Back during the time of the Vietnam War, there were instances of American soldiers resisting the war through violence. Ever hear of fragging? That was when certain soldiers would kill their officers or NCO if they thought the officer (NCO) was not taking their interests into consideration or giving an illegal order or just being downright incompetent. Quite a few 2nd Lieutenants met their demise that way (see this article).
And what sort of legal consequences, if any, do you think the fraggers should have faced?
It is not my prerogative to determine what should be the legal consequences of fragging. The Army Judge Advocate determined only 10% of the fragging incidents ever went to trial. I do not know the outcomes of those trials or the status of the accused either.
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
There's all sorts of ideal constructions of the role of law-enforcement, the reality is that most law enforcement everywhere started off narrowly focused on protecting private property (typically of the rich).
Unless I've missed something, laws and their enforcement go back to beyond human history. The earliest evidence of laws we have go back to 2400 BC, but surely that was not the beginning of societies having laws, not even getting into the transcendence of law from on high in the first place.
You are projecting current society backwards in time, there was very little structure to enforce the 'Code of Hammurabi' - states at that point simply didn't function that way. Historians generally believe that the function of codes like these ones was largely ideological rather than legal.
Again, the claim that the king has made these things happen leads to some people he told to go make it happen.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
The CEO of UnitedHealth Group, parent company of UnitedHealthcare, has an opinion piece in the NYTimes (free link) that's complete bullshit and has accumulated about 2500 comments telling him so.
Read through a couple of hundred comments, literally not one supporting th op ed.
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
There's all sorts of ideal constructions of the role of law-enforcement, the reality is that most law enforcement everywhere started off narrowly focused on protecting private property (typically of the rich).
Unless I've missed something, laws and their enforcement go back to beyond human history. The earliest evidence of laws we have go back to 2400 BC, but surely that was not the beginning of societies having laws, not even getting into the transcendence of law from on high in the first place.
You are projecting current society backwards in time, there was very little structure to enforce the 'Code of Hammurabi' - states at that point simply didn't function that way. Historians generally believe that the function of codes like these ones was largely ideological rather than legal.
Again, the claim that the king has made these things happen leads to some people he told to go make it happen.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
In Ancient Egypt a police force was created by the time of the Fifth Dynasty (25th – 24th century BC). The guards, chosen by kings and nobles from among the military and ex-military, were tasked with apprehending criminals and protecting caravans, public places and border forts before the creation of a standing army.
…
During the reign of Amenemhat I (1991 BC – 1962 BC) the role of professional judges were established and employed to decide court cases. The police force was specifically focused on law enforcement, while a newly created standing military was utilized to fulfill the police's other, previous tasks.
Watchmen were organised groups of men, usually authorised by a state, government, city, or society, to deter criminal activity and provide law enforcement as well as traditionally perform the services of public safety, fire watch, crime prevention, crime detection, and recovery of stolen goods. Watchmen have existed since earliest recorded times in various guises throughout the world and were generally succeeded by the emergence of formally organised professional policing.
Trial by jury goes back at least to ancient Greece:
Ancient Athens had a mechanism, called dikastaí, to assure that no one could select jurors for their own trial. For normal cases, the courts were made up of dikastai of up to 500 citizens.[2] For capital cases—those that involved death, loss of liberty, exile, loss of civil rights, or seizure of property—the trial was before a jury of 1,001 to 1,501 dikastai. In such large juries, they rule by majority. Juries were appointed by lot.
That’s a desperate bit of spin isn’t it. Do they really think they can gaslight the whole population at the same time ?
I liked his bit of bucolic Americana there in the middle, with the Thompson boy shuckin' hay on the farm and fishin' down at the ol' water hole.
Something of a tangent: I keep seeing commentators stating investors stepped over the CEOs body to get to the meeting he was going to (which went ahead on time) and that they advertised his post on LinkedIn within 48hrs - but I can not find the source of these claims in any reputable news source.
Eh, sounds a little Hollywood, too-good-to-be-true. At least from the emotional POV of someone who wants to think the worst the executives. You often hear these types of horror-show details in an event like this, and it often turns out to be false.
Not a conclusive statement on the veracity of the story. Just kind of an initial vibe.
Can we maybe all agree that, while even hunter-gatherers had an idea that eg. just randomly bashing your neighbour's kid's skull with a rock is undesirable...
...and that Hammurabi and company thought this a useful sentiment to put into aspirational law books...
...it was the self-interested actions of a later propertied class which finally began the first moves toward organized and codified enforcement of such regulations?
That’s a desperate bit of spin isn’t it. Do they really think they can gaslight the whole population at the same time ?
I liked his bit of bucolic Americana there in the middle, with the Thompson boy shuckin' hay on the farm and fishin' down at the ol' water hole.
I threw up a little in my mouth at that point. As to whether they can gaslight all of us ... well, they just need to gaslight enough of us to keep things from changing. When Obamacare was being debated, Obama had to keep assuring people that they'd be able to keep their health insurance if they wanted to, as if we all had such great health insurance.
Something of a tangent: I keep seeing commentators stating investors stepped over the CEOs body to get to the meeting he was going to (which went ahead on time) and that they advertised his post on LinkedIn within 48hrs - but I can not find the source of these claims in any reputable news source.
Eh, sounds a little Hollywood, too-good-to-be-true. At least from the emotional POV of someone who wants to think the worst the executives. You often hear these types of horror-show details in an event like this, and it often turns out to be false.
It's hyperbole, but it's expressive of ... well, something. The NY Times reported that day that Thompson was shot at about 6:45 AM, and that the investor meeting went forward as planned at 8 AM. Thompson was declared dead at a local hospital, so people arriving for the meeting wouldn't have even seen a draped body. There were news crews, though, and NYPD would have been documenting the scene; the NY Times says people at the Hilton (where the meeting was taking place) did know someone had been shot. People in the investor meeting started receiving alerts at about 9 am (IIRC from what I read) that it was the UHC CEO who was shot, and they called off the rest of the meeting at that point. So I'm guessing people thought folks attending the meeting knew at 8 am that the CEO was dead.
An image of a LinkedIn posting for the guy's job was circulated, and it was false.
Can we maybe all agree that, while even hunter-gatherers had an idea that eg. just randomly bashing your neighbour's kid's skull with a rock is undesirable...
...and that Hammurabi and company thought this a useful sentiment to put into aspirational law books...
...it was the self-interested actions of a later propertied class which finally began the first moves toward organized and codified enforcement of such regulations?
Actions, perhaps, but then they'd have been the ones with the ability to do it. Whether it was merely out of self-interest, without any desire to protect people or do the right thing is something only God knows.
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
It’s fine if you don’t believe in total depravity, but what you’re describing here isn’t at all what the doctrine of total depravity actually says.
(To be fair, most of us Reformed folk who do believe in the doctrine total depravity think the term itself is a misleading label for the doctrine.)
...I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
I don't know if I precisely believe that, though I'll admit I find it a useful model for organizing social and historical observations.
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
It’s fine if you don’t believe in total depravity, but what you’re describing here isn’t at all what the doctrine of total depravity actually says.
(To be fair, most of us Reformed folk who do believe in the doctrine total depravity think the term itself is a misleading label for the doctrine.)
