abraxas @ abraxas @sh.itjust.works

Posts

0

Comments

780

Joined

2 yr. ago

I can't be sure, but from what little I've seen of judges in action, I would guess substantially... but perhaps not for the reason we think.

Yes lack of remorse is a major component to sentencing, but so are a few other things that I think work on 1/6 rioters' favor. Likelihood to reoffend is arguably low because 1/6 was uniquely stupid. Being told by a US president to commit the crime is arguably somewhat mitigating (to the person, not to the president). These crimes were committed in what ostensibly could (should) have been a peaceful protest that got out of hand, so judges might question the severity of premeditation. All of these are typically valid reasons to lighten up sentencing. And then there's a sadly invalid one that probably mattered - light-skinned people are sentenced lighter than dark-skinned ones, and most of the 1/6 protestors were white.

In aggregate, there is value to going hard on all the traitors. Of individual offenders, it might be a more difficult place for a judge to sit, for both good and terrible reasons. But importantly, there's a lot of argument that we're not looking at judges that thought 1/6 was "perfectly fine". Such a judge would more likely find an excuse to dismiss (with or without prejudice) if they think the case is moving towards prosecution. We have simply not seen a lot of that.

Yeah. Not just NY, either. About a decade back where I live we called the cops about a curb-stomping we witnessed living across the street from the local bar. We had our radio on. Here was the timeline.

1. We call and report it
2. Bouncer comes outside of the bar and says "I just got a call there's a fight going on. You guys gotta break it up; the cops are coming"
3. Wait 5 minutes, as the victim gets told to leave and "go clean up" and the attacker walks back into the bar.
4. Dispatch (who has been quiet) reports on radio that somebody reported a fight in front of that bar
5. Wait 5 more minutes (did I mention the station is about 0.5 miles from this bar? In a small town with no traffic?)
6. One officer shows up, looks around without asking anyone anything
7. Radio back to dispatch "no fight here"

The end. We identified ourselves in our report, the officer declined to visit and question us. There were at least 5 eyewitnesses, and we live in a town that they'd probably talk... but nope.

Actually, the far right are more likely to turn to violence every time they lose, period. That's always been the way of things. You're conflating the Left's values with the Right. The Right do not care about Democracy. Have you never sat through one of those fascist fucks "we're not a Democracy, we're a Republic" defense of minority tyranny? They care about winning at all costs. They're as likely to turn violent is they lose 90/10 as if they lose because their leader was convicted of a felony or taken off a ballot for legitimate reasons.

It won't. It's a trick we've fallen for. We withhold Justice from the corrupt out of fear they use our justice against us illegitimately. Yet what we miss is that it only works if they have the ammo to do the same without using our justice against us. It's a game to them to wrap their horrors in our good deeds, but they can't actually commit more horrors because we do good.

The current SCOTUS claims to be using the "common meaning of words" as their interpretation mechanism for the Constitution.

Assuming they have any bit of consistency whatsoever, the common meaning of words gives at least prima facie argument against Trump being able to run with zero argument against Biden being able to run.

And lucky us, the current SCOTUS has not really shown loyalty to Trump as a person. Here's hoping that sticks around.

I think I agree with in many cases, except that I think some anti-capitalism dogma is helpful.

Why? Because while I don't think the answer is simple, I think many of the pillars and assumptions of capitalism make it the worst way to distribute resources and solve resource issues. Capitalism presumes everyone is going to be selfish but that they will somehow be selfless or stupid enough not to game the system enough to break it. Smith believed in the importance of regulation, but seemed as blind as the rest on how a system that presumes everyone will focus on themselves first can maintain reasonable regulations in the first place. In that sense, it has failed fairly consistently for centuries, where other systems (even some that appear capitalist to the naked eye) have done better.

Ironically, capitalism worked better when there were nobles who were half-beholden to it and some were half-beholden to other more blurry requirements, like a sense of duty to their people. I think a system that demands a little selflessness, however, has just shown to work better. Nobody's saying we go full socialist, but putting supply and demand on top of a foundation of social programs seems more effective than putting a few social programs on top of an anarcho-capitalist wetdream.

