From James Damore’s notorious Google diversity memo:

Suggestions

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).

My concrete suggestions are to:

De-moralize diversity.

• As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”
  Stop alienating conservatives.
• Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.
• In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
• Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

Confront Google’s biases.

• I’ve mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
• I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation and personality to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.

Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.

• These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.

Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.

• Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
• There’s currently very little transparency into the extend of our diversity programs which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo chamber.
• These programs are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.
• I realize that some of our programs may be precautions against government accusations of discrimination, but that can easily backfire since they incentivize illegal discrimination.

Focus on psychological safety, not just race/gender diversity.

• We should focus on psychological safety, which has shown positive effects and should (hopefully) not lead to unfair discrimination.
• We need psychological safety and shared values to gain the benefits of diversity
• Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX.

De-emphasize empathy.

• I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

Prioritize intention.

• Our focus on microaggressions and other unintentional transgressions increases our sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our tendency to take offense and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian policies. Speaking up without the fear of being harshly judged is central to psychological safety, but these practices can remove that safety by judging unintentional transgressions.
• Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with violence and isn’t backed by evidence.

Be open about the science of human nature.

• Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.

Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees.

• We haven’t been able to measure any effect of our Unconscious Bias training and it has the potential for overcorrecting or backlash, especially if made mandatory.

• Some of the suggested methods of the current training (v2.3) are likely useful, but the political bias of the presentation is clear from the factual inaccuracies and the examples shown.

• Spend more time on the many other types of biases besides stereotypes. Stereotypes are much more accurate and responsive to new information than the training suggests (I’m not advocating for using stereotypes, I just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of what’s said in the training).

If you click here, you’ll go to the original text of the Suggestions part of the memo. It contains hyperlinks inserted by Damore.

I think these are excellent suggestions that are worth debating. Too bad Google is not the kind of company where one can talk about these things without risking one’s livelihood. Why would anyone who had not already drunk the SJW Kool-Aid want to work there. “Microaggression Training”? That’s a thing? What a neurotic workplace that must be.

A thought: I wonder if fired Google programmer James Damore is on the autism spectrum. It has long been known that a disproportionate number of people in software development show signs of having Asperger syndrome.  It has a lot to do with why they’re so good at their jobs.

Aspies — the term is not really used anymore, but it was when my family became acquainted with the condition — are not neurotypical. Their brain’s wiring makes it easy for them to focus intensely on narrow interests, and they tend to be brilliant at the things that they focus on. Software development is a natural field for them. Microsoft even has a program to hire more people on the spectrum, because the neurological condition that makes many jobs difficult for them also makes them great programmers. They are detail-oriented, and can often see the logic in systems easier and quicker than others.

But there’s a hitch. From the Fast Company story linked to in the last graf:

What’s unorthodox about this, of course, isn’t just its setup. It also represents a novel, and potentially fraught, expansion of the idea of diversity. The impulse to hire more autistic employees is based on the same premise as hiring, say, women and people of color: Doing so not only welcomes in a wider range of creative and analytical talent, but brings more varied perspectives into an organization, and makes for a workforce that better reflects the general population of customers.

And yet, being autistic is considered a brain disorder, and it affects the way people process and communicate information—skills that are at the core of many white-collar professions. Adickman and his cohort were, in a sense, subjects in the third iteration of an ambitious experiment. Could the third-largest corporation in the world make the case that hiring and employing autistic people, with all their social and intellectual quirks, was good, not bad, for business?

People on the spectrum usually lack the ability that neurotypicals have to understand social signals, emotional cues, and social hierarchies. It’s not their fault; they just can’t see these things. Learning to live with someone on the spectrum requires you to show a lot of mercy and patience. Aspies often say things bluntly, but they mean no harm. And they tend to take things literally. For example, if the company they work for tells them that it values open expression, they may not understand that the company doesn’t mean that literally. The point is, it is very, very easy for people on the spectrum to step out of line, without meaning to. It is difficult for them to understand how things look to other people. This is not because they have bad character. It’s because of the way their brains are wired.