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
There's all sorts of ideal constructions of the role of law-enforcement, the reality is that most law enforcement everywhere started off narrowly focused on protecting private property (typically of the rich).
Unless I've missed something, laws and their enforcement go back to beyond human history. The earliest evidence of laws we have go back to 2400 BC, but surely that was not the beginning of societies having laws, not even getting into the transcendence of law from on high in the first place.
You are projecting current society backwards in time, there was very little structure to enforce the 'Code of Hammurabi' - states at that point simply didn't function that way. Historians generally believe that the function of codes like these ones was largely ideological rather than legal.
Again, the claim that the king has made these things happen leads to some people he told to go make it happen.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
But they were at least aiming for justice.
Not really, as I said above, these courts were dominated by local elites and the reality such as we have records is that it was largely about self protection. You are importing modern notions of justice backwards in a way that's anachronistic, as does the title of the Wikipedia page you cite (two of the examples are purely protection/preservation of property, one is actually a 'keep the sea lanes open' action on the part of a trading empire, and the last is a measure for controlling inter-elite tensions).
Actions, perhaps, but then they'd have been the ones with the ability to do it. Whether it was merely out of self-interest, without any desire to protect people or do the right thing is something only God knows.
We know it was self-interest because we have records of which crimes they pursued and to who they offered protection. The more universalist application of the law is largely the result of struggle from below (the evidence of universal application without struggle is very spotty).
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
Yeah, that's not "total depravity", which merely states that every part of humanity is touched by the effects of the Fall.
An organization called the Center for Startegic Politics has released a post-arrest survey on public attitudes toward Luigi Mangione. His favorability ratings are pretty low, relative to all the on-line hoopla.
Favourability ratings...
MEN 17%
WOMEN 7%
TRUMP VOTERS 18%
HARRIS VOTERS 21%
LIBERALS 25%
CONSERVATIVES 14%
PEOPLE UNDER 45 31%
PEOPLE OVER 45 8%
WHITES 14%
BLACKS 31%
HISPANICS 28%
PEOPLE DENIED HEALTH CARE BY INSURANCE COMPANIES 33%
I believe that the underlying point is that the violence of capitalism, especially ultra-neoliberal capitalism, is all too rarely acknowledged. It casts far too many people onto the scrap heap for this to be regarded as an accident. Given that ultra-neoliberalism also has no times for such concepts as the welfare state, how is this not murder by misuse of power and resources?
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
Yeah, that's not "total depravity", which merely states that every part of humanity is touched by the effects of the Fall.
Right, and that as a result, even in our best efforts to do good, however really good those efforts and the results may be, our motivations are never completely free from sin and self-interest. Total depravity has nothing to do being “totally depraved,” as those words would be generally understood today. It’s about our complete inability to save or heal ourselves from sin. Only through the grace of God can we be free from the hold sin has on us.
We have had and will have again a POTUS who said explicitly that he could do exactly what the alleged UHC shooter did and not lose a single vote. Responses to the UHC shooting seem to prove him absolutely right.
I saw a clip of a girl on TikTok who was talking about raising her generation (GenZ) with school shooter drills, thoughts & prayers, bulletproof backpacks, a few days off of school after a shooting, then a few days with counselors being made available, and then a return to the grind with the rest of the country moving on to the next news cycle well before that. She said something akin to "you've raised us to be numb to gun violence, but when it happens to you, you expect sympathy. Welcome to another 'Tuesday' in a public school."
We have had and will have again a POTUS who said explicitly that he could do exactly what the alleged UHC shooter did and not lose a single vote. Responses to the UHC shooting seem to prove him absolutely right.
I saw a clip of a girl on TikTok who was talking about raising her generation (GenZ) with school shooter drills, thoughts & prayers, bulletproof backpacks, a few days off of school after a shooting, then a few days with counselors being made available, and then a return to the grind with the rest of the country moving on to the next news cycle well before that. She said something akin to "you've raised us to be numb to gun violence, but when it happens to you, you expect sympathy. Welcome to another 'Tuesday' in a public school."
I don't think she's all that wrong.
Well, her claims of a double-standard might be more pertinent if this were a situation where large numbers of people were, in fact, demanding sympathy for the victim. But, as you seem to indicate in your first paragraph, that's not really been the reaction.
Based on the polling above, it's a considerable exaggeration to say that the whole country is cheering on the murderer. It does remain the case, though, that the non-cheering section of public opinion seems to be more concentrated in the "detached disapproval" camp, rather than than the "weeping histrionics" camp. Basically, the same way that she says people react to school shootings.
An organization called the Center for Startegic Politics has released a post-arrest survey on public attitudes toward Luigi Mangione. His favorability ratings are pretty low, relative to all the on-line hoopla.
They asked the wrong question. They should have asked people if they cared about the dead CEO.
An organization called the Center for Startegic Politics has released a post-arrest survey on public attitudes toward Luigi Mangione. His favorability ratings are pretty low, relative to all the on-line hoopla.
They asked the wrong question. They should have asked people if they cared about the dead CEO.
His approval/disapproval ratings are listed as well, I believe.
But, yeah, a better question might be "On a scale of 1 to 10, how sad do you feel about the murder of Brian Thompson?" With a control-question asking about a hypothetical victim not known to have caused anyone significant harm.
We have had and will have again a POTUS who said explicitly that he could do exactly what the alleged UHC shooter did and not lose a single vote. Responses to the UHC shooting seem to prove him absolutely right.
I saw a clip of a girl on TikTok who was talking about raising her generation (GenZ) with school shooter drills, thoughts & prayers, bulletproof backpacks, a few days off of school after a shooting, then a few days with counselors being made available, and then a return to the grind with the rest of the country moving on to the next news cycle well before that. She said something akin to "you've raised us to be numb to gun violence, but when it happens to you, you expect sympathy. Welcome to another 'Tuesday' in a public school."
I don't think she's all that wrong.
Well, her claims of a double-standard might be more pertinent if this were a situation where large numbers of people were, in fact, demanding sympathy for the victim. But, as you seem to indicate in your first paragraph, that's not really been the reaction.
Based on the polling above, it's a considerable exaggeration to say that the whole country is cheering on the murderer. It does remain the case, though, that the non-cheering section of public opinion seems to be more concentrated in the "detached disapproval" camp, rather than than the "weeping histrionics" camp. Basically, the same way that she says people react to school shootings.
Yes, because hundreds of widely broadcast cases of shooting-related 'weeping histrionics' have produced nothing. She's not making a claim about a double standard. She's detailing the detachment you've named, plainly describing one aspect of what more than a generation of failed gun violence policy has produced. Thoughts and prayers have cultivated jeers and shrugs. From her generation, anyway.
We have had and will have again a POTUS who said explicitly that he could do exactly what the alleged UHC shooter did and not lose a single vote. Responses to the UHC shooting seem to prove him absolutely right.
I saw a clip of a girl on TikTok who was talking about raising her generation (GenZ) with school shooter drills, thoughts & prayers, bulletproof backpacks, a few days off of school after a shooting, then a few days with counselors being made available, and then a return to the grind with the rest of the country moving on to the next news cycle well before that. She said something akin to "you've raised us to be numb to gun violence, but when it happens to you, you expect sympathy. Welcome to another 'Tuesday' in a public school."
