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What else am I supposed to call choosing to side with a child rapist fugitive and his enabler over a victim?
That is evil and normal voters seem to agree considering how Ramyswamy's chances have plummeted. There is no need for Vance to defend this, but he does so anyway the same way there's supposedly no reason to cover up the Epstein files and yet..
And where exactly does he say the 12-year-old had it coming?
You can keep changing the subject to avoid backing up your claim, if you like.
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I don't agree with magical kitty about much (this actually might be the first time), but the stepdad ran from a trial long before metoo. That means a cop listened to the story amd decided there was probable cause, and a prosecutor reviewed the case and wanted to bring charges and got an indictment. Then this guy skipped bail. That's not a conviction, but it puts him far closer to Roman Polanski than one of the Cornell 7.
How does someone decide to bet their campaign on the word of someone who hid a fugitive from justice over his accuser. None of us will know more about this case than the prosecutor, who believed the stepdad was guilty. Since a trial won't happen now, I'll trust his judgement on who's lying.
Actually there are two people who knew more. Amy herself, and the father.
And the father was a man who saw a trial coming and thought oh fuck I'm gonna be found guilty due to the available evidence. And because he is literally a criminal who fled the courts, we never got to see the results but we sure do know what he was expecting!
It's about as close to a layman's admission of guilt as we can get.
I think it’s reasonable to infer that the dad is probably guilty but if one didn’t care about their reputation one might believe that even if there is a 10% chance of being found guilty better to run.
Even if he hadn’t run (which I agree makes his guilt seem a lot more likely), his reputation would probably have been in the toilet anyway. As they say, “There’s no smoke without fire.”
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Also trials generate a lot of juicy documents, so even with a not guilty verdict it can actually be worse for the reputation, if people read those.
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The stepfather has no honor, that is clear, but it's still his claim against hers. Just because he's honorless scum doesn't mean he's lying.
The prosecutor has no reason to favor Amy or her stepfather (and I think it's important to keep that distinction both to respect her biological father who got custody after her abandonment and raised her and becuse non-biological parents have a massive increase in odds of abuse) so I take his independent view (as well as the Grand Jury's as stronger evidence Amy's claims are more likely to be closer to the truth than the stepfather's then their offestting claims.
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If you follow the comment chain, I'm specifically objecting to where magicalkittycat says
In the comment you're replying to, mkc is trying to obfuscate this specific point, and pretend that we're arguing over the broad features of the case, which we're not.
I largely agree with your comment, it's just not what I'm trying to get mkc to back up.
Is this really any better of a look?
Why would that matter?
If you're modelling this as "you're either with Ramyswamy, or against him", then I imagine it would.
I'm running out of ways to explain that I'm challenging this particular claim from mkc, rather than defending Ramyswamy as a person. Do you have any suggestions for how I could make that clearer?
Because it seems like debating the lethality of the poison Ramyswamy just guzzled and it seems close enough to defending his decision that I hope dies with his policial career.
Then I can only assume you're deliberately misreading what I've said. Let me try and be even more explicit, if that's possible.
If Ramyswamy has drunk poison, we should be able to describe that using true claims. Accusing him of holding the stance "The 12 year old must have had it coming" is not a true claim.
It matters what a person actually did. Even if Ramyswamy were the worst person in the world, you don't get to just make stuff up ("he killed a guy!").
If pointing out falsehoods counts as "defending" Ramyswamy's decision, then your concept of defence is meaningless.
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Yes. That's not obvious?
Children making false accusations is a thing that happens sometimes, though almost certainly not in this case. For a politician to hold that belief here is evidence that they're either uninformed or wasting their intelligence on rationalizing their own mistakes. For a politician to share that belief here is evidence that they're politically incompetent. You wouldn't want to vote for them, but if you find yourself in the same room you should probably talk with them and see how amenable they are to reason.
Children deserving to be raped is not a thing that happens sometimes. For a politician to hold that belief would be evidence that their souls have been lost to the service of evil. For a politician to share that belief would be evidence that they've had a full psychotic break. You wouldn't want to talk to them, but if you find yourself in the same room you should probably be wary and ideally armed.
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Contemptable? Detestable? There are certainly a large range of words to convey judgement, without making a false accusation.
Especially since a false accusation doesn't call 'choosing to side with a child rapist fugitive and his enabler over a victim' anything. It's a change of subject, not an adjective.
Yes, exactly this. "The 12 year old must have had it coming" isn't something you call someone; that doesn't even make grammatical sense.
It's a deliberate attempt to avoid having to stand by an indefensible claim, without any loss of face from having to retract it. "Look over there!"
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What it actually is by all appearances: a belief that the 12-year-old girl made it up and the husband was a tragic victim of a justice system too quick to take a disturbed child's inventions as gospel. You might call this a dangerous heuristic, even a culpably reckless one, but I think it's clear that a person who believes that is not cartoonishly evil in the same way as one who believes that the rape did occur but was no big deal.
I'm sorry, I'm supposed to believe that Vance and Ramyswamy's stance on the criminal justice system is that it's just too harsh (something that fails to show in pretty much any other topic) instead of that they don't care and are trying to use every method they can to take down Acton.
The father was a fugitive from the law! They're literally backing a guy who was accused of sexual abuse by two children and then skipped out of state while out on bail. He is a man who saw a trial coming and thought oh fuck I'm gonna be found guilty due to the available evidence. And because he is literally a criminal who fled the courts, we never got to see the results but we sure do know what he was expecting!
So again, it seems less "they think the criminal justice system needs to be softer on crime" and more "they're trying to use every tool they can reach for, including distorting child sex abuse". That's disgusting!
Then back up your actual comment, instead of trying to distract everyone with generic outrage about things we agree are disgusting.
If you've forgotten, here's what you said:
I did back it up, right here. I don't think they really doubt it happened, they just don't give a fuck that it did. 12 year old Amy Acton (actually I think it was 9 years old when the abuse started) grew up to be a Democrat so who gives a shit?
That has literally nothing to do with the quote I'm asking you to back up.
In case you've forgotten, here's the quote again:
As you know, nothing you've said actually addresses that. You're free to keep throwing smoke bombs and pretending that your comments about other things have anything to do with the quote I'm asking you about.
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I get you, but that was supposed to be a maximally charitable take.
Still doesn’t look very good, to put it lightly.
Edit. Or maybe not after reading the parent comment again.
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