Another point: people on the spectrum tend to have a real problem dealing with disorder. This can manifest itself in different ways. For example, they can be acutely sensitive to injustice, real or perceived, and perseverate on particular instances of what they consider to be unfairness. To someone who doesn’t understand how the autism spectrum works, this can look like jerkiness. But it doesn’t seem that way to the person on the spectrum.

Does this have anything to do with James Damore and his case? I have no idea. Perhaps Damore is not on the spectrum. But I tell you this: I feel very sorry today for Google employees who are on the spectrum. They may have little to no intuitive feel for how the social, and social justice, hierarchy at the company works, and won’t know if something they think is unproblematic is actually stepping on a land mine. As microaggression obsession turns workplaces turn into neurotic hothouses, they become far more dangerous places for people on the spectrum, who are at a severe disadvantage navigating through these dangerous waters.

If Google (and other companies) really mean what they say about diversity, then they ought to be more sensitive to the particular social challenges faced by those employees on the spectrum. They ought to be teaching neurotypicals how to work productively with people on the spectrum — and that means giving them a lot of grace. Again, James Damore may not be one of those employees, but if he is on the spectrum, his memo — in its content, its language, and that he released it at all — would make total sense. And whether he is or isn’t on the spectrum, a lot of the people who work on the tech side of people surely are. They have now been put on notice by Damore’s firing that theirs is a hostile workplace environment for people who are not neurotypical.

This is something we ought to be talking about, beyond Google. I would love to hear from readers who are on the autism spectrum, about how they cope in the workplace, given how sensitive companies have become to “microaggressions,” and how unforgiving office culture is about transgressions.

UPDATE: Reader “Aspie In Massachusetts” comments:

I’m a former software and hardware tech writer who was fired from many jobs, essentially for being an Aspie. While I was considered as technically excellent and a good writer, I couldn’t pick up social cues.

Over the years, I made various comments that to me were neutral or even positive. Yet I was often told that my comments were offensive. I had no idea why.

Once I learned that I was an Aspie and was taught some social skills, I learned what to say and what not to say. But it was too late for me; I had been fired from so many tech writer jobs that I could no longer find another job.

From what I’ve seen and read of James Damore, I’m sure he’s an Aspie. I suspect that lots of men in high tech think the way he does but know not to say so in public.

So while I find Damore’s ideas repugnant, I also have compassion for him. I suspect he had no idea that what he wrote was offensive. Aspies’ brains are wired differently than those of neurotypicals. Therefore, what many neurotypicals perceive as bad character is really biologically caused lack of awareness.

Rather than firing Damore, I think he needs to be taught some social skills. He’s hardly the only sexist male in high tech. His problem was that he didn’t know not to express his ideas out loud.

Some further points:

* There’s a software company in Denmark that hires only Aspies, and it does very well.

* I don’t think that the issues of Asperger’s or social skills in the workplace have anything to do with right-wing and left-wing, so I wish people would stop framing it in those terms.

* Asperger’s is NOT a mental illness – – it’s a neurological difference. If a disproportionate number of Aspies suffer from anxiety and depression, it’s probably because neurotypical society treats us so badly.

* Those of us in the Asperger’s community still use the term Asperger’s. It’s a valid descriptor, and the DSM 5 committee that decided to eliminate the term was wrong.

UPDATE.2: Reader yahtzee:

This is a common discussion at Slate Star Codex, which has a high percentage of readers/commenters on the spectrum and a high percentage of Silicon Valley folks (with the obvious overlap).

What you’re saying here is exactly right: bright, red lines and clear, concise goals with measurable results are what make sense to people on the spectrum. Judging social cues, who’s in, who’s out with the boss, understanding (unspoken!) hierarchies, playing office politics; these are things that people with high emotional intelligence are better at.

Mix in a totalitarian, all-consuming religion that dominates social media and has colonized parts of the tech world, and you are creating an environment where the rules-based autistic folks are going to be eaten alive. The new inquisition is based on watching the right people and the right trends, and knowing when to declare that, not only are we at war with Eurasia. We’ve always been at war with Eurasia. And knowing to declare it loudly.

