Your Best Comments From May 2026
Another month, a bunch more thoughtful comments
May flew by! Here are some of your best comments, with some responses by me.
Jonathan Reale, on “On The New York Times’ White-Guy Discrimination Case (And Bubbles)”:
The rest of that quoted section from the Klein article also could benefit from some “turnabout” perspective. Imagine taking the attitude that because someone made a federal complaint, employees at the paper were justified in trying to ascertain and share the identity of the turncoat, with who knows what consequences to follow, if the racial category of the complainant had been something other than it is. I can imagine specific words/phrases that would likely get used to describe the group of employees and their activity as they vigorously sought to identify the traitor in their midst.
Yeah, I think there’s widespread skepticism that you’re “supposed to” use the federal civil rights law if you feel discriminated against as a white person. I have no doubt that this sort of discrimination has been vanishingly rare in American history as compared to other types but, as I pointed out in that article, it puts institutions in a legally tenuous position when they are basically advertising their desire to engage in it.
Snailprincess, on “It’s Immoral Not To Call The Cops On Genuinely Menacing People You Encounter In Public”:
I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that, in progressive circles, particularly online, it is in vogue to say “the system” is so broken it must be replaced. If that is your belief, then attempting to work within the system is pointless and morally wrong. But I’m going to say something controversial, the system is. . . mostly pretty good. Our system of courts, police, trials, courts, etc. is honestly pretty good, especially on paper. We absolutely fall short in execution plenty. Things can and should be improved. But no, we don’t need to rethink the entire concept of police. Almost all of the energy I see online is directed at “the system is broken, burn it down,” that there’s very little left for proposing actual reasonable improvements. I think that filters into politics as well. Very early on in the protests, there were some reasonably good proposals out of the “Black Lives Matters” protest, things like increased accountability and training for police, etc. Those got drowned out almost immediately by the “defund” rhetoric. Make America Incrementally Better Again.
I’ve been thinking about this in terms of some of the internecine fighting that goes on between (to oversimplify) the center-left and the far left. If you’re socialized to believe contemporary America is a world-historical hellhole that is mostly evil, then yeah, you’re going to want to burn it down. If — and this is closer to my perspective — you think America has some serious, frustrating problems, but in certain respects offers people a better life than almost anything that has come before it (here things get somewhat complicated with comparisons to Denmark and Germany, etc.), you’re going to be a bit more risk averse, especially when it comes to doing root-and-branch rather than piecemeal reforms of the justice system, “overthrowing capitalism” (whatever that means), and so on.
I’m probably a bit more bearish on our criminal justice system than Snailprincess, mostly because I think the idea of a two-tiered justice system is. . . basically true? That is, if you have money, you just have so many more opportunities to come out of scrapes with the system (civil or criminal) relatively unscathed than you do if you are lacking in resources. That is obviously unfair, though I don’t know how to fix it. I do think we’ve made tremendous progress toward the decarceration of nonviolent offenders and that we should acknowledge as such. Doesn’t mean you need to leap all the way to “never lock up any violent person for any reason unless you absolutely have to.” As I mentioned in the piece, sometimes it’s the only moral option to maximize everyone’s safety.
Justin DaMetz, also on “It’s Immoral Not To Call The Cops On Genuinely Menacing People You Encounter In Public”:
I recently had to call the police late at night here in suburban Tulsa because a homeless man had decided the space between my two cars in my driveway was the best place to sleep for the night. He was intermittently yelling and crying, and the noise woke my five-year-old. Being someone who is more progressive than not, part of me felt bad calling the police on someone who was clearly having a hard time in life already, and was just looking for a place to rest for the night. The last thing I wanted was to have some police officer having a bad night give him a tough time. But I was glad I did: One of the responding officers told me, along with being deeply inebriated, he also had a grazing gunshot wound that looked like it had been untreated. Calling the cops got him the medical care that might have saved his life from infection, and got him a better place to sleep for the night than my cold driveway. And the officers from TPD were all kind, calm, and compassionate the entire time they were at my house.
In some cases, contact with The System is better than the alternative!
J Chicago, on “How WPATH Thumbed The Scale Of Youth Gender Medicine Research”:
There is also a wider and serious nocebo effect. All these young people are being told they need these “life-saving” interventions in order to thrive, which was directly criticized after a UK study in response to the claims:
“The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing, and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide.”
This is also discussed by Clayton:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02472-8
“However, an excessive focus on an exaggerated suicide risk narrative by clinicians and the media may create a damaging nocebo effect (e.g., a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ effect), whereby suicidality in these vulnerable youths may be further exacerbated (Biggs, 2022; Carmichael, 2017). This type of risk has been discussed in other similar situations involving youth (Abrutyn et al., 2020; Canetto et al., 2021; Shain & AAP COMMITTEE ON ADOLESCENCE, 2016).”
That is, patients who get these drugs might think they were saved from this risk.
And patients who don’t get them might be made even more anxious—a big problem right now in U.S. states where these interventions are not available for minors, and where the **MDs** treating them still believe that this means “lifesaving care” is being denied. The doctors pushing the “lifesaving” narrative are, in my opinion, doing harm to these kids by suggesting suicide is a natural response to having gender dysphoria and that gd can only be alleviated with these medications. It appears to me to be encouraging despair and fear, based on falsehoods.
