Chairman Pao's Little Reddit Book
During this American Independence Day, I think of America's historical identity. Part of America's greatness was in its industrial giants. Men such as Henry Ford. Henry Ford was born on a farm and quickly developed a mechanical ability. He went into engineering and he birthed the auto industry. Millions of lives were changed for the better around the world due to his brilliance.
Now America's industry has been mostly outsourced to the Third World. The industry that remains mostly revolves around financial scams or internet fads. And many of the modern business leaders tend to be frauds that don't even understand the business that that they lead.
Once such example of modern America is Reddit. Reddit is a popular social networking and news site.
Reddit is now led by a Social Justice Warrior named Ellen Pao. Her politics is relevant as that is all that she brings to the table. She is a professional victim that milks the grievance industry. She has no qualifications other than she is Asian and a woman.
Pao has no technical qualifications. In fact, she was mocked by the community when she attempted to post a link to a message from her own inbox. This would be the equivalent of your 80 year old grandma sending you a link to a pic that is on her C: drive. The CEO of Reddit literally does not know how to use Reddit.
Pao quickly ordered the removal of all the threads mocking her. But, probably unknown to her, everything stays on the internet somewhere. Below is a link to such a thread that was deleted.
https://archive.is/0N2IG
Under her leadership, Reddit is imploding. As she is not qualified to introduce any technical innovations to Reddit, all that she can offer is politicization of the company. One of her first acts as CEO was to implement "safe spaces". A "safe space" is the modern jargon Marxists use to justify censorship. Many popular subreddits (such as fat shaming) were purged. This created a backlash as Reddit has typically attracted a younger and more free thinking audience that does not welcome censorship.
She has also mandated that employees cannot negotiate their salaries. Her reasoning is that salary negotiation is discriminatory, as women are too stupid to negotiate on their own. She has also demanded that all potential employees have the proper politically correct view of "diversity". As such, Reddit is starting to have more in common with a religious cult than a business.
Pao's previous claim to fame was that she was involved in sexual drama at the previous place she worked (Kleiner Perkins). It seems she fucked one of the partners at Kleiner Perkins. Once she figured out that this would not get her promoted, she decided she was a victim of sexual harassment. She sued and the jury of six men and six women thought she was full of shit. She lost her case. But she became some sort of feminist heroine. The brave woman of color who spread her legs for her boss.
http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/03/24/final-arguments-in-ellen-pao-gender-discrimination-trial
To make this sordid tale even more relevant to the times, Pao was married while she was playing hanky panky at Kleiner Perkins. Married to a gay, African American. Yup, you read that right. Pao was (and still is) married to a guy named Buddy Fletcher. Before Buddy met Pao he was involved in a 10 year loving relationship with a white guy.
But then Buddy got Yellow Fever and decided to run off with Pao. Yeah, it also does not make sense to me. My only guess is that Ellen sort of looks like a boy. So maybe that was the attraction.
However, Buddy didn't really seem to mind when his wife was caught in the sex scandal. My guess is she is free to screw around with other guys as long as he is able to do the same. Although that could lead to a messy love triangle if they should both fall in love with the same man. I guess that is one of the risks of marrying a gay man.
Like Ellen, Buddy has made his money by filing discrimination law suits against his employers. Maybe that is what gave Ellen the idea to do the same thing. However, Buddy has run into legal issues with his "creative" financing.
http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/case-builds-against-former-ny-hedgie-buddy-fletcher/
And, now, Pao's latest screw up (heh) was firing a popular moderator after Jesse Jackson was humiliated on a "Ask Me Anything" thread. Poor Jesse was not used to being asked anything but softball questions. Jesse is old and confused. And things got pretty nasty for him.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/07/02/reddit-revolt-flares-again-as-ama-moderator-sacked-the-day-after-a-disastrous-jesse-jackson-qa/
America 1915: Henry Ford
America 2015: Ellen Pao
When I was growing up, the two most evil men of all time were Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy. (And maybe Nixon was third)
ReplyDeleteMcCarthy was invoked all the time as the most evil man in American history. McCarthyism was said to the DARKEST period in American history. McCarthy took away civil liberties. He was against freedom. He was paranoid. He was a bully. He was worse than Stalin or at least his equal.
This was in the 70s and 80s when the ACLU was still for total free speech, even defending the rights of Neo-Nazis.
Watch PBS documentaries back then, and it was bad ole McCarthy all the time. Everything bad and evil was associated with McCarthyism, just like ‘fascist’ came to be associated with everything dark and tyrannical.
McCarthy is still a dark figure on the ‘left’, but we don’t hear about him as much as we used to.