Oh, and another thing that trips up autistic folks: rule #1 about the social order is you can never talk about the rules of the social order, or acknowledge that it exists. Well, that’s not going to work, because talking about rules and order is pretty much a favorite pastime of people on the spectrum. It’s why Freddie DeBoer is always on the outs with the Twitterati on the left, because he’s slightly autistic and can’t follow rule #1.

The totalitarianizing left has enough problems trying to convert people with any sort of message other than the cudgel of fear. The idea that they’re going to wake the sleeping giant of tech-autists, and convince them that there’s no place for them in the utopia they’re trying to build is popcorn-worthy, to say the least.

Says Debra Soh, a scientist who specializes in sexual neuroscience. Excerpts:

Despite how it’s been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.

As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.

We see evidence for this in girls with a genetic condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who are exposed to unusually high levels of testosterone in the womb. When they are born, these girls prefer male-typical, wheeled toys, such as trucks, even if their parents offer more positive feedback when they play with female-typical toys, such as dolls. Similarly, men who are interested in female-typical activities were likely exposed to lower levels of testosterone.

As well, new research from the field of genetics shows that testosterone alters the programming of neural stem cells, leading to sex differences in the brain even before it’s finished developing in utero. This further suggests that our interests are influenced strongly by biology, as opposed to being learned or socially constructed.

More:

As the memo suggests, seeking to fulfill a 50-per-cent quota of women in STEM is unrealistic. As gender equity continues to improve in developing societies, we should expect to see this gender gap widen.

This trend continues into the area of personality, as well. Contrary to what detractors would have you believe, women are, on average, higher in neuroticism and agreeableness, and lower in stress tolerance.

Some intentionally deny the science because they are afraid it will be used to justify keeping women out of STEM. But sexism isn’t the result of knowing facts; it’s the result of what people choose to do with them.

This is exactly what the mob of outrage should be mobilizing for, instead of denying biological reality and being content to spend a weekend doxxing a man so that he would lose his job. At this point, as foreshadowed in Mr. Damore’s manifesto, we should be more concerned about viewpoint diversity than diversity revolving around gender.

Read the whole thing.  Gender non-essentialists are the young earth creationists of the Left.

A reader e-mails this short piece titled “The Practice Of Ritual Defamation”, by Laird Wilcox. It was written in 1990, but it could have been drafted yesterday. Excerpt:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

Ritual Defamation is not ritualistic because it follows any prescribed religious or mystical doctrine, nor is it embraced in any particular document or scripture. Rather, it is ritualistic because it follows a predictable, stereotyped pattern which embraces a number of elements, as in a ritual.

The elements of a Ritual Defamation are these:

1. In a ritual defamation the victim must have violated a particular taboo in some way, usually by expressing or identifying with a forbidden attitude, opinion or belief. It is not necessary that he “do” anything about it or undertake any particular course of action, only that he engage in some form of communication or expression.

2. The method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.

3. An important rule in ritual defamation is to avoid engaging in any kind of debate over the truthfulness or reasonableness of what has been expressed, only condemn it. To debate opens the issue up for examination and discussion of its merits, and to consider the evidence that may support it, which is just what the ritual defamer is trying to avoid. The primary goal of a ritual defamation is censorship and repression.

4. The victim is often somebody in the public eye – someone who is vulnerable to public opinion – although perhaps in a very modest way. It could be a schoolteacher, writer, businessman, minor official, or merely an outspoken citizen. Visibility enhances vulnerability to ritual defamation.

5. An attempt, often successful, is made to involve others in the defamation. In the case of a public official, other public officials will be urged to denounce the offender. In the case of a student, other students will be called upon, and so on.

6. In order for a ritual defamation to be effective, the victim must be dehumanized to the extent that he becomes identical with the offending attitude, opinion or belief, and in a manner which distorts it to the point where it appears at its most extreme. For example, a victim who is defamed as a “subversive” will be identified with the worst images of subversion, such as espionage, terrorism or treason. A victim defamed as a “pervert” will be identified with the worst images of perversion, including child molestation and rape. A victim defamed as a “racist” or “anti-Semitic” will be identified with the worst images of racism or anti-Semitism, such as lynchings or gas chambers.

