And these days freedom of speech needs defenders, for when I look around, I find it under attack everywhere. Blacklisting, cancel culture, libraries being closed or defunded, classic works of literature being banned or bowdlerized or removed from classrooms, an ever growing list of “toxic” words the mere utterance of which is now forbidden no matter the context or intent, the erosion of civility in discourse. Both the Rabid Right and the Woke Left seem more intent on silencing those whose views they disagree with, rather than besting them in debate. And the consequences for those who dare to say things deemed offensive have been growing ever more dire; jobs lost, careers ended, books cancelled, “deplatforming.”
Full blog post here: https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2022/08/15/let-his-voice-be-heard/
Centrism is cowardice. The Rabid Right is trying to silence pedophiles and child butchers. There is no debate to be had. There is a war for the soul of the west. One side wins; one side ceases to exist.
Basically what I was going to point out:
Nothing to do with free speech. Every public library could close tomorrow and free speech remains the same. But public libraries are a good thing to have, generally speaking. But why are they being closed and defunded? Because no one is going?
Or because the right is mad that they have an LGBT kids section and drag queen story hour? Are you equating my desire to not fund sexual child grooming with cancel culture? If that's the "rabid right", then we aren't really having a conversation.
Grrmartin is a huge progressive and not just cause he's fat
They see teaching hedonism and perversion as part of a healthy children's education. To them, not teaching about masturbation, pleasure, and promiscuity is abuse.
Libraries are bastions of Leftist activism now and they're outdated in the age of the internet anyway. They only exist to give internet access to the homeless.
Libraries also support a whole infrastructure of left wing authors with taxpayer dollars. Lib librarians all buy left wing authors and ban right wing authors. This guarantees all left wing authors enormous sales.Taxpayer dollars are used to funnel enormous sums of money to the Left, while shutting out the right.
https://youtu.be/Kg7i7f31hgk?t=173
I agree 100%. Anyone who includes "the right" in any criticism about censorship and silencing is a sissy trying to appear "fair." We all know the reality of censorship, that it is a tool of the left.
What is the right doing? Demanding PUBLIC schools not include pornography or pedophile grooming literature in their lessons or their libraries--not exactly a wholesale throttling of dissent.
I needn't repeat the consequences of publicly speaking against the transsexual movement or feminism or BLM or antifa.
Other than some retarded tradcon scandals...
Centrism may be cowardice, but this take is far more based than I was expecting from a septuagenarian working-class Jersyite with a life-long history of leaning left.
The progressive Left doesn't read, and even if they did, he can always do the 'marginalized person said it' shuffle, pay his dues again with some bad-mouthing of the Right, and he's off to the races.
Nobody's dredging up 25-year-old quotes from Leftists to attack them with, so long as they still serve the will of the Party.
I don't think the Right is trying to silence anyone at all. The main thing the Right does now is DRAW ATTENTION TO left wing speech.
Shit like "keep your weird politics out of the classroom" has nothing to do with freedom of speech, since nobody is EVER entitled to free speech at their job. Nobody is even trying to kick these trannies and groomers off of Twitter, if anything the Right is reposting them to show the world the ugly truth.
Well I’m surprised he called out the woke left. Granted he bent the knee to these people. He was the MC at the Hugo’s or nebulas and people were triggered because he mispronounced names! He apologized
Only one side is actually attacking free speech and making supreme headway, fatass, and its not the one whose nautical term is starboard. I'm afraid the extremists of that aisle haven't been relevant for over 30 years. If you really want to defend free speech, you better be willing to actually fight the people systematically destroying it, even if that means turning all your "friends," business partners, and the fandoms you've nurtured against you. You got your "fuck you" money. USE IT.
Hell yes!!!!
To anyone who thinks GRRM is "waking up" or becoming based, or realizing his mistakes, no.
He is a dyed in the wool, rabid leftist. Always has been. Always will be.
What's happened is what happens to everyone who lives too long--the meaning of "left" has moved well beyond where he is.
His bogey men were the religious conservatives. The people who thought D&D was Satanic, who don't believe in evolution, who banned comic books, who were anti rock music, etc. Well guess what, those people don't exist any more (or they exist in such tiny numbers they're utterly irrelevant).
The enemies of free speech today and freedom of expression TODAY are almost uniformly on the left.
Good for GRRM to realize this and call it out, but no, he's not centrist, and this is not a greater awakening. It's totally consistent with where's he always been.
Except funnily enough half of those religious conservatives where liberals and progressives before they found their nee religion of woke
Since the US only has two political parties, they've both had to be "big tents" to some degree.
I mostly voted for Republican candidates, but I am pro-abortion, I am personally and generally in favor of stronger environmental regulation, and I am not religious.
I still have more in common with many religious conservatives than I do with most leftists.
Some branches of my familiar were and still are extremely leftwing religious SJW (before there were SJWs) types. I have very little in common with them.
Religion is just one datapoint, and probably not a very reliable one. For generations of leftists though, the big bad "Christian conservative" is the ultimate evil.
We already tried the free speech route and it wound up with satanist faggots teaching children to dance on stripper poles, pedophiles swinging their dicks in little girls' faces, and teachers running classrooms like Lenin was still watching and trying to make him proud.
Public debate is a pissing contest, the one who gets off stage dry wins.
I like debates but they can be easily be manipulated by having a weak one side or control opposition.
Another problem is how media covers debates, it does not matter if Kamala was an embarrassment if the media either ignores her incompetence, deflects or lies about it. A large portion of people do not watch debates but summaries from media or reddit.
But I still think public debates are the way to go.
Political debates are a stupid archaic holdover of the pre-TV pre-Internet era. Nobody cares about the topics. If we are going to keep them we should completely revamp how they are run and what the goal is. (because it was never about convincing people of the facts)
I do like the "roundtable" discussions more commonly seen in Europe. But something like a long-form YouTube podcast would probably be more effective. Just have everyone shooting the shit and asking questions of the other candidates with enough light moderation to keep people on topic.
Any ideology with too much power within an area would be a threat to free speech but outside of Islamic countries, religion isn't an issue and unless you call the right's calls to stop messing with the kids censorship, the main fight is against the left.
Welp, how long until he's cancelled for daring to defend free speech?
It would be the perfect excuse to never finish the books, or perhaps enough incentive to actually write the ending, just to spite them and his old publisher.
What's his opinion on plagiarism?
I'm not aware of the right trying to silence pedophiles and child butchers. Stop them, certainly. But I regularly see the left's propaganda shared here without any edits precisely because it shows how nakedly evil these people are. Meanwhile the left has to censor right wing propaganda because it makes the truth so glaringly obvious, and that poses a danger to the left.
Shut the fuck up and keep taking the money from male genocide advocates, you fat fuck.
https://communities.win/c/feminism/p/15JTbCvLqn/until-the-new-ceo-apologizes-for/c
Never forgive HBO or anyone who associates with them.