I don't think she's all that wrong.
Well, her claims of a double-standard might be more pertinent if this were a situation where large numbers of people were, in fact, demanding sympathy for the victim. But, as you seem to indicate in your first paragraph, that's not really been the reaction.
Based on the polling above, it's a considerable exaggeration to say that the whole country is cheering on the murderer. It does remain the case, though, that the non-cheering section of public opinion seems to be more concentrated in the "detached disapproval" camp, rather than than the "weeping histrionics" camp. Basically, the same way that she says people react to school shootings.
Yes, because hundreds of widely broadcast cases of shooting-related 'weeping histrionics' have produced nothing. She's not making a claim about a double standard. She's detailing the detachment you've named, plainly describing one aspect of what more than a generation of failed gun violence policy has produced. Thoughts and prayers have cultivated jeers and shrugs. From her generation, anyway.
Okay. So she's saying(via your paraphrase) that older people have conditioned younger people to be numb to gun violence, but then turn around and demand sympathy for Thompson as a victim of gun violence.
I still don't think there's been alot of oldsters demanding sympathy for Thompson, though I have seen a few tut-tutting pieces in legacy media, none of whom seemed to convince their own readers, and one from Piers Morgan, who was desperately trying to frame it as a law-and-order issue, in line with standard conservative rhetoric.
I'll also say that I don't know if the bulk of the non-histrionic reaction(ranging from casual indifference to outright bloodlust) is due to emotional numbness, so much as to the perception that Thompson was something other than an entirely random victim. Even people who are desensitized to school shootings don't usually go onto social-media and express boisterous approval when they happen.
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
There's all sorts of ideal constructions of the role of law-enforcement, the reality is that most law enforcement everywhere started off narrowly focused on protecting private property (typically of the rich).
Unless I've missed something, laws and their enforcement go back to beyond human history. The earliest evidence of laws we have go back to 2400 BC, but surely that was not the beginning of societies having laws, not even getting into the transcendence of law from on high in the first place.
You are projecting current society backwards in time, there was very little structure to enforce the 'Code of Hammurabi' - states at that point simply didn't function that way. Historians generally believe that the function of codes like these ones was largely ideological rather than legal.
Again, the claim that the king has made these things happen leads to some people he told to go make it happen.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
But they were at least aiming for justice.
Not really, as I said above, these courts were dominated by local elites and the reality such as we have records is that it was largely about self protection. You are importing modern notions of justice backwards in a way that's anachronistic, as does the title of the Wikipedia page you cite (two of the examples are purely protection/preservation of property, one is actually a 'keep the sea lanes open' action on the part of a trading empire, and the last is a measure for controlling inter-elite tensions).
Actions, perhaps, but then they'd have been the ones with the ability to do it. Whether it was merely out of self-interest, without any desire to protect people or do the right thing is something only God knows.
We know it was self-interest because we have records of which crimes they pursued and to who they offered protection. The more universalist application of the law is largely the result of struggle from below (the evidence of universal application without struggle is very spotty).
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
Yeah, that's not "total depravity", which merely states that every part of humanity is touched by the effects of the Fall.
Yep, regarding justice, we will still disagree on people of the past caring nothing at all about right and wrong, but solely being motivated by wealth and power. And I don't believe it is modern notions of justice, but transcendent ones, that have always applied since or even before the creation of humanity or, for that matter, the universe. They may have gotten it wrong a lot (as probably do we), but that doesn't mean it never entered into their calculations. As for total depravity, I am glad to hear that it is more nuanced than what I have understood it to be.
Besides the obvious denied coverage/not denied coverage imbalance, I think the above two pairings are the most lop-sided of the bunch.
I wonder if "men > women" can just be chalked up to the generally acknowledged tendency of men to embrace violence more than women do, OR maybe some variation in the way that the respective genders interact with insurance companies. My money would be on the former, but I really don't know.
As for the punks vs. the geezers, probably just youth in their latest quest for sexy and violent titillation.
[My marxist shadow-cabinet is yelling something about the conditions of the post-adolescent economic precariat.]
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
There's all sorts of ideal constructions of the role of law-enforcement, the reality is that most law enforcement everywhere started off narrowly focused on protecting private property (typically of the rich).
Unless I've missed something, laws and their enforcement go back to beyond human history. The earliest evidence of laws we have go back to 2400 BC, but surely that was not the beginning of societies having laws, not even getting into the transcendence of law from on high in the first place.
You are projecting current society backwards in time, there was very little structure to enforce the 'Code of Hammurabi' - states at that point simply didn't function that way. Historians generally believe that the function of codes like these ones was largely ideological rather than legal.
Again, the claim that the king has made these things happen leads to some people he told to go make it happen.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
But they were at least aiming for justice.
Not really, as I said above, these courts were dominated by local elites and the reality such as we have records is that it was largely about self protection. You are importing modern notions of justice backwards in a way that's anachronistic, as does the title of the Wikipedia page you cite (two of the examples are purely protection/preservation of property, one is actually a 'keep the sea lanes open' action on the part of a trading empire, and the last is a measure for controlling inter-elite tensions).
Actions, perhaps, but then they'd have been the ones with the ability to do it. Whether it was merely out of self-interest, without any desire to protect people or do the right thing is something only God knows.
We know it was self-interest because we have records of which crimes they pursued and to who they offered protection. The more universalist application of the law is largely the result of struggle from below (the evidence of universal application without struggle is very spotty).
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
Yeah, that's not "total depravity", which merely states that every part of humanity is touched by the effects of the Fall.
Yep, regarding justice, we will still disagree on people of the past caring nothing at all about right and wrong, but solely being motivated by wealth and power.
It seems to me that “the people of the past” is a really large blanket to try to cover everyone with. “The people of the past” were no more monolithic on things like this than the people of today are. Then, as now, some people cared about right and wrong, while some people didn’t, or only cared about right and wrong insofar as it benefited them. Some people were solely motivated by wealth and/or power, while others weren’t at all. And power/wealth vs. right/wrong weren’t and aren’t the only options.
I’d say it’s very clear from the Hebrew prophets that far too many people in power in their time cared more about their power and their wealth than about justice or righteousness. There is, after all, a very real historical context for claims like “He had shown strength with his arm, and scattered the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly.”
As for the punks vs. the geezers, probably just youth in their latest quest for sexy and violent titillation.
I would not at all discount feelings among those under 45, and maybe even more those under 35 or 30, that the world and society they are inheriting is seriously screwed up, and their chances of economic stability are much lower than their parents’. Add to that the observations made earlier about gun violence, schools and “thoughts and prayers.”
Okay, everybody. As the person who first started discussing that poll, I should tell you that I've just been over to the website of the Center For Strategic Politics, and now have some doubts that this is a serious organization.
Just for starters, including everything, polls, articles etc, they appear to have about a quarter-dozen items on offer, and all about one particular individual.
Long list of staff, though, but short on bio.
Sorry. I shoulda checked into the outfit some more. But it's kinda cool to speculate who's behind this.
