I Can’t Help but Feel Like You’re Trying to Intimidate Me Into Pretending to Agree with You
The title says it all.
Out of all the recurring thoughts I keep to myself, “I can’t help but feel like you’re trying to intimidate me into pretending to agree with you” is my favorite.
It’s what I think whenever I hear about “mandatory training.”
It’s what I think when K-12 schools announce their “teaching philosophy.”
It’s what I think when universities comment on what does and does not “align with their values.”
It’s what I think when someone continues an argument after angrily refusing to bet.
“I can’t help but feel like you’re trying to intimidate me into pretending to agree with you.” These words have helped me cope with many a trying time. They are my phial of Galadriel:
“In this phial,” she said, “is caught the light of Eärendil's star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out."
“I can’t help but feel like you’re trying to intimidate me into pretending to agree with you.” Since ideas are non-rival goods, I gladly share this thought with the world.
May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out!
Yes. Zoom meetings are held to establish leftist presuppositions and leftist slogans and semantics. Non-leftists are intimated; they are excluded or remain silent. Thus the intimation and Zoom strategy manufactures a false consensus. A big lie.
The irony is that this intimidation is carried out by some of the least intimidating people on earth. There’s a feedback loop here that someone just needs to have the balls to break. Highly neurotic, oversensitive employees are a huge liability to organizations. Striver executives with no conviction recruit DEI sociopaths to cover their asses against these employees. The DEI team then creates mandatory practices that only serve to increase the anxiety around race/sex/gender in the workplace, thus justifying the need for even greater resources. Meanwhile 90% of rank and file employees (even many of those with pronouns in their email signature) know in their heart that the entire thing is bullshit. The whole thing is bound to crumble sooner or later as companies can’t just keep pissing money away indefinitely. It’s just a matter of when.