[ivraatiems]

> The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

> The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity.

I think this is the right's perspective, but it's not an accurate portrayal of the left's. I therefore disagree with the assertion that this is a fair representation of the "public consciousness" on this issue.

I'd say the left views it this way:

The left's goal is to include people who have historically been oppressed or ostracized, and to increase empathy and raise the bar for what is appropriate and professional to exclude behavior that hurts people, even if it has previously been considered acceptable.

The right's goal is to maintain the status quo and the structures and hierarchies of power (which disproportionately benefit them) and to put down any attempts to change it as "oversensitive snowflakes overreacting" instead of as well-intentioned people trying to make the world better.

To be clear - I see things as more aligned with the left's perspective in reality. But I also see so-called "snowflakes" on both sides, insofar as people are unable to take or manage fair criticism reasonably offered when it challenges their viewpoints. I vehemently disagree with the idea that adapting a code of conduct is either inherently political or, if it is, inherently left-leaning, except to the extent that various sides try to cast it that way.

Edit: On reconsideration: If you view a code of conduct that tries to equalize people and prohibit certain kinds of language the left would consider "oppressive" (e. g. sexist, racist, ageist, ableist) as inherently political, then I see the argument. But I still don't agree completely, insofar as people working together shouldn't need to insult each other to do so appropriately.

[tomp]

hehe I think his description of the left and your description of the right are the more correct ones. Both other descriptions more accurately describe the political center.

[ivraatiems]

Hmm, that's a good point. I'm not sure I agree, but something to think about.

I think it might be more accurate to say the negative descriptions accurately describe the bad-faith actors, and the positive ones describe the good-faith actors.

[tomp]

Unfortunately the "bad-faith actors" have all the media attention, and at least on the left, also a lot political power (i.e. they can get people fired/banned from Unis) (at least the media and academia seem completely left-dominated; maybe the opposite when it comes to the current US administration, although I don't see the far-right making any big progress, except maybe "the wall" and "Muslim ban"). Basically this is the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

[ivraatiems]

I'd say in the US, the right has a lot more power-in-fact than the left, but the left may have more of the popular will. The fact that the two aren't aligned is the result of our relatively shitty system, frankly. (And even so, the right is having such an identity crisis right now, it's hard to say it has total power.)

As far as "no true Scotsman" - we can't prevent people from associating with groups, but we can call them out when their ideals don't match those of the group, and we can hold them to account if they behave in ways that contradict the group's values or are a bad-faith application of those values. I think the left is... okay... at doing that, and the right is often pretty bad, but neither is exactly great. We're also bad at doing it proportionally, and at seeing people as sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes agreeing with us, sometimes not. But that's another problem.

[iherbig]

>I think this is the right's perspective, but it's not an accurate portrayal of the left's. I therefore disagree with the assertion that this is a fair representation of the "public consciousness" on this issue.

I'm not saying it _is_ an accurate portrayal of _either_ side. The only assertion I'm making is that those are the beliefs the public consciousness holds as truisms, irrespective of their truth values.

Edit: To clarify further, I want to make explicit something implicit in what I said. You may notice that what I'm asserting is the "commonly held beliefs of the public consciousness" is rather right-leaning.

I acknowledge that that statement is also implicitly asserting that the public consciousness is, to some degree, right-leaning as well.