Well, they're not the same thing, because nobody is claiming 20% women and minimal diversity is a moral imperative. There aren't executive-level staff in major corporations who are paid handsomely to ensure a 20% female staff. If you're arguing there is some kind of secret covenant amongst the shadowy bro-network for a fixed 20% women quota and minimal diversity, you'd need to provide some proof of that. Aside from that you haven't really addressed the questions I asked.
I've noticed a real inability (or perhaps disinclination) to speak about these issues in a straightforward way.
Taleb is correct to call out this cartoon as the politically correct nonsense that it is. A saner society might agree with him and ask itself why, in the current day, history needs to be rewritten to be completely fictitious.
Taleb's persona, however, does not lend itself well to open debate over such issues, as he champions himself as being a lone iconoclast against the "IYIs". All we can do is enjoy the show, I guess.
Is speaking to the Russian ambassador somehow illegal? It seems that the accusations here are whether Sessions had contacts with Russia during his time as a Trump campaign surrogate. He did not. So it's not clear to me what the controversy is here.
So what? America's history is overwhelmingly white and Christian. The vast majority of immigration to the US has been from white, Christian nations, even more so at the time when the Statue of Liberty was erected. Is the US a nation of Yemeni immigrants? It's silly to simply treat all potential immigrants as if they are the same. Also, it's disingenuous to reference the Statue of Liberty as some kind of justification for unlimited immigration from all nations of the world. The USA is not a dumping ground for the world's poor.
Lol. Care to comment on the many bannings/suspensions of prominent right-wing commentators/journalists on Twitter (Milo, Ricky Vaughn, Chuck Johnson, James O'Keefe, to name a few), the practice of "shadowbanning", as well of Facebook's well-documented history of deleting/censoring of posts about refugee crime in Europe and outright censorship of anti-refugee comments in Germany (under the guise of calling it "hate speech" of course...)?
Articles like these are primarily about signaling that one is an enlightened urbanite rather than an uncultured suburban troglodyte. In other words, simple cultural warfare. Even the title gives it away... lawns are "soul-crushing"? Only to pompous urban J-school graduates whose entire parasitic existence depends on the productive classes of society.
Fair enough, not trying to put words in your mouth, but here's the thing: the "white privilege" narrative that you rely on here IS actually a way of declaring a group of people as being morally unworthy. Granted you didn't use the word "evil" but if a group is permanently tarred with the accusation that their group interests are not legitimate and never will be, it's not a stretch to suggest that this group is being accused of a kind of eternal "Original Sin" from which they can never be cleansed.
And anyway, it's clear from your explanation that if these people were not white, you might have some sympathy for them. How else are we to interpret statements like: "they cannot point to any injustices visited upon them as an excuse for their current state of affairs" and that "these people have nothing to offer to anyone" a few lines after you elucidate how the US Govt did nothing to protect American manufacturing jobs? What exactly do foreign manual laborers "have to offer" that white Americans don't, aside from being cheaper?
Sure you did. Your third and fourth paragraphs essentially say, "These people, by virtue of being white Americans, do not deserve help from our country's institutions, because they are evil. Everyone else on earth is more deserving of help, and therefore, our country should give money to foreigners instead of its own people."
And people wonder where working-class rage comes from...
> But maybe we shouldn't feel sorry for these people, who grew up in the richest country in the world blah blah blah ...
So, whites deserve nothing from the institutions of their own country, except the "privilege" to be permanently tainted by a kind of Original Sin, and neglected in favor of literally every other ethnic group? Got it.
In regards to historical progressivist movements, I agree with you. I was referring only to the current progressive dispensation. Perhaps I'm not using the correct term for it... whatever you want to call the dominant American university ideology of today.
I do think it's appropriate to think of this ideology primarily in racial terms. Virtually any issue supported by the left today is, in its essence, about stripping white people of power, identity, and autonomy, and giving that power to other groups.
Diversity, equality, multiculturalism, globalism, "one-world"-ism, pro-mass-immigration, all of these terms mean "not white". It's perfectly easy to see that, because all "white" cultures are treated differently in this paradigm, as "oppressor", "colonialist" nations/peoples, "majority/minority", "privileged", etc. These terms don't apply to other groups.
The amorphousness and formlessness of this ideology and its lack of coherent theoretical basis (as opposed to something more rigidly principled like Marxism, libertarianism, etc) is what provides cover for its true aim, which is political power for its adherents.
Bingo. Progressive leftist ideology, in its essence, is anti-white racism. All of its purported ideals are really about stripping whites of any power or identity and giving it to others.
I've noticed a real inability (or perhaps disinclination) to speak about these issues in a straightforward way.