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Being a racist while having a soft skull

theprestige said:
Fair enough. It's not a hill I intend to fight on. I'd almost fight on the "political violence is bad and should be condemned" hill, but we had that fight already in the "nazis" thread. This is just the same people signaling the same "virtue" as before.
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I doubt you had that fight with me since my only contribution to that thread was to say that punching Nazis for being Nazis is unacceptable behavior.

My beef is more along the lines of people uncritically and unskeptically declaring every homicide that happens as a murder. They aren't. Murder has specific legal requirements which might change slightly based on the jurisdiction, but generally, the requirements are pretty close everywhere, and most of the things that people continue to declare as Murder here are nothing of the sort. So pointing out that Felony Murders aren't "killings during a felony" is mostly to try and point some of the "E" from JERF back into the board.
 
Meadmaker said:
It's unfortunate that he will pay such a heavy price for feeling entitled. He thought he was just going to cause a little pain, maybe a bloody nose, and teach that guy a lesson. Instead, a huge chunk of his life is going to suck really bad.


For ST and anyone else who is happy about the outcome with regards to the not-so-dear departed, just think about how your actions may have contributed to the young man's actions. I'm sure that a lot of people told that young man that racists are bad people and ought to be punched in the face. Those people don't have to pay the price that he will pay.
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Hell, we just had a whole year of half the country saying political violence is totally acceptable, if you have the correct politics. It's not even necessary for your victims to have incorrect politics.

It's hard to imagine that didn't influence Punchy McPunchyfist at all. Or that the chorus of voices saying the outcome was good won't continue to influence people to commit more political violence.
 
theprestige said:
Hell, we just had a whole year of half the country saying political violence is totally acceptable, if you have the correct politics.
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I think that after Jan 6th you can hardly suggest that this is attitude is isolated to one group of people.
 
smartcooky said:
Indeed, we have seen a number of Trump supporters on this site OK with Trump saying...

• It's OK for cops to "bump" the heads of suspect as they put them in the car
• It's OK to beat up a heckler, because he (Trump) will front his legal bills (and fat chance of the former)
• It's OK to use violence on BLM protesters, but
• "There are very fine people, on both sides" when a member of one of those sides just murdered someone and injured several others by driving their car into a crowd of peaceful protesters.

Yeah, the endorsement of political violence is strong on the right in this forum. Of course, one guy punching another because the other guy was repeatedly insulting him and directing racial slurs at him is not political violence... its just violence.

Incidentally, directing slurs and insults at people, and demeaning them is psychological and emotional abuse, which go hand in hand with violence.
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"nazis"

Progressives on this board have explicitly endorsed and excused political violence from the left. At best, your reply is a tu quoque. Which is necessarily an argument that political violence is bad and should be condemned. If you ever see me advocating it, please call me out on it.
 
PhantomWolf said:
I think that after Jan 6th you can hardly suggest that this is attitude is isolated to one group of people.
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I wouldn't dream of suggesting it's isolated to one group of people.

And I think that after the events of the preceding year, you can hardly suggest that the January 6th protests were especially wrong or worthy of condemnation, without suggesting the same for all the other violent protests around the country.
 
theprestige said:
I wouldn't dream of suggesting it's isolated to one group of people.

And I think that after the events of the preceding year, you can hardly suggest that the January 6th protests were especially wrong or worthy of condemnation, without suggesting the same for all the other violent protests around the country.
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Absolute nonsense. It is impossible to honestly believe that it is not especially worthy of condemnation unless trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power reflecting the will of the people through free and fair elections is not especially wrong compared to *checks notes* not wanting black people to be murdered and the public be fine with it.

Hell, it is even especially condemnable compared to the vast right-wing political violence of the last few years too.

This isn't a close call.
 
theprestige said:
I wouldn't dream of suggesting it's isolated to one group of people.

And I think that after the events of the preceding year, you can hardly suggest that the January 6th protests were especially wrong or worthy of condemnation, without suggesting the same for all the other violent protests around the country.
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All violence is worthy of condemnation regardless of if it is political or not. However, when it comes to political violence, spray-painting federal buildings, smashing statues, throwing objects at armoured police officers, and burning police cars, is still on a far lower level to storming the seat of Government with the declared intention to at least terrorise elected representatives, if not worse.

I would put the BLM protests that got violent at a similar level to the White Pride and Confederate statue protests that got violent back in 2017. The Jan 6th Insurrection was a new level of crazy.
 
They couldn’t even get an indictment for the cop who shoved over the old man Martin Gugino, cracked his skull and put him in the hospital for like four weeks. But it wasn’t an illogically sound argument to suppose that that might have happened because the cops were threatened by the idea that he might have been scanning their frequencies with a thing he was carrying. Did this guy have any suspicious objects on him?

But in the end, Mr. Gugino did live, and eventually regain the ability to walk. Cops have all the luck.

