85 Comments

LOL!!!!!

Didn't "reach out to" or make excuses for Kyrie Irving for sharing a link on Twitter did you, Bari?

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The double standard is sickening.

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To keep an open mind, to be willing to see another side to the story, remains a dying art. Your original support was admirable, but the willingness to explore the second is the signal. Glad I heard you on Meghan Kelly (sp?), with whom I have nothing in common absent blond highlights.

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I just watched Ben Shapiro’s interview with Carano. He gives her space to address what happened and to express her ideas and feelings. Her quiet fortitude and clarity in resisting the mob is commendable. I saw no arrogance, no hate. I was impressed.

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Bari, thank you for your courageous writings on... freedom! You paid the price at the NYT, a news source I used to value greatly. I admire you greatly for your refusal to surrender or to fail. I was told long ago that no one ever quits their way to success and you really embody that. Looks to me that you will succeed far beyond what the trolls have tried to take from you.

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The most likely backlash against the current bully mob is the ugliest form of populism. Either we find a way to stop the leftist loons now, or we will see a massive storm hit. But there are no leading voices on the left willing to "call off the dogs", so I am not hopeful. Well, there is another option - a military coup.

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The Holocaust was a singular evil. But it is quite possible that, in 20 years, the US Purge, if it takes the route well worn by many countries descending into tyranny, will be another singular evil. I'm not counting out that possibility.

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Excellent piece. Please keep up the good work.

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I know that nothing compares to the Nazis and the Holocaust. Unfortunately when there are things happening that have similarities, no matter how minor in comparison, it is hard to avoid doing so. But I will try. I have been a reader of the NY Times for almost 50 years. I always knew that the paper leaned left, but for the most part it was mostly objective and always challenged and enlarged my perspective on things. About seven years ago I started noticing usage of the terms "whiteness," "white supremacy" and "white priveledge" on a regular basis. I started reading articles which essentially would claim that things like philosophy and science were products of the white race and therefore not universal. This snowballed over the years and when Trump was elected all hell broke loose. Practically every article in the paper referenced white supremacy no matter what the topic...even recipes! The racial hatred and resentment spread throughout the left wing media to the point where anybody who did not agree was portrayed as a drooling, toothless, inbred animal. Fortunately the targets of this hatred are currently not a minority and I don't think their lives are in danger. But if this dehumanization were targeted at a minority we would have a moral catastrophe on our hands. So I have no problem with what Gina Carano said. Racial hatred and dehumanization is always wrong. And one last thing, if white people ever became a minority and were targeted by another majority group, don't think that Jews would not be at the top of the persecution list.

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Would that include all the Non-white Jews? Or are you just forgetting that the Jewish diaspora is much larger and varied than most are aware of.

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Would probably come to a point where some pseudoscientific movement would claim 'Jew' is a racist term, the real Jew is anyone who is oppressed, and 'white' Jews and anyone who benefits from white supremacy is actually White, which would include any Jew. and the braindead mob nods and smiles. I've heard enough of the racist CRT Bs to realize that the ashkenazi Jew is probably at the top of their list for most hated group, and they hate that they can't say it out loud. But the existence of the Jewish people has always put a thorn in their ridiculous ideology - it proves it is worthless

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Bravo

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Unlike Ms. Weiss I am a Star Wars fan. I grew up a Star Wars kid, and my 19 year old son and I have bonded over Star Wars since he was 5. So we are very much huge Mandalorian fans, and have been following the Gina Carano matter for months. My son and I both very much like her character and performance, but we do find ourselves taken out of the fantasy of the story when she is on the screen because of her comments. Now, after her recent comments, it would almost be untenable to watch her and not be taken out of the story.

Ms. Weiss doesn't seem to get is that there is no "right" to be a movie or TV star. There is a comic book saying "with great power comes great responsibility" When one gets famous and has a following for playing a character, they have a responsibility to be a decent person. Carano's punching down to trans people and those who wear mask is not something Disney needs to tolerate when it gets in the way of their primary mission of entertaining. (and of course making money).

Ms. Weiss mentions a double standard because of Pedro Pascal's comments about children in cages, but those comments reflect what many concentration camp survivors have said about that issue and how the Trump immigration statements create pre war II conditions.

Ms. Weiss' use of the McCarthyism analogy dishonors the memory of those that suffered under McCarthyism. The issue under McCarthyism was not people spouting off their unpopular beliefs in the 1950s, but attacking people and getting them fired and ostracized for joining the communist party when they were younger in the 30's and 40's. Sen Joseph Welch famously said to Senator McCarthy "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" In the Carano matter, Disney had long requested Carano act with decency, and instead she doubled down on her offensive comments.

