“Twitter suspends Babylon Bee for naming Rachel Levine ‘Man of the Year’” (New York Post):
Twitter locked the account of a right-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, after it awarded Rachel Levine, the transgender Biden administration official, the title of “man of the year.”
The Babylon Bee story was a reaction to USA Today’s naming of Levine, who is US assistant secretary for health for the US Department of Health and Human Services, as one of its “women of the year” last week.
Twitter says it will restore the account, which has more than 1.3 million followers, if the Bee deletes the tweet, but CEO Seth Dillon says he has no intention of doing so.
Apparently, Mr. Dillon was not unpersoned and could still tweet:
My question concerns the requirement that the Babylon Bee heretics delete their own tweet. Why didn’t Twitter’s orthodoxy enforcers delete it once they noticed the thoughtcrime?
A Facebook friend’s take on the original story:
it’s a meta-joke. The joke isn’t that he’s a man, the joke is that saying so is such a transgression of the orthodoxy that everyone immediately reacts, “omg, I can’t believe they said that” and bans them from social media
Is it an important part of the healing process for a thoughtcriminal to delete his/her/zir/their own tweet?
Related:
- “Facebook and Twitter restrict controversial New York Post story on Joe Biden” (Guardian, October 14, 2020): Twitter said it was limiting the article’s spread due to questions about “the origins of the materials” included in the article, which contained material supposedly pulled from a computer that had been left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. … Facebook, meanwhile, placed restrictions on linking to the article, saying there were questions about its validity. “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation,” said a Facebook spokesperson, Andy Stone.
> Is it an important part of the healing process for a thoughtcriminal to delete his/her/zir/their own tweet?
It is! In a proper struggle session the dissident must be publicly humiliated, read his/her/zir/their self criticism and display contriteness.
Facebook is down 30% from its high. Now half of the American population has to leave Facebook and Twitter and watch both to drop another 50%. Facebook and Twitter should welcome this. No price is too high for moral superiority and safe spaces!
Excellent point, Phil –though orthodoxy demands a public confession of sin — the soul must be cleansed, like when you go to confession, Phil. The public humiliation serves as a warning to others and thereby the miscreant will endeavor not to sin again. See Yuri Slezkine’s (monumental) The House of Government, examples in the Soviet context throughout.
“The End of History and the Last Man (woman/they/zir)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man
“The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book of political philosophy by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama which argues that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)—humanity has reached “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government
Now the Russian Bear has gone off he/she/they/zir meds and failed End of History 101 as they skipped English class and did not bother themselves to read the book and do their homework.
It’s important because it validates Twitter’s accusation. Even once convicted, most people continue to proclaim their innocence and we’ve seen that recently from Smolett in his courtroom rant, which we could only be watching in ClownWorld – but we are!
In this way, Twitter has positive affirmation from the convicted that they have accepted and internalized the verdict so that the “next time” they cannot claim: “It was a disagreement between Twitter and the Babylon Bee and we never acknowledged our guilt by deleting our own post. It remains a disagreement.”
That’s unacceptable behavior, also.
In other words, it has less to do with the “healing process” of the thoughtcriminal than the absolute validation of the powers of the accuser. They couldn’t care less whether the writers for the Babylon Bee continue merrily along as they are chased around by the folks with the rubber rooms, straight jackets, butterfly nets and Thorazine needles. They want affirmation of their standards as a necessary precondition for Twitdemption.
Remember the elementary school teachers ‘You ran in the hall now go back and walk.’ Brainwashing 101.
We just elected a right-wing nut to our local school board who thinks schools shouldn’t have rules, because rules = mandates and mandates are bad. We should only “advise” kids and parents but they can decide to do whatever they please.
Is that you John?
Mike, your definition of “right wing nut” seems to be “freedom – minded”.
Mike: You describe the principle of the Summerhill School (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School), which was founded by communists and socialists.
Men are apparently better at being women than even women are. But somehow acknowledging that is fighting the patriarchy. Or something.
If there were a “transvestite of the year” category, these Twitter arguments could be avoided.
You awful thoughtcriminal. Transvestite needs to be removed from the lexicon. If you think you are a woman, then you are a real woman. Same as any other woman. Just ask a scientist. Or the newspaper of record. Simply ask any educated superb person in an esteemed high place.
Olympic committee uses repressive binary buckets for medal allocation. We need more buckets.
Twitter is an overpromoted weekend project, nothing more. It needed to die a long time ago, but now would be fine, too.
Some questions I’ve had but don’t dare tweet about for fear of offending the #TwitterZeitgeist. Maybe our host philg can help explore these religious issues?
1. Can cisgender males rebrand themselves as trans lesbian men to score some diversity points? Would it help in custody disputes during the divorce of a formerly cisgendered couple if the XY-contributor could also claim co-equal status as Heather’s trans lesbian mommy?
