{}coin: good enough for election politics?

[Meredith L. Patterson]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 10:55:58AM -0500, Ted Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-01-23 at 11:29 +1000, James A. Donald wrote:
> > For example, Pax Dickinson was fired for crimethink
> 
> Pax Dickinson was fired for being a rampant misogynist. I can see how
> that would upset you, being also a rampant misogynist/racist asshole,

So, I'm not James, nor do I have much of anything in common with him
at all, but I'm far more creeped out by Anil Dash's self-righteous
chortling over his own perception of holding Dickinson's career future
hostage than I am at Dickinson's firing.

"What is new in our time," Bertrand Russell once said, "is the
increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices." 

Let me ask you this: put me in Pax's shoes. (You can substitute
something offensive I'd be likely to say for Pax's actual words, if
that helps with the cognitive dissonance. Perhaps something about
guns. Or titties, I say some pretty crass things about titties too.)
Suppose I then ended up across that lunch table from Dash, and that
Dash had made the same "you'll never see VC if I can help it" threat.

That's where the cognitive dissonance kicks in too strongly for me to
continue the Gedankenexperiment: Dash would never make that threat to
a woman, for fear of the ANIL DASH THREATENS FEMALE ENTREPRENEUR
headlines that would flow like wine afterward. Dickinson was Fair
Game, in Dash's view, and Dash accordingly displayed all the civility
and restraint of a Hubbardite zealot, cloaked as it was under the
veneer of a genteel Manhattan business lunch.

Anil Dash fancies himself an authority, and fancies his position to be
one from which enforcing his prejudices constitutes acceptable
behaviour. The only authority he actually holds is money and
relationships with other people who have money, but his demonstrated
eagerness to use that authority to punish nonbelievers marks him as a
danger to free thought and free discourse.

Don't let that sycophantic scumbag anywhere near public office, is all
I'm sayin'.

--mlp