Shelly Penton

The Portland frog backing down an army of jackboots

When your custom character appears in a cut scene

They are not merely bad people, bigots, crooks. They are The Enemy, people who cannot exist in any position of power if you want a government of laws, a country with any semblance of fairness or decency. They are anathema to our Constitution and every principle America ever aspired to embody

I think they'll have a hard time with that. They're apparently surveying a lot of people (including grad students). I don't know how you do that and then pretend you never did it.

Maybe they are hoping if they wait a year or two someone else will be in charge.

Introducing my son to college-level discourse by asking him "Can you say more about that?" every time he babbles.

elder millennial news director ending his big speech with "now lets go do the heckin newserino"

In MAGA brain, the presence of a woman or person of color in a powerful position in politics, business, or the military is taken presumptively as evidence of unfair advantage.

And if anyone wants a good analysis of the compact, as well as why journalists have been terrible at reporting about it:

If anyone is curious how the UVA faculty answered this issue:

***correction they sent it last night

I am apparently very bad at checking my email timestamps.

Email from UVA administration from yesterday evening: To the University of Virginia Community, You have likely read that UVA is one of nine schools that received a proposal from the Department of Education and other federal officials regarding a “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education.” The document raises questions of profound importance to the University of Virginia and more broadly to all institutions of higher education in the United States. President Mahoney has formed a working group to study those questions and to advise him concerning the appropriate response. The Board of Visitors has confidence in that process and looks forward to working with President Mahoney to address this critical juncture in the relationship between the federal government and American universities. It would be difficult for the University to agree to certain provisions in the Compact. We write to assure you that our response will be guided by the same principles of academic freedom and free inquiry that Thomas Jefferson placed at the center of the University’s mission more than 200 years ago, and to which the University has remained faithful ever since. We are including a link below that will allow members of the community to share their views, and look forward to your input. https://virginia.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1IanFDY9X6Zkrqu Rachel Sheridan Rector Paul Mahoney Interim President

Lord have mercy, UVA just sent an email about the compact, and as slow as it was for them to answer, *they still haven't answered.*

They are forming a "working group" to study their response.

Can faculty just reinvent the university concept without any admin attached? This is absurd.

What I *do* know is that people will seek out dignity no matter the cost, and will make their pride out of something shameful/their shameworthiness if that is the only option.

And with the internet, there really isn't a reason to admit shameworthiness at all.

If one feels hoodwinked into feeling bad, as if someone is changing the rules arbitrarily, then shame doesn't work.

And since awareness of differences in how/why to feel shame comes from the internet (lots of subreddits) there is no real/enduring/pedagogical shame that can be evenly applied.

to even admit that one can/should be shamed at all *except among those one trusts*.

I know "ma'am, this is a Wendy's" but people will always go with the group who will let them feel better about themselves. Extremes on either end of the political spectrum merely reinforce this feeling.

With every threat of indignity scaled infinitely (on the internet) there because an unwilingness

The question is "what are the conditions under which people are willing to trust someone enough to endure shaming from them?'

they will see it as an opportunity to re-establish their identity not with the "out-group" but with the "in-group."
They will see it as a *victory of identity* not a failing within that identity, i.e., something shameful.

It doesn't matter if I believe shaming is good or not.

Some people in this situation will give up. Some will over-correct. Some will double down.

But because we live in the time/conditions we do, most people won't even register it as shame. They will just see an arbitrary reason that other people chose in order to shame them. In other words...

without a shared (collective) sense of the future with me in it, I can't process what I say is wrong. All I can process is pain. Social pain, yes (not physical suffering). But the sense of exclusion without enough trust/common pathways to handle that means the pressure builds up and shame compiles.

being the biggest scaler of all time.

If I do/say something wrong, there is now no limit to how many people/ways they can shun/embarrass/shame. It can even be true that internet shame leads to nothing in particular (doxxing, etc). But without a way to compensate and maintain identity/dignity

(and others have talked about the roots of this, so less here)

But people are doing lulz for others (to be seen) for dignity (among recognized peers). They are establishing dignity for themselves, even if that dignity is based on the recognition of terrible behavior.

The internet fuels this by

Because there is an identity, a status, a *pride* to that which they have felt deprived of.

It would be tempting to reduce the argument to "Oh it's just 'Challenge accepted!," going the opposite way of expectations/norms for funzies/the lulz."

But I think that is a misreading of the situation.

People will always crave status, recognition, approbation, etc. – dignity! But if they can't gain it by the typical route (and honestly you can't please everyone), people will make an identity (a negative one *against those who shame them*) out of defying norms of those who excluded them.

...my dignity, which (as its very essence) permits me to move on with my life (forgiveness) after I have paid the price and reestablished trust with the in-group.

People are just hanging out with their feelings of shame without any attachment of it to a group to which they belong non-arbitrarily.

...difference to flourish (yay!)

But what that means is that one's sense of shame can be entirely different from another's.

And so what do we get instead? A *compounding* or doubling-down of the behavior that is shame-worth according to the outgroup. After all, only people I trust can conserve...

The problem (as I see it) is that not all collectives belong to each other/overlap. In other words, the contemporary era (and the internet) have expanded and multiplied identities, commonalities, and deep (spiritual) resonances.

We have allowed (in ways that people can skim along the surface)

But collectives do create/apply norms. And those norms have implicit limits about what can or can't be said to correct (pedagogically) that person. And there is a certain limit to which one individual can be damned/shunned and the method/extent/form of their exclusion.

We know that children don't mind being spanked (corporeal punishment) if it is part of their culture to expect to be spanked at least once. In other words, it is not about the experience itself, but the *social recognition* of that experience that matters.

Collectives do not think morally.

It's not that Germans learned the Holocaust's lessons per se. It is that their identity is tied up with ensuring that this will "never again" be possible. In other words, their pride comes from admitting how wrong they were.

This should not sound strange to tradition-aware Christians. It's orthodox

How far are we to establishing that memory/censorship laws are detrimental to liberal democracies?

A prof once asked (after reading my diss proposal) whether I was ok with shaming people. That's not the correct question.

The right question is, who should be the person/institution to shame people?

Bad Bunny's press team whispering into the ear piece, "Don't say *hell*. Say *fuego*."