Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EnigmaticHat]

Expelled for impersonating campus administration and putting out false statements.

Really? Somebody better lock up Diamond Joe Biden's publicist as well in that case.

I did specify expelled, not arrested. I'm not sure whether criminal charges would be merited, but I wouldn't rule it out either. But schools are allowed to police their students beyond simple law. Any reasonable school should consider impersonation of an administration official and releasing statements on their behalf as punishment worthy... I would consider it expulsion worthy, but I would accept a lesser punishment. Any punishment to express how this is "not ok".

Imagine if you were working at a company and you decided to make a "satire" account for your CEO or company owner. I would fully expect you to be fired on the spot once that became public.

Okay, regardless of my feelings on the rest of this, I want to sit down with a moment and make one point.

Not everything should be managed like a company.
 
Universities are not companies. Governments are not companies. Churches are not companies. Orgies are not companies. Do not try and run one like any other. I hate what this has done to so many systems. It's like becoming a company is the holy grail of every endeavor in the U.S, as though company behavior suddenly became the definition civilized behavior.
 
Again, this comment is without regard to the validity of the protesting done, and without concern for the punishment or lack there of for the students involved. I just feel the need to grab people by the shoulders and shake them vigorously every time they make an analogy with an 'in a company...' premise.

While, I am committed to Social Justice, I am still trying to figure out my role as a white ally,” he says. “I feel privileged because of my background, and I want to be careful not to whitesplain

So...

You can sit down at a computer, impersonate a man trying to do his job, push exaggerated tinder into a mess of sparks, fan the flames as best you can, but then you can't actually go out and stand by the very people you incited to action-- because you're worried that your white-privilege and non-appropriate life experience will influence the situation that you created?

Hell, that beats out bone spurs for best made-up reasons not to serve. Can you not see the massive irony here?

People. Are. Not. Different. You're all flesh-tubes and meat-wires strung together. You don't need to have to be black to support black rights, you didn't need to be japanese to oppose the internment, you don't need to be any flavor of LGBTQ to support their right to be who their brain tells them they are. I've never understood people who can look at a problem and say "Wow, yeah, that's terrible and should stop, but I don't feel like I should get involved because I am/am not X".

Counterpoint: Autism Speaks.  The autistic community absolutely fucking hates them because they present themselves as an advocate group but they don't listen to the people they're trying to help and they don't have any autistic people on their board of directors.

[Neonivek]

I REALLY shouldn't be researching one particular social justice group while in this thread.

And yeah I heard how terrible Autism Speaks is... But don't criticize them that is criticizing Autistic people

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm going to assume that last bit was sarcastic.

[Neonivek]

I'm going to assume that last bit was sarcastic.

Sarcastic indeed.

It is VERY common though that whatever group they speak out for... Is their sort of human shield. So I wouldn't put it past them to defend themselves as a "Criticizing us is hurting or criticizing all Autistic people"

It even happens in Bay12

[smjjames]

I hadn't heard about how terrible the Autism Speaks organization is, though looking at wikipedia, it sort of looks like they have no clue what they're talking about, usually.

[Frumple]

Anywho, dunno if it already came up and I just missed, but apparently the military has more or less officially spoken on the state of their consideration of trump's tweets. For the click averse, one of the higher up generals (chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or summat) has wrote that nothing changes until implementation plans and junk actually show up front of 'em, put there by something other than twitter.

Stay tuned to find out if our current administration is or is not willing and/or able to follow through on the issue.

[misko27]

Like it or not, his words have real, tangible implications.

Implications maybe, but no policy changes. Trump has not signed or made any sort of official change to the policy of transgenders in the military, because as it turns out Twitter is not an extension of executive power in this country. It's particularly strange since he does have the power to do this, but he hasn't. It's rather like someone told him "You could practically clap your hands and make it so", and he took this as a literal description of his power and not a metaphor.

Ninja'd, for once. Still, the point remains: Trump says a lot, all the time, practically 24/7. I don't mean to dismiss the words of one of the most powerful men in the world, but he says a lot and does very little. Taking him at his word 100% is not an accurate way of predicting his moves and policies. Example A: The currently non-existent prosecution of Hillary Clinton (even Breitbart was recently accusing him of Hypocrisy on this, noting that it is he who turned against this first, not Sessions.)

[EnigmaticHat]

I hadn't heard about how terrible the Autism Speaks organization is, though looking at wikipedia, it sort of looks like they have no clue what they're talking about, usually.

