
Why Google’s firing terrifies social conservatives so much - JSONwebtoken
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/08/why-googles-firing-terrifies-social-conservatives-so-much/
======
zzalpha
_Many of the left seek to win culture wars not on the merits of arguments and
ideas but simply by punishing and silencing any who disagree._

As though that's a unique aspect of "the political left". Folks in the GOP,
for example, definitely don't have litmus tests that distinguish a "true"
conservative from a RINO. His team is clearly better than your team!

Honestly, it's pretty clear this op-ed is every bit the polemic as any other
writing on this topic, and it's about as reliable an analysis as a result. It
does nothing to move the conversation forward in any constructive way.

Again: As a Rorschach test for your sociopolitical affiliation, the memo is a
smashing success. It manages this by, from the very start, couching the
discussion in terms of left-right political affiliation, immediately putting
the "left" on the defensive and the "right" cheering him on.

After that it's just a lesson in confirmation bias.

Edit:

As a random aside, am I the only one who feels like this thing is packed with
MRA dogwhistles? "males are biologically disposable", "when a man complains
about a gender issue affecting men, he is labelled as a mysogynist and a
whiner", "humans are generally biased towards protecting females", etc.

This guy would've done himself a huge favour by having someone read and
critique this thing _before_ sending it out. Even a straightforward rewrite to
remove some of these unsupported, content-free statements would've clarified
his thesis and cut out some of the obvious flamebait.

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bberrry
I'm skeptical about the benefits (and underlying assumptions) of "affirmative
action" diversity hires but I certainly wouldn't classify myself as socially
conservative. There are so many loaded terms on these subjects that needlessly
and counterproductively labels people and those labels come with a lot of
baggage.

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furxryfgrva
It should terrify everyone. It's a flagrant attempt at depriving someone (and
their family) of access to food/home/healthcare/etc just because they voiced
their opinion.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
Lol. Employment isn't a protected right. Voicing your opinion is one thing,
trying to use provable false statements to create a toxic work environment for
one third of your coworkers is a PR disaster, terrible for moral, and 100%
grounds for termination.

~~~
furxryfgrva
> provable false statements

They aren't false.

> create a toxic work environment for one third of your coworkers

The people creating a toxic work environment are those who are attempting to
blackball capable, veteran engineers in order to bring incapable and subpar
people into the workplace simply because they were born a different gender or
skin color.

> and 100% grounds for termination.

Firing someone for political beliefs is not grounds for termination, and never
has been.

~~~
craigsmansion
> They aren't false.

Correct. It's worse: they are irrelevant. It buried the lede of
unsubstantiated and toxic conclusions under some marginally related statistics
and science. As a whole it wasn't a scientifically sound argument by any
metric.

> The people creating a toxic work environment are those[..]

The people determining whether a working environment is toxic for them is the
majority of people working in that environment. Whether you feel it shouldn't
be considered toxic is a different matter.

> Firing someone for political beliefs is not grounds for termination, and
> never has been.

Anti-social behaviour, whether based on religion, political beliefs, or
plainly being a jerk, is always a good reason for termination in larger
companies. It's what keeps a work force together.

P.S. "subpar people"? Maybe you meant to say "Untermenschen"?

~~~
LyndsySimon
> toxic conclusions

How can a conclusion be "toxic"? A conclusion is either consistent or
inconsistent with the evidence at hand.

~~~
Yetanfou
A conclusion is "toxic" when it poisons the desired outcome and/or goes
counter to the narrative. Evidence does not play a major part in this, other
than to be quoted when it supports the narrative or dismissed or smeared when
it doesn't (viz. Obscurantism [1] and Moral relativism [2])

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscurantism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscurantism)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism)

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petraeus
Its an attack on the status quo, white males are terrified, understandably...

