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Bullies
Jul 14, 2020 21:33:31 GMT -5
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Post by fauxmaha on Jul 14, 2020 21:33:31 GMT -5
The more I ponder it, the more I get to the opinion that if "bullying" has any meaning at all, that meaning must be independent of the identity of both the bully and the bully-e (?), as well as the nominal reason for the bullying.
How can it be otherwise? The only way the word has meaning is if it describes a set of context-independent behaviours.
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Bullies
Jul 14, 2020 21:36:21 GMT -5
Post by Village Idiot on Jul 14, 2020 21:36:21 GMT -5
We don't teach kids how to think. Why bother. Anything to keep the United States from being one of the most powerful nations on earth. So you think that the kids will gang up on the kid without a mask because the kid without a mask is clearly a bully and it's revenge for those poor bullied kids who are dutifully wearing masks like the state tells them to. Because that's simply right. Do I have that right? No, you don't have that right, Aqua. That is not what I am saying. Dub did a good job of describing what I am saying. And, by the way, the state itself is not requiring students to wear masks. Individual districts are. These kids are tired of being stuck at home and not being able to be around their friends. Wearing a mask is their ticket out. Kids won't gang up on kids, but they will remind each other to wear their masks. And those being reminded will do so. No bullying involved. It's just the way kids are. It's the way most adults are. I've had the opportunity of spending time in the Anamosa State Penitentiary, a maximum security prison in Iowa. I have been there to help foster a Braille production program, a part of Iowa Prison Industries, helping prisoners make a bit of money to pay back the people they have wronged, and give them a bit of savings so they have a chance when they get out. It's interesting. Walk out in the yard, and there's a big area devoted to weight lifting. All these heavy weights and big strong prisoners. Isn't that dangerous, I asked. No. Not at all. If one person blows it, the entire program is shut down, and the area goes away. An area that is cherished by most of the inmates. Woe be it to the person who would cause that. I'd hate to be that guy. As a result, despite all the potential weapons laying around, it's considered the safest place in the entire prison. Because it's a privilege to be there, everyone is on their best behavior. Because they see the benefit. Is school like prison? No. Are there parallels between the two when it comes to human behavior? Yes. Just like there are parallels between human behavior in airports and sports arenas. Or how we all know how to behave when standing in line for a visitation of someone who has passed away. You asked, Aqua, if the kids will gang up on the kid without a mask because the kid without a mask is clearly a bully and it's revenge for those poor bullied kids who are dutifully wearing masks like the state tells them to. The answer is no.
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Deleted
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Bullies
Jul 14, 2020 21:48:01 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2020 21:48:01 GMT -5
Interesting Jeff. I hope this thread does not wind up with all of us blocking each other. Sorry Todd😊 DAMMIT, YOU NEED COMMAS AFTER 'INTERESTING' AND 'SORRY,' UNLESS YOU ARE SAYING THAT JEFF IS INTERESTING AND TODD IS SORRY! Interesting Jeff is a better nickname than he usually has here, being one which often references his underbits. Just saying.
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Deleted
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Bullies
Jul 14, 2020 21:55:12 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2020 21:55:12 GMT -5
All kinds of people say all kinds of stuff. Anymore. Every time I hear a right-wing anybody complain about being marginalized, censored, mobbed, persecuted, pilloried, or otherwise abused, I check my wallet Google around to see what perfectly harmless behavior might have set off the pitchfork-and-torches wing of The Left. What I often find is somebody who can dish it out but has trouble taking it. Glenn Greenwald clearly doesn't like her, but I take Greenwald with a pinch of sea salt. But she does come across as a bit of a street fighter. I'm certain that's not always the case, Russell. People on the either wing of the political spectrum can be awfully vitriolic towards people who don't think exactly like them. If you took the "right-wing" out of your first sentence, and left is as "anybody," I'd be more inclined to agree. Same with "The Left" reference. Both ends of the right-left spectrum have pitchfork-and-torches wings, and I personally find them boring as hell.
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Bullies
Jul 14, 2020 22:48:30 GMT -5
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 14, 2020 22:48:30 GMT -5
I'm perfectly familiar with the intolerant-and-pure wing of the left. It's the claims of victimization and silencing from people with perfectly bully pulpits that get under my skin, and recently that noise is coming largely from the right. They're cousins to the "war on Christmas" crowd, for whom "Happy Holidays" amounts to religious persecution. (And note the "often" in my post.)