7. Also to be successful, a ritual defamation must bring pressure and humiliation on the victim from every quarter, including family and friends. If the victim has school children, they may be taunted and ridiculed as a consequence of adverse publicity. If they are employed, they may be fired from their job. If the victim belongs to clubs or associations, other members may be urged to expel them.

8. Any explanation the victim may offer, including the claim of being misunderstood, is considered irrelevant. To claim truth as a defense for a politically incorrect value, opinion or belief is interpreted as defiance and only compounds the problem. Ritual defamation is often not necessarily an issue of being wrong or incorrect but rather of “insensitivity” and failing to observe social taboos.

Read the whole thing.  René Girard, you should have been alive to see this happening in your own backyard.

From Mark Lilla’s forthcoming (August 15) book The Once And Future Liberal:

Electoral politics is a little like fishing. When you fish you get up early in the morning and go to where the fish are — not to where you might wish them to be. You then drop bait into the water (bait being defined as something they want to eat, not as “healthy choices”). Once the fish realize they are hooked they may resist. Let them; loosen your line. Eventually they will calm down and you can slowly reel them in, careful not to provoke them unnecessarily. The identity liberals’ approach to fishing is to remain on shore, yelling at the fish about the historical wrongs visited on them by the sea, and the need for aquatic life to renounce its privilege. All in the hope that the fish will collectively confess their sins and swim to shore to be netted. If that is your approach to fishing, you had better become a vegan.

Boy, is this ever true — and note well that Lilla is a liberal who is trying to wean his own side off of the self-sabotaging politics of identity.

The Damore-Google debacle is such a perfect example of why so many people fear and loathe the Left in power. I am a father of two boys and one girl. I want them all to succeed in whatever their callings might be. I don’t want them given special privileges, nor do I want them to suffer special prejudices, even though I know that both will be present in the real world.

If my daughter was good at software development and wanted to work at Google, I would want her to have a fair shot at a job there. And if she were hired, I would expect that the company would do everything it reasonably could to make sure its employees treated each other fairly and courteously. And I would want the same thing for my sons — at Google, or wherever they work.

Most people want that for their kids, I think. Few people — even among us conservatives — want a world in which their daughters are unjustly passed over for jobs, or subject to workplace harassment. Nor do we want a world in which our sons are treated that way.

But here’s the deal: what we’re seeing happen at Google, to James Damore, is insane. What his memo reveals about the corporate culture of “diversity” and “microaggression training” is frightening and bizarre. Identity liberals forget that women have sons and husbands too, and worry that their male loved ones will be stigmatized and punished unfairly in the workplace, just as they worry about their female loved ones. What identity liberalism within corporations has done is embed in the structure of corporate culture a set of prejudices and values that are no more just than the ones they replaced.

I would not want my children working for Google. I would not want my sons to be subject to that kind of ritual defamation and professional ruin for expressing the “wrong” opinions. And I would not want my daughter to have the kind of power over her coworkers that women do in the identity-liberal culture of Google. I want all my kids to work for employers that care about justice in the workplace, but do so within a context that — as James Damore suggested in his memo — treats employees as individuals.

I do not believe I am the only one who observes this Google mess from outside and sees the company and its ideological mob of backers behaving like the kind of lunatics Mark Lilla calls out in his anecdote. These people would be toxic to work with. On Quillette, four scientists respond to the controversy. Here’s an excerpt of what Rutgers psychologist Lee Jussim has to say about the Damore memo, and the commentary about it on the Gizmodo site:

This essay may not get everything 100% right, but it is certainly not a rant. And it stands in sharp contrast to most of the comments, which are little more than snarky modern slurs. The arrogance of most of the comments reflects exactly the type of smug self-appointed superiority that has led to widespread resentment of the left among reasonable people. To the extent that such views correspond to those at Google, they vindicate the essayist’s claims about the authoritarian and repressive atmosphere there. Even the response by Google’s new VP in charge of diversity simply ignores all of the author’s arguments, and vacuously affirms Google’s commitment to diversity. The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments. If I had one recommendation, it would be this: That, before commenting on these issues, Google executives read two books: John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.

Mill: “…unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them.”

Haidt: “If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.”

