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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   18418 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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Jumping right in with something that may get me in trouble, who knows?

First, obligatory disclaimers. This is a serious question. I am not trying to "boo, outgroup". I don't think Trump is an innocent little baa-lamb, okay? Let's just get all the "but of course he did it, he's the type of guy, grab 'em by the pussy" stuff out of the way. "Reade is crazy, she's a Russian asset, it was all lies". Ignore all that. Try, as far as you can, to put the background and any opinions you have on X versus Y out of your mind. Just go by the statements of what was accused and alleged and no interpretation "well of course A is the type to do this so B is telling the truth but C is not the type so D is lying".

On the bare facts of the allegation, do you think E. Jean Carroll is telling the truth? Do you think it happened as she said it happened, do you think the verdict was correct? And if you believe her, why don't you believe Tara Reade? Neither have independent witnesses. Both allege sexual assault with digital penetration (at least, so far as I understand, Carroll did at first then said he penetrated her with his penis). Both allege it happened in a secluded area. Why does Carroll get an $83 million payout for Trump saying she's a liar while Reade - doesn't?

(1) E. Jean Carroll's account (from The Cut):

So now I will tell you what happened:

The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.

I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.

The whole episode lasts no more than three minutes. I do not believe he ejaculates. I don’t remember if any person or attendant is now in the lingerie department. I don’t remember if I run for the elevator or if I take the slow ride down on the escalator. As soon as I land on the main floor, I run through the store and out the door — I don’t recall which door — and find myself outside on Fifth Avenue.

(2) Tara Reade's account (from Current Affairs):

And then it wasn’t long after that, that the scheduler called me in and said, I want you to take this to Joe. He wants you to bring it, hurry. And I said, okay. And it was a gym bag. She called it an athletic bag. She said he was down towards the Capitol and “he’ll meet you.” And so I went down and he was at first talking to someone, I could see him at a distance and then they went away. And then, we were in like the side area. And he just said, Hey, come here, Tara. And then I handed him the thing and he greeted me, he remembered my name. And it was the strangest thing. There was no like exchange really. He just had me up against the wall. I was wearing a shirt and a skirt but I wasn’t wearing stockings. It was kind of a hot day. And I was wearing heels and I remember my legs had been hurting from the marble of the Capitol, walking on it. So I remember that kind of stuff. I remember it was kind of an unusually warm day. And I remember he just had me up against the wall and the wall was cold. It happened all at once. The gym bag, I don’t know where it went. I handed it to him. It was gone and then his hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And then he went down my skirt, but then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers. And he was kissing me at the same time and he was saying something to me. He said several things, I can’t remember everything he said. I remember a couple of things. I remember him saying first before, like as he was doing it, “do you want to go somewhere else?” And then him saying to me when I pulled away, when he got finished doing what he was doing and I pulled back and he said, “come on man, I heard you liked me.” And it’s that phrase [that] stayed with me because I kept thinking what I might’ve said [to make him think that]. And I can’t remember exactly, if he said “I thought,” or “I heard,” but it’s like he implied I had done this.

Again, no 'afterwards we learned this or we heard that', just judge the two accounts on what is said here and which you find credible, if either, or both, or none. If it's "could have happened but I don't know" or "did happen based on what's here" or "never happened". But base that opinion on what you read here of both allegations, not any political swirling around in the past or present.

I think they are both lying. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim and all they have are stories and their primary tactic has been to flip this burden around to make the person they are slandering have to prove they didn't commit the acts.

As far as I know, Tara Reade has fled to Russia. That is, not only did she simply flee abroad, she also made sure to flee to a nation outside the US sphere of hegemony. That tells me that she's afraid of being offed/suicided by Deep State goons. Also, as far as I know, Kamala Harris publicly supported her back when she was competing with Biden for the presidential nomination. When she later received the candidacy for vice president, all online media reports of her statement were scrubbed from existence.

All this suggests her accusation is legit.

she's afraid of being offed/suicided by Deep State goons.

I would suggest if this was genuinely her fear that this not the greatest endorsement of the reliability of her testimony, but in fact an indication of quite absurd paranoia. Entertaining the fantasy that the 'Deep State' would murder someone for the benefit of Joe Biden's political image, she defected in May 2023, long after the story had come and gone - what would be the purpose of killing her? She and her accusation are now political non-entity, if they even ever had much of an impact.

Or she’s mentally ill and Kamala was grasping to take out Joe.

Just go by the statements of what was accused and alleged and no interpretation "well of course A is the type to do this so B is telling the truth but C is not the type so D is lying".

I don't think this is really that useful, especially when you look at some of the other statements made and that Trump's team was banned from presenting - like, are we allowed to take into account that the dress she said she was wearing when it happened hadn't been designed yet?

I believe both. Both men seem like sleazy perverts that would do this kind of thing. I assume most have seen Biden's creepy sniffing of children on live TV, kissing and so on. What does he do when the cameras aren't running? What kind of role model was he for Hunter, given how he turned out?

Then there's Trump's relations with Epstein, there's the quote: "He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Note that none of this is 'hard proof' - but why would anyone expect facts to be rigorously, objectively confirmed in the most politically fraught matter imaginable? The facts were 'confirmed' in the case of Russiagate before the whole thing turned out to be a fraud. Why trust official facts in cases like this, considering the political sensitivity? The very existence of Epstein shows that there's a huge market for illicit sex, rape and so on amongst the US elite. Someone dealt with him before he could talk, he clearly had a lot of influential colleagues. These people can easily make facts disappear, they can make people disappear even inside a prison under 24 hour suicide watch. They are quite literally above the law. In the absence of facts, all that's left is vibes and both men give off pretty terrible vibes.

But do you believe both because "this seems like it did happen" or because your opinion of both accused is "they're the exact sleazy types who would do this?" That's what I'm trying to disentangle; I don't want to drag in the comparison of character between Trump and Biden, I want to compare both accounts on the bare accusation that "Such-and-such happened in this place" to see if one is more credible than the other, or both are, or neither are.

I don't believe either of them, but on the face of it, there's nothing in Reade's accusation that is not in Carroll's accusation, and I think it was primarily because of who the accused in both cases were that one was immediately believed and the other wasn't. That's no way to settle an accusation.

I believe they're the sleazy types who would do this.

I want to compare both accounts on the bare accusation that "Such-and-such happened in this place" to see if one is more credible than the other

But you can't separate facts from personalities and past events. We care about these people precisely because they're very powerful and influential, their personalities and pasts are of global significance. For example, juries in Australia weren't allowed to know that a woman had made false sexual assault complaints in the past, when deciding sex assault cases. This is, in my view, obviously wrong.

https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/complainants-history-of-false-sexual-assault-allegations-is-inadmissible/

It's a similar kind of wrong to exclude character in this case. There's not much else to work from, it's pure he-said, she-said! Without considering character, we're left with gross shape-rotation exercises. I personally don't understand the mechanics of sexual assault very well, I've never seen it or done it. I expect most here are similar.

Why does Carroll get an $83 million payout for Trump saying she's a liar while Reade - doesn't?

Basically, because Trump is an idiot and Biden is not.

I don't believe Trump raped Carroll. She seems to me like a fantasist - possibly a crazy and malicious one, possibly just crazy. Either way, she seems pretty disconnected from reality. A good cross-examination should have destroyed her credibility. But the cross examination went terribly for Trump. And on the other side of the equation, he went and repeatedly made unnecessary false statements that diminished his own credibility (e.g. that he had never met her).

None of this proves he raped her of course. But it was a civil trial and the criminal law rules about giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt don't apply. The jury had to choose who they believed to be more credible based on what they were presented with in the courtroom.

And of course, there's the defamation element - which is actually where the big payout comes from. Listen to Biden denying the Tara Reade allegations - he says the claim is untrue, he points out that her story has changed, but he is careful not to accuse her of lying. Because that would give her a cause of action. Trump no doubt received similar legal advice but chose not to heed it.

And he continued to accuse her of lying even after he was found liable for sexual assault, and he continued to accuse her even after he had already been found to have defamed her in the first defamation case. And she has cause of action to sue him for defamation for a third time and get another payout! And when you keep doing the same thing you had to pay damages for already, don't be surprised when a jury decides that the penalty needs to scale up enough to actually deter you.

