> The reason some New York Times staffers defenestrated op-ed page editor James Bennet was that he was, they claimed, endangering the lives of black staffers by running a piece by Senator Tom Cotton, who called for federal troops to end looting, violence, and chaos, if the local authorities could not. This framing equated words on a page with a threat to physical life — the precise argument many students at elite colleges have been using to protect themselves from views that might upset them.

Hold on now: words do incite violence. Media does incite violence. Remember how it became standard practice to not publish the names of mass-shooters? That's because copycat crimes ARE a thing, and because quite a few school shooters and the like mention getting their face in the news as one REASON for doing the shooting.

So, as a journalist you ought to inform me. Give me an accurate picture of what people outside my bubble are seeing and thinking right now. But you absolutely cannot claim to not be responsible for the consequences of your words. That's why journalism has to be so nuanced.

> In these past two weeks, if you didn’t put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect.

I didn't do any of these things. I wasn't harassed. Nobody cared.

> That’s why this past week has seen so many individuals issue public apologies as to their previous life and resolutions to “do the work” to more actively dismantle “structures of oppression.” It’s why corporate America has rushed to adopt every plank of this ideology and display its allegiance publicly.

What happens when a company doesn't voice support of BLM? Do they get harassed on Twitter? Did you know that the tweets on Twitter only represent about 2% of Americans [1]? I wonder how many sales you actually lose if 0.01% of those Twitter users bash on you for a single day and then forget all about you by the next day.

> We have employers demanding our attendance at seminars and workshops to teach this ideology.

This concern, I can appreciate. But in the same angle as my previous paragraph, most employers haven't demanded these seminars. I imagine you're looking at that 0.01% and letting it get to you again. Also, what happens when you decide to silently not attend these seminars? I'll bet a lot of these mandatory seminars become not-so-mandatory once you quit tolerating your employer's BS.

But again, let's be nuanced. My work is my contribution to society. I absolutely want my contributions to society to be nuanced. You won't find me working for the NSA. You won't find me working for a petro company. In fact, I'd quite like it if the company I'm working for refused to sell their product to either of those two things, because that's an easy thing I can do to limit some of my greatly negative contributions to society.

So IF the majority of an organization wanted to focus on doing some small thing to address police brutality or systemic racism (like, actually, and not just as a show), and they go about it at an organization-wide level, would that be a bad thing? That kind of just sounds like being principled, which I'm pretty on board with. It'd be cool to have more opportunities to work for an organization that care about their contributions to society beyond what's measured by money.

> And then his tone-deaf, tin-pot dictator act in reaction to the Floyd protests and subsequent riots put him beyond the pale for many of the persuadables. Left-wing activists, for a change, didn’t play into his hands — although they’re doing their best in Minneapolis and Seattle.

Have you been to the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (in Seattle)? Or have you only seen what's portrayed of it in the media (TV, Twitter, etc)? Spoiler alert: I've watched what's on Fox, I've watched what's on Twitter, I've watched what's on the local news, I've been there in person: each medium portrays a significantly different view of things. You can't really put more than 20% of the blame on the people on the ground for whatever image Seattle's developed. The media is so much more responsible for what things look like to everyone more than a mile away from events.

-----

Anyway, my answer is yes: there is still room for debate. Do you have friends? Do you talk to them? It turns out that most people I talk to in real life actually have decently nuanced views! And a number of them are willing to discuss those views with you, and they might even ask you for your thoughts if you show that you understand them.

Mass media is the problem. The one-to-many broadcast style of "dialogue" is the problem. 280-character limits are the problem. Sending your thoughts to the whole world and then being surprised when more than a handful of people disagree with you is the problem.

[1] https://nypost.com/2019/04/24/twitter-doesnt-reflect-how-mos...