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 5:19:58 GMT -5
Dub likes this
Post by millring on Jul 15, 2020 5:19:58 GMT -5
Whadda deviled ham HE is.
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 5:36:21 GMT -5
Post by millring on Jul 15, 2020 5:36:21 GMT -5
I'm perfectly familiar with the intolerant-and-pure wing of the left. It's the claims of victimization and silencing from people with perfectly bully pulpits that get under my skin, and recently that noise is coming largely from the right. They're cousins to the "war on Christmas" crowd, for whom "Happy Holidays" amounts to religious persecution. (And note the "often" in my post.) No they don't have "perfectly bully pulpits". The very issue is that they are being excluded from the common public square. And nobody illustrates that better than you do when the first argument you almost always reach for on this common square is to make illegitimate the source from whence comes an argument. The entire issue in an information age is the common square. Your argument is that since the "right wing" has its ghetto, we should be satisfied. And that's been an effective misdirection. But the asymmetry of "bully pulpits" is the very issue: 1. The "right" has to use the "left"s sources or their argument is illegitimized by source. 2. The left sez "You have your perfectly bully pulpits"...but then, in the common square, refuses to recognize those pulpits. It's air-tight. And it is bullying of the first order.
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Post by millring on Jul 15, 2020 5:43:46 GMT -5
These kids are tired of being stuck at home and not being able to be around their friends. Wearing a mask is their ticket out. But it is also begging the question on a grand scale -- perhaps the grandest scale on which a question has been begged since the days of Galileo. ...but, of course, as the article Terry posted here pointed out, who's going to question "all the scientists in the world working together"? "My wife wanted a cat. I did not want a cat. So we compromised and got a cat."
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 7:32:11 GMT -5
Post by dradtke on Jul 15, 2020 7:32:11 GMT -5
The flounce, on the other hand, is a different kind of performance and is not limited to bullies. I like that one, Bill. Is it new? It goes nicely with the pearls.
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 8:52:21 GMT -5
Post by howard lee on Jul 15, 2020 8:52:21 GMT -5
From the Oxford Writer's Dictionary, just so we might all be on the same page:
bul·ly 1 | ˈbo͝olē |
noun (plural bullies)
a person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable: he is a ranting, domineering bully.
verb (bullies, bullying, bullied) [with object]
seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone perceived as vulnerable): her 11-year-old son has been constantly bullied at school | a local man was bullied into helping them.
ORIGIN mid 16th century: probably from Middle Dutch boele ‘lover’. [<-- Isn't that weird and hypocritical?] Original use was as a term of endearment applied to either sex; it later became a familiar form of address to a male friend. The current sense dates from the late 17th century.
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 10:24:41 GMT -5
Post by james on Jul 15, 2020 10:24:41 GMT -5
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 11:20:24 GMT -5
Post by Cornflake on Jul 15, 2020 11:20:24 GMT -5
I investigated a lot of complaints about discrimination when I was still working. They included claims of discrimination because the complainant was old, female, black, Latino or Christian. One result of that experience is that I never take a claim of discrimination, on any basis, at face value. When I'd talk to the complainant's coworkers, quite often I learned that no one liked the complainant for reasons that had nothing to do with his or her protected status. In other cases I found that the complainant was perfectly likable but incompetent, or plainly not suited for the position he or she had hoped to be promoted to.
Another thing I learned is that most employees don't understand the law. It's not illegal, in and of itself, to create a hostile work environment. It's illegal to subject an employee to such an environment because he or she is a member of a class that is protected against discrimination. If a boss is an equal-opportunity jackass towards everyone, regardless of color or creed, that doesn't violate the law. If a boss bullies people even-handedly, no legal problem. If your coworkers don't like you because you're unpleasant, they're free to shun you, regardless of your age, gender or ethnicity.