It seems to me that “the people of the past” is a really large blanket to try to cover everyone with. “The people of the past” were no more monolithic on things like this than the people of today are. Then, as now, some people cared about right and wrong, while some people didn’t, or only cared about right and wrong insofar as it benefited them. Some people were solely motivated by wealth and/or power, while others weren’t at all. And power/wealth vs. right/wrong weren’t and aren’t the only options.
I agree—that was basically my point, in response to what I understood @stetson to be saying. I believe the attempt at justice in societies long long ago was very imperfect and often brutal, poorly applied, and such (frankly, it can often be like that now, too, though I think many things are much improved), but I don’t think it simply wasn’t there at all.
Okay, everybody. As the person who first started discussing that poll, I should tell you that I've just been over to the website of the Center For Strategic Politics, and now have some doubts that this is a serious organization.
Just for starters, including everything, polls, articles etc, they appear to have about a quarter-dozen items on offer, and all about one particular individual.
Long list of staff, though, but short on bio.
Sorry. I shoulda checked into the outfit some more. But it's kinda cool to speculate who's behind this.
Just been back to the site. I suppose it could be legit, and they just happen to be a very new company and this survey is the only thing they've done so far. Their bluesky account mentions it being their first survey.
I thought it was a bit suspicious that one of their few media links was to an anti-shooter editorial in National Review, but now think they just linked to it because it quoted their survey.
At least some of the staff seem real, but again, short on CV. Right now, they appear to be funding themselves via donation.
I doubt you can tell much from the survey - 455 adults is tiny, and any crossbreaks from that are essentially meaningless. You can just about be sure people prefer people not get shot in the street, and also hate the health insurance industry. Anything beyond that has too poor a signal to noise ratio to be meaningful.
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
There's all sorts of ideal constructions of the role of law-enforcement, the reality is that most law enforcement everywhere started off narrowly focused on protecting private property (typically of the rich).
Unless I've missed something, laws and their enforcement go back to beyond human history. The earliest evidence of laws we have go back to 2400 BC, but surely that was not the beginning of societies having laws, not even getting into the transcendence of law from on high in the first place.
You are projecting current society backwards in time, there was very little structure to enforce the 'Code of Hammurabi' - states at that point simply didn't function that way. Historians generally believe that the function of codes like these ones was largely ideological rather than legal.
Again, the claim that the king has made these things happen leads to some people he told to go make it happen.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
But they were at least aiming for justice.
Not really, as I said above, these courts were dominated by local elites and the reality such as we have records is that it was largely about self protection. You are importing modern notions of justice backwards in a way that's anachronistic, as does the title of the Wikipedia page you cite (two of the examples are purely protection/preservation of property, one is actually a 'keep the sea lanes open' action on the part of a trading empire, and the last is a measure for controlling inter-elite tensions).
Actions, perhaps, but then they'd have been the ones with the ability to do it. Whether it was merely out of self-interest, without any desire to protect people or do the right thing is something only God knows.
We know it was self-interest because we have records of which crimes they pursued and to who they offered protection. The more universalist application of the law is largely the result of struggle from below (the evidence of universal application without struggle is very spotty).
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
Yeah, that's not "total depravity", which merely states that every part of humanity is touched by the effects of the Fall.
Yep, regarding justice, we will still disagree on people of the past caring nothing at all about right and wrong, but solely being motivated by wealth and power.
We aren't discussing abstract notions of justice (and practically speaking ancient philosophers tended to have an expectation of universalism that is far from our own), but how they are instantiated in institutions:
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
This in response to @Crœsos's remark that a lot of the dialogue around institutions was characterised by self-interest on the part of the powerful:
I'm just commenting on the way state-backed institutional violence is invisible to most of us, to a degree that politicians, who are agents of an entity that claims to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, can make statements like "violence is never the answer" and we'll both wholeheartedly agree and automatically read in a bunch of unspoken caveats like "except for wars" or "this only applies to violence by private actors". We very rarely note that there may be an element of self-interest in an institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence decrying private violence.
They may have gotten it wrong a lot (as probably do we), but that doesn't mean it never entered into their calculations.
Uneven systems of enforcement are generally of most concern to those being denied justice rather than those doing the denying, which is why more universalist enforcement of law was most often accompanied by struggle from below, and for large stretches of history those denied a voice were also denied justice (see Nick's point above).
People love Lord Acton's dictum, but often have a blind spot to how it might have applied in much more hierarchical or absolutist times.
I doubt you can tell much from the survey - 455 adults is tiny, and any crossbreaks from that are essentially meaningless. You can just about be sure people prefer people not get shot in the street, and also hate the health insurance industry. Anything beyond that has too poor a signal to noise ratio to be meaningful.
FWIW, based on the near-unanimity of pro-shooter opinion on social media early on, I'd say that 18% of the general public holding similar sentiments seems pretty plausible.
(Now, how these same big-talkers would answer "Would you give refuge to the shooter if you had children living in your house?" is another question.)
Basically, argues that Mangione'views don't fit onto the standard left-right axis as conceptualized by elites, and it's the same for a lotta other people.
And that this is terrifying.
Interesting article, but more for the writer's sense of distraught novelty at the discovery of ideological inconsistency among hoi poloi.
I once heard my father(born in the mid-1930s) defend the drag-performers he had seen on his honeymoon in San Francisco("Just because they're different doesn't mean they're bad people"), and on another occasion say he had no problem with lgbqt teachers "...as long as they're good teachers". But he's also a guy who supported the death-penalty, thought bilingualism and multiculturalism just big expensive hassles, and for a while took a quiet but consistent interest in end-times theology, including both pre-mil and British Israel. Politicians he admired ranged from Tommy Douglas(Canada's Clement Attlee) to Ronald Reagan. He thought the USSR was some major threat to world freedom, but also that the Batista years in Cuba were a disgrace and Castro did some good things for the people.
Now, to say the least, my dad was not the type to commit acts of lethal terrorism, so nobody was combing through his magazine shelf or dinner-table comments to postulate a coherent worldview. Had anyone been doing that, though, it woulda been as big a dog's-breakfast as Mangione's collection of the equivalent.
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
There's all sorts of ideal constructions of the role of law-enforcement, the reality is that most law enforcement everywhere started off narrowly focused on protecting private property (typically of the rich).
Unless I've missed something, laws and their enforcement go back to beyond human history. The earliest evidence of laws we have go back to 2400 BC, but surely that was not the beginning of societies having laws, not even getting into the transcendence of law from on high in the first place.
You are projecting current society backwards in time, there was very little structure to enforce the 'Code of Hammurabi' - states at that point simply didn't function that way. Historians generally believe that the function of codes like these ones was largely ideological rather than legal.
Again, the claim that the king has made these things happen leads to some people he told to go make it happen.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
But they were at least aiming for justice.
Not really, as I said above, these courts were dominated by local elites and the reality such as we have records is that it was largely about self protection. You are importing modern notions of justice backwards in a way that's anachronistic, as does the title of the Wikipedia page you cite (two of the examples are purely protection/preservation of property, one is actually a 'keep the sea lanes open' action on the part of a trading empire, and the last is a measure for controlling inter-elite tensions).