Biden said that Tara Read said untrue thing, Trump said E. Jean Carroll lied. That's a distinction without a difference. It's only meaningful to would-be intellectuals in the political and legal systems running augury-semantic power games.

It's not all like you say either: this case was deliberately weaponized against Trump, from the very beginning with the law that extended the statute of limitations in the first place. Yeah, sure, Trump is an idiot for not protecting himself from something that's never happened before. Biden is a mastermind. And I get to sit in judgment of both, because I've accepted the excuse du jour of rationalizing minds as something real that exists.

Biden said that Tara Read said untrue thing, Trump said E. Jean Carroll lied. That's a distinction without a difference.

No it isn't. Lying is saying something true with deliberate intent to deceive or mislead. It is, by definition, only a subset of saying untrue things. One can say untrue things without lying by:

  • someone says something untrue to you, and you believe it
  • misremembering
  • just plain old human error causing you to be mistaken

The difference is that those situations aren't generally considered to be a moral failing, while lying is. Therefore, it's derogatory to say a person is lying while it's neutral to say that what they said isn't true.

Biden said that Tara Read said untrue thing, Trump said E. Jean Carroll lied. That's a distinction without a difference. It's only meaningful to would-be intellectuals in the political and legal systems running augury-semantic power games.

Yes, it is a meaningful distinction to the legal system. The question was why does Trump get punished by the legal system. It's because he doesn't play by the rules of the legal system. You can like that or dislike that about him, but it's why he keeps losing in court.

I don't think much would have been different if the statute of limitations had not been changed, either. The defamation claim was not outside the statute of limitations, and without a seperate trial on the abuse claim itself the first defamation trial would have just become a de facto sexual assault trial like Depp v Heard. It would still have had the same outcome where repeating the same claims that had been judged defamatory would open him up to further litigation where he would be bound by the outcome of the previous trial.

That's been a meaningful distinction for centuries, probably predating the Colonies.

Tara Reade’s accusation seems more plausible, but I would have no trouble believing neither, or both, or Carrol but not Reade.

That’s the thing- we don’t know. Writing a rape accusation that doesn’t break the laws of physics is within the capabilities of college educated women, both are prominent men of the sort who false rape accusations, regardless of actual frequency, are probably more common towards, and both of them are old men with boundary issues who might plausibly have raped someone in the past. Obviously the defamation payout is politically motivated and obviously the case against Joe being dropped is politically motivated, but neither of those things has any bearing on whether it actually happened.

Maybe I need to update my priors in light of many recent events but I have a hard time believing someone would completely make up an encounter versus exaggerate. I’ve read enough PUA material and know enough high body count guys that I feel like I know how they think.

A lot of girls do fail to give consent when perfectly willing and I think a lot of playboys have internalized that and act with some aggression. My guess is Trump did pursue her for a fling and was likely aggressive and probably handsy.

My probabilities

90% an encounter occurred between her and Trump

30% he crossed a line. Which I would say is digital penetration

<10% he raped her in the common usage sense. And I’m like closer to <1% especially since it’s in a semi-public space

I’m under no illusion Trump is some kind of Saint. The jury award is silly and is a prime example of why we have statute of limitations. I wouldn’t be shocked if Trump did it and has zero recollection of it.

I could believe that it was consensual between Carroll and Trump (who goes into a changing room with a man, with lingerie, to try it on by getting undressed in front of him? that's the kind of 'she must have been willing' assumption any guy would make) and that she later rejigged this into 'he assaulted me' when she lost her job as the advice columnist and needed money and publicity. Or it could all have been an invention from the start to sell her book. I'm leaning more and more to "she's lying" but that's precisely why I wanted outside views on "does this seem credible or not?" for both of them.

Carroll claims that Elle fired her because Trump disputed her claim about Trump assaulting her. The rape/assault accusation came first; it wasn't a later development. Even before her The Cut article, her income from Elle was in decline, and she's now finding more success at substack.

Carroll says one of the primary reasons she hadn't come forward earlier is that she blamed herself. On reflection, she says going into the changing room with Trump and lingerie was stupid. She agrees with your "who goes into" disbelief, but that isn't an excuse for assault.

She lampshades her telling, admitting it's inconceivable that Bergdorf would have a floor vacant of customers and staff. I don't know whether her account is credible, but the level of evidence seems underwhelming.

I’ve read enough PUA material and know enough high body count guys that I feel like I know how they think.

Let's remember that there is online PUA (un)reality and actual physical world PUA/high body count guy reality.

Online PUAs go hard into things like "last minute resistance" and "anti-slut defense." These are absolutely rapey and awful. And they're pretty much theoretical rationalizations and analysis created by soy boys LARPing as "PUAs" (any online subculture that has lots of acronyms is often populated by the same basic template nerds with various extra skins and other DLC attached.)

Actual, real life "PUA" types experience consent in absolutely black and white scenarios like "has she leaned over and asked me to f**k her? Is she actively unfastening my belt? Has she already gone ahead and leaned in for the kiss herself?" Real life PUAs look at a grey zone not just as a potential risk, but as a failure at the application of their skills. The idea isn't to jump her bones as she is perhaps just beginning to imagine an encounter, but to push the pre-physical seduction to such an extent that she is actively soliciting it in no uncertain terms - and will look back on it with genuine happiness. The parallel between real world PUA stuff and corporate sales is undeniable; don't sell them, make them want to buy the thing so bad they're shoving money at you. And make them happy to see you when you come back for a second time around (am I talking about sales or sex here .... I don't even know anymore).

Real life seduction / PUA / whatever you want to call it is about the challenge of generating real and powerful desire. It's not about weaseling into a grey area to be the sex-bandito who's in and out in a flash.

This is also why lots of (again, "real") PUAs leave that subculture - they want to level up to the next stage of generating real, powerful, and enduring desire over a long term relationship.

Because that is incredibly hard. And supremely worthwhile.

Online PUAs go hard into things like "last minute resistance" and "anti-slut defense." These are absolutely rapey and awful. And they're pretty much theoretical rationalizations and analysis created by soy boys LARPing as "PUAs" (any online subculture that has lots of acronyms is often populated by the same basic template nerds with various extra skins and other DLC attached.)

Meh. Such statements are needlessly generalizing and biased in my view. As far as I can tell, PUA recommendations/techniques mostly discussed LMR and ASD specifically in the context of one-night stands in clubs. Then again, such venues lost most of their relevance in the post-COVID digital age anyway.

I spent time in the real life PUA community during it's heyday (eg regular lair meetups in different cities). While there are PUA's who act in the manner you've outlined, there are also absolutely PUA's who will aggressively try to push through last minute resistance. I know because I've heard them brag about it multiple times. I would not even be able to say the majority had graduated to the level of puissance you've described above.

Many were unskilled/had no idea what they were doing, or were skilled, but actually bad apples in the aggressive 'push through resistance' sense. I'd say 30% were both skilled at their craft and acting in good faith in the manner you describe above. I'd say 30% were just assholes using their powers (or lack thereof) for evil. At least 50% of guys were badly/untrained. There's a venn diagram with 4 circles between skilled/unskilled and kind/selfish players.

The bad guys exist. I don't mean to tar the PUA community with the same brush because the bad apples were still in the minority, and I knew that most guys just wanted to eventually get a girlfriend rather than go for a highscore on bodycount. But sights like the accuser stories above weren't unknown in the nightclubs (eg physically aggressive, unwanted advance). I'm not saying that's rape and deserves an $80 million payout, but it is what it is.

Actual, real life "PUA" types experience consent in absolutely black and white scenarios like "has she leaned over and asked me to f**k her? Is she actively unfastening my belt? Has she already gone ahead and leaned in for the kiss herself?"

Oh come on, there are plenty of real life promiscuous men who believe in the same stuff as your Internet PUAs, even if they don’t know the cringe terminology for it.

There are some men for whom seduction is about seduction, and for whom anything less than absolute enthusiasm would be unattractive and a turn-off, but there are many others who just want they dick wet, if you will.

Sure, I think all straight men on some level want women to find them attractive, but this isn’t a necessary precondition to want to fuck them, or no men would pay for it.

Sure, I think all straight men on some level want women to find them attractive, but this isn’t a necessary precondition to want to fuck them, or no men would pay for it.

