Post: #26

(01-08-2019 11:05 AM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

(01-08-2019 09:54 AM)Buck Wild Wrote:  It is important to have an awareness that we live in a post-Christian society now. That means virtues like forgiveness are off the table. Because forgiveness is now not a cultural value, this means apologies are to be dispensed with as well. In a post-Christian climate, apologies are simply used as prima facie evidence of guilt and used to further ensure punishment.

I'm not sure what I would have done in his situation, but there is zero chance I would have tendered a public apology the way he did. The first order of business is to know the climate you're operating in and in this climate, apologies are undignified and ineffective. A post-Christian society simply has no use for genuine contrition. It of course goes without saying that his firing was outrageous and wrong---I wish him the best of luck.

Great post! Let me take your thoughts even further.

A post-Christian society also means all the old sins are null and void (i.e. adultery, sodomy, etc). They've been replaced by new ones like racism, sexism, and misogyny.

This is why we now have massive over-reactions to someone mis-speaking. It's the modern equivalent of committing adultery and having to wear a scarlet letters.

The corporate media now functions as the New Church. Anyone who goes against its teachings gets branded a heretic. The punishment is banishment from mainstream society and economic excommunication (losing your jobs, getting thrown off Patreon).

What's most troubling, though, isn't all of the above. It's the fact that the majority of Americans blindly follow along and get angry at you if you try and point this out to them. It's like questioning the bible back in the old days.

It's one thing to persecute people who express the "wrong" opinion on race and gender. That type of thing is certainly reminiscent of the medieval church and their suppression of dissenting ideas.

It's another level entirely to manufacture racists out of thin air to crucify. This is hardly the first such incidence.

Modern day leftists of course feel smugly superior to the repressive authoritarian regimes of the past, totally lacking the self-awareness to realize that with every baseless accusation that someone is a "racist," and every call to destroy the lives of such people by whatever means legally permissible, they are contributing to something even more sinister. Would even the 1300's Catholic church persecute someone who tripped over a word and mispronounced it in a way that sounds kind of like a thing they don't want people saying, and apologized profusely afterward?

The best analogy for the modern day anti-racism crusade is a massively scaled up version of the Salem witch trials. Witches of course didn't exist, and while virulent racists do exist, there are far too few of them to feed the narrative. So what do you do in that case? Create some. Sacrifice human livelihoods for the cause.

Post: #27

When I worked at a home improvement big box store in the garden center, I took ownership of the pest control aisle. To this day I can't say RAcoon without putting a hard accent on the first syllable though to be safe I frequently tried to use the term "trash panda" with customers who understood that. A substantial number of customers from a certain demographic however would try to bait abbreviating RAcoon to coon while playing with their phones.

Post: #28

In Baltimore, longtime news anchor Mary Bubala got fired because she asked questions of an interviewee that were perceived as racist.

"We have had three African American female mayors in a row," Bubala said. "They were all passionate public servants. Two resigned, though. Isn't it a signal that a different kind of leadership is needed to move Baltimore City forward?"

The general feeling is that her intent was not racist and she worded the question poorly. But that doesn't matter. It exploded on social media and she foolishly apologized. The attackers then smelled blood and went in for the kill, so she got canned. Full story and vidoes here.

My thoughts:

1). As I've written before, hate crime laws gave minorities "protected" status so it put them in a category where their lives are valued more than the average person's. Laws are not just laws. They mold our behavior. As such, minority groups have become quasi-religious figures than regular folks commit "sins" against. That's what happened here.

This is why intent doesn't matter anymore. So the longtime concept of "mens rea" is obsolete in cases like this. When you sin against the clergy, it doesn't matter if it was an accident. You get punished either way.

2). That said, it's hard to get too worked up over a member of the media getting canned for a mistake. Because you know damned well that if you or I said something wrong and it went public, they'd be the first ones calling for our heads.

In some ways, all of these incidents falls under the category "a taste of their own medicine."

Post: #29

(05-07-2019 06:05 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  My thoughts:

1). As I've written before, hate crime laws gave minorities "protected" status so it put them in a category where their lives are valued more than the average person's. Laws are not just laws. They mold our behavior. As such, minority groups have become quasi-religious figures than regular folks commit "sins" against. That's what happened here.

This is why intent doesn't matter anymore. So the longtime concept of "mens rea" is obsolete in cases like this. When you sin against the clergy, it doesn't matter if it was an accident. You get punished either way.