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller says that Damore got the science almost entirely correct, and exposed a contradiction in the diversocrats’ thinking. In this excerpt, he highlights the two dogmatic principles behind diversity ideology:

• The human sexes and races have exactly the same minds, with precisely identical distributions of traits, aptitudes, interests, and motivations; therefore, any inequalities of outcome in hiring and promotion must be due to systemic sexism and racism;

• The human sexes and races have such radically different minds, backgrounds, perspectives, and insights, that companies must increase their demographic diversity in order to be competitive; any lack of demographic diversity must be due to short-sighted management that favors groupthink.

The obvious problem is that these two core assumptions are diametrically opposed.

Let me explain. If different groups have minds that are precisely equivalent in every respect, then those minds are functionally interchangeable, and diversity would be irrelevant to corporate competitiveness. For example, take sex differences. The usual rationale for gender diversity in corporate teams is that a balanced, 50/50 sex ratio will keep a team from being dominated by either masculine or feminine styles of thinking, feeling, and communicating. Each sex will counter-balance the other’s quirks. (That makes sense to me, by the way, and is one reason why evolutionary psychologists often value gender diversity in research teams.) But if there are no sex differences in these psychological quirks, counter-balancing would be irrelevant. A 100% female team would function exactly the same as a 50/50 team, which would function the same as a 100% male team. If men are no different from women, then the sex ratio in a team doesn’t matter at any rational business level, and there is no reason to promote gender diversity as a competitive advantage.

Likewise, if the races are no different from each other, then the racial mix of a company can’t rationally matter to the company’s bottom line. The only reasons to value diversity would be at the levels of legal compliance with government regulations, public relations virtue-signalling, and deontological morality – not practical effectiveness. Legal, PR, and moral reasons can be good reasons for companies to do things. But corporate diversity was never justified to shareholders as a way to avoid lawsuits, PR blowback, or moral shame; it was justified as a competitive business necessity.

So, if the sexes and races don’t differ at all, and if psychological interchangeability is true, then there’s no practical business case for diversity.

On the other hand, if demographic diversity gives a company any competitive advantages, it must be because there are important sex differences and race differences in how human minds work and interact. For example, psychological variety must promote better decision-making within teams, projects, and divisions. Yet if minds differ across sexes and races enough to justify diversity as an instrumental business goal, then they must differ enough in some specific skills, interests, and motivations that hiring and promotion will sometimes produce unequal outcomes in some company roles. In other words, if demographic diversity yields any competitive advantages due to psychological differences between groups, then demographic equality of outcome cannot be achieved in all jobs and all levels within a company. At least, not without discriminatory practices such as affirmative action or demographic quotas.

So, psychological interchangeability makes diversity meaningless. But psychological differences make equal outcomes impossible. Equality or diversity. You can’t have both.

Weirdly, the same people who advocate for equality of outcome in every aspect of corporate life, also tend to advocate for diversity in every aspect of corporate life. They don’t even see the fundamentally irreconcilable assumptions behind this ‘equality and diversity’ dogma.

Why didn’t the thousands of people working to promote equality and diversity in corporate America acknowledge this paradox? Why did it take a male software engineer at Google who’s read a bunch of evolutionary psychology? I suspect that it’s a problem of that old tradeoff between empathizing and systematizing that I wrote about in this Quillette article on neurodiversity and free speech. The high empathizers in HR and the diversity industry prioritize caring for women and minorities over developing internally coherent, evidence-based models of human nature and society. High systematizers, such as this memo’s author, prioritize the opposite. Indeed, he explicitly calls for ‘de-emphasizing empathy’ and ‘de-moralizing diversity’, arguing that ‘being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts’. He is right.

Debra Soh, whose PhD is in the neuroscience of sexuality, says, in the same article:

Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism or stratifying opportunities based on sex. It is only because a group of individuals have chosen to interpret them that way, and to subsequently deny the science around them, that we have to have this conversation at a public level. Some of these ideas have been published in neuroscientific journals—despite having faulty study methodology—because they’ve been deemed socially pleasing and “progressive.” As a result, there’s so much misinformation out there now that people genuinely don’t know what to believe.

