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The Right Not to Applaud
In 2015, Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner was presented with the Arthur Ashe courage award. The award is for athletes who exhibit courage in the face of adversity. A unanimous standing ovation from a roomful of wealthy, successful actors, media figures, and pro athletes tends to undercut any narrative of oppression and persecution. In fact, anyone in that audience not in a wheelchair who remained seated risked immediate career-threatening blowback in social media. It would have taken far more courage not to celebrate the award that to be its recipient, a situation that bears resemblance to the expected audience response to speeches by Fidel Castro (he/him) or Saddam Hussein (he/him).
I bear no animus towards Jenner. I watched and admired Jenner’s performance from a very respectable 10th place in the decathlon in the 1972 Olympics to the especially electrifying gold medal performance in 1976 back in an era when Soviet bloc countries seemed to have the edge in a lot of track and field events.
I admit to being baffled by Jenner’s current journey or whatever you call it, with more pity than judgment.
Something is deeply out of whack in our social contract. As Americans, we are strongly inclined to grant each other the widest possible zone of personal autonomy. If you are an adult who wants to get some unfortunate tattoos and join a goofy cult, it is not my place to stop you, and certainly not government’s role. However, you do not have the right to mandate my approval of your choices.
The left has successfully destroyed any power to formally or informally enforce traditional, conventional values and replaced that state of affairs with a far more pervasively, broadly enforced, woke value system that is being applied in every corner of our lives and thoughts.
The right to withhold applause needs to be re-established and fiercely defended. It is precisely where mutual respect resides in a pluralistic society.
Published in General
As succinct and insightful a depiction of our current situation as I have ever seen.
I have this in my Media Library for a post that’s bouncing around my head. Most people think they’d be the strong rebel, standing up for the oppressed, but we’re all humans with weaknesses and don’t always take a stand. It takes effort to go against the stream.
To paraphrase Matt Walsh, tolerance was never the goal. It simply opened the doors for the barbarian hordes demanding affirmation.
In the cult of relativism, objectivity is the greatest sin. You must affirm everybody’s “personal truth”. Rather than free people from the shackles of authority, as proponents claimed, it ultimately destroyed the foundation of rational discourse so that truth becomes what those in power say it is.
Relativism is the West’s version of Maoism.
Since Jenner is, supposedly, a Republican there was talk of if Jenner might run for officez even for President. Which makes me wonder…if a trans-woman were to run for President and win, woukd feminists rejoice that a woman has been elected President, or would they feel that a man has taken their victory from them.
Makes me think of this:
Time to take a stand . . . or just sit there.
Why would anybody attend the event if they didn’t agree with the choice of recipient?
Another example: You don’t hear much about Farm Aid anymore. The powers-that-be ain’t gonna associate themselves with a benefit concert for rednecks.
The right to not applaud is not the same as the right to not applaud without (social) consequences. There’s always been a difference, and the latter has never been the situation.
Probably, if I owned slaves in the Antebellum South I would not have freed them. I am terrified of that. We should fear our potential for evil.
I was raised with the maxim that if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing. This suggests to me a society that accepted a difference of opinion so long as you didn’t brazenly antagonize people with the opposing point of view. What I’m hearing now is that having nothing nice to say is not even an option. Your silence betrays your guilt. This is closer to the plot of “A Man for All Seasons” than it is to the America that I was raised in. Can you point to a time in our history where speech affirming a particular stance on a sociopolitical issue was thus compelled?
As you often do Zafar you miss the point. The criticism is that you have to applaud a trans person.You socially aren’t allowed to disagree. There is something conformist and corrupt about that. I personally like Chris Jenner but I don’t like having to pretend that a biological male is a female in all ways.
It is compelled even if not by the government. And as rule I don’t like compulsion.
Well said.
Oh Henry Castaigne! Let me bathe in your sweet nothings!
Nobody is holding a gun to anybody’s head and forcing them to applaud. They’re applauding because that’s part of the consensus, and there are consequences of visibly disagreeing with the consensus, and they don’t want to risk those consequences.