That's a good point, which my post failed to consider.

Oh come on, there are plenty of real life promiscuous men who believe in the same stuff as your Internet PUAs, even if they don’t know the cringe terminology for it.

Sorry, but I have to "No True Scotsman" you on this one. Agree totally that there are a ton of guys with various levels of game that run around doing this shit. I tried, in my previous post, to call out the fact they aren't actually committed to developing the deeper skills and mindsets of "seduction" (aside: I don't like either the term PUA or seduction, but I can't think of a better one thats in common usage). To mix up some metaphors - knowing a few military phrases and having gone to one or two tactical training events doesn't make you a SEAL.

Just remember I apologized first before deploying my rhetorical ninja roll.

She has failed to substantiate any of her claims. The dress she claims to have worn during the encounter did not exist at the time she alleges it happened. She otherwise has not given details on when exactly it occurred. She has a history of making rape accusations against men. And the primary funder of her legal expenses is the same billionaire Reid Hoffman who funded the Nikki Haley campaign.

Put it up there with Christine Blasey Ford, or the UVA rape hoax. Jussie Smollet's story was more plausible.

I’ve read enough PUA material and know enough high body count guys that I feel like I know how they think.

I've had lots of sex. I don't walk into dressing rooms and rape the first woman I find.

The claim seems to be that the dress was not made in 1994, at the early end of her time range. She had already shifted to probably 1996, because she didn't think her friend Lisa, in whom she had confided, would travel to Mar-a-Lago knowing about this attack.

I'm having trouble finding any precise claims about when this Donna Karan dress was made, so my assumption is that it was made in 1995.

It seems there should be some website going in deep with details of the 1996 Bergdorf floor layout, the sizes and colors the bodysuit were available in, etc. My search is failing me.

It seems there should be some website going in deep with details of the 1996 Bergdorf floor layout, the sizes and colors the bodysuit were available in, etc.

Surely this research would have been conducted by Trump’s legal team?

From the court records, it seems that Carroll's lawyers introduced the floor layout into evidence, but I don't see how to download them. Obviously they didn't believe them to be exculpatory.

I don't know much about fashion, but this dress seems similar to Carroll's dress. Different color, but similar buttons, pockets, etc. Maybe a different cut, as this looks a little short to wear with just tights? This is a Spring 1995 fashion show, so it was plausibly introduced in 1995, and not available in 1994.

I have yet to see any evidence of Trump's legal team in any case being in any way competent.

Good points. I did pre-qualify that I may need to update my priors.

I think it’s come from operation in a mistake theory mindset versus a conflict theory mindset. Mistake theory being a mentally ill lady perhaps with tds would magnify something that did happen in her head as she grew to hate Trump the President. Conflict theory being along the lines of people might actually just completely make things up ala Smollette for gain.

The part that makes this less believable is it occurring during the middle of the day in a public space where a simple scream would have place Donald Trump in cuffs and away for a few years. If the accusation was at 3 am after a night at the club it would seem more plausible.

Reid Hoffman point I give no credence to. Acting legally by funding opposition candidates in a Democracy is a lot different than participating in a fraudulent accusation. The only slight negative for Hoffman is I doubt he would ever vote for Haley so funding her I would consider as acting in bad faith.

occurring during the middle of the day in a public space where a simple scream would have place Donald Trump in cuffs and away for a few years.

You have a really different impression of how the legal system treated famous rich men in the 90s than I do.

This was around the same time as the OJ trial. If they can't convict a rich, famous man with the mountain of evidence present in that case and a nearly-decapitated body on the line, I don't see why they would bother to listen to some woman whining about getting fingered in a dressing room.

Maybe I'm wrong but I really believe the 90s were a different time to an almost impossible-to-convey degree, especially when it came to women being assaulted or abused. Even Anita Hill was turned into an attention-seeking floozy by the popular media of the day, every woman who got into the news accusing a famous or powerful man of something bad almost uniformly had their lives destroyed and stories inverted by the tabloid press of the day.

Jussie Smollet's story was more plausible.

Ah now. Regardless of whether Carroll's version of events is true, things like it have happened - men have sexually assaulted women in semi-public spaces like changing rooms or fitting rooms. (The fact that they have - and do - is a major component of the dominant culture war issue du jour.) Nothing like Smollett's story has ever happened to anyone - there was no part of it which passed the smell test.

Sorry to be graphic, but as a logistical matter, it's very hard to imagine how Trump could have inserted his penis into her vagina while she was both 1. standing up and 2. actively resisting him. In this scenario as written, he has his hand with fingers in a V-shape at her crotch, surrounding her vagina, and then he sort of squats down while maintaining pressure against her crotch, in order to thrust upward with his penis through his open fingers. At the same time, he is supposed to be pinning her against the wall with his shoulder. The shoulder of the same hand or of the other hand? At one point he grabbed both her arms and pinned her against the wall, but then he is using his hands to undress himself and putting one hand between her legs. Is she still resisting at this moment or not?

As written, the whole thing just seems impossible, it could have happened if she "gave up" at some point, but it could not have happened in the way she describes.

Yeah, it's the logistics of it that I find difficult. As someone who has worn tights, unless he flipped her round, it's very hard to see how he could have inserted his penis into her vagina while pulling them down unless he ripped/tore them so he could part her legs sufficiently. I think, but I'm not sure, that an earlier version of the story was that he digitally penetrated her, which is more plausible, but if you're going to claim rape then you probably need penile penetration as the event. Though a judge said that Carroll saying she was raped, even if the jury found that was not the crime, was substantially true so maybe you just need to pick the right target and "he looked at me with lust in his eyes, I was raped" is good enough for an NY judge?

Carroll testified that her tights were not removed or ripped. He allegedly forced a kiss on her, and I don't see any description of flipping her around.

She said she was wearing four inch heels; I don't know if that would improve or worsen the angles.

Well I wasn't there so I can't say, but if she's allegedly having her tights forcefully pulled down while she's resisting and he's attempting to put tab A into slot B, then.... I can't see how she gets away with that, when simply pulling on a pair of tights the wrong way can ladder them for me.

maybe you just need to pick the right target and "he looked at me with lust in his eyes, I was raped" is good enough for an NY judge?

It's more like if you're found to have sexually assaulted a woman, and she says you raped her, then the difference between those two actions is not big enough for you to be allowed to sue her for defamation. The judge did not do any independent fact-finding of his own, he was bound to accept the jury's verdict.

I think, but I'm not sure, that an earlier version of the story was that he digitally penetrated her, which is more plausible, but if you're going to claim rape then you probably need penile penetration as the event.

This seems to have been the jury's assessment as well. They said he didn't rape her but did sexually assault her, which is consistent with a finding that he stuck his finger in her but not his penis.

Let's just get all the "but of course he did it, he's the type of guy, grab 'em by the pussy" stuff out of the way. "Reade is crazy, she's a Russian asset, it was all lies". Ignore all that. Try, as far as you can, to put the background and any opinions you have on X versus Y out of your mind. Just go by the statements of what was accused and alleged and no interpretation "well of course A is the type to do this so B is telling the truth but C is not the type so D is lying"... Again, no 'afterwards we learned this or we heard that', just judge the two accounts on what is said here and which you find credible, if either, or both, or none.

Why are we ignoring humongous amounts of Bayesian evidence here, exactly?

Yeah, if we just took the singular initial victim statement and judged the case based on how persuasive that was out of context, then we might judge a lot of cases differently. Probably we would find in favor of educated and well-spoken victims who know how to craft a persuasive narrative. That's not a good thing.

Why does Carroll get an $83 million payout for Trump saying she's a liar while Reade - doesn't?

Because one was defamed and one wasn't?

'That didn't happen' said a few times in response to questions isn't defamation. Taking time out in a bunch of your stump speeches and social media posts to call her a whackjob and crazy liar and say you never met her and fire up your followers to attack and harass her and ruin her career is defamation.

Like a lot of cases that come up here, the reason Trump gets a harsher sentence/any punishment at all is his own behavior around the event at question. Yes, there's a difference between discovering that you accidentally held onto some confidential documents, immediately notifying the relevant agencies to turn them over and ask if there's anything else you should do, and ordering your staff to do an internal audit to make sure it hasn't happened anywhere else, vs intentionally taking dozens of boxes of confidential documents to your home, bragging about it and showing them to people, denying it and lying repeatedly when the feds inquire about it, trying to cover them up and hiding more when the feds come to get them, and etc. etc. etc. Malicious intent matters for sentencing.