Why? Could it be because if people, young and old, are told of McCarthyism today, they will be reminded that it was rather like how Political Correctness operates in our world? And with college campuses now going after free speech and with homos destroying everyone who won’t bend over to ‘gay marriage’—and with millennials brainwashed on PC acting like characters in THE CRUCIBLE—, maybe the ‘left’ realizes that its folks are now acting like McCarthyites or PcCarthyites. After all, who is trying to curtail freedom of speech and ban symbols such as the Confederate Flag?
And Sabrina Rubin Erderly’s style of journalism is even crazier than anything McCarthy pulled off. If McCarthy had said he was gang-homo-raped by a bunch of American communists in a dark cellar, that might have been on the level of what Rubin almost got away with.
This is a bit off-topic:
ReplyDeleteToday, I've been watching Ken Hughes "Cromwell" (1970) and I couldn't help laughing out loud at the sight of this puritan banner. Yes, it reminded me of another banner.
16th century England: "God is our strength"
21th century America (along with England): "Diversity is our strength"
This is further evidence for the claim that Diversity is a new religion, a new sacred creed, a new god.
You take puritan mindset, prone to guilt and enforced hiper-moral consenus, yo mix it with ashkenazi neo-marxist bullshit and... voilà : there's your new mandatory religion.
It's a cocktail made in Hell, but I'm not sure if it's shaken or stirred.
BTW, you should pay some attention to that movie, specially if you're interested in NRx musings.
In a way, what was most frightful about McCarthyism was its 'career-centric' approach to dealing with subversion and radicalism.
ReplyDeleteEven during the 'McCarthy Era', there was ample freedom to express radical and leftist views. People's right to have or espouse radical views were not taken from them. First Amendment mostly remained intact.
What was taken away was the right to work, to have a career.
So, you could still express communist and radical views. But you could no longer hold jobs. That was the real zinger.
And such strategy has been why PC has been so effective. PC in America still cannot take away our right to free speech(as in Europe where free speech is pretty much dead). But PC can take away your job and career.
Through such economic threats via finance, law, media, and etc, people became afraid to stand up to stuff like 'gay marriage'. They still had the right to oppose it in theory, but their careers would haven threatened if they put the theory to practice.
Today, work/career is very closely tied to creed. You can still use the First Amendment to express controversial views, but you will likely lose your job. In a way, the internet has made it worse because anyone can start a public campaign against you, a power that didn't exist in the past. You can be 'outed' for a post on Facebook, for instance.
Anyway, we need to find a way to safeguard the right to work from one's personal or political views. There is something in the Constitution that says 'regardless of race, color, or creed'. So, a person should not lose his work or livelihood due to personal or political views(CREED) that have nothing to do with work.
Unless that is secure, no amount of First Amendment protection will do any good.
As in the days of McCarthy, the mere prospect of losing one's job, career, and livelihood will force people into line.
PC politicized work/career. It does the very thing that it once condemned McCarthy for doing.
During the 'McCarthy Era', one could lose one's job --- though not free speech rights --- if one was discovered to have said something radical or communist.
Liberals have long argued that people should not lose their jobs for their political or personal creeds. They've been saying McCarthy Era was a dark period because people were blacklisted for controversial views.
But today, Libs are for destroying the livelihood of anyone who says anything that offends PC sensibility.
-------------------
What do businesses, especially big businesses, fear most?
Lawsuits and bad publicity.
Once it became easy to sue anything and anyone over PC issues, businesses got frightened of PC because failing to live up to its demands could lead to mega-lawsuits.
We tend to blame the 'left', but the 'left' has been enabled by greedy law firms who will take any case to sue big companies to milk it of millions or even billions.
Once PC was made profitable for law firms, businesses had to comply and shut down free speech since the 'wrong climate' could lead to lawsuits.
Also, media decide bad publicity. Now, with the internet, even ordinary shmucks on twitter can start some nutty campaign to attack some company.
Look at idiotic 'gamergate'. Bad publicity means bad business, so the profit-motive has turned capitalism into a den of cowards.
The legal profession is about rule of law, but most lawyers are there to make money. And using PC as weapon to milk big companies has been killer for law firms.
So, it has actually undermined rule of law where free speech and freedoms are concerned.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1965: Repressive Tolerance. In A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse. Boston: Beacon Press.
DeleteSumming-up:
The classical liberal tolerance is nothing but "repressive tolerance", which is a bad thing. What Marcuse recommends is "liberating tolerance", which means "intolerance towards the Right, tolerance towards the Left."
His dreams seem to have been accomplished, but don't despair. Once the Leftist Singularity takes place, the gear will spin in the opposite direction. Next time, intolerance will be headed towards the Left, as God intended. Let's hope we'll live long enough to witness that moment.