The New Puritans

[Theodarzna]

In 2011, Alex Morse looked like a progressive star. At age 22, he’d become the first openly gay mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, was the youngest person ever to hold the office, and soon after became the first Bay State mayor to endorse a recreational marijuana ballot initiative.

Bright, quick, and with a sense of humor, he appeared headed places. His announcement last year that he was running for congress against Richard Neal, the House Ways and Means committee chair and a master collector of corporate cash, made him a focal point of the movement to remake the Democratic Party in a less donor-fattened image.

Last week, Morse’s career took a dark turn. The College Democrats of Massachusetts sent him a letter telling him he was no longer welcome at any of their events. The group later released a letter accusing him of a variety of things, most particularly “having sexual contact with college students, including at UMass Amherst, where he teaches, and the greater Five College Consortium.” The College Dems claimed he met college students on apps like Tinder and Grindr; Morse taught a political science course at UMass-Amherst.

Morse acknowledged having “consensual adult relationships, including some with college students” but insisted he had “never used his power as Mayor or UMass lecturer for romantic or sexual gain,” adding that he “never violated UMass policy,” and “any claim to the contrary is false.”

UMass policy bans consensual sexual contact between faculty and “any students or postdoctoral researchers they teach, advise or supervise.” Although the College Democrats said Morse “abused his power for sexual relationships,” no one seems to be accusing him of sleeping with one of his own students. The issue here appears to lay entirely in the group’s conception of “power,” which reads like a parody of post-millenial paranoia.

The College Democrats explained that a major part of Morse’s offense was that he sought the contact information of students at their events:

Mayor Morse came to College Democrats of Massachusetts events and got to know our membership, and then sought out students that he met at our events privately on social media, in a manner widely understood by our generation to indicate intimacy.

If you’re wondering if it’s possible that the College Democrats seemingly just defined communicating on social media as a kind of sexual act, you’re not wrong. It got worse. In their letter to Morse, the group explained that when Morse wrote to those adult students – who, of course, gave Morse their contact info voluntarily – they lacked the free will to ignore his communications:

We have heard ​countless​ stories of Morse adding students to his ‘Close Friends Story’ and Direct Messaging members of College Democrats on Instagram in a way that makes these students feel pressured to respond due to his status…

American college students, it seems, are so intimidated by someone with a political job title that they lack the agency to ignore an Instagram shout-out. The College Democrats elaborated (emphasis mine):

Mayor Morse is a widely-admired and well-connected gatekeeper to progressive politics in Massachusetts and nationally, which makes the task of refusing his advances fraught for college students who wish to enter progressive politics themselves… the Mayor’s various positions of power create a significant and undeniable power imbalance between himself and the college students he sought out… where such a lopsided power dynamic exists, consent becomes complicated.

This is not a sexual harassment issue in the classic sense of someone who actually has power over someone else, for instance in the workplace or in a classroom. The concept here is that students who might “wish to enter progressive politics” will feel uncomfortable refusing, or even just not answering, so mighty a personage as the Mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, for fear of what that might do to their job prospects someday, in a field they have not even chosen yet.

Therefore, just as a child or, say, a St. Bernard cannot consent to sex, neither apparently can an adult college student with an uncertain job future. And given that consent is “complicated” when such a “lopsided power dynamic” comes into play, it’s no wonder that the actual encounters are harrowing – even when, as the Boston Globe explained, the victims were not even aware of that “power imbalance” at the time:

One student who had a sexual encounter with Morse found out afterward that Morse is a mayor and university lecturer, the letter said, and the student felt uncomfortable at learning this information.

There is an argument to be made that anyone who teaches, even part-time, even a T.A., should avoid having relationships with students at their own college, as that person might someday end up in one’s own classroom. I could be maybe be convinced by this idea, if I didn’t feel so sure this question would less likely be raised about a 31 year-old part-time male lecturer having sex with female students, and moreover if it were not so clear that the actual problem for these College Democrats is something else entirely.

There are a million reasons to be disgusted by this story – the overt trading in ancient homophobic tropes about sexual predation, the Moral-Majority style sexual Puritanism, the nauseating neo-Bolshevik terminology (“gatekeeper” is set to be this generation’s kulak) and the ludicrous political implications, with would-be mega-progressives laboring to keep someone like Morse from unseating a favorite of Lockheed-Martin and Altria from one of the Hill’s most powerful committees.

But the most grotesque part of the story is the obsessive/delusional misunderstanding of “power,” which after years of intersectional propaganda has become the primary lens through which young progressives see the world. Constant preaching that all human interactions are political contests, with one side always getting the better of the other, has made a whole generation phobic about adulthood.

This terror of a world separated into victimizers and victims has already ruined journalism, where a new class of reporters is so locked into the idea that every second of airtime or line of an editorial is an exercise of power that they’ve begun demanding the removal of alternative political viewpoints from their publications — other ideas make them feel literally unsafe.

