Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for August 03, 2020OT/LE

submitted by rwkastenBring on the dancing horses from self.CultureWarRoundup

sorted by:
new (suggested)
topinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Matt Taibbi: The New Puritans

The College Democrats explained that a major part of Morse’s offense was that he sought the contact information of students at their events:

Mayor Morse came to College Democrats of Massachusetts events and got to know our membership, and then sought out students that he met at our events privately on social media, in a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate intimacy.

If you’re wondering if it’s possible that the College Democrats seemingly just defined communicating on social media as a kind of sexual act, you’re not wrong. It got worse. In their letter to Morse, the group explained that when Morse wrote to those adult students – who, of course, gave Morse their contact info voluntarily – they lacked the free will to ignore his communications:

We have heard ​countless​ stories of Morse adding students to his ‘Close Friends Story’ and Direct Messaging members of College Democrats on Instagram in a way that makes these students feel pressured to respond due to his status…

American college students, it seems, are so intimidated by someone with a political job title that they lack the agency to ignore an Instagram shout-out. The College Democrats elaborated (emphasis mine):

Mayor Morse is a widely-admired and well-connected gatekeeper to progressive politics in Massachusetts and nationally, which makes the task of refusing his advances fraught for college students who wish to enter progressive politics themselves… the Mayor’s various positions of power create a significant and undeniable power imbalance between himself and the college students he sought out… where such a lopsided power dynamic exists, consent becomes complicated.

This is not a sexual harassment issue in the classic sense of someone who actually has power over someone else, for instance in the workplace or in a classroom. The concept here is that students who might “wish to enter progressive politics” will feel uncomfortable refusing, or even just not answering, so mighty a personage as the Mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, for fear of what that might do to their job prospects someday, in a field they have not even chosen yet.

[–]rwkastenBring on the dancing horses[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

on Instagram in a way that makes these students feel pressured to respond due to his status

Here's one tell. Through the lens of "hopelessly addicted to status attained via narcissism-enabling social media apps", these students are absolutely correct. That someone could just not be so hopelessly addicted is a foreign concept. These are the bastard children of Jack and the Zucc.

who wish to enter progressive politics themselves

And there's the other one. Of course every progressive is very, very interested in politics; to be seen not to be means you're a bad progressive. So you have a bunch of 21 year olds lecturing a 31 year old about his consent conduct, and in a way, they are absolutely correct to do so. In the mad maze that is the progressive religion, the youngsters are on the right side of the priests here.

This would not be the case if Morse was fucking townies or wasn't such a bright progressive champion himself, but he chose to pursue sex in a snakepit he helped create and enable, and I think it just that the snakepit is now rejecting him.

And Taibbi is once again trying to destroy the progressive house with liberal tools, like this has ever worked once in the past decade. Maybe someone should inject his next red pill with a drop of black.