An irony is that Ms. Carano was actively supporting Trump's voter fraud claims. McCarthy's right hand man during the Senate hearings was Roy Cohn, who was highly influential on Trump in his younger years.

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I wish Gina well in her pursuits. She will make mistakes and she will, in a way, go up against one of the biggest entertainment companies in our lifetime. The odds are not in her favor. But even Disney loves a good underdog story.

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"Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

In Short - The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

–Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents 82-83 (1770) in: Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 1, p. 146 (Liberty Fund ed. 1999).

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“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

― Friedrich W. Nietzsche

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Actually Nietzsche stole that from Golem

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I wonder if there is a place for learning from history--including and perhaps especially from the Shoah? It seems that there is a difference between equivalences and lessons. An equivalence would be like "Here's a picture of concentration camp children behind a fence and here's a picture of illegal aliens behind a fence." with the implication that they are the same thing. A lesson on the other hand is saying here's something that happened before that led to bad things and we're seeing something similar now which is likely to lead (or has led) to bad things. Pascal was saying "We're already there--just like the Nazis." whereas Carano was saying "This is something that could get us to a bad place" without necessarily getting as bad as Nazi Germany.

So, is there a way to learn from history? Or can it simply not be allowed to be made explicit? Or is the Shoah something that is such a terrible one-off that no one is allowed to learn anything from it?

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I think learning from history is possible, but I think it's difficult to get right and very difficult to persuade people based on it. One problem is that history is vast and our information is very incomplete, biased, and contradictory. So it is often possible that the same or similar events can be used to make opposing points. Another is that the further back in time we go the less similarities we have with the people involved. Carano used events from (roughly) 1930-45 to make her point. How much do today's people and society have in common with then? I think very little. Human nature is probably unchanging, so some lessons can be learnt, but not many.

If we look at what Carano posted, is she right, is there a lesson there, might it persuade anyone?

"Because history is edited" = correct, it's too big not to. "most people today" to "simply for being Jews" = is I think half correct. Most of the history that is taught about Germany/Nazis concentrates on second half of 1933-45, from the start of the war, not on the first six years. The Nazi goverment did work at gradually getting the German population used to the idea of not just killing all the Jews (and several other groups) but to widespread use of slave labour and many other atrocities that in 1933 probably would not have been accepted by the German people. (Although concentration camps existed from almost the beginning of the Nazi government.) But, Jews (and others) were rounded up in many other countries too, German propaganda didn't do the work there. In some cases it was just fear of German reprisals for sheltering Jews, but also many Europeans were highly anti-semetic and enthusiastically helped. "how is that different from hating someone for their political views?" = wrong. It is different because political views are a choice, being Jewish under the Nazis wasn't. Jews who converted to Christianity were still considered Jews and killed. The Nazis (and their helpers) hated Jews for being Jews, not because of any choice they made.

The Holocaust/Shoah is a one-off in its size. The Armenian and Tutsi genocides are very similar, though smaller. In particular, in all three genocides, the war effort was actually hindered by the killings but the killings were given priority. Trying to use any of these examples to make any point other than that people can do amazingly evil things is probably futile. Any lesson/equivalence will seem to be hyperbole, and can be easily dismissed as such. Pascal's effort at equivalence is an example, it’s so hyperbolic it's impossible to take seriously.

The general point Carano is (perhaps) making, that the road from hating what people think, to shaming people for what they think, to hating the people themselves, to then treating them as second class people (an other), to dehumanizing them, to then killing them, is the path the German people went down, is true. That propaganda helped is also true. That path is a well trodden path with thousands of examples from history. If she had picked some other example, one that led to a few deaths plus a series of terrible governments, say Italy in the 1970s and 80s, maybe it would have been better. The problem with that, is that far less people know about them, so the lesson/point is lost.

Carano's general point could also be used as a reason to silence people. If propagandists are part of the problem, shouldn't we look to silence them? So the same events can be used to argue for free speech, people shouldn't be silenced for what they think; but also for censoring, people shouldn't be exposed to propaganda because it can make them hate.

For a different take: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/01/opinion/IHT-when-the-holocaust-is-incomparable-it-becomes-unworldly.html

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Why in the Hell (my home) has not any one of you smart people responded to this persons request? ???????

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Thank you, from a conservative columnist canceled from a paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, that fired an editor who failed to bow down and use properly obsequious terms for civil justice movements, has a "race beat" and who employs another editor who told me she wanted to "strangle" me because of my pro life views. I have also been called a xenophobe (I'm an asylum attorney) and a misogynist (my pronouns are self evident.) So profound thanks for your courage and moral clarity

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