SSCReader
2d ago
Fair and a good answer!
I do think Arbury, Rittenhouse and Perry show that things are not as bad as they may seem judicially at least.
The justice sysyem agreed with you on Arbury (admittedly after significant publicity to actually bring charges), agreed with you on Rittenhouse (i think?), and presumably disagreed with you on Perry, though at least that one wasn't as clear cut, and Texas being much more ok with carrying rifles around makes it an interesting one, and it was still able to be corrected within as you point out the rules of the system.
I know it is said the process is the punishment, but if the system were hopelessly skewed against you and yours, the outcomes would also be worse, I think.
SSCReader
1d ago
But he may have been driving a car at the crowd right? If Perry drives car at crowd, then Foster can hold unsling his rifle and presumably open fire and Perry can't claim self-defence because he provoked. Unless of course by blocking the road Foster was provoking Perry.
Its why I think all self-defence shootings should have to to trial. Because most of them hinge on who was reasonable to fear what. And the people best suited to decide that is a jury of peers. But the trial should have to be expedited.
SSCReader
2d ago
Civil disobedience is is a well worn use of public power in the West. Though I think the French may be the champions at it.
I am not sure it is quite as American as apple pie..but rebelling against authority through acts of civil disobedience were right there at the dawn of the Republic.
SSCReader
2d ago
Well they claimed that Rittenhouse pointed his gun at Rosenbaum twice, once to trigger Rosenbaum's charge and then once during (after/during fleeing).
If the first was true (and this is a big if of course!) then Rosenbaum charging Rittenhouse in the first place was legitimate self-defence. Then Rittenhouse fleeing may have "reset" that, but then pointing his gun at him again again counted as a threat.
In fact its possible Rosenbaum started with the one having the self-defence right (again only if Rittenhouse did point his gun at him first with no provocation) then lost that right when Rittenhouse fled, and Rittenhouse gained it when Rosenbaum kept chasing him.
And that is why although I think Rittenhouse being acquitted was correct, I think him being brought to trial was reasonable. Whether he was the one who kicked off the encounter is potentially the matter of a couple of seconds of time based upon Rosenbaum yelling about not pointing his gun at him. And being based on what a "reasonable" person would have felt such that I think a jury of peers not DAs or cops should be making that determination. Especially when you look at cases like Arbury where they were like, no chasing someone down with guns and trucks seems reasonable to us. No charges!
Having DA's and judges and the like be elected positions and so explicitly partisan seems like a big problem to me. Not sure how you can have a blind justice when they have to keep peeking to see who is voting for them. But that horse has left the stable, won the Kentucky derby three times and retired.
SSCReader
6d ago
Again the vast majority of that is about him manipulating other people, weaponizing their beliefs to his own advantage. Cult leaders do the same with religious beliefs. It just seems odd to hate his victims. Like it would be odd to hate the world because some people fell for Jim Jones. I can understand hating your former friend or indeed Jim Jones but the fact that people fall for a presumably at least superficially charming person doesn't still seem like a great reason to hate the world, rather than hating the people who manipulate the world. The people who went to bat for him, presumably did so because they believed he was a sympathetic victim not a monster.
I've encountered people like him (minus the fire axe, substituting a broken pint glass) and many people did believe he was a lovely person and he took advantage of that over and over. But it didn't make me hate the world so much as hate him. People generally assume other people are operating in good faith in personal relationships and that allows people who are willing to cheat and lie to take advantage of it. You are a victim of him, but so are the people that believed his lies and manipulations. They didn't side with him because they hated you, they sided with him because he knew exactly what to say and how to say it.
You and the world are both victims of people like him. Hating your fellow victims is I think missing the point. Having said that it seems like a terrible experience and I am sorry you were dragged into his machinations.
SSCReader
6d ago
Well I am not a libertarian, but whether some pimps do that, doesn't invalidate pimping as being valuable. Anymore than the fact some cops being corrupt invalidates law enforcement entirely.
SSCReader
6d ago
In the mind of the progressive the black man is a loyal slave to the black woman, subservient to her 'sexualized black body' and incapable of independent thought.
This does not comport with progressives I know. Black women are higher on the progressive stack than black men because black men are still men, you are much more likely to hear about how black men oppress black women, than progressives saying they think black men are subservient to black women. Though likely it would take a black woman to start that conversation because white progressives would see themselves as punching down if they were to critique black men generally.