The main break between the autistic community and Autism Speaks centers around whether autism is a mental illness.  The thing about being on the spectrum is that most of the bad health outcomes that it leads to come from how other people choose to act.  In this way its kind of analogous to homosexuality.  Where like yes, being gay in some parts of the world gives you negative health outcomes like depression risk and suicide risk, and creates massive social problems.  But its not inherently a result of your actions.  If 50% of the population was gay and everyone got it completely and was OK with it, those negative outcomes would go away.  Ditto for autism.  Its primarily a social and developmental "problem", but the problem comes from how others react rather than how you act.

Autism speaks on the other hand runs ads on the general vein of say anti-depression or anti-alcohol ads.  Their general attitude could be summed up as "with your help, in 50 years we might have a cure for autism!"  They've donated money to research into prenatal screening so that fetuses at risk for autism can be modified or aborted.  The autism community (AFAIK?) doesn't view autism as a mental illness, so obviously they're very upset with that.  Autism Speaks also likes to emphasize the otherness of autistic people and the problems they cause for their parents and for society, promoting fear and anger towards individuals on the spectrum.

[Descan]

Basically the DoD went "Put up or shut up." to the Trump Admin? In a more diplomatic fashion. "We can't stop you twittering about whatever, but until you actually give us something to work with, we ain't doing shit to fulfil your fantasy."

[MetalSlimeHunt]

What I love about this is that Trump is so incompetent that even acting in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, where he has nearly unlimited authority and literally just has to say "make it so" to Mattis or the JCS and it'll be made so, he still found a way to fuck it up both optically and formally.

[EnigmaticHat]

Although the generals will always have the option of doing what they're asked slowly/badly, or tactically saying the right thing to the wrong reporter.  IIRC Obama got caught on that when he tried to integrate LGBT soldiers early into his term and faced heavy pushback.

[Baffler]

Basically the DoD went "Put up or shut up." to the Trump Admin? In a more diplomatic fashion. "We can't stop you twittering about whatever, but until you actually give us something to work with, we ain't doing shit to fulfil your fantasy."

More like "Hey everyone who heard about this, we're ready to roll out these changes but it won't happen for a while since we still need to work out the specifics." And I don't see how this is making a mistake """""optically.""""" Usually in government you announce a change well in advance of actually implementing it, no?

[Draignean]

Basically the DoD went "Put up or shut up." to the Trump Admin? In a more diplomatic fashion. "We can't stop you twittering about whatever, but until you actually give us something to work with, we ain't doing shit to fulfil your fantasy."

More like "Hey everyone who heard about this, we're ready to roll out these changes but it won't happen for a while since we still need to work out the specifics." And I don't see how this is making a mistake """""optically.""""" Usually in government you announce a change well in advance of actually implementing it, no?

Typically, one informs the people doing the implementation well ahead of the public, in order for them to be able to accurately answer the questions of the public. This has all the makings of a shitshow because most everyone involved was informed at the same time via Twitter.

[Frumple]

Pretty much. When you're effectively forcing the people you intend to implement something to go, "We didn't hear about this until now and have no idea what the hell they actually want done," it doesn't exactly look good.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Basically the DoD went "Put up or shut up." to the Trump Admin? In a more diplomatic fashion. "We can't stop you twittering about whatever, but until you actually give us something to work with, we ain't doing shit to fulfil your fantasy."

More like "Hey everyone who heard about this, we're ready to roll out these changes but it won't happen for a while since we still need to work out the specifics." And I don't see how this is making a mistake """""optically.""""" Usually in government you announce a change well in advance of actually implementing it, no?

Despite it being the reality we live in announcing policy on twitter is still not alright. That even goes beyond optics and into actual practical failure in some instances because bunches of people end up not knowing what their standing responsibilities are, hence the press release by the military today.

Secondly, there's a difference between fielding a policy change and suddenly pulling a full reversal on an existing policy without any behind the scenes work. Or trying to, as it ended up being here. As far as can be observed the only person who really knew about this was Trump. The JCS didn't know. Mattis wasn't even at work. This displays a rather clear ineptitude to the public. An organization of people need to be on the same page, at the very least on the decision-making level.

All the memos and meetings that large organizations go through happen for a reason beyond banality and the tyranny of capitalist flesh. It's necessary to make things go smooth. Donald Trump does not go smooth.