Pride goeth before the fall, they say. The hellish party is the wait.

It’s a different situation than elsewhere, but it’s important to try to understand because these problems will, I regret, continue to spread. America is still a cultural exporter for now, and that includes the insane situation we’ve come to.

Imagine if, in your country, there was a civil war started by racists over 150 years ago and even though they lost their leaders were allowed to live and hold office, and they were given plenty of room to tell a fake version of events, erect monuments, and fly the flag of rebellion.

That is only a thin slice of one part of what’s been going on in the states. If ever your country deals with traitors, I hope you see them hanged. Letting them live will kill your country sooner or later.

As for the downvotes I don’t know I’m just talking here. I can’t speak for them. In America, this issue is often played to ‘both sides’ in bad faith, and far right ideas are given more than equal time in ways that have normalised fascist tendencies for decades, leading to the current situation (more or less a coup in progress). It’s a difficult needle you’re trying to thread at the best of times, and right now an “even handed” stance feels a lot like cities trying to solve traffic by adding “just one more lane” to their already massive highways.

As ever, this is just me talking.

I don’t see the equivalency as valid though. I am white, but that’s not something I’d ever be proud of in itself because it’s literally just pigmentation alone. I’m so ethnically mixed and Americanised that I can’t really claim the English, Croat, or Scottish heritage I have got - despite being a British citizen living in England who eats haggis with enough frequency to disturb my family. I very much appreciate my heritage but it has no hold on me as an in-group identity. They don’t claim me, nobody needs to.

If I was to take the stance of being “anti-DEI”, which lets face it, it’s just white supremacism with updated buzzwords, I’d be taking the stance that my literal mere pigmentation is an equally valid source of pride as a black woman’s history of oppression, or a trans man’s struggle to be treated as their true self.

I’ve struggled, but I haven’t struggled from being white or cisgender. I’ve walked alone at night wherever I liked ever since I was barely a teen with hardly so much as a glance over my shoulder. Gone to other countries where I barely speak fifty words in the local tongue with nary a care. I’ve spent my whole life being given credit as the person I present as. I’ve been unafraid to take risks, and it gives me hell to know others haven’t been able to enjoy those things in life. It’s not even a huge amount of empathy we’re talking about here.

So that’s my story. Anyone who reads this and thinks I’m a self hating white is probably in need of a smack. I’m fine with myself. I want others to have a taste of being okay once in a while like I have, is all.

Grades have not depended on race in mainstream or HBCUs. Admissions however have not ever been equal, and DEI initiatives were created with the idea of counterbalancing that - or in lieu of reparations, which would be a real attempt to correct the inherent issue.

I knew I smelled something.

Well hell, I hope Gabe eventually meets enough libertarians to become disgusted with himself. Penn Gillette recently did, so there’s always hope.

Okeh. Slightly weird to have an opinion with no examples. Propaganda, much?

Now with 40,000% more lamentation

I hope nobody ever teaches anon how to be normal so that their damage raises as few kids as possible

Computers are what we’d get if Epimetheus stole something from the gods for us instead

If I deleted steam

I’ll bite. What’s a company with extreme DEI?

Not really on the table, my kid would kill me in my sleep. Just going to move forward towards other things.

They seem to have a track record of lukewarm responses to social issues, lax content moderation, and a combo of flat corporate hierarchy and a complete lack of diversity in their team that have made it difficult to lead any efforts to improve the situation.

My read is that Gabe is not evil, just a comfortable old guy who, like many comfortable old (white) guys, has bought into the myth of the great meritocracy as a self serving narrative, which is really just a post-hoc mythology of success in most cases imo.

I’m reading deeply into a lot of skimmed clues, so all of the foregoing is subject to revision if I see anything compelling in the opposite direction.

I’m still gonna use American stuff that’s good if they keep DEI. brb checking up on Steam.

Edit: it’s not looking good tbh I think I’ll switch to GOG / physical media as much as feasible.

Curse of eloquence. I always know how to phrase things trenchantly, but I’m deeply ineffectual

Put on a green hat and plunge the toilet

I would heartily support one.

Sure it was only the voting public’s marginal preference at one point in time and it matches exactly with Russian geopolitical aims and it’s a non-binding referendum pushed by moneyed interests and it was never going to be a good idea but that’s what it looks like to have a mandate for abandoning free trade, international standards, freedom of movement, and a privileged status in the federation.

The older I get, the more I see what Oderus Urungus saw.