Why are we ignoring humongous amounts of Bayesian evidence here, exactly?

Because I'm not interested in "Trump is a sleazeball and Biden is just a funny old guy" arguments over who did it and who didn't do it and why one is bad and the other is good. That's not the evidence I want to consider. I want to look at the bare accusations and see what makes them credible, implausible, or one is better than the other. Supposing Carroll hadn't accused Trump but John Nobody. Would that change the view of "yes it's true" on 'Bayesian evidence'? Same with Reade - if she had picked Republican Tom Thompson the 19th instead of Joe Biden, would she have magically been more credible?

I want to avoid that, and look at the allegations in isolation so we can decide without clouding the issue. Then we can argue over "is this just evidence that they're out to get Trump with nuisance lawsuits" or not. I wanted as unbiased as I could get (in full knowledge that there's no change of no bias at all) views on "this is the accusation here, that is the accusation there, do these seem plausible or not?" and you guys are about as good as I can hope to get on that.

Ok, I think that's illegitimate in itself - these impressions of these people don't come from nowhere, the things they are built from are legit evidence - but fine, we can ignore that.

But the trial itself contains plenty of evidence beyond that one paragraph you cite as the only thing we're supposed to judge on.

Absent literally anything other than the written statements, sure, both seems plausible, both are things that can happen. Unless you're finding logical inconsistencies, things that are actually impossible, it's a bad idea to put too much weight on a single paragraph-or-two written statement... people vary too much in how good they are at recounting things in a coherent narrative, weird or surprising things happen all the time in real life (authors always talk about how coincidences in real life wouldn't be plausible in fiction), all human memories are fallible and getting a detail or two wrong years later doesn't mean the incident didn't happen, etc.

You always need more evidence than that to make any kind of confident judgement, which is why there's an investigation and a trial where they bring out other evidence.

E Jean Carroll's account is inherintly less beliveable because she has no evidence of contact. It's just a claim that a random celebrity raped her in a store fitting room years ago.

Tara Reade at least had verifiable professional contact with Biden.

I have a problem with both accounts. Carroll comes off as a nutter. Reade looks like she's coming forward because of some other grevances. I think Reade could be exagerating.

She has a photo of herself and Trump together.

Doesn't really matter. As has become the common practice in trials of right-wing figures for defamation (Giuliani, Jones, and Trump), they skipped directly to the penalty phase this time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the case that Guiliani and Jones both refused to comply with their discovery obligations?

I admit that I have trouble separating the context from the tale, but neither of these has either the ring of total truth or sounds so ridiculous that it's obviously false (e.g. that stupid Rolling Stone story).

The difference in outcomes is pretty obviously based on context and the behavior of the individuals involved. Reade appears to be an actual Russian asset. Trump can't shut the fuck up and take legal advice. I wouldn't describe the outcome as "fair", but what's fair got to do with anything in these sorts of proceedings?

In this case I think he’s in the right of not taking legal advice. The issue in my view is the law is wrong. This should have been statute of limitations. It’s far from certain he did this and he should have the right to defend himself in public.

His ignorance of legal advice on this manner is something I do admire about him. It’s the whole giving the FU to the system thing and believe every women. Many other men without his power have been destroyed by false accusations.

People aren’t voting for Trump because he’s a guy that’s going to capitulate to a jury and a judge. His whole game is destroying the deep state which means he’s going to stand up to all these things. Deescalating these matters would mean Ron Desantis is our next POTUS.

Reade appears to be an actual Russian asset.

While I haven't kept up with this story in extreme detail, this is the first I've heard of this accusation. What makes that so apparent?

She defected to Russia:

“I’m still kind of in a daze a bit but I feel very good,” Reade told Sputnik, a Russian press outlet supportive of President Vladimir Putin, while sitting with Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent jailed in the US but now a member of parliament in Russia.

“I feel very surrounded by protection and safety,” Reade said on Tuesday.

...

Sitting next to Butina, Reade said: “I just really so appreciate Maria and everyone who’s been giving me [protection] at a time when it’s been very difficult to know if I’m safe or not.

“I just didn’t want to walk home and walk into a cage or be killed, which is basically my two choices.”

I don't know, maybe she really believed that she was going to be murdered for accusing Joe Biden of sexual assault. I am cynical enough to think that the order of operations with regard to buddying up with Maria Butina and accusing Biden of assault might have gone the opposite direction to what she now states though.

Both allege it happened in a secluded area. Why does Carroll get an $83 million payout for Trump saying she's a liar while Reade - doesn't?

I have to stop you there, Trump's alleged defamation was not a flat "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" or "It was consensual." The initial verdict was much, much lower; Trump manages to keep escalating it by continuing to deny the court's verdict in his inimitable manner. Trump will always strike me as an unlikely candidate to be railroaded simply because he could, so easily, avoid the railroading by simply choosing not to do the things he does. "I was acquainted with Ms. Carroll and thought we had a friendly relationship. It is unfortunate that she does not remember it the same way. I will continue to appeal the verdict." There goes your $83,000,000. Trump is trapped in a whirligig of his own creation.

That said, I weakly believe that both claims are more-likely-than-not true in a Rashomon sense of true: they reflect the internal experience of the women who made the claims. I strongly believe that neither claim ought to be justiciable, both because they are old and ought to be out of the SoL, and because as my evidence prof put it "Either Rape law is wrong or evidence law is wrong, but they can't both be correct." The standard of evidence demanded in rape law is so far below the standard demanded in virtually every other felony that the result is absurd, and we've already seen it used tyrannically against regime opponents.

Neither claim is provably true in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the accused. But neither is it provably untrue in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the women involved.

That said, I think you're going to end up just picking a fight here with the theory that:

Try, as far as you can, to put the background and any opinions you have on X versus Y out of your mind. Just go by the statements of what was accused and alleged and no interpretation "well of course A is the type to do this so B is telling the truth but C is not the type so D is lying".

Because now people are going to conceal that phase of their thinking. Or not. More likely, it seems that virtually everyone in a position of power (except Al Gore and his wife) are liable to become aggressive sexual deviants.

because as my evidence prof put it "Either Rape law is wrong or evidence law is wrong, but they can't both be correct." The standard of evidence demanded in rape law is so far below the standard demanded in virtually every other felony that the result is absurd

Right.

I want to highlight a stark ideological divergence on the motte: people here often vaguely criticize the modern ‘framework of consent’. It brings to mind feminist consent-a-outrance ideas, where second-to-second affirmative consent in the presence of a notary is the current_year standard for wholesome sex. Haha, so ridiculous, let’s all bond over another pinkhair joke. Wrong. We are not the same. We’re bitter enemies, laughing from opposite sides.

In one corner, the defenders of the rights of the accused , like your prof. They think the exceptional burden on the accused to prove innocence, and therefore consent, is already far too heavy. That people now routinely record consent on their phones before sex out of fear, is a clear sign that the state is way out of line, taking liberties with people’s liberties.

In the other, radfems and traditionalists, who don’t think women’s consent matters at all. Women may keep the neighbours awake with their enthusiastic consent, but they don’t know what’s good for them (abstinence) , they’ve been brainwashed by the patriarchy or coerced by men’s greater physical force . Any non-lesbian, non-procreative sex is prima facie proof of grave societal failure, all hanky-panky pacts are null and void, all people who had unauthorized fun should be punished period.

So the first group laughs at pinkhair’s onerous consent norms because the accused should long have been acquitted, and the second laughs because the accused should long have been condemned.

This is perceptive. I plead guilty: I criticize the consent-only sexual ethic without really having a credible substitute to replace it.

In the other, radfems and traditionalists, who don’t think women’s consent matters at all.

I would not agree with this characterization or the description that follows it. Of course the woman's consent matters. The problem is that due to the private and intimate nature of sexuality, consent simply cannot be determined in any objective or rigorous fashion in a large percentage of cases. Instead, it is very obvious that most disputes over consent in intimate relationships are going to devolve into a he-said-she-said situation, and that there is no practical way to prevent this, even in principle. And yet we still have to pick a norm, and the choice is between favoring accusers or favoring the accused. Both options appear to enable bad actors about equally, and it's not obvious that being falsely accused of rape is significantly more or less traumatic than being raped. Given the givens, which side should we come down on?