Actions, perhaps, but then they'd have been the ones with the ability to do it. Whether it was merely out of self-interest, without any desire to protect people or do the right thing is something only God knows.
We know it was self-interest because we have records of which crimes they pursued and to who they offered protection. The more universalist application of the law is largely the result of struggle from below (the evidence of universal application without struggle is very spotty).
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
Yeah, that's not "total depravity", which merely states that every part of humanity is touched by the effects of the Fall.
Yep, regarding justice, we will still disagree on people of the past caring nothing at all about right and wrong, but solely being motivated by wealth and power.
We aren't discussing abstract notions of justice (and practically speaking ancient philosophers tended to have an expectation of universalism that is far from our own), but how they are instantiated in institutions:
I don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement, etc.
This in response to @Crœsos's remark that a lot of the dialogue around institutions was characterised by self-interest on the part of the powerful:
I'm just commenting on the way state-backed institutional violence is invisible to most of us, to a degree that politicians, who are agents of an entity that claims to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, can make statements like "violence is never the answer" and we'll both wholeheartedly agree and automatically read in a bunch of unspoken caveats like "except for wars" or "this only applies to violence by private actors". We very rarely note that there may be an element of self-interest in an institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence decrying private violence.
They may have gotten it wrong a lot (as probably do we), but that doesn't mean it never entered into their calculations.
Uneven systems of enforcement are generally of most concern to those being denied justice rather than those doing the denying, which is why more universalist enforcement of law was most often accompanied by struggle from below, and for large stretches of history those denied a voice were also denied justice (see Nick's point above).
People love Lord Acton's dictum, but often have a blind spot to how it might have applied in much more hierarchical or absolutist times.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing here. Uneven systems of enforcement are, indeed, unjust (apart from the question of mercy, of course). And if you push people too far, they will, indeed, often react very strongly, whether in righteous or less righteous ways. I consider the murder of the CEO to be, by definition, less righteous.
Re "We aren't discussing abstract notions of justice," well, I certainly was, and how much ancient societies were aiming for true justice, however imperfectly or even corruptly. I believe it's important to include that, the impression I had from some comments was that justice played no part in ancient laws or their enforcement, and while I believe the human race is fallen, I don't believe it has been so fallen that no one had any concept of good/evil, fairness, justice/injustice, etc. at all until, I don't know, Abraham or Moses, but even they were pretty ancient.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing here. Uneven systems of enforcement are, indeed, unjust (apart from the question of mercy, of course).
In which case I am not clear what in @Crœsos's reply you are objecting to when you state here that you "don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement"
Re "We aren't discussing abstract notions of justice," well, I certainly was, and how much ancient societies were aiming for true justice, however imperfectly or even corruptly.
Well, I was very clear what I was talking about in the post that you responded to here, so I'm not sure what your point is.
I once heard my father(born in the mid-1930s) defend the drag-performers he had seen on his honeymoon in San Francisco("Just because they're different doesn't mean they're bad people"), and on another occasion say he had no problem with lgbqt teachers "...as long as they're good teachers". But he's also a guy who supported the death-penalty, thought bilingualism and multiculturalism just big expensive hassles, and for a while took a quiet but consistent interest in end-times theology, including both pre-mil and British Israel. Politicians he admired ranged from Tommy Douglas(Canada's Clement Attlee) to Ronald Reagan. He thought the USSR was some major threat to world freedom, but also that the Batista years in Cuba were a disgrace and Castro did some good things for the people.
Why do you think your dad is ideologically inconsistent here?
He seems willing to let people get on with living their lives in their own way, but not willing to go to significant effort or expense to accommodate their choices. His opinions in your last sentence all seem more or less correct. The USSR was a threat to freedom, Batista was a disgrace, and some of the things Castro did were good.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing here. Uneven systems of enforcement are, indeed, unjust (apart from the question of mercy, of course).
In which case I am not clear what in @Crœsos's reply you are objecting to when you state here that you "don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement"
Re "We aren't discussing abstract notions of justice," well, I certainly was, and how much ancient societies were aiming for true justice, however imperfectly or even corruptly.
Well, I was very clear what I was talking about in the post that you responded to here, so I'm not sure what your point is.
Perhaps I took "We very rarely note that there may be an element of self-interest in an institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence decrying private violence" to be more absolute than it was meant, in which case -- well, I won't quite go so far as to say, a la Gilda Radner's character Emily Litella from Saturday Night Live, "Never mind," but if it was not meant so absolutely (i.e., that seeking justice has never been a factor in ancient societies, that they were never seeking to do right and act justly as best they knew how, and that it was all exclusively people in power protecting their own power, etc.), in any of these comments, well, I'm glad to hear it. I did get that impression from some comments. I've definitely encountered that notion in the past, and I wholeheartedly disagree with it. (I may also have run into more people with extreme notions online over the last array of years, too.)
(I did really get the impression that some commenters did argue the way I was reading it, though...?)
I very definitely believe that, yes, people have often done wrong in the name of justice, and that many laws down through the millennia have been unjust, but I also definitely believe that as far back as we have history at all, there have been people aiming, as best they knew how, for justice, and that the enforcement of the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing. I don't subscribe to the "ACAB" ("all cops are bastards," basically that the police should never, ever be trusted under any circumstances, and that they are all enemies, etc.) thing that has become popular here in the US (including among a lot of people I have encountered online, some of whom are friends or more often former online friends of mine)--again, lots of people are corrupt, and police brutality has been more clearly visible in the media than it ever was before, but that does not mean all enforcers of the law, everywhere, and even all down through history or even prehistory, were nothing more than agents of fascism, without the tiniest attempt at the real virtue of justice. We might be very tempted, especially currently, what with the horrible US administration about to come in, to be that cynical, but I don't believe the world is that dark, hopeless, or meaningless.
I once heard my father(born in the mid-1930s) defend the drag-performers he had seen on his honeymoon in San Francisco("Just because they're different doesn't mean they're bad people"), and on another occasion say he had no problem with lgbqt teachers "...as long as they're good teachers". But he's also a guy who supported the death-penalty, thought bilingualism and multiculturalism just big expensive hassles, and for a while took a quiet but consistent interest in end-times theology, including both pre-mil and British Israel. Politicians he admired ranged from Tommy Douglas(Canada's Clement Attlee) to Ronald Reagan. He thought the USSR was some major threat to world freedom, but also that the Batista years in Cuba were a disgrace and Castro did some good things for the people.
Why do you think your dad is ideologically inconsistent here?
He seems willing to let people get on with living their lives in their own way, but not willing to go to significant effort or expense to accommodate their choices. His opinions in your last sentence all seem more or less correct. The USSR was a threat to freedom, Batista was a disgrace, and some of the things Castro did were good.
Valid points. Maybe my terminology was wrong. It's not that he was ideologically incoherent, it's that his ideology, let's call it Cold War mixed-economy liberalism, would not run along the partisan lines that the Guardian writer would expect it to.
Thought experiment: Had my father bombed the Soviet embassy as a lone wolf to protest the alleged threat to world freedom, and some reporters interviewed me about his views and I outlined them as above, would he get written up as a Cold War mixed-economy liberal, or would his ideology be described as a "confusing mish-mash of opinions from all over the place"?