2. If someone is gender fluid, what is the appropriate frequency to ask them for their pronouns? Monthly? Weekly? Daily? Every few minutes? Could pronoun declarations be improved by adding an explicit ttl? I’m thinking something like: Pat (they/them, ttl=1 week) instead of the customary (they/them). Is the reason Apple and Google haven’t already built this into the contact managers on our phones evidence of unconscious temporal rigidity and demonstration of an anti-fluidity bias?
3. Why do people apparently insist on gender and quantity congruence with pronouns between the nominative and possessive pronouns? Why always he/him, she/her, they/them, xi/xir? Would it be more _trans_gressive and fluid to select he/her, or she/them, etc.? Cisbigots would be more likely to mess this up, and he/she/they could be righteously canceled?
4. Could a person identify as having hyper-fluidity such that whatever pronouns someone else ends up using was, ipso facto, wrong, and thus worthy of calling down a twitter mob for his/her/xir/their hate?
Thank you for introducing the concept of ttl for pronouns, we definitely need pronoun name servers!
Regarding 3., the unfortunate reality is that “ze” already has two declensions, “ze/zir” and “ze/hir”:
https://www.mypronouns.org/ze-hir
I suppose declensions of “he/she/they” are currently listed explicitly out of solidarity with the oppressed “ze” (which has to list them because of ambiguity), but you are right that there should be more fluidity in this area in general!
The other 1984-esque feature that Twitter (and Reddit) have is that they don’t ban people. Rather, they place them in permanent suspension. There is no way to be removed from permanent suspension, so I don’t understand why they are being obtuse about this.
Another topic that gets ring-wingers, including “Dr” Phil in an uproar. This must be the Putin-selected Russian-bot topic of the week on social media.
Quite frankly I don’t care what people identify as. Doesn’t impact me one bit. I won’t go up to a transgendered person, wag my finger in their face, and say, “You are confused.” Why won’t I? I don’t care, doesn’t affect me. You do you transgendered person.
I’ll stand by the Bee’s rights to be an asshole. That’s generally what being right-wing is nowadays — being an asshole and not expecting any consequences.
At my workplace (~80% Republican) we have a running joke that any asshole we encounter is a Republican. The Republicans there have taken it in stride and it is even a source of pride.
“Doesn’t impact me one bit.”
Does enough to post about it on a right-wing asshole blog.
Sam: I reject the title of “right-wing” for this blog! First, I reject the concept of a “left-right” spectrum in American politics. Neither political party has any coherent philosophy. As F.A. Hayek (a Nobel laureate, like Obama!) noted in The Road to Serfdom, “Scarcely anybody doubts that we must continue to move toward socialism, and most people are merely trying to deflect this movement in the interest of a particular class or group” (Introduction). Second, this blog is mostly a quest for understanding. I don’t advocate for any particular political point of view. Like my fellow Floridians, I assume that people rationally vote their interests and that financial interests are primary (e.g., someone working at a university will therefore vote for Democrats since Democrats promise to increase taxpayer funding for university tuition and research). I wouldn’t, therefore, expect to persuade anyone to change his/her/zir/their political position.
The Russian Bear knows exactly what she is doing. She’s been around for a millenium and has already recovered from the socialist disease (aka “liberal democracy” which is neither democracy nor liberal) and is now suppressing yet another national socialist outbreak threatening her people.
from Theodore Dalryple:
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Many here seem really confused about the left-right political divide maybe this will help.
https://voxday.net/2022/03/22/the-satanic-world-order/
A satirical comment is “hateful conduct”, but the Azov brigades have a Twitter account and are platformed on CNN:
https://nitter.net/ggreenwald/status/1506257928717750276#m
There is no left/right in politics any more. In Europe that distinction has been destroyed by Blair/Schroeder, who were token leftists but implemented pro-corporate and pro-war policies.
I do not know when it exactly happened in the U.S. (Bill Clinton?), but the current leftism is all about corporate/academic power, interest groups and giving cozy positions to friends and family. Everyone who still thinks in 2022 that the left actually cares about Black, Trans or Latinx people is an idiot or resides in an academic ivory tower.
In any society, you can tell who has the power by observing who you can publicly make jokes about. In China you can’t make jokes about Xi. In Iran you can’t make jokes about Khamenei. In North Korea you can’t make jokes about Kim Jong-un. In America you can’t make jokes about….
Question #1: Can a convicted “he” criminal identify as “she” criminal and thus request be transferred to a women only correction facility?
Question #2: Can a convicted “his/her/zir/their” criminal, every other month / week identify as a different gender and thus request be transferred to/from women/men correction facility?
Question #3: What is the LGBTQ++ community stands with inmates who are incarcerated? After all inmates have rights in this country.