Setting the default in favor of the accused makes fornication significantly safer for those most inclined to engage in it, and setting the default in favor of the accuser makes fornication significantly riskier for those most inclined to engage in it. Traditionalists have no interest in preserving low-risk fornication, as they generally believe it is harmful to all involved, which is exactly why this has become an issue for current- and last-generation progressives in the first place: the norms the previous generation of progressives created and cemented have caused such obvious harm that the current generation is demanding a major overhaul of our justice system as a result. This entire dispute to be obvious fallout from the unworkable sexual norms promulgated by the sexual revolution, which we never agreed to and have no interest in shoring up against its own internal contradictions. We have no interest in helping to minimize risk for those fornicators most dedicated to pushing the risk envelope, because we think that such actions are bad and are happy to see them discouraged. We do not expect the downsides of favoring the accuser to affect us, since part of being a Traditionalist is agreeing that fornication, much less edge-pushing fornication, is a bad idea and shouldn't be done. If those who disagree wish to push the envelope anyway, they can do so at their own risk.

More generally, though, Traditionalists just see all this as not our chair, not our problem. Traditionalists do not generally believe that "affirmative consent" will actually work; it will simply shift the damage profile around. Both solutions seem stupid and awful, and mainly we're just watching in horrified fascination and doing everything we can to keep clear of the fallout zone.

that most disputes over consent in intimate relationships are going to devolve into a he-said-she-said situation, and that there is no practical way to prevent this, even in principle.

That's only a small part of the problem. Modern rape laws, and further ‘anti-rape’ lobbying efforts, are attacking consent as a defense, like they attack every defense. It’s not just ambiguity. The schema is not : he-said, she-said, what shall we do? ; but he-said-yes, she-said-yes, – still rape. If you’re drunk – consent invalid. If you’re a student or an employee – consent invalid. You agree the woman's consent does not matter to you in those cases?

I think the story is really a straightforward conspiracy by radfems and trads to impose their sexless tyrrany by classifying all sex as a felony. They haven't achieved it completely yet, but they're getting there.

And yet we still have to pick a norm, and the choice is between favoring accusers or favoring the accused.

For centuries, for all other crimes, it’s the accused . He gets the presumption of innocence. The acccuser has to prove a crime occurred. But we have allowed our justice system to be inverted and perverted in this holy crusade against rape. The rape our culture encourages, according to feminists.

We do not expect the downsides of favoring the accuser to affect us

I don’t think you can contain the damage to your outgroup. Your leaders are constantly being targeted under the absurd rape laws. I don’t think total abstinence or the pence rule can protect you from the sanctification of Woman’s Word. Remember, evidence is no longer required. Evidence Law is an obstacle to victims getting justice.

As you say, “it's not obvious that being falsely accused of rape is significantly more or less traumatic than being raped.”, therefore I’d have to side with any woman accusing you and send you to prison regardless of what actually happened.

Traditionalists do not generally believe that "affirmative consent" will actually work

yeah, because you don’t believe in consent. Sex is bad and consent is irrelevant, just like your radfem sisters.

The schema is not : he-said, she-said, what shall we do? ; but he-said-yes, she-said-yes, – still rape.

Proving they both actually said yes is impossible.

We just saw an example of this within the last few days: a rape scandal in Canadian junior-league hockey. From that thread, we have a description of video evidence recorded by the accused, explicitly to establish consent:

Two videos taken on the night of the incident were shown to reporters by lawyers representing some of the players. In the first, which was recorded within the hotel room at 3:25 a.m. on June 19, 2018, E.M. can be seen from the neck up. A male voice can be heard saying “You’re ok with this?” “I’m ok with this,” she replied. In the second, which is 12 seconds long, and which was taken at 4:26 a.m., E.M. appears to be covering herself with a towel. “Are you recording me?” she asks. “Ok, good. It was all consensual. You are so paranoid, holy. I enjoyed it, it was fine. It was all consensual. I am so sober, that’s why I can’t do this right now.”

The Globe story also revealed a text message conversation between E.M. and one of the players in the hours after she left the hotel room. The player begins by asking E.M. whether she had gone to the police. The woman said she had spoken to her mother and her mother had called police against her wishes. “You said you were having fun,” the player wrote. “I was really drunk, didn’t feel good about it at all after. But I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” she replied. “I was ok with going home with you, it was everyone else afterwards that I wasn’t expecting. I just felt like I was being made fun of and taken advantage of.”

This evidence was obviously insufficient to protect the men in question, as they were nonetheless accused of rape and were prosecuted, with disastrous results for their careers and their lives. Nor is this surprising, given that people here are willing to argue that such evidence is insufficient to establish consent.

You can have video evidence of consent that matters. For example, if there's a video of the same woman shot in a safe space before the gangbang telling the camera how excited she is to have sex with not just one, but five hockey players.

When you are in a hotel room with five guys who are built like literal hockey players and they are growing increasingly frantic about you giving them video evidence that you willingly had sex with them, even if the room is not locked and they are not barring your way out, the inherent power disparity means that lying on camera is the safer option than risking one of them snapping.

I disagree with the above statement, because it seems to me that the problem is in fact an infinite regress. If you have video of them giving consent, they can claim the video is coerced. If you have video of the entire encounter, they can claim they were coerced before filming began, and then the "start" of the video was staged. And of course such coercion is entirely possible, even if one might suspect it unlikely.

The problem is that sex is not, in fact, a safe source of unadulterated, low-stakes, trivial fun. It remains a deeply powerful and fundamentally meaningful act, despite generations of propaganda to the contrary, and with that power and fundamental meaning comes an irreducible capacity for serious harm. You can ignore that fact, as our society strove to do for some decades, but the consequences accumulate and sooner or later must be addressed. Telling people that sex was meaningless fun didn't make it true, it only encouraged them to walk blind into extremely painful realities.

If you’re drunk – consent invalid.

We have no rigorous way of measuring intoxication after the alcohol has left the system, and even timestamped breathalyzers suffer from the same problem as the video evidence above.

If you’re a student or an employee – consent invalid.

This fails for the same reasons the video evidence does. You can't prove a negative, and nothing less will be accepted because the accumulated harm demands that something be done. By all means, argue that the women should tough it out and that if they make the wrong call, they eat the consequences. I won't be the one you're arguing against, but I'm skeptical you'll prevail in any arena more consequential or connected to the real world than this one. People generally sympathize with women for solid, well-founded reasons; the fact that our current social dysfunctions render this sympathy increasingly toxic doesn't mean that withdrawing it will result in anything actually improving on net. Some fraction of men will abuse women if they can, and a much larger fraction of men will take advantage of women in a way that will inflict trauma on those women long-term. Given our current social structure, the women are in a position to do something about it, and woe betide those who get in their way.

You agree the woman's consent does not matter to you in those cases?

"Consent" is necessary but insufficient. That is very different from it "not mattering". You want fornication with fewer consequences for men and worse consequences for women, the radfems want fornication with fewer consequences for women and more consequences for men. I think you both are awful for basically identical reasons, and would not willingly live under either of your regimes.

I think the story is really a straightforward conspiracy by radfems and trads to impose their sexless tyrrany by classifying all sex as a felony.

Or perhaps the current system is a straightforward conspiracy by tits-and-beer "liberals" and people like you to continue getting away with rape and abuse. But wouldn't that be rather an uncharitable accusation?

In any case, your claim of "All sex" is obviously unsupportable. The radfems have no ability to criminalize the sex I have with my wife. The sex they seek to criminalize and you apparently seek to enable is not the sex we are currently having, nor the sex we intend to have in the future. I am safe from the radfems, and my wife is safe from the pickup artists or whoever. Nothing prevents you or anyone else from forming long-term pair bonds based on deep trust and mutual commitment and avoiding the whole mess entirely, all the while enjoying all the high-quality sex you please. Denying strangers access to your wallet and genitals is a simple, straightforward policy with much to recommend it, and safe sex is as much a myth as safe guns or safe liquor. Even if you have no interest in controlling your sexual appetites, you can at least take a cue from Diogenes: "would that I could sooth the pangs of hunger by rubbing my belly."