New reporters see news audiences in much the way the College Democrat leaders view students, as helpless beings incapable of exercising judgment or free will. Journalists like me once enjoyed the idea that our audiences were grownups capable of taking in difficult truths and deciding their meaning for themselves: the new trend is to see audiences as defenseless, childlike lumps, who must be led to the correct political conclusion the way horses are led by their bits.

The right-wing, Jerry Falwell-style terrors about Twisted Sister or N.W.A. or Hustler cartoons or whatever were grounded in parents’ fears about outside influences undermining relationships with their children (the political code was “assault on family values”). This new movement is the opposite: young people seduced by academic busybodies instead of metal stars or rappers, fleeing the freedoms of adulthood instead of rushing toward them, and demanding that they be allowed to remain in a permanent infantilized state as a human right.

Woody Allen* once said that his vision of nature was “big fish eating little fish, and plants eating plants, and animals eating… it’s like an enormous restaurant.” He was being funny. This new movement that sees humanity as just a brutal landscape of devourers and devoured is definitely not joking. In fact it has no sense of humor at all, and as episodes like Morse’s show, it’s becoming more aggressive and demanding all the time.

(Source)

The saga of Alex Morse is fascinating. First, the concern about an age gap and supposed grooming did not seem to matter a few months ago when it was Pete Buttigieg met Chasten, Pete being a mayor at that time and about a decade older than Chasten who was a grad student at the time. And as of yet there is no great call or scolding to disavow Pete Buttigieg, heck Biden is preparing the Party for when Pete's in charge. This discourse seems both disingenuous and also highly selective. It seems highly "Coincidental" that Wokeness seems to always get raised in such ways as to protect establishment figures, ideas, politics and parties, yet never seems capable of canceling rent, debts, or the health insurance industry.

[unfilteredJW]

It’d be hard to roll my eyes more.

But I’m trying.

[Machismo]

So, the guy was a college professor who was banging students at the college... so the university student group didn't want him speaking at events, where they state he was trying to use it to hook up with students?

Talk about grasping at straws.

[Elegiac]

It’d be hard to roll my eyes more.

But I’m trying.

Yeah I'm confused, is the allegation that centrist Democrats are using homophobia as a cover for sidelining progressive candidates, or is it just outright implying that the Buttigiegs' marriage is based on grooming (which is ironic considering the content of the article).

This really smacks of "checkmate, atheists" energy.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Well the last thread was put Alt-Right conspiracy and this is Alt-Right confused classic liberal garbage but.

I’ll give the OP they at least provided some their own thoughts to the copy pasta.

Well done. The article is nonsense though

[Edge-]

Buttigieg and Chasten met when Buttigieg was 35 and Chasten was 28, in 2017, and were married when both were a year older in 2018. I'm genuinely not sure what the heck Buttigieg has to do with any of this, as he was not a professor at a college that Chasten was studying at nor the mayor of his city at the time. I see no real mentions of age or grooming in Taibi's piece nor can I find much about "grooming" or "age gaps" at all, with most articles referencing age referencing how young Morse was when he became mayor.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/statu...36711742545920

Though I see Glenn Greewald is running with the whole age thing and being incredibly disingenuous and apparently pretty dishonest. Macron was also 29 when he married his wife, so we're not talking about 18 year olds with no life experience, either. That's the "dishonest" bit I'm getting at with him.

This is a really weird whine bit Taibi, who seems to take offense to some questioning whether or not it's appropriate for a professor, adjunct or not, to be engaged in a relationship with students at the college they teach at who may be well over a decade younger than they are who are just entering adulthood.

Therefore, just as a child or, say, a St. Bernard cannot consent to sex, neither apparently can an adult college student with an uncertain job future.

Holy shit though, talk about fucking awful analogies to the extreme.

young people seduced by academic busybodies instead of metal stars or rappers, fleeing the freedoms of adulthood instead of rushing toward them, and demanding that they be allowed to remain in a permanent infantilized state as a human right.

Alternatively: Woke adults starting to openly discuss power structures and their affects on people and society rather than pretending that these things don't exist, often letting themselves be exploited and manipulated, and demanding higher standards for their elected officials.

Like, I just found out about all this stuff this morning and have been trying to get some more info on it, but largely it seems that the pearl clutchers like Taibi and Greenwald are intentionally obfuscating and strawmanning in some really weird attempt to...I genuinely don't know, complain about those darned Zoomers?

[Elegiac]

Like, I just found out about all this stuff this morning and have been trying to get some more info on it, but largely it seems that the pearl clutchers like Taibi and Greenwald are intentionally obfuscating and strawmanning in some really weird attempt to...I genuinely don't know, complain about those darned Zoomers?

Oh yeah wasn't Taibbi the same dipshit claiming the Trump whistleblower wasn't actually a whistleblower because they didn't have their life ruined?