SSCReader
8d ago
Again, obligation is irrelevant. Whether you are morally obligated or not is orthogonal to whether you should (from the point of view of your fellow citizens) be forced to do it, by your government.
Everything from taxes on up follows from there. If (and it is a big if!) the housing issue caused enough problems and if (again another huge if!) forcing boomers to sell would solve it, then their personal moral obligations don't matter a hoot.
Civilization is built on forcing people to make sup-optimal (for them personally) actions in service to the greater good. Personal moral obligations don't come into it. That's why not following the law has to have consequences, because we don't naturally choose to do so. Very few people would pay their tax burden fair and square if it were based on their personal moral obligations only. Throw the fear of the IRS into it however..
Thats why people need to care what their peers believe they should do even if they themselves believe they have no personal obligation to do so. Because we can and are forced to comply every day with laws we feel we have no personal obligation towards. Its the foundation of modern civilization.
You may not be obligated to get the short end of the stick, but that has no impact on whether you will or should (from a societal pov).
Society is not there ro ensure every single person gets the best possible personal outcome. It suceeds because on average people are better off, but that distribution is not likely or guaranteed to be fair. It just needs to be fair enough to be stable.
SSCReader
6d ago
I can see why you would hate:
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The sociopath - obviously.
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Those who believed them - though I think that is a mistake, most people have not much experience in dealing with truly manipulative people, and those that make it to adulthood are often brilliant at it.
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The ideology they exploited - though I think this is also a mistake as every ideology has gaps and good manipulators will exploit anything. It is understandable though. It's why abuse victims might hate Catholicism or Christianity even though if it weren't that it would have been something else.
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The world - this is where it really breaks down. You hate Jim Wong in China who never heard of you? Bob Smith in Australia who writes a manosphere blog? Trump? J.K. Rowling? AOC? the Dalia Lama? Putin? Modi? Messi AND Ronaldo?
Hating the world just seems like a huge over-reaction in other words. And one where that bitterness does not seem likely to actually be helpful in moving forward.
SSCReader
5d ago
But countries that behave in such a way as to turn international sentiment in the direction of "they are kind of assholes all the time, hey" will (may) eventually suffer consequences from that.
That's a different metric though, than claiming it is an escalation. If you want to say you have to weigh your response (and how you spin your response) for real politik reasons, that is absolutely true. But whether it is factually an escalation is different.
SSCReader
8d ago
It can be true that you don't have an obligation to do so AND that socially that does result in additional costs on productive people. You don't have an obligation to drive a less polluting vehicle, nonetheless the government can force you to do so (or tax you if you drive a more polluting one) if it thinks the benefit is great enough. Companies don't have an obligation to keep manufacturing in America as it is more expensive but it might be a good idea to force/tax them to do so anyway etc. etc.
Not having a personal obligation doesn't negate the fact your choices may be sup-optimal for society at large in other words.
Interestingly 1) is basically the conservative Hobbesian view right? That all of civilization is just a skin over our inherent natures. Women it appears are aware of the Leviathian shaped hole, even if they have never heard of Hobbes.
Which probably aligns with memes where men threaten their daughters prom dates with guns. They believe an 18yo man can't be trusted with their daughter without some fear being involved.
The question is are they right or wrong. I might suggest the large amount of rape during invasion and conflict might point to an underlying truth many men are uncomfortable with.
That more men than we might think would rape when the social order is not there.
Of course that is just a subset of the idea that more of us would murder or commit violence in general in the absence of a restraining force. The state of war of all against all.
"It follows that, in such a condition, every man has a Right to everything--even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural Right of every man to own everything exists, there can be no security to any man--no matter how strong or wise he is."
In a Hobbesian view there may not be a lot of difference between a bear and a human unburdened by societal restraint. We both exist in a state of nature.
Of course the bear is atill stronger and has better natural weapons. Is it better to be hunted by a bear or a human (assuming the human only has what they can cobble togerher in a forest)?
SSCReader
17d ago
I'm a Catholic. If I were to imagine s/anti-semitism/anti-Catholicism/ for all of these things I keep hearing from official government sources, or from the news media (but I repeat myself, hey, oh!) it would just make me laugh.
