be, out of a commitment to journalistic excellence and responsibility to the viewer/listener), and of how he so clearly epitomizes such odious perspectives, they would not only be appalled but you'd probably never hear the end of it.  (As it is, not being all that well clued in to the role of the mind in human existence, they have been focusing on a chief symptom of the nation's ills - our head of state - rather than the root cause: the nature of the intellectuals.)

There is something about Ayn Rand that has the political Left in this country running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off.  It's like they simply cannot bring themselves to treat her ideas with the respect it in fact deserves, or with the fundamental fairness that ought to be accorded any thinker's ideas.  Their bad-faith (to put it lightly) smearing of Rand over her youthful "admiration" (if it could even be called that) for a certain facet of a murderer's personality, completely divorced from the context of her lifelong intellectual progression, should be a tip-off right there that not all is well in the intellectually-inclined ranks of the political Left when it comes to characterizing those they perceive to be on "the other side."  But that is only one incident among many.  It is a constant, pathological pattern of smears, outright lies, malice, bad faith, evasion, fear, hysteria, incomprehension (often obstinate), ignorance (often willful), mean-spiritedness, mockery, bigotry, hatred, disrespect, abuse, guilt-by-association, context-flouting, selective focus, and what have you.  And it appears to be Ayn Rand that brings out the worst in these people, in inverse proportion to the true value of the unknown ideal that resides within the grotesquely disfigured strawman they create.

If you want to get into something like the hermeneutics of suspicion here, to uncover the cognitive and psychological biases that underlie this despicable behavior even among "leading intellectuals," my best guess is that it is a subconscious defense mechanism against a perceived enemy who poses the most potent threat to their leftist paradigm.  (And they would be right about that.)  They might - and often do - consciously deny that Ayn Rand is much of a real threat in her own right - Leiter has referred to Ayn Rand on numerous occasions as "an intellectual lightweight" and "a pea-brain" - and instead focus on the threat that her influence on millions of readers poses to their leftist paradigm.  To rationalize away the merits behind her influence, they have to dig their heels in deeper and attribute that influence to intellectual shortcomings on the part of those millions of readers.  "It's a youthful phase" or "it's a justification for selfishness and feelings of superiority that the assholes in society find appealing," and other such worthless ad hominem attacks.  In typical partisan and psychologically-projective fashion, the leftists might try to justify their reaction to Rand on the grounds of her admittedly piss-poor attacks on the great majority of historically-significant philosophers (Kant especially).  This simply won't fly, because it's glass-house-dwellers hurling stones at a house that is only partially adorned by windows.  Polemics is a major blind spot in Rand's case (though the underlying causes of this can be understood if you look at her context - whom she had the opportunity to engage in discussions, the intellectual atmosphere of her time, and so forth; what's their excuse?).  But there's nothing in her polemics, save arguably for her analysis of Kant's alleged psychological techniques, that comes close to the outright viciousness that these leftist "intellectuals" engage in.  It's suspicious enough when so-called intellectuals ignore or casually dismiss Rand as not being worth their time, but otherwise have the good sense and decency to keep their yaps shut; it's a different level altogether when they behave exactly as hired partisan political goons do, and engage in the lowest of cheap shots and smear tactics.  I'm not talking gutter-low here, I'm talking sewer-low.  And these thugs have the nerve to call themselves philosophers?

I want to propose a thought experiment of a certain kind, as I conduct for myself on a regular basis.  It involves a hypothetical situation (not altogether different from Rawls's Original Position, although it involves actual historical figures) in which this or that set of historically-influential philosophers all gather in the same room (or on the same parapet) and hash things out.  The group could be as small or as large as imagination permits.  It could be limited only to philosophy's "Big Three" - Plato, Aristotle, and Kant - and the emerging consensus among them would be quite amazing, I should think - perfectivist, even.  (Did I mention that you can't refute perfectivism?  It would have to be invoked or implicitly relied upon in any attempt to trump it argumentatively.  It's no accident that this here philosopher is the one to discover this principle (inductively, of course, as you see by reviewing the array of contextually-fundamentally-similar individuals whom I list in my brief "Perfectivism: An Introduction" article.).  This here philosopher is not one to be fucked with, as the likes of Prof. Leiter will come to learn the hard way, in due course.)  Another thought experiment involves all those depicted in The School of Athens, although an updated version of that scenario would almost certainly include some ladies (Ayn Rand, for example).

