“If I was wrong about calling you a Holocaust denier and Nazi, I will gladly apologize to you. I am glad to hear that you are not, and if you no longer think that Inglorious Bastards was not 100% historically accurate, well then good on you. My apologies.”
Real nice.
In the 80s, victims of those like Cosby and Weinstein had literally no recourse and no possibility of getting even the slightest shred of justice. Now, they have this possibility.
This just demonstrates once again that we live in entirely different universes of morality. Your system appears to me, based on what I’m reading from your posts, as utterly monstrous – truly horrible to women and girls especially, and terrifying to imagine my future children living under. They could be raped by those in power and have no recourse, just as Cosby’s, Weinstein’s, and yes, Trump’s, (and undoubtedly countless others), had no chance of justice, and society allowed these monsters to continue their abuse of women for decades.
This “look how much better we are now” attitude is nothing more than dangerously unsophisticated self-congratulatory wishful thinking.
The fact of the matter is that there have always been, powerful and/or beloved figures who have used their status to perpetuate and cover their crimes. We have always been uncovering and catching some of them. When we do, they are almost always old men who have been getting away with it for decades.
The idea that women never had a chance but have a chance now because Look! Weinstein, Cosby! Is a naive and unnuanced view of reality that if anything puts women more at risk of being victimized. Not less.
Right now, there are rich and powerful figures at the beginning and middle of their careers of rape and sexual abuse who are getting away with it, and barring them making a stupid mistake will be getting away with it, well into the future. If and when they are uncovered, it will most likely be when they are older, their power and belovedness is at a wan, their success has emboldened them to the point where they have gotten to bold and sloppy, and they have created such a huge population of victims that their voices are finally heard outside the sound proof room of their unimportance and obscurity.
So no, things are not so much better than they used to be. I don’t Think they are better at all. Maybe Me Too has made it a little harder. So what? These guys will just work a little harder.
Do you think these guys are just doing what they are doing and then we catch them? They are smart and intelligent and cognizant of societal trends and how the system functions and they adapt in response to these things by hard work and careful planning. The same traits that make them successful and rich and powerful and beloved are the same traits that make them good at being rapists.
Previously, they operated by counting on the silence and obscurity of those they victimized. Now that we have me too and social media you may think that we have fixed something or made it better, or given “victims a chance.”
Not so much. One can hide in silence, yes but it is easier to hide in a cacophony. Every rich powerful and beloved person is inundated by kooks seeking attention, or making ridiculous claims. This is a new kind of cover for these predators, and they will learn to adapt and make use of it.
Not much has changed.
As we’ve talked, it seems to me that your view of morality is simplistic and ungrounded in anything resembling reality. Frankly, I feel like I am talking to an adolescent or someone in their early 20s who hasn’t really gotten out much.
Don’t do this - implying or stating that those who hold differing views than you are like children.
[/moderating]
Understood. My apologies.
This just seems like a bunch of unsupported assertions – that rapists can be skilled at getting away with rape doesn’t challenge anything I’ve said. Society is still terrible in how we approach rape and sexual assault, but it’s made actual progress in the last few years – now, a woman has a significant non-zero chance of being heard and taken seriously if she comes forward with a story of being abused. 30 years ago, that chance was almost zero. We need to get to the point in which every woman is heard and taken seriously, but that progress has actually been made, and this is precisely because of the #MeToo movement.
But we’ve obviously been at an impasse here for a while. Not much point to further discussion – I’m just thankful that the younger generation seems much closer to my point of view than yours on this issue.
Are you thinking this through at all?
I think we can agree that the ability for victims to voice their accusations and seek justice is a good thing. Me too, though has unintended consequences.
You do know that virtually every celebrity or rich and powerful person has allegations made against them? Right?
Try it. Keanu Reeves was accused of hypnotizing, raping and fathering four of a women’s children.
Justin Timberlake has one.
Pick some names of your own and play the game, and you will find that almost everybody with a modicum if fame has been accused. The more famous, the more likely.
The public sort of gets this, we understand instinctually that these people are magnets for such allegations.
Me too is certainly going to bring out more valid accusations that otherwise would not be heard. The unintended consequence is that it also encourages the kooks and nut jobs and con people looking to cash in and make a buck.
Harvey Weinstein had an employment contract that discussed how much they would settle the first allegation of sexual misconduct for, the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th. Etc.
You may say “wow! I guess that means he expected to be caught and accused and planned for it, and everyone around him must have known all about it and been complicit.”
That’s a pretty big indictment of Hollywood and the Entertainment Industry. Cosby was in that industry too. Perhaps it makes you wonder how sexual predators are so at home in literally the most liberal and progressive and woke industry in the country. And that’s a good question. There is something to it.
The bigger truth is that such contracts are becoming more and more standard. Being accused just goes with the business. Like getting health insurance, or fire insurance, or liability insurance it’s just good planning to put something in place to deal with it.
In fact it is so common that they commonly buy insurance policies to indemnify against it. Hell, you can buy one, too.
So that’s a reality.
So, in which environment it is easier to be a sexual predator.
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One in which accusations are rare and noteworthy.
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One in which they are commonplace and expected to such a degree that planning for them is a part of everyday
On a separate note, I’d like to apologize to you for calling you immature, and for the rape school comment.
I think poorly of people who take cheap shots like that, and I know better.
