The Reckoning
samharris.substack.com
Donald Trump has been re-elected President of the United States.
  • Corkyskog
    162·
    3 days ago

    This almost reads as satire to me. Really, it was the culture issues that right wing news focuses on, and no one other than their audience seems to ever talk about? If democrats abandoned all of their support for these issues, the right wing media would just find another list of excuses and move us even further right.

    It’s like he almost got it at one point… then just misses the mark completely.

    Jon Stewart just had a good take on the daily show about this “Democrat Woke-Blaming” nonsense.

    • cmbabul@lemmy.world
      13·
      3 days ago

      I’ve been critical of Sam Harris for a long time, his whole shtick is white washing shitty centrist talking points by presenting himself as a reasonable intellectual. He’s just secret Jordan Peterson, he’s even defended him before and then defended that defense as not a defense

  • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 days ago

    This is the worst article about the reasons she lost I have seen. I’ve read a lot of them and just. Fuck dude this is awful. Transphobia particularly is just reprehensible. I mean. Look at this shit.

    Trans women are people and should have all the political freedom of people. But to say that they are women—and that making any distinction between them and biological women, for any purpose, is a thought crime and an act of bigotry—that is the precept of a new religion.

    He’s literally not getting the point. No one is saying that trans women and cis women aren’t at all different. We are just saying that trans women are also women and that simply calling us “people” as he does is fucking shitty. We aren’t cis. No shit. We know that. None of us are making that claim. This fucker is just completely ignoring so much of the core of trans issues. And to call it a new religion. Like fuck man this guy is awful. Also he literally italicizes women and people. Fucking insane.

    When talking about trans kids he says he’s sure there are “real” cases of gender dysphoria but that some kids are just convinced to be trans by fucking tiktok.

    Then says

    Where, due to the influence of trans activists on our institutions, these kids are effectively in a cult, being brainwashed by a new orthodoxy.

    Saying that trans activists are sneakily converting kids into our cult and brainwashing them. Fuck dude. He insists he’s not transphobic then goes into the worst transphobia I’ve seen in a while.

    Another:

    Whereas it is obvious that, for millions of Americans, it might as well have been the only issue in this election. Not because they are transphobic assholes, but because they simply do not accept the new metaphysics, and even new biology, mandated by trans activists and the institutions that they have successfully bullied and captured.

    Saying that trans people are bullying doctors into changing biology and that we captured it like a fucking capture the flag match and that us as trans activists are changing science as a whole. Us trans folk have only ever said that simplistic biology is just that, simplistic, and that there is far more complex biology that exists so maybe biology isn’t super important when it comes to gender expression and trans identity.

    This one is a long one:

    Having the thought police suddenly proscribe the use of the term “woman,” and demanding that we speak instead of “birthing person,” or “menstruators,” or “people with ovaries,” or some other Orwellian construction designed to test everyone’s patience and sanity… the sight of people being deplatformed on social media or fired from universities for merely stating that there are two biological sexes—I actually know a professor who lost her job at Harvard over this… witnessing an epidemic of gender confusion spread through our schools, when people with their own eyes could see that this was a social contagion being encouraged by the schools themselves—the ultimate fruition of which, in many cases, is irreversible medical procedures… We’ve got an epidemic of teenage girls wanting double mastectomies—snd some are actually getting them, based on ideas being spread on TikTok—and any parent who resists this trend gets demonized and, under certain conditions, could lose custody of their kids? Congratulations, Democrats. You have found the most annoying thing in the fucking galaxy and hung it around your necks.

    People don’t lose their job for saying “there are only two biological sexes”, they lose their job for refusing to respect trans students by not using their preferred name or pronouns. Saying it’s just about speaking truth to biology is misunderstanding everything. And then saying that using inclusive language is Orwellian? This fucker is a far right fascist piece of shit and this article should be fucking removed for how absolutely awful it is.

    All trans people are asking is to just fucking respect who we are. None of us are arguing for rights that others don’t have, none of us are arguing biology doesn’t exist, none of us are arguing we are cis, none of us are converting kids into our cult through tiktok, none of us are apart of the “trans religion”, none of us are bullying doctors into respecting our existence, none of us say there’s no difference between us and cis folk (thats the entire reason there are cis women and trans women, because there is and always will be a distinction).

    This was a terrible article to read so early into my day and I didn’t even get into the immigration part because now I’m gonna have to go wash my fucking eyes out with bleach.

    Edit: he’s also at the end of the trans section using Elon Musk as a reason for how bad trans people and trans activists are because if the richest and smartest man in the world can see through the cult, then we should all be aware that trans people are a cult.

    • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 days ago

      In the case of Dr. Hooven – the person being referenced here – her usage of binary biological sex categories was why she eventually needed/was bureaucratically forced to retire from Harvard. She never had issue with using people’s preferred pronouns or names. She taught a well-regarded course, “Hormones and Behavior,” and was attacked, in my opinion, for going on Fox News to defend the usage of “female” and “male” as categories of biological sex in medical classes.

      While she’s a life-long Democrat, I suspect if she hadn’t gone on Fox & Friends to defend the position, the blowback would have been less targeted and vicious.

      That being said, Harris’s piece is exponentially more troubling and offensive than anything Hooven ever did. In my estimation, it’s misguided, short-sighted, and poorly conceived. Worse, it’s largely wrong.

      • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
        12·
        2 days ago

        going on Fox News to defend the usage of “female” and “male” as categories of biological sex in medical classes.

        Yeah no one is saying to use different terms when it comes to biological sex. It’s not happening. What they’re likely doing is simply saying there’s more complexity to what defines biological sex. Going on Fox News and saying that is showing who she is. A believer in the far rights talking points when it comes to trans issues. She went on Fox News to defend something like that when that thing just isn’t happening is why she was likely pushed out. Because shes parroting far right talking points.

        And as we’ve seen recently with a handful of Democrats throwing trans people under the bus, her being a lifelong Democrat means nothing here.

        • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 days ago

          Yes, people did precisely that in this case. Or do you speak for all trans people and trans allies? I didn’t get the memo. You’re literally doing the thing being criticized. I explained to you that they were pushed out for defending the terms female and male for biological sex in her field. Your response: “yeah, that’s not what it was, it’s because she’s a crypto-conservative working for the IDF.”

          It’s like, well. OK, but that’s not what happened. Many people on the left have gone on fox news to defend positions. Do you just assume they too are all therefore secretly conservative? What a silly worldview to have.

          Regardless, I’m not going to bicker with you, I don’t want you hyperventilating again. I’ll block you and make it easier for both of us. Good luck with your video games.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 days ago

    Ignoring most of the article, bringing up the fact that “Trump gained support from every racial group except white people, where he lost one percentage point when compared to 2020,” is a real and damning statistic for the Democrats. I’ve been saying for some time that I continue to be amazed as democrats turn themselves into the party of suburban and urban white privilege.

  • A7thStone@lemmy.world
    41·
    3 days ago

    More neoliberal shit. “We need to stop talking about minorities because there Nazis won’t shut up about them, and it makes me uncomfortable.”