And if you lived in Northern Ireland or somewhere else where Anti-Catholic sentiment resolved into both government and private action against your faith and Catholics? Or perhaps even 60 years ago in the US.
The reason it makes you laugh is because you haven't (presumably) lived somewhere where that sentiment creates action. And indeed, as part of our move away from that, we did have to say mandate a specific percentage of Catholic officers in the police, and increase funding for integrated faith schools and the like. The US is pretty well integrated when it comes to Catholics vs Protestants, but this is a fairly modern occurrence.
Just because the idea of Anti-Catholicism makes you laugh, doesn't mean that it can't be a problem if it actually occurred. Even just 20 years ago my brother marrying a Catholic was a huge scandal in my extended family. And my uncle still needles her about cannibalism, from time to time, though these days only when he is drunk, because my brother will kick him out.
Now there certainly can be an argument that the fear of anti-semitism in the US is overblown but I would caution against underestimating just how much sectarian problems Catholics can face.
SSCReader
8d ago
But if I do look, open my door step out and you deliberately speed up to hit me, I still take the liability seems entirely unworkable.
Because now, we have legalized tit for tat, you hit me, if I survive I wait outside your house and wait for you to try and get into your car and hit you.
Its entirely unworkable.
SSCReader
7d ago
It made me hate the world.
Why would it make you hate the world? Men lying to get laid, is as old as the hills. Hating that behavior (and perhaps the people who use it) seems the more accurate response?
SSCReader
16d ago
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not follow these rules. Private individuals are given the ability to sue other private individuals to provide accommodations for them. The threat of getting sued also encourages a lot of preemptive work on the part of companies. How much does all of this suing and preemptive work cost?
Doesn't this critique also apply to the whole civil suit edifice? If a company breaks a contract with me, it is the government that backs the court resolution with force if necessary. Which kind of highlights a problem with giving a budget per person. Currently a company might make efforts to not break a contract because I can sue them, and that should count as government spending by this metric? And if the solution applies then each person is given a contract enforcement budget, but, a big company could simply sign a contract for oil rights on my land worth a million dollars, then break the contract and I only get 5000 dollars towards trying to rectify it?
In other words your solution removes the advantage of government force against entities that are less powerful than a government but more powerful than a normal individual. The whole point is to leverage the scale of the government as the aggregate of its citizens. Which I understand is somewhat antithetical to a Libertarian, but I think your proposal is kind of the worst of all worlds. I can see an argument to take the government out of it entirely and I can see an argument to have the government do the whole thing. But where the government does it, but only to a very minor extent for each person just seems more inefficient than either.
Which isn't to say I think the ADA way is right either, I'd rather just have a mandate passed on what a company needs to do, set up a department, people make complaints and the government either finds in the companies favor and does nothing, or uses government power to force the company to comply. Then you could also measure the cost both to the company and to the government of enforcement without diluting the whole purpose of having a government.
SSCReader
30d ago
Shame is an innate and necessary part of the human mind. It's a warning alarm, and it exists to warn you of the existence of a serious problem. Turning off the alarm doesn't make the problem stop existing.
But what you feel shame about is culturally formed. Kids don't feel about being naked or touching themselves until they are trained to do so. Catholics don't feel shame about the things they feel shame about until they are trained into it.
And that means your alarm can be false. Like people who internalize that they should feel shame about approaching members of the opposite sex even respectfully or who feel shame about feeling sexual attraction at all.
So you can't use the alarm to tell you there is a serious problem. All it can do is warn you that you have internalized that X is a problem. It doesn't do much to tell you if X is a problem really.
My grandfather was raised in an ultra strict Quaker offshoot, where any contact with the outside world was seen to be wrong and that music was sinful. He felt ashamed of listening to a choir in the less strict Church of Ireland he later moved to. Is hearing a Christian choir a serious problem he should have been alerted to? Or was his sense of shame miscalibrated because his society was simply wrong?
In other words, I agree shame and shaming is an intrinsic part of the human condition and that it exists to bring together societies through incentivizing behaviors your society see as positive. What it can't do is actually tell you if those behaviors are or are not positive in and of themselves. Because shame is sub-conscious.