Now, for this particular thought experiment, imagine Brian Leiter showing up at an annual meeting of the Ayn Rand Society.  He goes right up to Allan Gotthelf, James Lennox and Fred Miller - three leading scholars of Aristotle, two of them published by the top university press, Oxford (one of them by the ultimate in academic prestige, Oxford's Clarendon Press), and one of them on the faculty of the #2-ranked graduate philosophy program in America (#3 in the world when you include Oxford's) - and he says right to their faces, "Rand is such a lightweight who can't possibly compare to Aristotle, so why do you even bother with her?"  He'd be making fucking fool out of himself, would he not?  If he had a sense of honor, integrity, decency, and courage, he'd go up to such people (online or in person) and engage them in a mutually-respectful and truth-seeking dialogue.  But would he dare?  He'd have to clean his act way up first, else he'd look like a fucking fool.

Except that he makes himself a fucking fool doing what he's doing now, on his widely-disseminated blog, by belittling and bashing Ayn Rand in terms that would get him squashed like a cockroach at an Ayn Rand Society meeting, by people who actually know what Ayn Rand really advocated - people who understand Rand in terms she herself would recognize, the way Brian Leiter presumably understands Nietzsche in terms Nietzsche himself would recognize, as against so many ignorant caricatures.  (For a sizable list of such Rand scholars, see the literature I list here.)

Brian Leiter is a coward, not a worthy fucking adversary.  He might be all great when it comes to Nietzsche or philosophy of law or what have you, but he shits his credibility away when he doesn't consistently integrate his careful scholarly interpretative methods into all his "philosophic" endeavors.  A self-styled "philosopher" bashing that which he's too lazy to even try to understand, is a fool.  The only question now is who among his professional colleagues has the guts and the wisdom to call him out on his cognitive vice.  Who out there does care about her or his intellectual reputation and is willing to do the right thing by speaking up?

"Checkmate, asshole."

Ayn Rand vs. ignorant "liberal" idiots

When it comes to Ayn Rand, the self-styled open-minded more-enlightened-than-thou "liberals" in the country today show their true colors, and they aren't pretty.

The latest case in point:
"Ayn Rand is for Children" at Salon.com, dated today.

It's the usual (childish!) silliness passing for hard-hitting analysis, nothing that us veterans of internet culture-wars haven't seen recycled ignorantly thousands of times already and upvoted by the reddiotic circlejerk to the point of self-parody.  That link points to the /r/politics subreddit, which is filled to the brim with intellectually-lazy partisans who give not the slightest shit about truth or justice but about what's popular, and reddiot's social-metaphysical upvote/downvote format only encourages it.  But wait until you see the /r/"philosophy" subreddit, where there's no excuse whatsoever for this kind of ignoble/vicious behavior.  But it gets worse: Even the leading "philosophy" blogger in the academic profession, Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago, and scores of vile little like-minded leftist cronies in that very profession, get in on the disgraceful, shameful act.  I think of these particular academic-world assholes as the Lance Armstrongs of the philosophical profession: they have managed successfully to keep up the illusion of objectivity and integrity, but it won't last; it can't last, not as long as the truth can get out and justice prevails in this world.  (If they are forward-looking enough, as they're supposed to be as philosophers, they cannot fail to recognize that in the extra-advanced information age that is the coming generation, all their public evasions can and will be fully exposed and assessed, as is happening right here, a good deal ahead of the curve.  I can't think of any way around that eventuality short of species-wide technological collapse and/or extinction - and I've been giving this subject a reasonably good deal of thought.)