But that’s always been the case for the social consensus. The only difference is what the markers of virtue are today. Imnsho conservatives are noticing this for the first time because it’s the first time (at least in a long time) that the consensus doesn’t include their beliefs and doesn’t defer to their feelings.
Why is holding an opposing point of view automatically ‘brazenly antagonising’?
Also, it really implies a society where difference from the consensus has to be quiet.
If you attended high school in the US, right up till the 1990s (and perhaps beyond) you were forced by social pressure to affirm the straight thing. It wasn’t the law, and there were people who didn’t, or couldn’t, but they paid a heavy price.
Since the 1970s you’ve been forced to affirm racial equality. And women’s equality. Even if you believe in neither. Again – it isn’t against the law to not affirm it, but there’s a social price to be paid if you don’t, and that price is an effective control measure.
I think almost all of my liberal friends believe in their hearts that had they been born into a wealthy plantation family in the mid 1830’s, by age 18 they would have seen the light. Then they would have gone off to join Aunt Mildred The Abolitionist in her drafty, 6th floor Chicago tenement apartment to pass out pamphlets about ending slavery.
Yeah, right!!
There’s an important distinction to be made between being silent on a topic when your private opinion would be regarded with disdain and being forced to publically affirm a position contrary to your opinion.
There is no society where every individuals will privately agree with every consensus opinion, therefore every society will have individuals whose private opinions are held in low regard. But it is a select few societies where the individual is forced, by social pressure, to publically affirm a belief contrary to their own or else face dire consequences.
I wasn’t alive during the period in history you mentioned, so I’m legitimately wondering if gay people were forced to make public statements contrary to their privately held beliefs, or if they at least had the option of silence on the issue and if so, to what extent this was prevalent.
There have been many social situations in my personal life, where I simply remained silent because making my opinion known would do much harm and little good. There were other times, when I felt more comfortable making my opinion known even if it was done in a slow, methodical manner so as not to arouse a passionate response from the other party. However, in those times I choose silence, I was never challenged to reveal my honest opinion at great cost, or affirm a belief contrary to my own.
One of the great many themes of this movie.
Actually, that’s not true.
Until very recently, it was almost universally held in the US that …
”I may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Now, it seems that the majority want people burnt at the stake for failing to give full-throated support to the depravity of the moment.
“Hey, checkout the jugs on that chick!”
*studious silence*
“Come on, check them out! What are you, a f…?”
“Those jugs are awesome!”
It was pretty prevalent.
Just one example, but forcing outward agreement is not a new thing. We are a consensus driven species.
How about defending their right to say it without facing any consequences? Because that’s the point here.
Nah. It used to be — here in America, at least — Live and let live, and, It’s a free county.
Generally.
Now it’s — generally — There oughta be a law.
The example you gave sounds like a private conversation. I’ve been in situations where I’m expected to act or speak in a way which makes me uncomfortable. I think we’ve all been there at some point or other. I also don’t think studious silence is the only response to such a scenario. There are ways to deflect or redirect the topic to something else. Not always, but that’s how things go sometimes.
I’m specifically addressing the decision to remain silent in a public setting, such as that being discussed in the original post. I don’t know if, at any point in our history, the decision of silence rather than affirmation was damning as it has become in modern times.
[Edit]
I think the blacklist was possibly one such time, though I do not know much about it.
When you’re having a conversation with a group of people in high school, or the army, or after church, or at a work dinner the line is somewhat blurred between private and public conversation
What’s your point? That having to deflect in order to avoid endorsing something you don’t agree with is okay? It’s just a different way of dealing with the same social coercion.
I’ve given you an inconvenient example.
Which doesn’t make it okay. It was rotten then and it’s rotten now.
We both agree that being forced to choose between coerced speech and self-damning silence is wrong. Where we may disagree is on the uniqueness of what is taking place now. Your point of view is that this sort of thing has gone on throughout American history, but Conservatives ignored it until it was turned on them. Assuming I’ve represented your view fairly, I disagree with it as a general statement though acknowledge it may have existed in limited circumstances.