We have had and will have again a POTUS who said explicitly that he could do exactly what the alleged UHC shooter did and not lose a single vote. Responses to the UHC shooting seem to prove him absolutely right.
I saw a clip of a girl on TikTok who was talking about raising her generation (GenZ) with school shooter drills, thoughts & prayers, bulletproof backpacks, a few days off of school after a shooting, then a few days with counselors being made available, and then a return to the grind with the rest of the country moving on to the next news cycle well before that. She said something akin to "you've raised us to be numb to gun violence, but when it happens to you, you expect sympathy. Welcome to another 'Tuesday' in a public school."
I don't think she's all that wrong.
Well, her claims of a double-standard might be more pertinent if this were a situation where large numbers of people were, in fact, demanding sympathy for the victim. But, as you seem to indicate in your first paragraph, that's not really been the reaction.
Based on the polling above, it's a considerable exaggeration to say that the whole country is cheering on the murderer. It does remain the case, though, that the non-cheering section of public opinion seems to be more concentrated in the "detached disapproval" camp, rather than than the "weeping histrionics" camp. Basically, the same way that she says people react to school shootings.
Yes, because hundreds of widely broadcast cases of shooting-related 'weeping histrionics' have produced nothing. She's not making a claim about a double standard. She's detailing the detachment you've named, plainly describing one aspect of what more than a generation of failed gun violence policy has produced. Thoughts and prayers have cultivated jeers and shrugs. From her generation, anyway.
I very definitely believe that, yes, people have often done wrong in the name of justice, and that many laws down through the millennia have been unjust, but I also definitely believe that as far back as we have history at all, there have been people aiming, as best they knew how, for justice, and that the enforcement of the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing.
Without paying very close attention to the *vast* amount of humanity which was always excluded from that application of justice, you are going to end up with the 'moral arc of the universe' stripped of its context.
I very definitely believe that, yes, people have often done wrong in the name of justice, and that many laws down through the millennia have been unjust, but I also definitely believe that as far back as we have history at all, there have been people aiming, as best they knew how, for justice, and that the enforcement of the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing.
Yeah, maybe you should pay more attention to the exclusions. Was the doctrine of discovery 'at least partly a good and right thing'. I wonder.
The Guardian has put up another article on the supposed ideological confusion surrounding perceptions of the crime, this one more about the failed efforts of conservative commentators to convince their followers the shooter is an evil man.
One well-observed point was that Donald J. Trump has said nothing about any of this. Whereas he's usually the first to jump on any law-and-order bandwagon, and a denunciation of anti-corporate assassination is certainly something his plutocratic cronies would appreciate. The writer basically chalks the silence up to good political instincts on the part of Trump, which I think is quite accurate.
Typed too soon. A mainstream news site about an hour ago posted an oral statement from Trump, in which he denounced the killing and its cult of admirers in the most damning of terms.
I think it still says something that it took two weeks, given that everything I heard him say in the statement was based simply on what was known to everyone as soon as the video of the killing was released.
So far, Trump seems to be losing the war in the comments sections. Though it seems most of his hecklers are liberals or leftists who hated him to begin with.
So far, Trump seems to be losing the war in the comments sections. Though it seems most of his hecklers are liberals or leftists who hated him to begin with.
Everything I've found on Reddit still supports Mangione.
So far, Trump seems to be losing the war in the comments sections. Though it seems most of his hecklers are liberals or leftists who hated him to begin with.
Everything I've found on Reddit still supports Mangione.
Quite likely. I've only really been following YouTube.
Democracy Now has a new interview with Ken Klippenstein, the journalist who published Mangione's manifesto.
Apparently, one of the reasons legacy media decided not to publish was fear of inciting copycats, which seems rather quaint, since I think everyone had assumed what the killer's motivation was, right from the minute the story broke.
Without paying very close attention to the *vast* amount of humanity which was always excluded from that application of justice, you are going to end up with the 'moral arc of the universe' stripped of its context.
I literally don't know what you mean here, or how it relates to the idea that there was some attempt at some kind of justice, even if very imperfect, going all the way back.
(I'm also not sure, apart from the Second Coming, that I believe in the "moral arc of the universe." I don't especially think things are intrinsically getting better over time. I think things can get better, and get worse, but not that moral improvement is an intrinsic thing.)
Yeah, maybe you should pay more attention to the exclusions.
Why? I'm aware of them, and their existence doesn't mean there was not some attempt at some kind of justice, even if very imperfect, going all the way back. Not perfect. Not equally applied. Often brutal. But some kind of notion of it, with some kind of attempt at it.
Was the doctrine of discovery 'at least partly a good and right thing'. I wonder.
What does the existence of a terrible doctrine have to do with, again, some attempt at some kind of justice, even if very imperfect, going all the way back? I never said that every single law or notion was a good and right thing--just that "the enforcement of the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing." Perhaps if I say more clearly that the principle of enforcing the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing it will be clearer. (It doesn't mean that there may not be, in various situations, a higher principle which requires someone to not enforce a given law, or to actively break a given earthly law.)
Comments
It is not my prerogative to determine what should be the legal consequences of fragging. The Army Judge Advocate determined only 10% of the fragging incidents ever went to trial. I do not know the outcomes of those trials or the status of the accused either.
No not really, there are historical studies which look at things like pronouncements on debt cancellations, with comparisons to commercial records of the time showing that there was no discernible impact.
There were courts of course, but they weren't judging things based on law codes. At the local level these were generally dominated by local worthies, and there was little or no strict hierarchy, with instances of edicts by governors being re-litigated or ignored entirely
Read through a couple of hundred comments, literally not one supporting th op ed.
But they were at least aiming for justice.
Again, this goes incredibly far back:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_criminal_justice
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchman_(law_enforcement)
Trial by jury goes back at least to ancient Greece:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial
And so on.
Eh, sounds a little Hollywood, too-good-to-be-true. At least from the emotional POV of someone who wants to think the worst the executives. You often hear these types of horror-show details in an event like this, and it often turns out to be false.
Not a conclusive statement on the veracity of the story. Just kind of an initial vibe.
Can we maybe all agree that, while even hunter-gatherers had an idea that eg. just randomly bashing your neighbour's kid's skull with a rock is undesirable...
...and that Hammurabi and company thought this a useful sentiment to put into aspirational law books...
...it was the self-interested actions of a later propertied class which finally began the first moves toward organized and codified enforcement of such regulations?
It's hyperbole, but it's expressive of ... well, something. The NY Times reported that day that Thompson was shot at about 6:45 AM, and that the investor meeting went forward as planned at 8 AM. Thompson was declared dead at a local hospital, so people arriving for the meeting wouldn't have even seen a draped body. There were news crews, though, and NYPD would have been documenting the scene; the NY Times says people at the Hilton (where the meeting was taking place) did know someone had been shot. People in the investor meeting started receiving alerts at about 9 am (IIRC from what I read) that it was the UHC CEO who was shot, and they called off the rest of the meeting at that point. So I'm guessing people thought folks attending the meeting knew at 8 am that the CEO was dead.