It's not even like these "liberal" intellectual thugs care about a fair fight.  Cowards!  Weaklings!  BUMS!  What psychological syndrome might explain this pathological pattern of behavior?  One libertarian philosophy professor with a great deal of affinity toward Rand once explained to me that it pretty much boils down to politics: if Rand had (incomprehensibly) somehow been on the left politically while everything else about her remained the same, the academy and the rest of the Left would have welcomed her with open arms, especially given her demonstrable intellectual prowess (to anyone who'll look with an open mind - the "workshop" appendix to Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology being a nice readily-accessible example if it in action).  I'm about 98% sure this professor has it right.  (Yet another instance highlighting the sorry state of affairs here appears in a 2012 piece at the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Being the kind-hearted, take-no-prisoners, suffers-no-fools-gladly gentleman that I am, I contacted the author of this piece a few days back (under a real-nym) to correct him on his errors by providing abundant contrary evidence; the response so far has been, shall we say, unsatisfactory, yes? - to put it mildly.  Maybe he's too busy; I don't know.  But that published piece sucks swamp ass regardless.)

I mean, c'mon: Jimmy Wales is a child, as today's Salon article unequivocally implies?

That these kinds of articles continue to flow even to this day from supposedly enlightened liberal news-and-opinion websites, in light of the growing academic/professional literature on Rand (see the Ayn Rand Society for example - lots of adults there, some of them leading Aristotle scholars, several of them on the faculty of highly-ranked philosophy programs), says a lot more about these so-called liberals than they do about Rand.

About this author:

"David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future.""

Oh, he sounds like he's really got some philosophical chops.  Chances are 0% that he so much as emailed or called someone up at the Ayn Rand Institute for comment.  These "liberal" pieces of shit never do.

Such so-called liberals' constant hysterical strawman reactions to Rand have gotten to the point of being comical (among those with a clue, or among those who don't evade stone-cold facts). Do they really have nothing better to offer than what the university professors seriously studying Rand have been offering, which has been overwhelmingly positive?

It's too bad Ayn Rand isn't still around, because there's no way these people would would be getting away with this blatant idiocy.  How does it happen as it is?  It's because of the intellectuals.  As they go, so goes the nation.  No wonder the public discourse in this country is so fucked up.  I'll supplement this supremely judicious rant by quoting Rand from that link about the intellectuals, as it is way too good not to:

[The intellectuals] are a group that holds a unique prerogative: the potential of being either the most productive or the most parasitical of all social groups.

The intellectuals serve as guides, as trend-setters, as the transmission belts or middlemen between philosophy and the culture. If they adopt a philosophy of reason—if their goal is the development of man’s rational faculty and the pursuit of knowledge—they are a society’s most productive and most powerful group, because their work provides the base and the integration of all other human activities. If the intellectuals are dominated by a philosophy of irrationalism, they become a society’s unemployed and unemployable.

From the early nineteenth century on, American intellectuals—with very rare exceptions—were the humbly obedient followers of European philosophy, which had entered its age of decadence. Accepting its fundamentals, they were unable to deal with or even to grasp the nature of this country.

The intellectual Establishment of today isn't dominated by a philosophy of irrationalism, although it is dominated by a number of bad trends that undercut its usefulness to the society-at-large and its progress toward better conditions.  Aside from the ugly political aspect of things, there's that thing about the American intellectuals having been unduly influenced by European philosophy when Aristotelian philosophy has always been the best intellectual paradigm in terms of the health of societies (and home-grown pragmatism hasn't been cutting it - not when it fails to identify eudaimonic self-actualization as the primary aim of ethical conduct and intellectual excellence as the key to all of human virtues).  Added to that is the trend among intellectuals to oppose capitalism as if out psychological and sociological instinct.  That ties in with Rand's observation that this nation's so-called intellectuals were unable to deal with or grasp the nature of this country.  Hell, take a look at prevailing contemporary constitutional jurisprudence in contrast to a commonsense Jeffersonian-Paineist-Spoonerite-Barnettian natural-rights jurisprudence for a sign of the intellectual corruption involved.