Alternatively, pay your money and take your chances. Just don't complain when the dice come up snake-eyes.

For centuries, for all other crimes, it’s the accused.

For centuries, we had strong social and legal restrictions that were effective at preventing and punishing premarital sex, and understood that this was good and necessary. Our societies understood that men and women are fundamentally different, and that "equality" between their legal interests is not really possible. Then we burned all that down because, like all good children of the Enlightenment, We Knew Better. And now those changes that you preferred have created such misery that changes you don't prefer are being forced through anyway.

I don’t think you can contain the damage to your outgroup. Your leaders are a constantly being targeted under the absurd rape laws. I don’t think total abstinence or the pence rule can protect you from the sanctification of Woman’s Word.

It is not a perfect defense, and it certainly cannot protect us from a Blue Tribe enjoying complete social and political dominance. Nor does it protect us as well as, say, the favor of the nakedly corrupt actors exploiting that dominance. It protects us better than anything you can offer, though. I am not immune to being me-too'd, but I am as close to immune as I can reasonably be, and probably closer to immune than I would be if I tried to convert to Bluedom, simply from social effects.

Remember, evidence is no longer required. Evidence Law is an obstacle to victims getting justice.

Sure. But not living around Blues and minimizing my interaction with them means that I have almost zero social contact with people who actually believe this, or would be willing to exploit it. That's the actual defense, and the fact that it breaks down when attempting to share institutions with Blues is simply more proof that such coexistence is a bad idea in general. In any case, my system gives the best chance of survival available to people like me. The accusations used to smear Kavanaugh were an appalling injustice, but his strict adherence to avoiding stupid antics spared him. If he'd spent his life maximizing body count as opposed to keeping meticulous journals of his day-to-day activities, there is zero chance he would have survived them.

The Pence Rule works, which is one of the reasons that I consider attempts to smear it as sexism to be so appalling.

As you say, “it's not obvious that being falsely accused of rape is significantly more or less traumatic than being raped.”, therefore I’d have to side with any woman accusing you and send you to prison regardless of what actually happened.

I'll take my chances, and I like my odds. False rape accusations are about as low on my list of concerns as unwanted pregnancy (we want them) or HIV infection (blood transfusion after a major accident, maybe?). It's not a thing that's worth worrying about.

yeah, because you don’t believe in consent. Sex is bad and consent is irrelevant, just like your radfem sisters.

Consent is necessary but insufficient, which is very different from "not believing in consent". I do not believe that sex is bad; within a marriage, and maybe even within a committed relationship, it's absolutely fantastic. As a potentially-zero-sum competition between alienated atomic individualists, it's dangerous and stupid for everyone involved, like playing Russian roulette. The radfems are fools, and if people like you are successful in wresting social dominance from them, I'll fight you the same as I fight them now. What I won't do is agree that their brand of foolishness justifies your brand of foolishness, or ally with you to help your brand of foolishness win over theirs. You, like them, have nothing to offer people like me, other than to leave us alone.

You, like them, have nothing to offer people like me, other than to leave us alone.

Then perhaps people like you should side with the sorts of people that will leave you alone (and have a lengthy track record of doing so), rather than the ones that will not, so that when socioeconomic conditions stop being able to sustain liberalism and that freedom dries up it's your brand of [master] morality and not theirs with a better chance of coming out on top.

People generally sympathize with women for solid, well-founded reasons

Reasons which are no longer relevant or correct, but their biological and cultural inertia remains. Traditionalism has, traditionally, never needed to come up with an answer for why women with the same (or more) sociopolitical power as men should obey rules meant to deal with the problems women create when they're the less powerful gender; that's the entire reason why it's been losing ground for the 300ish years since the Industrial Revolution. Traditionalist moral philosophy just isn't set up to handle post-scarcity environments for what should be obvious reasons, and corruption in post-scarcity environments is inherently progressive-biased anyway (as the former masters of North America, being a network of matriarchies that failed to advance technologically in any way over the 10,000 years they had the continent to themselves under functionally post-scarcity conditions, demonstrate).

Proving they both actually said yes is impossible.

No, that has actually been done here, there’s video, text messages, no one is disputing that she said yes.

‘He said she said ‘ goes : ‘He said she said yes, she said she said no’ – If he’s telling the truth, she said ‘yes’, so he’s innocent of rape. And if she said “no”, he’s guilty.

That’s not the situation here at all: all agree she said yes, but for some cockamamie reason the consent has been declared invalid so - schocker – he’s guilty, yet again.

You and the radfems don’t accept consent as a defense because you don’t accept innocence as a defense. The way you see it, he may be innocent of rape, but he’s still guilty of being a man and having sex.

This evidence was obviously insufficient to protect the men in question, as they were nonetheless accused of rape and were prosecuted, with disastrous results for their careers and their lives.

Right, and that's absurd. They have overshot the standard for innocence by several orders of magnitude. They should be released with the court’s deepest apologies, maybe teach the prosecutor what a real case should look like.

disagree with the above statement, because it seems to me that the problem is in fact an infinite regress. If you have video of them giving consent, they can claim the video is coerced.

No argument there. @orthoxerox is just another guy on the trad-radfem side, he does not recognize women’s consent because there’s always a man hiding in the bushes, coercing them.

The problem is that sex is not, in fact, a safe source of unadulterated, low-stakes, trivial fun.

I get it, you’re not big on sex, like your prophets before you.

We have no rigorous way of measuring intoxication after the alcohol has left the system, and even timestamped breathalyzers suffer from the same problem as the video evidence above.

I don’t give a shit? Drinking does not put the responsibility for your actions on others in any other context (drunk driving, getting into a fistfight, etc).

You can't prove a negative, and nothing less will be accepted because the accumulated harm demands that something be done.

Maybe the ‘accumulated harm’ demands that all Jan 6 protestors be sent to prison. The accumulated harm is not a real thing here.

People generally sympathize with women for solid, well-founded reasons

You can sympathize with women, admire them, fear them, as much as you like. Their legal ability to turn their agency and reasoning faculties on and off at will still won’t make any sense.

If the employee, the student, the woman, cannot be counted on to make one decision because her body is weak and her mind easily influenced, how can she be counted on to make any?

You want fornication with fewer consequences for men and worse consequences for women

No, in the absence of evidence for a crime, I want no consequences at all.

would not willingly live under either of your regimes.

Not only are you living under the radfem one, you’re a pillar of it.

The radfems have no ability to criminalize the sex I have with my wife.

She could easily accuse you, anytime, of getting insufficiently affirmative enthusiastic continual consent, that one time in boca. Marital rape is a common thing, you know. Oh god, she wasn’t drunk, was she?

You, like them, have nothing to offer people like me, other than to leave us alone.

I originally set out to find where the battle lines really are in this triangle. And I think it’s pretty clear that you are in fact allied to radfems, in your shared hatred of ‘fornication’ and in support of modern rape and harassment laws, against classical liberals like me.

I apologize that it has taken this long to respond to the reports on this comment, but the mod team discussed it and is very broadly of the view that this is a terrible post. It's antagonistic, primarily, but also stuffs a lot of words into other people's mouths. It doesn't discuss the culture wars, but merely wages them. And this will be the sixth time you're banned for it.

I entertained the idea of making it something long term, like maybe 90 days--we used to do a fair number of those back on the subreddit. But some mods suggested a permaban, and it seems nobody could think of a good reason to not permaban you. So, that's what I'm doing.

Why not the 90 day ban, though? Isn't that a more reasonable default?

Looking at the mod log, I think his most recent ban was for two weeks, so it would still have been a pretty substantial step up, six times as long (though maybe one of the others was longer, I didn't look).

I don't know, when people are willing to talk, and seem sincere (which seemed to me to be the case here), it seems reasonable to set cap bans at a few years.

Even if you end up needing to ban them again years down the line, there's a difference in messaging between "you'd be welcome back later, if only you can behave" and "leave, and never come back," and the former seems better. Even if the one in question isn't likely to listen, it sends the message better to everyone else that it isn't about personal antagonism.

Or so it seems to me, but you surely have the experience I do not.