My focus is particularly on the idea promulgated in modern society that choosing to remain silent on a hot-button issue is grounds for being cancelled. This seems to me a fairly new phenomenon in American Society. In the past, you may have vigorously disagreed with the general populace about something in your private life, but unless you took a public stance on the subject, you were essentially left to your own devices. Modern society has adopted the “personal is political” approach to everything, which has obliterated the ability for many people to opt for silence rather than adopt a particular stance on an issue.
The right not to applaud? Do people applaud just so they’ll be left alone? What does that sign in the window of the green grocer’s shop really mean?
Looks like this is a job for Václav Havel!
So people today who disagree that trans women are women (just for example) pay a higher price than gay people did in the past? Are you sure?
When it comes to being gay, or having a polygamous marriage, that is definitely not true.
I just think the sphere of coerced speech has shifted. But there you go – we can disagree. Peace.
I believe that people who choose to remain silent rather than openly affirm the premise that trans women are women will pay a higher price than people who in the past remained silent rather than openly affirm the common belief at that time about homosexuality.
Regarding your second point, it was indeed true insofar as the context was personal belief rather than personal practice. There was no poltical movement that I’m aware of which threatened to expunge you from society for refusing to openly advocate for Traditional Marriage. There are such movements now from the left on sexuality, abortion, and other topics like Global Warming. This has been exacerbated by the internet to a large extent, but there it is.
I think an example might offer more clarify. The former CEO of Disney intially took a neutral stance to the Parental Rights Bill in Florida. He essentially said Disney would not make any statement regarding that legislation. The twitter mob, believing his silence was aiding their ideological opponents, raised hell until he finally made a public statement which proved disasterous for the company.
It’s not just that you can’t say the wrong thing, you no longer have the right to remain silent. You must actively support the current progressive causes, or be an anathema. Aside from limited circumstances in the past, I believe this is a largely new phenomenon.
Psst. See Part III
What makes you think this? When the common belief about heterosexuality began to be questioned?
The thing about homosexuality is that for many many years (until the status quo was questioned) it wasn’t policed by a movement but by informal social groups expressing social consensus. (Hence playground games like smear the queer.) That doesn’t make that policing any less effective or impactful.
It did, didn’t it? Wasn’t that a case of punishing a corporation for expressing and opinion!
You keep saying that, but you leave wriggle room with things like ‘aside from limited circumstances’. If it happened in the past it isn’t a new phenomenon. If it didn’t happen to ‘you’, why would you even notice it?
What is happening in our present society. I am open to hearing evidence that similar circumstances did occur in the past.
This is off topic. I’m not discussing how homosexuality was treated in the past vs. how traditionalists are treated in the present.
This was a case of Disney making a statement. I’m discussing the right to stay silent. Two different things.
I leave wiggle room, because as I’ve mentioned, it may have happened in the past. I brought up the example of the Hollywood Blacklist as a limited circumstance where I believe this may have happened. I also acknowledge that I’m not omnicient, nor particularly well read on this subject. Hence I allow some wiggle room for the opposing party to offer evidence against my opinion.
I’m trying to be as specific as possible to avoid tangential debates. The main topic, as I see it, is the right to remain silent without your having been silent being construed as a denial of the popular, hence powerful, positions in society.
Disney did not remain silent, hence it is not on topic. Practicing homosexuality is not the same thing as staying silent on it in a traditional society.
The phenomenon in our society is specifically:
1. People in positions of authority promote a set of beliefs which are in conflict with an individual’s personal beliefs.
2. That individual, not wishing to make himself a target nor betray his beliefs, chooses to remain silent on the topic.
3. The individual is given an ultimatum by an authority: You must publically affirm this set of beliefs, or face repercussions. This intrinsically denies the individual his right to remain silent since he must affirm those beliefs.
Notice, at no point has the individual promoted his own beliefs either by action or words. Had his right to remain silent been honored, he would have no issue.