Troubling news out of Silicon Valley, where Google—the company that knows literally everything about you and everyone you love—has been shown to employ people who think bad thoughts and, in a forum encouraging the free exchange of ideas, exchanged ideas that are Bad. I mean, can you even believe someone would write a manifesto with passages such as these?
I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).
Monstrousness! True wickedness. While this evil individual has been fired, it seems the rot has spread much further than anyone might have imagined:
Employees across Silicon Valley are deeply divided about Google's move, according to a survey conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday by Blind, an anonymous corporate chat app. When Blind asked its users if they thought Google should have fired Damore, over 4,000 from different companies weighed in.
Perhaps most pertinently, 441 Google employees responded. Of them, more than half – 56% to be precise – said they didn't think it was right for the company to fire Damore.
My God! Haven't they seen the rational responses from the media? Don't they understand the proper way to respond to "science" and "statistics"?
Yes, yes, I know, I know. For years we said that denying science is bad. But this science is even worse than denying science! So, you know, get on with the denial.
And get on with the purge. Look, here's the thing: If we're going to root out this violence—and this speech is most certainly violence, as some Google employees were literally too upset to come to work when they found out a guy who has a passing familiarity with statistics walked among them—then we need names. Allow me to suggest a quick and easy plan for Google to right the ship.
- Pump James Damore for names. He certainly knows other alt-rightists who work at Google; the company is probably lousy with them. So offer him a severance package that includes a bonus for each name named: Say, $10,000 for every wicked brogrammer he can come up with.
- Expand the list of names by interrogating the Bad Thinkers. If Damore gives up five and each of the five gives up five and each of those 25 give up five, well, this purge will be rolling in no time!
- Rebrand Google Channels to serve as a list of unhireables. The problem with simply firing all these monstrous bigots is that they'd probably just get a job elsewhere in the tech industry. We need some sort of list, preferably one drawn up in black, to serve as a depository of undesirables. Remember Red Channels? I'm guessing Google doesn't have much going on with its Google Channels page; maybe it's time for a rebranding?
Now look: some innocent people are going to get caught up in this. Some people might even name names just to hurt enemies or to try and save their own skin. But that's okay! It's a small price to pay for ensuring ideological purity while also pretending to believe in the free exchange of ideas. The noble ends of a blacklist always justify the occasional abuse.