And just like with feeling shame about a choir, the seeds of the sexual revolution lie in the fact that if you shame too much it becomes just as much of a problem as shaming too little. We historically shamed too hard and too deep and as with all oppression, a revolution will form. The previous norms of sexual shaming were crushed, because they were not moderated, because so many people ended up being shamed that they were in fact able to overthrow the shame mongers. That is the lesson I personally think all ideologies need to learn. Shame too many people (whether for sexual immorality or for racism or sexism or whatever), then there is a tipping point.
You might argue the results have been wretched, but obviously enough people felt the previous situation was ALSO wretched enough in order to overthrow it.
SSCReader
8d ago
Exactly! And it does because Boomers vote and lobby and spend money to look out for their interests.
How they feel about their personal moral obligations has no impact, but what they do does. And the people opposing them need to learn that lesson if they hope to succeed. Being morally right does exactly nothing to advance their cause.
SSCReader
22d ago
Thats because for a few years she was much much more famous than who she was dating. Prior to that there were interminable articles when she was dating Tom Hiddleston, and Harry Styles and Joe Jonas and Calvin Harris etc. Kelce is significantly more famous in the US at least than Matt Healy or Joe Alwyn (accounting for about the last 6 years before Kelce).
Hard to sell a power couple most of your audience couldn't tell who one of the couple is. But a pop star and a sports star? That is simply PR gold, covering multiple demographics. I'm honestly surprised they aren't on even more.
SSCReader
6d ago
Some black women and black men are in tension but its highly variable. My wife's friends range from those who refuse to date out, to a very small minority who are Black women divest aligned. But that is still very much the minority.
Indeed one of the main arguments of BWD is that most black women are too lenient on and too supportive of black men.
White progressives are in my experience aware of tensions (given feminism they pretty much have to be) between black women and men, they just feel it is not their place to talk about it. That's different than not knowing or caring.
SSCReader
18d ago
The average creative writing major should expect to get a mostly-unrelated job or need more education. The average screenwriting major should expect to essentially not get into the film industry at all.
But most people in almost every field except STEM, don't end up working in their degree field anyway right? A lot of white collar jobs are gated behind a degree, but it doesn't really matter what degree you have, as getting the degree is the signal. There simply are not many actual psych jobs or politics jobs, so most people getting any of these are going to end up an office manager or something similar. Might as well study something you are interested in at university level unless you have a very specific plan, and even in a lot of those instances there are simply not going to be enough jobs in that field and you will end up doing something else. And my experience (and I work in academia) is that applies to most of both men and women.
Once you realize the majority of people are going to end up working in a field unrelated to their major then creative writing isn't much worse off. The truth is the vast majority of graduates are going to end up in some kind of mundane office dronish position, unrelated to whether they want to become a writer or an astronaut or a journalist.
SSCReader
17d ago
AI search says 33 odd churches, CBC says 24 of those are confirmed arson, and approx. half were Catholic. So 12 or so by the look of it.
Hope that helps!
SSCReader
11d ago
Well if it takes a well developed cultural system to leverage us into not behaving that way, then are we not just repressed rapists? Just ones buried under years of conditioning? Teach men not to rape indeed..
Just to be clear I don't 100% agree with Hobbes here, though I think it is as you say partially true. Just noticing the similarity in positions between somewhat feminist thought and the Hobbesian conservatives.
SSCReader
11d ago
Essentially (to my understanding) that people assume our rules and norms are self-enforcing whereas in actuality (as per this theory) without significant effort we would exist in the "state of nature".
So thinking that men would revert to such a state when deprived of the social efforts to repress our base instincts means you are noticing the hole in our current (mostly Western) mindset.
Right, and that is where I am not sure if that would count as withdrawing and giving adequate notice, if it had come down to whether or not he was trying to disengage in good faith. It happens very quickly, and I assume the adequate notice clause is to avoid people baiting someone into attacking them, taking a couple of steps back in a couple of seconds and then claiming they were disengaged. You have to give the person time to understand your position has changed, and turning back to point the gun at Rosenbaum again could be seen as renewing the threat.
In the end though I agree it doesn't matter, as the prosecution was not able to show that Rittenhouse had actually threatened Rosenbaum in the first place, so the rest of the discussion is basically academic. All he had to so was satisfy the minimum of an attempt to retreat in order to not trigger the failure to retreat part of the law. And that, the video clearly shows. Arguably he could have fired the first time and that still would have been satisfied.
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