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 12:58:08 GMT -5
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 15, 2020 12:58:08 GMT -5
No they don't have "perfectly bully pulpits". The very issue is that they are being excluded from the common public square. And nobody illustrates that better than you do when the first argument you almost always reach for on this common square is to make illegitimate the source from whence comes an argument. The entire issue in an information age is the common square. Your argument is that since the "right wing" has its ghetto, we should be satisfied. And that's been an effective misdirection. But the asymmetry of "bully pulpits" is the very issue: 1. The "right" has to use the "left"s sources or their argument is illegitimized by source. 2. The left sez "You have your perfectly bully pulpits"...but then, in the common square, refuses to recognize those pulpits. It's air-tight. And it is bullying of the first order. Allow me to address these points in order. 1. Bully pulpits: Well, the Drudge Report and Thoughtco.com have lists. Anybody with two fingers and a keyboard can find any flavor of news and opinion that suits them. This is all public square. It's bigger and louder and more various than back in print-only times, when I started paying attention. (And where do you suppose I turn to see what the "other guys" are saying? It's right there in front of god and everybody.) drudge-report.net/conservative-news-sites/www.thoughtco.com/the-top-conservative-news-and-opinion-websites-33036142. Delegitimizing sources: This is maybe just me, but I hesitate to see myself as an extreme outlier. When I come on a non-trivial and possibly "controversial" news story, I check multiple sources, on the lookout for incompleteness or bias. I do the same kind of thing for opinion/analysis pieces, with particular attention to the writer and publication, since opinions are obviously not simply factual. And I obviously am going to map any writer's opinions and analyses against the ones that I have spent something like sixty years building. I am not a tabula rasa, and I'm arrogant enough to stick to my understanding of the world in the face of mere opinion (as distinct from evidence), especially when I can see the bases--metaphysical or epistemological or ideological--for that opinion. A bit of abstract background: A publication or website is defined by its content and its audience, and the dynamic that produces any given configuration can favor either (or any) "side." The internet has made cost of entry into the news/opinion space much lower than it was in the print or broadcast era--if you can afford to pay a provider to host your files, you're in business. And even a blog can be a business in the economic sense. When I check a new-to-me publication on Wikipedia, I note how it came to be--who started it, who backs it, who are its owner's/participants' allies and colleagues and associated think tanks. And those alliances and affiliations are all over the ideological map. And, having been founded with a particular slant or agenda in mind, they attract and encourage particular audiences. That's the push-pull. Just as it was when I was in high school and the politically inclined read NatRev or New Republic or Commonweal, or paid attention to the op-ed pages of big-city papers. 3. Bully ing: Calling bullshit on bullshit isn't bullying. Nor is fact-checking. Nor is maintaining a list of unreliable sources. Nor is refusing to accede to epistemologically unsupportable assertions. Coda: If there is a pathology in public discourse, it is strongly rooted in the ignorance and credulousness and tribalisms of the audiences--and the deliberate exploitation of those traits by agenda-driven actors: shit-stirrers and true believers and company/party flacks.
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 13:02:42 GMT -5
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 15, 2020 13:02:42 GMT -5
Oh, and Bari Weiss goes--she started making herself heard while an undergrad (she was a prominent activist and founded a magazine), then went on to a series of pretty good gigs (Haaretz, The Forward, WSJ) before landing at the Times. She has 214,000 Twitter followers. Her letter about her resignation portrays her as beleaguered and bullied, but her history (notably her undergrad activities) suggests that she enjoys vigorous engagement--or maybe is driven to engage in it as part of her moral vision. There's a Vanity Fair profile from last year that makes her sound like a sweetie--"According to friends, she loves to spar not just to hear the sound of her own voice but because she might learn something." Glenn Greenwald's portrait is not as flattering. So where's the truth? www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/bari-weiss-the-new-york-times-provocateur
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 13:35:55 GMT -5
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 15, 2020 13:35:55 GMT -5
ORIGIN mid 16th century: probably from Middle Dutch boele ‘lover’. [<-- Isn't that weird and hypocritical?] Original use was as a term of endearment applied to either sex; it later became a familiar form of address to a male friend. The current sense dates from the late 17th century. [/div][/quote] See "bully Bottom," A Midsummer Night's Dream, III. i., IV.ii.
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Post by theevan on Jul 15, 2020 14:13:08 GMT -5
Oh, and Bari Weiss goes--she started making herself heard while an undergrad (she was a prominent activist and founded a magazine), then went on to a series of pretty good gigs (Haaretz, The Forward, WSJ) before landing at the Times. She has 214,000 Twitter followers. Her letter about her resignation portrays her as beleaguered and bullied, but her history (notably her undergrad activities) suggests that she enjoys vigorous engagement--or maybe is driven to engage in it as part of her moral vision. There's a Vanity Fair profile from last year that makes her sound like a sweetie--"According to friends, she loves to spar not just to hear the sound of her own voice but because she might learn something." Glenn Greenwald's portrait is not as flattering. So where's the truth? www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/bari-weiss-the-new-york-times-provocateurThat truth doesn't matter. What matters is the way things went down for her at the NYT and why. And what matters more is what it reveals about the leadership and culture of the organization. Especially bearing in mind we're talking about journalism here. Gray (Lady) fades to Black. (Or perhaps Yellow.)