(this is not to say that I disagree that the comment was pretty bad)

More comments

In case anyone's wondering about this ban, the real reason is that fuckduck got into a fight with a mod the other day, but the clique needed another excuse to ban him.
I probably should have made an alt account to say this, because now I'll probably get perma'ed for misusing an apostrophe next week or something.

Edit: called it https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/184547?context=8#context

I don’t give a shit? Drinking does not put the responsibility for your actions on others in any other context (drunk driving, getting into a fistfight, etc).

"Friends don't let friends drive drunk". While it's not (yet) a legal duty, it's now a moral duty to stop your friend from getting behind the wheel, even if that means they can't give you a ride or that you'll have to pay for their ride home. And yes, this moral duty means you have to drink less yourself if you see your friend getting sloshed and bragging about their driving ability. And if you challenge them to a race, thinking they are more willing to answer that challenge and more likely to lose when drunk, then you will end up in legal trouble.

It's only a moral duty if you accept the state as a moral authority. If you believe in a higher authority or a superseding principle - like the idea that a person is only moral if they are responsible for their actions, then your duty is to uphold that principle. Forgoing that principle to look after your friend then puts the responsibility on you, but that is by choice.

A), it's still their responsibility, even if I have a residual advisory duty to help them avoid death.

B), I have no such moral duty to prevent strangers and friends alike from having sex.

So…Donald Trump already ought to have been condemned, therefore the trial is ridiculous?

I don’t believe I’ve seen a radfem draw such a conclusion. The closest would be those arguing that even if he didn’t assault Carroll, he’s surely guilty of raping someone. But those people are hardly calling the trials illegitimate. Where are these radfems making common cause with the legal conservatives?

Conversely, how often do you see a hardline traditionalist criticizing Trump? Set aside the general scarcity of such folks. It’s much easier to quietly opt out of politics than it is to shoot your team’s mascot.

I think you’ve built a Moldbug-worthy category, and that it doesn’t actually describe any real ideological divergence.

Conversely, how often do you see a hardline traditionalist criticizing Trump?

There's dozens of us! Dozens!

It's not about trump, it's about the consent discourse on themotte. I thought about posting it on its own, but it was a bit light, and fivehour's prof's quote was the reason I wrote it, so I just plonked it here.

Obviously the massive black hole of the trump culture war angle isn't helpful for delineating the kind of objective doctrinal disagreement that interests me here.

Okay, that's tangential to the question I am asking, and I should have left it out. Basically, do you find (a) one of these (b) both of these (c) neither of these accounts credible?

I want to avoid all the political stuff around them, because that's getting us nowhere and everyone has their own opinions. The media sure do, but going down those rabbit holes is a distraction.

What kicked this off for me is all the "look at all the court cases Trump is facing" and this is one of them. So forgetting, as best we can, the individuals involved or the three-ring-circus around it all, insofar as the first has been a successful court case or two, just on the bare accounts of the parties making the accusations: do the good people, folx, or however you all like to describe yourselves of The Motte, as reasonably intelligent and sane persons, think that either/both/neither account is credible and second, you'd convict on that alone?

I can accept "yeah this sounds like it could have happened, but I wouldn't be sure enough in a court of law to convict on it" if that's how you feel. I'm trying to get a gauge on how these two accounts sound to other people, outside my own views and opinions (for what it's worth, the more I hear about the Carroll case the more I'm shifting towards "she's lying" but that's not helping me decide if the bare account of the accusation, with no witnesses to back it up, sounds credible to others).

Okay, that's tangential to the question I am asking, and I should have left it out.

I'm curious what's tangential.

The Motte, as reasonably intelligent and sane persons, think that either/both/neither account is credible and second, you'd convict on that alone?

I repeat: Neither claim is provably true in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the accused. But neither is it provably untrue in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the women involved.

The entire concept of a "conviction" (or any kind of verdict, as we're talking about civil not criminal trials here) on the basis of one person's testimony to behavior that happened decades ago is obscene. It is contrary to the idea of civil liberties and limited government. Full stop. If in the jury box I'd be a vote against, regardless of the law involved.

Trying to adjudicate who had sex with whom and how into it they were decades ago is a morass. Trying to do so is obscene, and should not be a part of our politics. Full stop. That was my position on Brett Kavanaugh, on Tara Reade, on Trump's various women, it'll be my position on the next one too.

(for what it's worth, the more I hear about the Carroll case the more I'm shifting towards "she's lying" but that's not helping me decide if the bare account of the accusation, with no witnesses to back it up, sounds credible to others).

It's extremely likely that she is lying, or simply wrong, about multiple details of any quick moving event that happened decades ago. Trump, in turn, denied ever knowing her and said she was so ugly he'd never fuck her anyway; when confronted under oath with photos of their meeting, Trump misidentified Carroll as his then-mistress/later-second-wife Maples. Humans aren't actually so good at this stuff.

But neither is it provably untrue in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the women involved.

Jean Carroll has demonstrably lied.

That said, I weakly believe that both claims are more-likely-than-not true in a Rashomon sense of true: they reflect the internal experience of the women who made the claims.

Agree. It's hard to overstate just how extreme this can extend, even in a totally non-sexual context.

I once had an HR interview as a bystander to an incident between two other colleagues. It look me 15 minutes of variations on "wait, what are you talking about?" to the HR rep to realize what I had seen as an forgettable, minor disagreement between the two was reported as "verbal assault and harassment" by one party.

And that reporting party was a Dude.

This is why physical evidence standards, documented intent, provable patterns of behavior etc. are so important in any cases wherein emotional salience is so high. I think in both of these cases, a whole lot of that is lacking.

@FiveHourMarathon is objectively correct in stating that the award and verdict is an own-goal on the part of Trump. The compensatory vs punitive damage awards clearly indicate that the bulk of the $83 mm is to convince Trump that he should really quit talkin' shit about Carroll.

The compensatory vs punitive damage awards clearly indicate that the bulk of the $83 mm is to convince Trump that he should really quit talkin' shit about Carroll.

If the accusation is false, just shut up, fork over the dough, and take the lumps? I wouldn't be inclined to do that myself were I accused of a serious crime. But this is getting outside the limits I want to impose on the question, which is just: is the account as given credible?

I'll discount Rashomon as too much nuance and take it that, without supporting evidence, your view is neither claim is good enough to stand up on its own?

The compensatory vs punitive damage awards clearly indicate that the bulk of the $83 mm is to convince Trump that he should really quit talkin' shit about Carroll.

It's clearly political.

How so?

I’d have expected loud, grating defamation to be very unpopular with a jury whether or not politics was involved. It pattern-matches to an “above the law” stereotype that Americans really, really don’t like.

Carroll didn't surface her claims until after Trump was president, for a book she was writing. She accused other men but sued Trump.

The case would not have progressed if not for New York State passing a new law to extend the statute of limitations in cases of rape. It was understood that this would allow Carroll to sue Trump over her claims.

Her lawsuit has been funded by Reid Hoffman, the same billionaire donor who (until recently) was funding Nikki Haley's campaign.

The judge was prejudiced against Trump from the start. The evidence his lawyer tried to admit was not allowed. Trump was largely prevented from speaking, on the grounds that the fact that he violated Carroll had already been established, so he could say nothing in his own defense. What little Trump did say the judge instructed jurors to ignore, except for his yesses and nos. The judge then instructed jurors to remember that they had the power to punish Trump with punitive damages. Maybe it's possible a New York jury decided to interpret these instructions in a totally apolitical way? I severely doubt it.

Trump's "defamation" was calling Carroll a liar who made up her claim to sell books. She demonstrably lied in several instances (the judge instructed the jury to ignore all such evidence every time it came up). Several of the remarks, in fact, were made by Trump before the statute of limitations was changed so Carroll could evensue him for rape.

The whole thing is political, from front to end. There is nothing ordinary about this case. The jury judges and accuser deserve no benefit of the doubt. That Trump has been declared guilty is obviously, facially, against a plain reading of the facts. The most obvious explanation is that it is political.

The judge was prejudiced against Trump from the start. The evidence his lawyer tried to admit was not allowed. Trump was largely prevented from speaking, on the grounds that the fact that he violated Carroll had already been established, so he could say nothing in his own defense. What little Trump did say the judge instructed jurors to ignore, except for his yesses and nos. The judge then instructed jurors to remember that they had the power to punish Trump with punitive damages.

