There is another thing: collecting scalps. Having a list of the people you got fired, banned from twitter, doxed, etc shows how powerful you are (to those who imagine the world is keeping score). It is a phony type of respect they seek, the respect due to fear, and favored by those who have nothing in real life that people respect them for. You can notice one thing these people who wage internet war have in common: they are not part of the successful economy. They are part-time adjunct profs, part-time writers/journalists (probably working elsewhere), college students with pretentions to be revolutionaries.

Because this is a story that shows that the progressive "social justice" culture to which Yiannopoulos fans were reacting can be as ugly and toxic as the culture of Breitbart and the alt-right.

As ugly and toxic? If the "progressive social justice culture" was only as ugly and toxic as "the culture of Breitbart and the alt-right" you could have a conversation with them, and it would at least be physically safe to participate in a pro-free speech demonstration.

When you take almost anything to an extreme you end up with the absurd. If you treat the absurd as serious and worth fighting over you become dangerous. Doesn't really matter where you started. You end up in the same dangerous and ridiculous place.

There is another thing: collecting scalps. Having a list of the people you got fired, banned from twitter, doxed, etc shows how powerful you are (to those who imagine the world is keeping score). ~ cc at October 9, 2017 8:49 AM

Authoritarian movements use the human desire for petty revenge and on-upmanship to divide and conquer. Neighbor pisses you off? Report him for subversive activity, even if you have to lie about it. He'll never mess with you again, right?

It's telling which political movements monitor and react vehemently to even minor transgressions. These are the ones that cannot be trusted with power, as if any can.

I posted this in another thread, but it bears repeating (and updating):

In our zeal to find fault with each other, we seem to be regressing intellectually and socially.

Our modern intellectuals are poorly educated, semi-literate scolds; modern day Miss Havershams seeking revenge on innocent third parties for injuries inflicted so long ago the details have been forgotten and only the anger remains.

We don't study language or vocabulary so any word can be offensive and even the most unintelligible patois is awarded an exalted status as a cultural marker.

We don't study history, so we are offended by any character flaw in a once-revered historical figure. We insist on perfection in those admired by others.

We don't study economics, so any politician promising free bread and circuses or to make America great again becomes our savior. Soundbites over substance. And, likely as not, most of the population wouldn't get the "bread and circuses" reference.

We're getting intentionally more ignorant and, as a result, we're more easily offended and ready to take up arms against the offenders.

We're tearing our own country apart for no reason other than we refuse to (or simply cannot) understand each other.

We're tearing our own country apart for no reason other than we refuse to (or simply cannot) understand each other.

Conan the Grammarian at October 9, 2017 1:40 PM

You know when the country will stop tearing itself apart?

When government goes back to the business of building roads and airports, and providing for the common defense instead of being a spoils system dividing up the pie among various aggrieved groups of rent seekers.

When government goes back to the business of building roads and airports, and providing for the common defense instead of being a spoils system dividing up the pie among various aggrieved groups of rent seekers. ~ Isab at October 9, 2017 2:25 PM

Too late. That would require people in the country to strive and work for a living, without largesse from the public treasury. But, various groups representing displaced peoples discovered they could use victimhood to force the majority to alleviate its guilt with disbursements from the public treasury.

Eventually these disbursements withered any ambition within these subgroups; the people in them were not only happy to accept public largesse but came to see it as their due and met any attempt to decrease it with charges of prejudice and indifference - until they had no more ambition than a feudal serf.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy. ~ Elmer T. Peterson

What worries me most is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring. ~ Alexis de Toqueville

"It is a phony type of respect they seek, the respect due to fear..."

There's that, but I think there is a bit more to it than that. It's the respect that has long been accorded to Harvey Weinstein. A lot of people in Hollywood and the media feared him because he had the power to ruin people, and apparently he was not shy about letting everyone know it. But he also had the power to make careers, hand out favors, and -- most importantly -- confer status on people. If Harvey favored you, your stock in the industry went up instantly. And so for decades there have been lots of people who were willing to suck up to him and cover for him, even knowing full well what he is. Because they wanted something out of him too. It was a mutually parasitic relationship.

The Harvey Weinsteins of the world like having that kind of power. They like seeing how people will degrade themselves in order to be near the throne. To them, that's what respect is. The idea that some people won't do that, and won't accord respect based on a dysfunctional king-subject relationship, is beyond their comprehension. That's why everything that is happening now -- the election of Trump, the NFL's ratings dropping, the cratering of Hollywood's summer box office -- confounds the Weinsteins of the world so much. As they see it, they are winners and those people in the audience are losers. They don't understand that people have the option of refusing to play the game.