The entertainment industry is enormously complicit in enabling and covering for rape and sexual abuse, and I’ve advocated on this very board for Congressional hearings on the industry (and Hollywood in particular) and even an industry-wide work stoppage, accompanied by something like a “Truth and Reconciliations” committee, in which anyone could come forward and tell their stories with a guarantee that it wouldn’t harm them in the industry. I’ve argued this before on this board, multiple times, I’m pretty sure.
It has little to do with liberal vs conservative, and much to do with powerful and long-running patriarchal industries having terrible internal cultures regarding the treatment of women (and the entertainment industry is hardly alone in this). In an industry like Hollywood that is so explicitly superficial and puts such high value on things like appearance and sex appeal, this is accelerated even more. #MeToo threatens traditional Hollywood, as it should, and the industry still hasn’t even come close to the reforms that are necessary.
That the rich and famous tend to face more nutty claims from random strangers doesn’t dispute any of this, or any of my arguments. I’m unaware of any celebrity having been brought down by false allegations – false allegations from crazy people are generally very easy to demonstrate as false.
I think this is absolutely false.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument that you absolutely know that Carroll’s accusation is false. There was a time storm, and you saw the actual events through a fleeting window of temporal disturbance.
What you actually saw was Donald Trump smile and nod, and greet Carroll. She flirted with him. He was polite and disinterested, and left. That was it. I know that you dislike this example so let’s say that at some point in the future another timestorm will show you all the other accusations, and they all turned out to be true. Later on you will lose this knowledge to see him hang, but that is in the future. Ok?
For now though, you are committed to the justice of the one event you did see. This false accusation.
How could you possibly prove it didn’t happen?
Proving a negative is almost impossible.
“Time storm”? Really?
How about a hypothetical rooted in the real world?
Just out of curiosity: what is the evidence you have been presented with that prompts you to make an exception in favor of disbelief in this instance, and as a bonus, what is it that you find makes the evidence overwhelmingly compelling?
Or is this a case of the rare occurrence when you DON’T “like to believe” that?
Good to see you back, by the way. I hope all is well with you and yours. 
Okay, proving a negative can be difficult (though not always, especially if the allegation is made by the mentally ill).
But this is your example? This actually supports my main point – that we as a society still don’t treat these allegations with seriousness. Trump hasn’t been harmed at all by this allegation, or by any other – even by his own bragging about sexual assault. In a truly just and fair society, any credible allegation that was responded to with “she’s not my type” would be disqualifying for city council, much less president. Any prominent person who had bragged about sexual assault would face public humiliation and the loss of any chance at a public career.
I see your outlook on this issue, broadly speaking, the same way I saw the outlook from my (long deceased) Southern grandparents on civil rights. They were nice and loving people, but they just didn’t get it, and may not have been capable of it. Society passed them by. So far, by my reading of your posts, you haven’t shown any ability, or even any desire, to try and learn from those who might have different experiences from you regarding rape and sexual assault. You don’t appear to even have considered the possibility that the we who haven’t been harmed by sexual assault or rape should be explicitly following the lead of women and (yes) men who have been harmed by sexual assault or rape on how society should change to better handle these issues. Everything from conversations I’ve had personally with survivors of rape and sexual assault, interviews with survivors, written works by survivors, and public statements by prominent survivors leads me to the conclusion that the #MeToo approach is the morally correct one at this moment, and we have a lot of work to do. If the vast majority of rape victims and survivors are telling us that that is how we should go forward (and I believe that’s what they’re telling us), then that is how we should go forward.
How long 'till someone gets all dolled-up and wanders the neighborhood until they’re sexually accosted/assaulted and comes back to the board to inform us that they, and they alone, have discovered that being sexually accosted/assaulted is a terrible thing?
Bonus if moist lumber is involved.
CMC fnord!
I’ve used two homonyms of believe.
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A statement of strong unshakable faith “I believe Jesus is savior.”
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A synonym for I think. “Do you have a quarter?” “I believe so.”
I try to avoid #1 in these kind of things.
I believe the allegation is false in the #2 sense based on the current data at my disposal. I am not committed to this position and would change readily given new data.
This stance is founded under the premise of presumption of innocence meaning that the default position is that it did not happen unless their is strong and compelling evidence to suggest it did. Weighing her story, against the fact that she failed to file a police report, has let decades pass, presents no physical evidence, is resistant to filing a police report now, objected to letting the coat she claims be examined (during an interview I saw or read but can’t produce,) has a profit motive, and seems in my very personal and subjective opinion “off” for lack of a better word, combined with the fact that press after jumping on the story seem to be backing away very quickly… all this leads me to restrain my original presumption of innocence, and perhaps even click things over a couple of notches from default skepticism to outright doubt.
There is a truism that I don’t recall specifically about how listening to mothers of deceased children makes for bad legislation.
You have to know who the victim is. This can be problematic. If it’s a false accusation, than the person being accused is the victim not the accuser. There are historical examples where accusations based on status carried weight, and these are typically used as horrific examples of what not to do. Giving added weight or following the lead of someone based on their claimed victim status is doing just that.
Second, I hardly expect a victim to be objective.
So no. I am in vehement disagreement.
Sounds pretty much like my grandparents on Civil Rights. They explicitly rejected the reports of black people on how they were treated, and how they should be treated, using essentially the same sorts of rationalization.
You would give the benefit of the doubt to the self-declared sexual abuser and proud womanizer.
"nuff said.
And narcissistic liar.
Those colored lenses you are so fond of are exactly why your reasoning is so bad so consistently.