> I don't understand your overall position. I understand that one aspect of it well enough to call it idiotic.

This assertion ('I admittedly don't understand the context, but I'll gladly render judgment on a single tenet of it!') may seriously have just given me an aneurysm.

Can you cite one boycott or strike that history looks fondly upon that centered around calling for a specific person's head? These tools have traditionally been used to advance policy changes and improve living conditions for whole groups of people, not exact revenge on someone you don't like.

There's nothing wrong with voicing dissatisfaction in, well, basically anything. There's also nothing wrong with terminating a business relationship with an entity who has done something you don't like. Or even tweeting form letters at a company's CEO. That's all beside the point.

I think sometimes, the appropriate recourse is to realize that you're overreacting to something, calm the hell down, and go on with your life.

My problems with this specific situation:

- Trying to organize a popular campaign targeting a specific person's reputation and/or livelihood while refusing to divulge your own identity is incredibly gutless. If you're sure enough of your convictions to take that kind of action, why are you not sure enough to sign your name to it?

- Social tools like boycotts and protests become less effective the more frequently they're used. In isolation, this doesn't really apply. In light of the Brendan Eich mess, it seems like the start of a dangerous (and frankly annoying) trend. Are we going to see boycotts every time an organization makes a decision that someone with basic HTML skills disagrees with?

- When waging any kind of social crusade, there's a line of conduct that you can't cross without abandoning any claim to the moral high ground. You seem to agree with me that violence is on the wrong side of that line. I'd argue that trying to get specific people fired from private industry for essentially unrelated conduct (during their time as a public official, no less) is, as well. Especially when the whole thing really seems to be more about punishment than effecting future change.

- You're still trying to equate declining to vote someone into public office with trying to organize a movement to get someone fired. Those things aren't even close to equivalent.

- You're missing something about the nature of boycotts. They're not designed to demonstrate your disagreement. They're designed to coerce their target to accede to your demands, lest they suffer financial harm. I'm not saying they're innately bad, but they are much more coercive in nature than protests, whose nature I also think you're mischaracterizing. By your definition, there would be no point in protesting any action carried out by any politician in the last term of a term-limited office, right?

- Editing to add one more. The reason we have qualified immunity is that, in theory, you want the best possible people occupying important public positions. (Obviously, things don't often work out this way, but I think it's still important for the incentives to align properly.) When it becomes clear that anyone who holds one of these offices may have to fend off angry mobs for the remainder of his or her professional life, you're making public office less attractive for anyone else who might ever be considering accepting an appointment to it. Which will probably, in the aggregate, make these positions less attractive to the people most qualified for them.