And the answer, I think, is that we need to be somewhere a bit more distant from the middle-ground, allowing free trade only after life and health are covered. Of course, like everyone else, I don't know everything and not everyone would agree with me.

Through a lot of the recent bullshit, the police were shaking hands with Proud Boys and turning their heads to miss crimes committed by them. Multiple police forces were entirely dismantled and rebuilt because there were zero salvageable members of them. And that only happened when their behavior got too much national attention.

The "boys club" that is the police takes the above and makes it worse. For most cops, if 1/3 of their force is all doing something, they're going along with it out of fear of rejection or even fear of reprisal.

I don't think it's entirely about "fear of backlash". I think the real fear people are expressing is the fear of the election appearing rigged, Ahmadinejad-style. If the Republicans nominate Trump, and he goes unconsidered with "unknown numbers" of write-in votes in enough states to affect the election, he would obviously argue that he actually won on votes and might even be convincing to non-Republicans.

When the Colorado Supreme Court decided against Trump, it was a split decision by an all-Democrat panel that questioned what "due process" should be on the matter. There's so many ways that this can be spun nationally or internationally by the modern equivalent of the way the South created sympathy through propaganda after the Civil War that survives today. Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world will likely question the legitimacy of the president or US elections after this matter no matter who wins or how chips fall.

BUT, there's also no right answer, and none of the above reasons are sufficient to just put Trump back on the ballot and hope. It should never have gotten to this. Someone that is publicly believed by a significant percent of America to not be eligible should not have party support in the first place. And if it did, Congress should have stepped in before now.

Ultimately, the Republicans are again objectively hurting America for their own agenda.

Modern "capitalism" (not really what Smith would recognize, if we're being honest) has found plenty of ways to manufacture scarcity. In fact, artificial scarcity and pipeline inefficiency is now the heart or where "wealth" is produced.

1. Financial organizations who create wealth by moving 1s and 0s on paper
2. Marketing and sales institutions who create wealth by fabricating demand
3. Lobbyists who who buy scarcity through techniques like trademarks and anti-competitive regulations (some of which are GOOD regulations used for ill)

The agricultural industry is the perfect example of bullet point 3 gone so wildly out of control it'd make you scream. We produce so much food that the government subsidizes farms backing off on food production for valid conservation reasons. And yet 12.8% of Americans still fall under a category called "food insecurity", where they can not consistently afford/access a healthy diet.

Then they downsize workers and further erode merchantability while jacking up prices. Capitalism is a race to the bottom, and those at the top have made sure they will literally be the last to fall. You want to get a billionaire to sell their 4th yacht, it'll only cost us a million people going hungry.

There are ways out of capitalism, but the only fast ones are violent and worse than capitalism themselves. We should be working on moving towards incorruptable governance and social expansion. It happens in slow steps. The millionaire tax in MA managed one of those steps recently, despite some pretty dramatic opposition by the ultrawealthy.

Exactly. I liked RBG a lot, and/but I don't like the way people keep taking her out of context when making wild claims about what we could or should have done to prevent Dobbs.

Before the 1/6 insurrection was a SCOTUS coup. It happened. And the one thing we shouldn't do is blame the party that wasn't involved in it.

I mean, with asterisks? The Catholics only get away with that because they reject Sola Scriptura, and sometimes treat some of the words of their Church Fathers as "the next best thing". Even then, they've gone back and forth on abortion (and largely treated it as a minor issue) until only the last few centuries.

...but along those lines, I've never really seen a Catholic argument against abortion try to lean too heavily on Biblical sources. Because they know they'd lose.

In religion's defense, many religions are also being used to prop up pro-choice. It just so happens 2 or 3 of the largest religions are very outspoken so the rest of them are getting ignored.

Stealing from Pew, almost all of Judaism, Universalism, and many of the major non-evangelical protestant religions are pro-choice. Even Islam is largely "limited pro-choice". If I had to guess, the majority of religions weighted by adherents are either morally pro-abortion-rights, or at least pro-choice due to lack of mandate otherwise.