No matter how controversial it is or how great the pushback, I believe it’s important to speak out, because if we can’t discuss scientific truths, where does that leave us?

Read the whole thing.

It doesn’t take a right-wing ideologue to understand that what Soh and the other scientists I’ve quoted here are saying is common sense. Nor does it take a right-wing ideologue to be chilled to the bone by the ferocity of the anti-Damore mob. I have personally been in a situation in the workplace in which a perfectly ordinary thing I said that was directly related to my work almost turned into a Human Resources situation that could have cost me my job and my career, had I not decided that this was not a hill I was prepared to die on. My accuser had a laughable case — seriously, if I told you the details, most of you liberal readers would agree with me, I’m sure — but the accuser also had power within the culture of that particular workplace, because of the accuser’s identity as a member of a favored class. I judged that I was unlikely to win any showdown. After that, though, fear of false accusation seriously affected my work. I avoided that co-worker, and when I could not, was careful not to say anything that this person could construe as hostile — even though it meant I was not able to do my job as well as I had before.

The psychological pressure being in that kind of work situation puts on you takes a toll. You realize that you have to work in a social context in which reason does not fully apply, and in which you can be accused at any moment of ideological deviation, on the most spurious grounds. And you understand — you had better understand it, because your job depends on it — that if you are put on trial in the court of the Human Resources Department, you will not be treated as an individual, but as a member of an oppressor group. The people passing judgment on you will consider themselves virtuous to find you guilty of heresy.

Damore’s mistake was in assuming that Google actually wanted to know how to run its business more efficiently, and wanted a more fair workplace. Damore’s mistake was to believe Alphabet (Google’s parent company) CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent claim that Google runs itself according to “science-based thinking”.

No, it doesn’t. It runs itself according to the religion of Identity Liberalism. There is no “right” and “wrong” there; there is only “good” and “evil”.

The problem with Identity Liberalism is not that it seeks to create workplaces that are fair to men and women both, and to people of all races, and so forth. We all want that, or ought to. The problem is only partly that it’s criteria for judging the fairness of a workplace are contradictory and unfair, as Dr. Miller points out above. The core of the problem is that identity liberalism construes disagreement as heresy, and viciously punishes heretics.

And it is therefore impossible for identity liberalism, and the institutions that embrace it, to self-correct, because all criticism is treated as evil. The critic finds himself, like Damore, defending not his thesis (which may or may not be wrong), but his moral worth.

If you want that kind of society, vote Democratic. If you want a society that turns into a war of all against all, based on race, sex, and whatnot, vote Democratic. That’s what it seems like to a lot of us. We are not about to swim to shore and volunteer to be netted, because we hate ourselves and our sons and daughters so much that we believe we deserve to have our careers sacrificed for the sake of creating Utopia.

Mark Lilla writes that identity liberalism works against ordinary democracy. He says:

The more obsessed with personal identity campus liberals become, the less willing they become to engage in reasoned political debate. Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X… This is not an anodyne phrase. It tells the listener that I am speaking from a privileged position on this matter. (One never says, Speaking as a gay Asian, I feel incompetent to judge this matter.) It sets up a wall against questions, which by definition come fro a non-X perspective. And it turns the encounter into a power relation: the winner of the argument will be whoever has invoked the morally superior identity and expressed the most outrage at being questioned.

More:

What replaces argument, then, is taboo. At times our more privileged campuses can seem stuck in the world of archaic religion. Only those with an approved identity status are, like shamans, allowed to speak on certain matters. Particular groups — today the transgendered — are given temporary totemic significance. Scapegoats — today conservative political speakers — are duly designated and run off campus in a purging ritual. Propositions become pure or impure, not true or false. And not only propositions but simple words. Left identitarians who think of themselves as radical creatures, contesting this and transgressing that, have become like buttoned-up Protestant schoolmarms when it comes to the English language, parsing every conversation for immodest locutions and rapping the knuckles of those who inadvertently use them.

What happened to James Damore at Google is that he was made a scapegoat for violating a taboo. This is the kind of society that liberal identitarians want America to become. People who stand to be the scapegoated in such an unjust dispensation are naturally not going to vote for candidates of the party that welcomes this kind of thing, and calls it justice.