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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   19444 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.

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.

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