How is any of this evidence of the judge being prejudiced?

The evidence his lawyer tried to admit was not allowed.

Surely you recognise that it is absolutely routine for judges to make rulings on what things can and can't be used as evidence in a case? If you want to claim the judge did something wrong here you'll need to argue he applied the rules of evidence incorrectly or something.

Trump was largely prevented from speaking, on the grounds that the fact that he violated Carroll had already been established, so he could say nothing in his own defense. What little Trump did say the judge instructed jurors to ignore, except for his yesses and nos.

Yes, and this is entirely appropriate. They already had a whole other trial to determine if he sexually assaulted her, and it found that he did. This was a defamation trial over whether or not he defamed her, and if so, over how much he owed her in damages. The judge ensured that the jury only considered evidence relevant to the case before them.

The judge then instructed jurors to remember that they had the power to punish Trump with punitive damages.

Should he have not informed the jury of what they could and could not do??

@FiveHourMarathon is objectively correct in stating that the award and verdict is an own-goal on the part of Trump. The compensatory vs punitive damage awards clearly indicate that the bulk of the $83 mm is to convince Trump that he should really quit talkin' shit about Carroll.

But here you're continuing to support the double standard. Carroll can claim Trump raped her all she wants and nothing should come of it, but if Trump calls her a liar, he's liable for defamation over and over again.

Trump could absolutely have chosen to sue her for defamation for her claim. There is no legal double standard in that, beyond claims of "the rules don't matter."

Trump can also call her a liar without committing defamation, he has repeatedly chosen not to. The framework for the non-apology apology is so well known at this point that it's practically available as a template on EForms next to promissory notes and ground leases.

That he's failed to do so is a matter of temperament.

Trump could absolutely have chosen to sue her for defamation for her claim.

He did. His claim got thrown out.

Do you have a link to that anywhere? I wasn't aware he had tried, I can't find that noted in the articles I'm looking at (though obviously it is possible it was left out intentionally).

It gets mentioned occasionally. Here.

Thanks! Very helpful.

I'll meet you half way.

I think you're right in that there does appear to be a double standard on Carroll's allegations (which a jury denied) and Trump's ability to say whatever he wants (at whatever volume he wants) about it. I'm not an expert enough in defamation to say where the line is.

But I still stand by my "own-goal" analogy because either a lot or all of this (past the first jury trial, to be specific) could've been avoided if Trump just STFUs and relies on milquetoast cliches - "The justice system functioned and I abide by the verdict." He keep creating new opportunities for potential attacks. The fact that these attacks are/may be politically motivated is irrelevant because (a) He keeps creating the opportunities and (b) It is impossible for him not to know how much certain groups have made it their existential purpose to hunt him through the courts. When you mix egotism with a martyrdom complex, you get a lot of frivolous legal activity.

To refer back to the One True Gospel, The Wire;

"Keep it boring, String, keep it real fuckin' boring" - Prop Joe

And, from the Prophet Lil Wayne;

"Real G's move in silence like lasagna"

But I still stand by my "own-goal" analogy because either a lot or all of this (past the first jury trial, to be specific) could've been avoided if Trump just STFUs and relies on milquetoast cliches - "The justice system functioned and I abide by the verdict."

Yes, Trump can avoid anything more if he just capitulates -- shuts up and allows Carroll to accuse him all she wants without answer. That is indeed how the justice system "functioned". The problem is the justice system got utterly broken.

Without answer, except for getting to make an actual defense in court? Twice?

His personal brand demanded that he make a spectacular, performative stink about the issue, rather than issuing a press release and letting the lawyers sort it out. The jury decided that was the wrong choice.

I don’t see the problem with assigning a monetary incentive not to be maximally inflammatory.

2024, The fallacious ad hominem known as tone policing becomes law.

Always has been.

No, really. “Obscenity” is a bad enough category as it is. “Fighting words” is another. We ask judges and juries to assess the tone of speech all the time, which is part of the reason “actual malice” shows up in libel laws.

Sure, but that's a general brokenness to the justice system, and Trump's increasingly large legal wounds are mostly a result of him refusing to stop walking on the broken glass even when he could just step around it and only be a bit inconvenienced, not the system being biased against him.

This is not a general brokenness to the justice system. Finding someone guilty for defamation for claiming as false an accusation of rape made against them many years after the time of the alleged event, without furthr evidence, is a specific brokenness for this case.

I strongly believe that neither claim ought to be justiciable, both because they are old and ought to be out of the SoL

I think that is why Trump is not being criminally charged, but the defamation that he is being charged for is recent.

Do you think that's still improper, that if the matter of fact which the defamation centers on is outside SoL, the court shouldn't be allowed to say whether or not recent statements were defamatory?

Given that civil courts have a lower evidentiary burden to begin with, I don't think this naturally follows.

Do you think that's still improper, that if the matter of fact which the defamation centers on is outside SoL, the court shouldn't be allowed to say whether or not recent statements were defamatory?

I addressed this in my initial comment, but I'll work it out a bit further here.

  1. Statements of personal innocence, and defending your friends' innocence, should never be punishable in and of themselves. "I did not rape her" should not be construed as defamation.

  2. Statements that impugn someone's character unnecessarily can probably still be defamatory, but because truth is an absolute defense to libel and the truth of the matter is somewhat impossible to prove, it should probably be limited to cases where the defamation is extreme.

  3. Given that civil courts have a lower evidentiary burden to begin with, I don't think this naturally follows.

I disagree, and find the civil vs criminal distinction cold comfort. The civil courts ultimately have power of discovery to upend your life, the verdicts will be enforced by the courts and ultimately by men with guns, they create "facts" that can't be contradicted later.

For the present case, on balance I don't think Trump should face any liability for defamation in this case. It does meet the legal standards involved and procedures were followed, and he could easily escape liability by simply...cutting it out with the nonsense. But it is inappropriate to punish someone for protesting their innocence.

But it is inappropriate to punish someone for protesting their innocence.

I agree, but I really, really don't think that's a fair summary of what is being charged as defamation here.

I am going to just admit up front that I have not taken time to hunt down every speech and Truthbomb (or w/e they're called) or other public statement Trump has made about this which was cited as defamatory and judge them myself. If you have, you can pull rank here.

But my impression from summaries I've seen is that it was much more of an attack on her character and motives and person, made repeatedly and as part of stump speeches and campaign rhetoric and as political strategy, on a way that painted her as a political actor and possibly part of a conspiracy, in away that turned his supporters against her in ways that upended her life in major ways, and made her feel/be unsafe.

Just saying that you are innocent shouldn't be defamation, but that doesn't mean you can't do other things to defame someone at the same time as you claim your innocence.

I've followed the story very shallowly, I read Carroll's original short story (it's very engaging) and I browsed articles in the WSJ and NYT in between since.

Maybe what trump said is worse than I think? But my impression is that while he has put his finger into the fan blade over and over, it hasn't crossed the line as I would draw it. Unfortunately I don't get to draw those lines.

That said, I weakly believe that both claims are more-likely-than-not true in a Rashomon sense of true

But neither is it provably untrue in a way that should lead to legal consequences for the women involved.

Carroll won't name when the alleged assault happened. The details she can give are wildly implausible or verifiably false. She posed for a magazine cover wearing the dress she claimed it happened in, which didn't exist at the time it supposedly happened. (Unless she changes her story again.) She has admitted to deleting evidence related to the case.

Right, but all of that has already been examined by a jury and rejected, and so no court may consider it again. Also the courts consider lower courts and juries to be unbiased, and claims by parties that they are not are rejected out of hand.

The prior lawsuit did not reject anything. They concluded that Trump was liable in a civil case, a far lower threshold than proving he was guilty. Even then, many of the arguments I have just made were not admitted into court. And they still didn't find that Trump raped her -- that jury's compromise position was that he probably assaulted her by touching her vagina with his hands, but not with his penis. (Perhaps because her own story changed several times.)

As I said: Carroll has absolutely lied in ways that destroy her legitmacy. The idea that she is telling the truth is totally preposterous.

You can see others above saying that the jury decided it, so the courts are bound to assume it's true. That's the whole fig leaf the legal system is using to keep up the ridiculous fiction of the Carroll rape case.

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