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 14:28:36 GMT -5
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 15, 2020 14:28:36 GMT -5
We're talking about 1) the op-ed page and 2) Weiss's version of conditions there. If I cared enough about either, I could burn an entire afternoon sorting through the claims and claimants, but there comes a point where what I'm hearing is a lot of "let's you and him fight." I'd rather be sorting my recently-laundered socks (and in the summer I don't even wear socks that much).
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 15:36:19 GMT -5
Post by millring on Jul 15, 2020 15:36:19 GMT -5
No they don't have "perfectly bully pulpits". The very issue is that they are being excluded from the common public square. And nobody illustrates that better than you do when the first argument you almost always reach for on this common square is to make illegitimate the source from whence comes an argument. The entire issue in an information age is the common square. Your argument is that since the "right wing" has its ghetto, we should be satisfied. And that's been an effective misdirection. But the asymmetry of "bully pulpits" is the very issue: 1. The "right" has to use the "left"s sources or their argument is illegitimized by source. 2. The left sez "You have your perfectly bully pulpits"...but then, in the common square, refuses to recognize those pulpits. It's air-tight. And it is bullying of the first order. Allow me to address these points in order. 1. Bully pulpits: Well, the Drudge Report and Thoughtco.com have lists. Anybody with two fingers and a keyboard can find any flavor of news and opinion that suits them. This is all public square. It's bigger and louder and more various than back in print-only times, when I started paying attention. (And where do you suppose I turn to see what the "other guys" are saying? It's right there in front of god and everybody.) drudge-report.net/conservative-news-sites/www.thoughtco.com/the-top-conservative-news-and-opinion-websites-33036142. Delegitimizing sources: This is maybe just me, but I hesitate to see myself as an extreme outlier. When I come on a non-trivial and possibly "controversial" news story, I check multiple sources, on the lookout for incompleteness or bias. I do the same kind of thing for opinion/analysis pieces, with particular attention to the writer and publication, since opinions are obviously not simply factual. And I obviously am going to map any writer's opinions and analyses against the ones that I have spent something like sixty years building. I am not a tabula rasa, and I'm arrogant enough to stick to my understanding of the world in the face of mere opinion (as distinct from evidence), especially when I can see the bases--metaphysical or epistemological or ideological--for that opinion. A bit of abstract background: A publication or website is defined by its content and its audience, and the dynamic that produces any given configuration can favor either (or any) "side." The internet has made cost of entry into the news/opinion space much lower than it was in the print or broadcast era--if you can afford to pay a provider to host your files, you're in business. And even a blog can be a business in the economic sense. When I check a new-to-me publication on Wikipedia, I note how it came to be--who started it, who backs it, who are its owner's/participants' allies and colleagues and associated think tanks. And those alliances and affiliations are all over the ideological map. And, having been founded with a particular slant or agenda in mind, they attract and encourage particular audiences. That's the push-pull. Just as it was when I was in high school and the politically inclined read NatRev or New Republic or Commonweal, or paid attention to the op-ed pages of big-city papers. 3. Bully ing: Calling bullshit on bullshit isn't bullying. Nor is fact-checking. Nor is maintaining a list of unreliable sources. Nor is refusing to accede to epistemologically unsupportable assertions. Coda: If there is a pathology in public discourse, it is strongly rooted in the ignorance and credulousness and tribalisms of the audiences--and the deliberate exploitation of those traits by agenda-driven actors: shit-stirrers and true believers and company/party flacks. So, you agree with me then?
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 16:13:30 GMT -5
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 15, 2020 16:13:30 GMT -5
Not with the "they are being excluded from the common public square" part, no. Nor that I "make illegitimate the source" with which I disagree. Nor that there is some kind of fish-don't-perceive-water condition that keeps me from understanding the ideas of others.
So, no. And clearly I don't feel the way you do about many of the things we agree do exist. Most of the world would strenuously disagree with (and probably disapprove of) many of my most strongly-held beliefs. So it goes.
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Bullies
Jul 15, 2020 16:17:09 GMT -5
Post by millring on Jul 15, 2020 16:17:09 GMT -5
Most of the world would strenuously disagree with (and probably disapprove of) many of my most strongly-held beliefs. So it goes. You just drew the circle big enough such that A can now equal non-A. And they said it couldn't be done. “He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In!” It's hard to be us.
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