The idea that minorities have a special "protected" status is a myth. "Protected classes" refers to categories of discrimination: race, sex, national origin, religion, disability, in some US states sexual preference, veteran status.

Acts of discrimination within the categories are mostly neutral: you can be found liable of discriminating against white people or committing a hate crime against a white person. Same with sex, sexual preference, or religion: it goes in both/all directions.

Disability? I'm not sure if deaf people could be found liable for discriminating against a hearing person. Religious discrimination obviously has a number of exceptions. The government itself actively discriminates in favor of veterans, so that protected class does not go both ways.

Hate crime laws are race/sex/etc neutral, and require an underlying act which is already a crime. You can't be prosecuted for a hate crime for just epithets, absent acts or "true threats" (= expression + intention + ability to carry out the threat.)

Hence,
assault and battery (with dangerous weapon, w intent to kill, murder, or arson etc) + evidence of specific intent to intimidate because of race etc = hate crime.
true threat (I'm going to stab your ass) + evidence of specific intent to intimidate because of race etc = hate crime.

I had a case, white woman was charged with the basic hate crime for saying to a black woman "Get out of my neighborhood, n****r." I filed a motion to dismiss, it was dismissed, because her words weren't true threats and protected under the First Amendment.

Rather than making mens rea obsolete, hate crime laws require more layers of mens rea which have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt: that the underlying offense (eg threats, assault and battery, arson) was committed for the purpose of racial etc intimidation. The racial epithets are not crimes in themselves, they are evidence of the intent to intimidate.

I have seen black guys charged with hate crimes in cases where a white guy was beaten up and "cracker" was allegedly thrown around. A white cop once complained to me in a casual conversation that black-on-white hate crimes were too-rarely charged because there was an additional act of robbery alleged, so the crimes were charged as robberies even though "cracker" etc was thrown around during the acts. That didn't make much sense to me. The penalty for robbery was life in prison, more than the basic hate crime, so how exactly was anyone getting a break?

As far as the original story goes, I knew white guys in the army, used to throw around the "Martin Luther Coon" stuff. This was back in the 70s and 80s. Weatherman had heard it before, unfortunate if he hadn't been saying it himself and it popped up from his subconscious id.

Post: #30

IMHO, I don't think bigoted language should be criminalized. It's free speech and just like obscenity there is a big gray area in the middle.

Now, criminalized and shunned/shamed are two different things. The social media lynch-mob are doing a fine job of running around the law and playing judge-jury-executioner. Jobs that have a public face make employers bow to public sentiment and blackball at a whim, even if it was a gaffe like this.

But the whole idea behind the first amendment is to protect speech that some people won't like because no matter WHAT you say, somebody won't like it, and these days when someone doesn't like it, they try to use the SJW -ist/-ism labels as a way to shut it down.

I keep coming back to the historic case of the Skokie neo-nazi march because back then there was far more support for a strict defense of the first amendment, even by the ACLU.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/skokie-legacy-...d=56026742

https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-...ech-skokie

Groups like the ACLU are synonymous with SJWs today but back then they were more about the principle and not merely shifting power to protected "victim" groups by any means necessary. They realized back then that if they stood for double-standards they would be instantly called on it and their legitimacy would go up in smoke, so they had to sometimes back unpopular positions. Now moral double-standards are seen as perfectly acceptable (assuming these NPCs even realize their own hypocrisy, which most often they don't).

Post: #31

Ouch. I don't think they should have been fired for that. They likely did it to avoid any follow up controversy. Shows how much power social media has. Even back in the day when Doom and Mortal Kombat were first introduced, puritans ran to the courthouse to get a new ESRB rating instilled in video games. I bet if they held their ground, the mistake would have been forgotten in a week or two with something else to cry about.

Post: #32

Quote:Disability? I'm not sure if deaf people could be found liable for discriminating against a hearing person

Maybe 40 years ago there was a production of “children of a lesser god “ where the casting directors flat out posted “only deaf actors will be allowed to audition to for the role of Sarah Norman”. And there was nothing the actors with hearing could do. They did a revival last year and not sure if they did it again or not?

Post: #33

Deafness isn't a visible disability until you ehar them speak but not all deafness can lead to serious speach issues.

Its easy to discriminate against them however.

Post: #34

So tolerant