An image of a LinkedIn posting for the guy's job was circulated, and it was false.
Actions, perhaps, but then they'd have been the ones with the ability to do it. Whether it was merely out of self-interest, without any desire to protect people or do the right thing is something only God knows.
I believe in the Fall, but I do not believe in the "total depravity" doctrine, with no human ability to seek or aim for the good whatsoever, with all of life being nothing more than a ghastly, self-interested power struggle from prehistory down till now.
(To be fair, most of us Reformed folk who do believe in the doctrine total depravity think the term itself is a misleading label for the doctrine.)
I don't know if I precisely believe that, though I'll admit I find it a useful model for organizing social and historical observations.
Good to know!
Not really, as I said above, these courts were dominated by local elites and the reality such as we have records is that it was largely about self protection. You are importing modern notions of justice backwards in a way that's anachronistic, as does the title of the Wikipedia page you cite (two of the examples are purely protection/preservation of property, one is actually a 'keep the sea lanes open' action on the part of a trading empire, and the last is a measure for controlling inter-elite tensions).
We know it was self-interest because we have records of which crimes they pursued and to who they offered protection. The more universalist application of the law is largely the result of struggle from below (the evidence of universal application without struggle is very spotty).
Yeah, that's not "total depravity", which merely states that every part of humanity is touched by the effects of the Fall.
Favourability ratings...
MEN 17%
WOMEN 7%
TRUMP VOTERS 18%
HARRIS VOTERS 21%
LIBERALS 25%
CONSERVATIVES 14%
PEOPLE UNDER 45 31%
PEOPLE OVER 45 8%
WHITES 14%
BLACKS 31%
HISPANICS 28%
PEOPLE DENIED HEALTH CARE BY INSURANCE COMPANIES 33%
PEOPLE NOT DENIED ETC 9%
I saw a clip of a girl on TikTok who was talking about raising her generation (GenZ) with school shooter drills, thoughts & prayers, bulletproof backpacks, a few days off of school after a shooting, then a few days with counselors being made available, and then a return to the grind with the rest of the country moving on to the next news cycle well before that. She said something akin to "you've raised us to be numb to gun violence, but when it happens to you, you expect sympathy. Welcome to another 'Tuesday' in a public school."
I don't think she's all that wrong.
Read that NYT Op-Ed. Yeah, not worth the time.
Well, her claims of a double-standard might be more pertinent if this were a situation where large numbers of people were, in fact, demanding sympathy for the victim. But, as you seem to indicate in your first paragraph, that's not really been the reaction.
Based on the polling above, it's a considerable exaggeration to say that the whole country is cheering on the murderer. It does remain the case, though, that the non-cheering section of public opinion seems to be more concentrated in the "detached disapproval" camp, rather than than the "weeping histrionics" camp. Basically, the same way that she says people react to school shootings.
His approval/disapproval ratings are listed as well, I believe.
But, yeah, a better question might be "On a scale of 1 to 10, how sad do you feel about the murder of Brian Thompson?" With a control-question asking about a hypothetical victim not known to have caused anyone significant harm.
Yes, because hundreds of widely broadcast cases of shooting-related 'weeping histrionics' have produced nothing. She's not making a claim about a double standard. She's detailing the detachment you've named, plainly describing one aspect of what more than a generation of failed gun violence policy has produced. Thoughts and prayers have cultivated jeers and shrugs. From her generation, anyway.
Okay. So she's saying(via your paraphrase) that older people have conditioned younger people to be numb to gun violence, but then turn around and demand sympathy for Thompson as a victim of gun violence.
I still don't think there's been alot of oldsters demanding sympathy for Thompson, though I have seen a few tut-tutting pieces in legacy media, none of whom seemed to convince their own readers, and one from Piers Morgan, who was desperately trying to frame it as a law-and-order issue, in line with standard conservative rhetoric.
I'll also say that I don't know if the bulk of the non-histrionic reaction(ranging from casual indifference to outright bloodlust) is due to emotional numbness, so much as to the perception that Thompson was something other than an entirely random victim. Even people who are desensitized to school shootings don't usually go onto social-media and express boisterous approval when they happen.
Yep, regarding justice, we will still disagree on people of the past caring nothing at all about right and wrong, but solely being motivated by wealth and power. And I don't believe it is modern notions of justice, but transcendent ones, that have always applied since or even before the creation of humanity or, for that matter, the universe. They may have gotten it wrong a lot (as probably do we), but that doesn't mean it never entered into their calculations. As for total depravity, I am glad to hear that it is more nuanced than what I have understood it to be.
Besides the obvious denied coverage/not denied coverage imbalance, I think the above two pairings are the most lop-sided of the bunch.
I wonder if "men > women" can just be chalked up to the generally acknowledged tendency of men to embrace violence more than women do, OR maybe some variation in the way that the respective genders interact with insurance companies. My money would be on the former, but I really don't know.
As for the punks vs. the geezers, probably just youth in their latest quest for sexy and violent titillation.
[My marxist shadow-cabinet is yelling something about the conditions of the post-adolescent economic precariat.]
I’d say it’s very clear from the Hebrew prophets that far too many people in power in their time cared more about their power and their wealth than about justice or righteousness. There is, after all, a very real historical context for claims like “He had shown strength with his arm, and scattered the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly.”
I would not at all discount feelings among those under 45, and maybe even more those under 35 or 30, that the world and society they are inheriting is seriously screwed up, and their chances of economic stability are much lower than their parents’. Add to that the observations made earlier about gun violence, schools and “thoughts and prayers.”
Just for starters, including everything, polls, articles etc, they appear to have about a quarter-dozen items on offer, and all about one particular individual.
Long list of staff, though, but short on bio.
Sorry. I shoulda checked into the outfit some more. But it's kinda cool to speculate who's behind this.
I agree—that was basically my point, in response to what I understood @stetson to be saying. I believe the attempt at justice in societies long long ago was very imperfect and often brutal, poorly applied, and such (frankly, it can often be like that now, too, though I think many things are much improved), but I don’t think it simply wasn’t there at all.
Just been back to the site. I suppose it could be legit, and they just happen to be a very new company and this survey is the only thing they've done so far. Their bluesky account mentions it being their first survey.
I thought it was a bit suspicious that one of their few media links was to an anti-shooter editorial in National Review, but now think they just linked to it because it quoted their survey.
At least some of the staff seem real, but again, short on CV. Right now, they appear to be funding themselves via donation.
We aren't discussing abstract notions of justice (and practically speaking ancient philosophers tended to have an expectation of universalism that is far from our own), but how they are instantiated in institutions:
This in response to @Crœsos's remark that a lot of the dialogue around institutions was characterised by self-interest on the part of the powerful:
Uneven systems of enforcement are generally of most concern to those being denied justice rather than those doing the denying, which is why more universalist enforcement of law was most often accompanied by struggle from below, and for large stretches of history those denied a voice were also denied justice (see Nick's point above).
People love Lord Acton's dictum, but often have a blind spot to how it might have applied in much more hierarchical or absolutist times.
FWIW, based on the near-unanimity of pro-shooter opinion on social media early on, I'd say that 18% of the general public holding similar sentiments seems pretty plausible.
