The number of high profile tech bros on Twitter using the death to further their own views was disgraceful. SF may have big issues but using someone’s murder to further your political beliefs is horrible. I’m sure we won’t hear any retraction though.
Watching from outside, the whole "Tech Bros vs. Woke Hippies" framing is just nuts. It's at most a local politics dispute over control over the SF city government. And yet it's spilled over into all kinds of radicalized global thinking.
People like pg and Garry are out there on twitter acting like the nutjobs trying to deny their startup workers housing and teach their kids about colonialism as a history paradigm are the Greatest Threat To Free Speech Worldwide.
Is it time now to maybe take a deep breath and think about maybe calling a truce? The hippies can be rough to live with but really they aren't so bad. I know a bunch.
I guess, if viewed cynically. It seems more likely to me that he was sincere, just wrong. That's the "radicalized" bit I was talking about. The SF tech scene has a smell right now that seems to me a lot like what we saw with the Gamergate incels a decade ago. And that... didn't lead to good places.
Radicalization happens to everyone, even the rationalists. Maybe it's just time to cool off.
The piss on the homeless views always get aired whenever a homeless person does something bad, or is accused, without evidence of doing something bad.
It's couched in 'the woke are ruining everything letting murderhobos run rampart' rhetoric. Sometimes with a helping of 'the police are completely unable to function if we subject them to any oversight, or hold them accountable to the rule of law.'
You see this take very frequently on <your local city subreddit>.
If you talk to actual cops, they're burnt out and quiet quitting like the rest of us. Scope creep has been marching steadily over the past decades: we're asking them to do too much; they're not trained for many of the kinds of interactions that they find so taxing. It would be better for everyone if they offloaded that work to others who are better qualified. This means giving police less money, and giving other services more money.
> using someone’s murder to further your political beliefs is horrible.
Agree that it's gross but we do it all the time, and I think too often it only feels horrible to people when the political beliefs aren't align with one's own. If the loudest voices in this incident had been pushing for increased funding for supportive housing or mental health services, would Joe Eskenazi have written an article titled "Bob Lee deserved better than to be killed — and then co-opted in death"? I kind of doubt it...