[Drutt]

Though I see Glenn Greewald is running with the whole age thing and being incredibly disingenuous and apparently pretty dishonest.

Are you sure you're not misreading what Greenwald wrote? He's explicitly criticizing those flagging this as a problem.

What’s that you say? Chasten doesn’t consider himself a survivor, and insists it was all consensual?

Doesn’t matter. Woke ideologues know better about other adults’ lives (whom they don’t know) than the adults themselves.

Chasten suffers from false consciousness, from trauma.

Good to see @AlexBMorse push back against these pathetic Jerry Falwell busybody sexual-moralizing liberal/leftists who want to control and judge the consensual private lives of other adults. Should be even firmer. Donate to Morse (the far better candidate) to repudiate this rot.

Not even @CollegeDemsofMA — which took $$ from Alex Morse’s incumbent-opponent (of course) — claims he dated his own students nor had sex absent *adult consent*.

This is just a creepy attempt to control people’s private lives, with old homophobic tropes:

Greenwald seems to be quite firmly on the side of "this is absolute bullshittery of the highest order" from my reading (although he did have a couple of sarcastic Tweets which I could see easily giving someone the wrong impression in isolation).

[Edge-]

Are you sure you're not misreading what Greenwald wrote? He's explicitly criticizing those flagging this as a problem.

And I think the people flagging this as a problem have some valid points to make, hence why I lumped him in with Taibi. Especially because Greendald constantly whinges about "policing the lives of others" when it appears that the criticism in the letter comes not from leftist "pearl clutchers" seeking to "infantilize" young adults, but by some of the college students that he engaged in relationships with.

I mean, can we agree that a teacher and mayor lookin for booty calls at political gatherings for college students is kinda scummy no matter who you are? Because like, that's not what they're for. That's what dating/hookup apps are for. That's what going to bars is for. I went to plenty student organized political gatherings while I was in college, and I can't ever remember a professor or invited official ever hitting on students or hearing of them hitting on students, because that shit is unprofessional as fuck.

[Mihalik]

Don't date/bang your students, interns and staffers. Avoid dating your employees and coworkers in general. Dating/banging people you have power over is generally a bad idea.

I figured this one out even before I finished college.

I'm not exactly sure what's the controversy around this one. My GF is 10 years younger. We met when she was 20, we met at an art event. Bit pushing it as she was 4 years younger than the age limit I set on my dating apps at the time and I really wasn't interested in dating someone that young, but consenting adults etc. Had she been my student/intern then it would have been straight up creepy.

[Polyxo]

I'm not going to read this.

[Endus]

Imagine taking a "professors shouldn't sleep with students" policy and trying to argue that means the left are Puritanical homophobe commies.

You'd have to be legitimately insane to take this article seriously. It's disconnected from reality.

[Deja Thoris]

It's theo. You never know!

[Azadina]

I'm not going to read this.

It's pretty much the usual: whole bunch of words to say nothing of any relevance, just BS.

[NED funded]

Its actually super creepy to hit on students in their meetings you were invited to :/

[Sunseeker]

*sees interesting thread title, takes guess at the OP*
*opens thread*
Yep, just what I expected.

[pathora44]

Imagine taking a "professors shouldn't sleep with students" policy and trying to argue that means the left are Puritanical homophobe commies.

You'd have to be legitimately insane to take this article seriously. It's disconnected from reality.

It's a Theo post so Ipso Facto the article is a giant pile of horse shit.

- - - Updated - - -

It’d be hard to roll my eyes more.

But I’m trying.

It is like my eyes are playing Star Fox 64 and Peppy is screaming at them the entire game.

[JohnBrown1917]

No, modern puritans are still the religious nutjobs the far right/trump lovers of this forum love.

[Felya]

No, modern puritans are still the religious nutjobs the far right/trump lovers of this forum love.

Trump is literally doing speeches about crazy liberals like Biden, hating god and the Bible... the OP is like defending Dick Chainy, to attack Obama for ignoring the justice system. Oh wait... it is the same writer...

[Milchshake]

Yeah I'm confused, is the allegation that centrist Democrats are using homophobia as a cover for sidelining progressive candidates, or is it just outright implying that the Buttigiegs' marriage is based on grooming (which is ironic considering the content of the article).

This really smacks of "checkmate, atheists" energy.

Had a thread, almost exactly a year ago. How our alt-right posters have nothing to add to the conversation , but gaslightling and projection.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ting-and-Abuse

These libertarian-libertines are just projecting their own gross behavior. Greenwald, for whisking away his 18 year-old partner at 37. Tiabbi, for writing a book about harassing women and coercing Russian teens into anal.
Not shocking they look up to Woody Allen, the godfather of being creepy.


The OP is a kindred spirit maybe.
This is classic abuser behavior, aka DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse-Victim-and-Offender.