(I mean, shit! - Congress could prohibit alcohol if it wanted to, on the very same grounds that the Supreme Court upheld cannabis prohibition in Gonzalez v. Raich (which built upon the bullshitty Wickard decision covering what's-not-interstate-commerce) - even though Prohibition was repealed once already (prior to Wickard, that is)!  That's ass-u-ming that SCOTUS wouldn't bullshit its way into some squaring of this screwy circle in order to keep Congress from doing that.  This absurd state of affairs could be cleared up quickly and easily on Jeffersonian grounds.  But wtf do I know, I'm not a lawyer, just a measly philosopher whose chief credential is a non-peer-reviewed blog.  Speaking of "peers," is Scumbag Leiter one of them?  Derek Parfit, perhaps?  Who "peer-reviewed" Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche, anyway?  I'm just asking questions here.)

Signs of health in the intellectual community would include the re-emergence of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics in the academy (some decades after Rand had been on the cutting edge in this area, mind you) and the decline of Marxism into near-irrelevance.  These are no-brainers, however.  A chief indicator of dysfunction, on the other hand, I pointed to in a very recent posting: the most-unfortunate failure by the academy to connect with and make itself relevant to the People.  The People desperately need education in philosophy - in critical thinking, in intellectual curiosity, and not only Aristotelianism or Randism in particular (although Aristotle and Rand would be the first to do all in their power to mobilize the intellectuals into relevance) - else the populace becomes anti-intellectual and public discourse suffers accordingly.

And that is how widely-viewed websites like Salon.com end up publishing idiotic commentaries on one of the nation's most influential and controversial thinkers of the day, and who knows what else.  It is also how our current Head of State comes not understand jack shit about Ayn Rand (although I'm sure he could recite Rawls chapter and verse based on what he absorbed there at Hahhhvuhd).   The people all across the fruited plain deserve a decent, fair, well-informed discussion among its leading ideas-merchants - especially those in academe - about societally-influential and controversial ideas that inform their lives and political trends.  When the academy fails miserably - and I mean miserably - to deliver on their implicit and explicit promises to fulfill their professional and human obligations in this regard, righteous anger on the People's behalf is a perfectly normal and completely justified response.

This stuff should be a no-brainer.  Scholars at the Ayn Rand Society have figured this stuff out.  (Rand had it figured out more than 50 years ago, for crying out loud!)  Why can't the rest of the intelligentsia?  The sooner they get their act together, the sooner we all reach the cultural, technological and whatever other Singularities.  Foot-dragging is not an acceptable option.  It's not some goddamn mistake that ultimatephilosopher.com points right to this here expletive-filled blog, which has "ayn rand" and "integration" as the largest-lettered labels in the sidebar and a link to incestuous lesbians in the "about me" section, not to mention a treasure-trove of wisdom spread out over some 250ish blog entries now.  Now how about getting fucking clue, any of you professional intellectuals reading this - and that goes especially for you so-called high-minded liberals among you - and get your asses in gear for the sake of the future well-being of humanity.  At the very least, think of the children! ;-)

What would Aristotle do (aside from wiping the floor with Rand-bashing idiots and himself-point-missers)?  (Remember, kids: boundless intellectual curiosity as the root source of great-souledness.)

Now go, go, for the good of the city!

("Yes, UP, for the thousandth time, integration is fun. :-|")

P.S. For an example of an honorable leftish-liberal media figure, try Glenn Greenwald.  He's had the very good sense (as is standard for him) not to enter the Rand-criticism fray or to so much as mention Rand beyond his demolition of Paul Ryan, a politician (ew!) and Romney-sidekick (yuck!) who, as Greenwald correctly mentions, bears little resemblance to a Randian hero.  Greenwald was the primary draw, for me, to Salon's website on a regular basis, before he moved over to the UK Guardian.  For anyone who has observed Good Guy Glenn in action, he never loses an argument.  Why?  Because when he speaks on a subject, he knows what the fuck he's talking about.  There's a key rule for how to win arguments: know more about the issue than your opponent does.  It's worked for me: I've never lost an argument about Rand, for instance.  Something something impossible to refute perfectivism....