ETA: oh right, and it also wasn’t an illogical argument to suppose Gugino might have fumbled a dramatic prat-fall intended to merely be more dramatic. If someone were to suggest this old fellow intentionally fumbled his landing, intending to make a show of it but accidentally sustaining a fatal injury, that would similarly be a sound argument. I’m not saying that is what happened, of course. But you can’t argue with the logic of its possiblility.
 
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theprestige said:
Hell, we just had a whole year of half the country saying political violence is totally acceptable, if you have the correct politics. It's not even necessary for your victims to have incorrect politics.

It's hard to imagine that didn't influence Punchy McPunchyfist at all. Or that the chorus of voices saying the outcome was good won't continue to influence people to commit more political violence.
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Agreed.


I'm not sure, though, that everyone agrees where to find the half that causes the violence. I'm pretty sure it's found around the edges, whereas some people seem to think it's on one side.

(i.e. there was violence in multiple places from both left, right, and some that are hard to classify.)
 
theprestige said:
Sorry for the confusion. I'm saying that suppressing unwanted speech with violence is a political act.
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Not sure I agree. I can’t find the political message in an angry guy punching a different guy for insulting him
 
smartcooky said:
Was it coolness and calmness though? For example

Victim: *aggressively* "Shut ya' face ****** (n-word)!!

Pujols: *more aggressively* "You wanna repeat that!!!"

Victim: *even more aggressively* "I said shut ya' face ******!!

Pujols: WHACK!!!

If this is anything like it played out, the defense could easily argue that Pujols gave the victim an opportunity to back away from what he said. Rather than taking that opportunity, the victim chose to aggressively ramp up the provocation by repeating the racial slur.

I'm not arguing for Pujols, I'm just commenting that the defense might probably try this, and IMO, if has a non-zero chance of being successful.
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That's fair. I think he's still got an uphill battle to show that the geezer met the standard for 'sufficient provocation'. Tough to picture some geriatric meeting that standard with words against a 27 yr old.

If the racist was another young guy, I'd barely bat an eye here. Unfortunate unintended consequence and all, but a fight was understandable. But throwing down against a senior citizen when the guy's in his 20s...man, that doesn't sit right. Kind of like belting a kid for running their mouth.
 
Thermal said:
That's fair. I think he's still got an uphill battle to show that the geezer met the standard for 'sufficient provocation'. Tough to picture some geriatric meeting that standard with words against a 27 yr old.

If the racist was another young guy, I'd barely bat an eye here. Unfortunate unintended consequence and all, but a fight was understandable. But throwing down against a senior citizen when the guy's in his 20s...man, that doesn't sit right. Kind of like belting a kid for running their mouth.
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Kinda depends on the 77-year-old. If he was pushing around a walker maybe, if he was into pushing weights, maybe not. This guy is 73 and I don't think I'd want to take him on in a fight.
 
Lithrael said:
They couldn’t even get an indictment for the cop who shoved over the old man Martin Gugino, cracked his skull and put him in the hospital for like four weeks. But it wasn’t an illogically sound argument to suppose that that might have happened because the cops were threatened by the idea that he might have been scanning their frequencies with a thing he was carrying. Did this guy have any suspicious objects on him?

But in the end, Mr. Gugino did live, and eventually regain the ability to walk. Cops have all the luck.

ETA: oh right, and it also wasn’t an illogical argument to suppose Gugino might have fumbled a dramatic prat-fall intended to merely be more dramatic. If someone were to suggest this old fellow intentionally fumbled his landing, intending to make a show of it but accidentally sustaining a fatal injury, that would similarly be a sound argument. I’m not saying that is what happened, of course. But you can’t argue with the logic of its possiblility.
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Yeah but this guy was much older than Martin Gugino, 77 as opposed to 75

*** I'll get my coat :runaway
 
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Sideroxylon said:
Are such dynamic responses never justified?
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"Dynamic" is fine, but I think the answer for violence is no, at least not without a threat present. If the accused wants to mount a case that this was a case of "fighting words", but in the legal definition, he can try. In the legal definition, the application of "fighting words" has been restricted to verbal activity that makes a reasonable person believe that an attack is imminent. If he can claim that he felt the 77 year old dude was going to punch him, and his punch was just preemptive self defense, then he's got a case.

I think in my youth violence on the level of a punch or a fistfight was more tolerated, but today, I think the answer is that it is never acceptable without self defense, and I think the world is a better place because of the change.
 
Emily's Cat said:
This growing sense of righteous vigilantism concerns me quite a bit.
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Given their many defenses of people who murder black folks for being black (as well as those of many others on this forum), I find Thermal's objections without merit. However, nobody here is actually saying people should be killed or beaten for being racist boors, so there's little real concern.

(And no, I will not be digging through his posts to find examples - I'm simply saying that this sort of sanctimony over the poor precious white supremacists is annoying)

And yes, I'm both chuckling and saying "Nobody's a good person in this story". In my state, he'd be charged for sure. In Florida, he shouldn't. The end.
 
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Having worked in fast food briefly as a teenager, I can tell you that this is not how you deal with an angry customer. You stick your hand in the crack of your ass and then handle their food. Also acceptable is the addition of bodily fluids to their order.
 
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