An Email from Medium Trust & Safety

And why I'm thrilled Elon Musk bought Twitter today.

A love comment from a user on Medium the other day.

Medium’s Trust and Safety reminded me of the platform’s rules tonight. To advise me that, “Medium exists to move the conversation forward.” That if things get out of hand, step back. Let things simmer down.

I guess someone complained from a couple of woke posts I commented on Friday or Saturday.

I’m tired of cow-toeing to online personalities who decree their opinion the right and only one allowed. That’s the definition of online bullying.

Medium said they want writers to share their stories and allow others to express their viewpoints.

“The ability for people to confidently and comfortably share these personal stories is of paramount importance to our mission as a service.”

I could not agree with this more.

Harassment or Personal Attacks

They had a “however/but” in their message. To them, discourse and disagreement are part of the process and are often necessary. Just don’t have any discourse or escalated disagreements or we’ll ban you, is the implication.

“... we do not allow harassment or personal attacks. We ask that you help our community by disengaging before conversation reaches the point of conflict, and treat others with respect.”

They then asked that if I find content I feel violates the rules please block the user and move on.

A Kind Notice Indeed

I appreciate them writing to me. In my reply, I noted as much.

Someone must have sent in a complaint to refutations I made over the weekend on a couple of one-sided rants. Ones about blatant dis- and misinformation that the courts or news reports resolve.

I did not go searching for these posts. They appeared in my feed. I read the pieces, and they were what I imagine to be like watching a one-sided segment on CNN.

And so, for each erroneous point, I offered a counterpoint.

The next morning I awoke to the kind message at the beginning of this piece.

This is why I’m glad Elon Musk bought Twitter

I did not take a screenshot of this vile response until I wrote this piece tonight.

There is no intention on my part to file a complaint about their response.

This is how the person feels. There is passion, misguided as it is. A gauge of how things are in the mind of this person. And from the claps in support, and other comments in the thread, how several others feel.

I’m thankful that I’m not filled with such rage.

And I replied to the Trust and Safety people, this person may say such, offensive and erroneous as it is. Big-Tech has become too eager to remove comments and people like this from online discussions.

Twitter’s record of censorship, its CEO’s disdain for the 1st Amendment, and more are the reasons that Elon Musk just forked over $44 Billion to acquire the company and take it private.

I am glad Musk announced today that he has bought Twitter. This kind of B.S. needs to stop.

The Domination of the Woke and Identity Politics

For too long now, identity politics has gained too much influence. Twitter is a platform where a minority who scream and shout until they get their way dominates. Censorship is rampant there. Say something someone disagrees with, and you’re a bigot, racist, white supremacist, blah, blah, blah.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran a brilliant editorial today written by a political science professor, who talks about identity politics. The impact it is having on America.

Professor Bradley Gitz writes:

“The identity-politics model becomes both unchallengeable in the sense of acquiring complete dominance of the public discourse and non-falsifiable in the sense of being impervious to any kind of empirical refutation.

“An ensuing rejection of intellectual life occurs because the adopted explanatory framework tolerates no dissent and demands only enthusiastic endorsement (or else). It already has all of the answers (much like the Marxist framework from so much of contemporary “anti-racist” thinking, often unwittingly, derives, with any critics dismissed for suffering from a form of false consciousness that blinds them from their own racism and sexism). You end up with a closed-loop which leaves no room for any inquiry (research) that doesn’t begin with identity-politics assumptions and lead to identity-politics conclusions."

Gitz then cites American writer and academic professor Michael Lind.

“If you are an intelligent and thoughtful young American, you cannot be a progressive intellectual today, any more than you can be a cavalry officer or a silent movie star. That’s because, in the third decade of the 21st century, intellectual life on the American center-left is dead. Debate has been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned: Black Lives Matter, Green Transition, Trans Women are Women, 1619, Defund the Police.”

Gitz says that after this, we have nothing to discuss. No truth to seek. “All you need to know about someone is the color of their skin and what gender they identify with—we are only what we look like.”

He boils all the noise and distorted way of thinking down to: “Most Americans don’t think they are racist or that the country they love is pervaded by systemic racism or defined by white supremacy. They don’t like racial quotas (even if disguised under the euphemism of equity), don’t want people judged by the color of their skin, and don’t believe their lives have been defined by privilege or oppression.”

This cultural revolution is a disaster that Americans did not want.

But like professor Gitz concludes, “What (we) want no longer matters.” This is the real threat to our democracy. Such wise words have not entered the public domain in a long time.

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