(Now, how these same big-talkers would answer "Would you give refuge to the shooter if you had children living in your house?" is another question.)
Subheading...
Basically, argues that Mangione'views don't fit onto the standard left-right axis as conceptualized by elites, and it's the same for a lotta other people.
And that this is terrifying.
Interesting article, but more for the writer's sense of distraught novelty at the discovery of ideological inconsistency among hoi poloi.
I once heard my father(born in the mid-1930s) defend the drag-performers he had seen on his honeymoon in San Francisco("Just because they're different doesn't mean they're bad people"), and on another occasion say he had no problem with lgbqt teachers "...as long as they're good teachers". But he's also a guy who supported the death-penalty, thought bilingualism and multiculturalism just big expensive hassles, and for a while took a quiet but consistent interest in end-times theology, including both pre-mil and British Israel. Politicians he admired ranged from Tommy Douglas(Canada's Clement Attlee) to Ronald Reagan. He thought the USSR was some major threat to world freedom, but also that the Batista years in Cuba were a disgrace and Castro did some good things for the people.
Now, to say the least, my dad was not the type to commit acts of lethal terrorism, so nobody was combing through his magazine shelf or dinner-table comments to postulate a coherent worldview. Had anyone been doing that, though, it woulda been as big a dog's-breakfast as Mangione's collection of the equivalent.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing here. Uneven systems of enforcement are, indeed, unjust (apart from the question of mercy, of course). And if you push people too far, they will, indeed, often react very strongly, whether in righteous or less righteous ways. I consider the murder of the CEO to be, by definition, less righteous.
Re "We aren't discussing abstract notions of justice," well, I certainly was, and how much ancient societies were aiming for true justice, however imperfectly or even corruptly. I believe it's important to include that, the impression I had from some comments was that justice played no part in ancient laws or their enforcement, and while I believe the human race is fallen, I don't believe it has been so fallen that no one had any concept of good/evil, fairness, justice/injustice, etc. at all until, I don't know, Abraham or Moses, but even they were pretty ancient.
In which case I am not clear what in @Crœsos's reply you are objecting to when you state here that you "don’t hold this view of the state, of war, of law-enforcement"
Well, I was very clear what I was talking about in the post that you responded to here, so I'm not sure what your point is.
Why do you think your dad is ideologically inconsistent here?
He seems willing to let people get on with living their lives in their own way, but not willing to go to significant effort or expense to accommodate their choices. His opinions in your last sentence all seem more or less correct. The USSR was a threat to freedom, Batista was a disgrace, and some of the things Castro did were good.
Perhaps I took "We very rarely note that there may be an element of self-interest in an institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence decrying private violence" to be more absolute than it was meant, in which case -- well, I won't quite go so far as to say, a la Gilda Radner's character Emily Litella from Saturday Night Live, "Never mind," but if it was not meant so absolutely (i.e., that seeking justice has never been a factor in ancient societies, that they were never seeking to do right and act justly as best they knew how, and that it was all exclusively people in power protecting their own power, etc.), in any of these comments, well, I'm glad to hear it. I did get that impression from some comments. I've definitely encountered that notion in the past, and I wholeheartedly disagree with it. (I may also have run into more people with extreme notions online over the last array of years, too.)
(I did really get the impression that some commenters did argue the way I was reading it, though...?)
I very definitely believe that, yes, people have often done wrong in the name of justice, and that many laws down through the millennia have been unjust, but I also definitely believe that as far back as we have history at all, there have been people aiming, as best they knew how, for justice, and that the enforcement of the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing. I don't subscribe to the "ACAB" ("all cops are bastards," basically that the police should never, ever be trusted under any circumstances, and that they are all enemies, etc.) thing that has become popular here in the US (including among a lot of people I have encountered online, some of whom are friends or more often former online friends of mine)--again, lots of people are corrupt, and police brutality has been more clearly visible in the media than it ever was before, but that does not mean all enforcers of the law, everywhere, and even all down through history or even prehistory, were nothing more than agents of fascism, without the tiniest attempt at the real virtue of justice. We might be very tempted, especially currently, what with the horrible US administration about to come in, to be that cynical, but I don't believe the world is that dark, hopeless, or meaningless.
Gilda Radner reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQppLas38uI
Valid points. Maybe my terminology was wrong. It's not that he was ideologically incoherent, it's that his ideology, let's call it Cold War mixed-economy liberalism, would not run along the partisan lines that the Guardian writer would expect it to.
Thought experiment: Had my father bombed the Soviet embassy as a lone wolf to protest the alleged threat to world freedom, and some reporters interviewed me about his views and I outlined them as above, would he get written up as a Cold War mixed-economy liberal, or would his ideology be described as a "confusing mish-mash of opinions from all over the place"?
Well, the next school shooting has now happened, albeit not on a "Tuesday."
Without paying very close attention to the *vast* amount of humanity which was always excluded from that application of justice, you are going to end up with the 'moral arc of the universe' stripped of its context.
Yeah, maybe you should pay more attention to the exclusions. Was the doctrine of discovery 'at least partly a good and right thing'. I wonder.
One well-observed point was that Donald J. Trump has said nothing about any of this. Whereas he's usually the first to jump on any law-and-order bandwagon, and a denunciation of anti-corporate assassination is certainly something his plutocratic cronies would appreciate. The writer basically chalks the silence up to good political instincts on the part of Trump, which I think is quite accurate.
I think it still says something that it took two weeks, given that everything I heard him say in the statement was based simply on what was known to everyone as soon as the video of the killing was released.
The only other place I've seen anything so anti-shooter was on Ken Ham's creation-science channel.
Quite likely. I've only really been following YouTube.
Democracy Now has a new interview with Ken Klippenstein, the journalist who published Mangione's manifesto.
Apparently, one of the reasons legacy media decided not to publish was fear of inciting copycats, which seems rather quaint, since I think everyone had assumed what the killer's motivation was, right from the minute the story broke.
I still use it as my media of record. I often won't consider a story factual until I see it in the NYT etc.
But yeah, for analysis of the facts, they're rapidly losing the plot.
I literally don't know what you mean here, or how it relates to the idea that there was some attempt at some kind of justice, even if very imperfect, going all the way back.
(I'm also not sure, apart from the Second Coming, that I believe in the "moral arc of the universe." I don't especially think things are intrinsically getting better over time. I think things can get better, and get worse, but not that moral improvement is an intrinsic thing.)
Why? I'm aware of them, and their existence doesn't mean there was not some attempt at some kind of justice, even if very imperfect, going all the way back. Not perfect. Not equally applied. Often brutal. But some kind of notion of it, with some kind of attempt at it.
What does the existence of a terrible doctrine have to do with, again, some attempt at some kind of justice, even if very imperfect, going all the way back? I never said that every single law or notion was a good and right thing--just that "the enforcement of the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing." Perhaps if I say more clearly that the principle of enforcing the laws has been at least partly a good and right thing it will be clearer. (It doesn't mean that there may not be, in various situations, a higher principle which requires someone to not enforce a given law, or to actively break a given earthly law.)
Was the Ken Ham anti-shooter stuff about this shooting, or another one?