...if we look back at the US Civil War, the Christian churches fell on both sides of the Slavery argument fairly consistently, basically based on what their constituents wanted to hear.

If you insist on that, secular society is also a religion. As is regional atheism.

People don't hate abortion because they're afraid of God. They hate abortion because their parents and teachers taught them to. Yes, some religions help propogate societal behaviors, but they are not solely, or even primarily responsible for them.

Honestly, just look at the way Catholic Priests in conservative areas have been largely rejecting Rome on anything that isn't radically conservative despite claiming to inheret their morals from Rome. Or more starkly, just look at the undying history of sedevacantism.

Nothing about the anti-choice movement is religious; it's tribalism. Same way as gun rights have nothing to do with the sky god either.

If we're being honest, the only strictly biblical argument on the topic of abortion leans heavily pro-choice and sometimes even pro-abortion-as-punishment. Throughout most of history most Christian branches have been neutral or passively negative on abortion, usually considering it a minor sin that it wasn't their job to prosecute (yes, occasionally either banning or encouraging it as well). The idea that life begins with conception is distinctly non-traditional (Judaism or firstgen Christianity) and was picked up from the Pythagorians.

It's important to differentiate cultural mores from religion. Organized Religion can make you convince yourself something is wrong when you are otherwise strongly predisposed to find it right (or vice versa). Cultural mores is more like "omg, you can't see my ankles how dare you!". They're like behavioral "dialects", much like happens in language. Technically, when I say something is wicked pissah, I "inhereted" that from the Mainers despite my not being from Maine. That doesn't mean it came from my religious ties with them. My parents and peers taught it to me. Same as all my fucked up knee-jerk morals I grew up with.

I've always seen it more that the Roe decision is what happens when an anti-choice majority rules on abortion in "reasonably good faith", leaving the opening for erosion when a 14th Amendment Decision would have been steelclad. I don't think they wanted to appease everyone, they just didn't want to compromise their legal ethics OR their personal morals.

And I guess I don't think it would have been steeclad because Dobbs wasn't about leaning around Roe insomuch as saying "Roe was wrong" because "the fetus is special and should be treated as such" (paraphrase because I'm too lazy to look up the offending line in Dobbs right now). Bodily Autonomy could easily be overturned by a bad faith judiciary by simply pointing out DUI laws, or even "the spirit of drug laws"... OR just saying "the fetus is special" the same as they did in Dobbs.

In fact, call me paranoid, but I question whether the current SCOTUS wouldn't overturn a national abortion protection on States Rights grounds, finding some reason to disqualify the Commerce Clause from being applicable.

My tool experience is limited, but with Makita you seem to be describing the same anachronism principle you find in espresso machines.

Arguably the best espresso machines in a class are reminescent of the same model you found 40+ years ago. If you're looking for the B+ range, everything worth buying has a big metal E61 grouphead with manual levers. In the S-class range, you tend to have more manual levers as often as bells or whistles. My new machine that cost more than I deserve (wife bought it) is basically an oldschool machine with nothing modern in it but a PID controller. Legend has it, it will be passed down in my family for generations to come (exaggeration, but not much).

Because as we learned in our lemmy growing pains, large-scale federation is a challenge that requires a fairly concerted effort and then doesn't always succeed very well.

People still (rightly) have tons of complaints about lemmy failing to do things as well as reddit did. It has some huge upsides (no center ownership) but it's a challenge. Now imagine the much-smaller userbase. I knew everyone in the topics I frequented back in my forum days because there were that few people.

That was very rare back when I used forums. But similarly, at least every month I'd have a reply to a 1-2-year-old comment I left in reddit. It happens.

It's also not easily recognizable as an aggregator when you go to subs/communities where there are zero or nearly zero links, and it's all threads.

They're honestly more like a hybrid between an aggregator and an oversimplified forum. Most subs I frequented feel like Delphi did back when I grew up.