Originally published at: Capitol rioter going for plea bargain says she's since "learned" by watching Schindler's List and reading Just Mercy | Boing Boing
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I mean, okay. I don’t really have any idea what real contrition should sound like in this case. At least she’s not saying that Trump won the election and she’s connected up the riot with racism.
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Cool. Arrest everybody and make them read and watch and debate until they learn something, but arrest them.
People of color don’t have the same privilege of saying that they only commited a mistake and get out with a slap on the wrist. People died. Arrest them.
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Well, if we take it at face value, it bears out what some of us (well, me, for sure) have been saying for a long time.
The only cure is education, education, education.
(But then there’s Florida)
On the other hand, she could be making what her legal advisor has told her are appropriate noises to minimise the consequences of her deliberate and knowing acts.
Who knows?
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It’s too bad there isn’t a Spielberg movie laying out what happened in Germany after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch when the participants were let off with wrist-slap punishments. Whichever judge issued this sentence would have benefited from watching it.
“Just Mercy” in this country continues to be applied mainly to white defendants like this insurrectionist.
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The fact that so many of these people (loosely defined) are from out of state — not MD or VA, but FL, CA, TX — is where this falls down for me. There is a bit of planning and premeditation that goes into this and while you are waiting for your flight or packing the whip, you had to ignore a lot of the rising rhetoric. I know people can do that, but maybe that’s part of the problem, that people can subscribe to “The Daily Me” and never hear a thing that doesn’t align with their interests and prejudices. So I would be disinclined to be merciful here. A sentence that includes some effort, some life education that might undo some of that twisted understanding would be my preference.
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Capitol rioter writes thesis on Schindler’s list in a large gymnasium without internet access just to prove it?
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Ummm… if she can “learn” to be “better” just by watching a couple of movies, then she’s dimwitted enough to be turned back into a terrible person the very next time she spends an hour watching conspiracy BS on youtube. This is not a good sign that she’s at all rehabilitated or safe.
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That’s my initial thoughts too. If I was the judge I would say that it is a start, but it isn’t justice served. She can watch and read more on the subject as part of her community service. Restorative justice should be the first step, that it means that someone will be keeping an eye on them while they learn the error of their ways.
I am wary of sending some of these people to prison, because it is white supremacy university in the US. They will come out worse than they were when they went in.
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You make a very good point. But if she had never seen anything like those films before and only ever seen the right-wing bullshit, maybe she has at last had her eyes opened a millionth of a millimetre. Any sentence should involve proper ongoing education, especially focused on analytical thinking and democratic principles to ensure they open even wider and stay open. But that’s not what the ‘justice’ [sic] system does, is it.
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I mean, that’s education at work one way or the other, right?
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I often wonder what reaction you’d see out of these knobs by showing them Night and Fog.
A lot of the common cultural reference points people have on the Holocaust are fairly, I guess polite is the word.
I’ve seen Night and Fog twice. And I really can’t think about the film with out feeling nausea and fear. Tearing up a bit.
In film school my Jewish roommate actually had to put his head on the desk to avoid vomiting. I think he passed out for a bit.
It’s an absolutely crushing confrontation with reality. Sadly it doesn’t come up often enough, simply because it’s so difficult to watch.
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Good for her for learning. She still needs to serve time for her crime.
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In a sealed survival bunker, with Internet access and a TV that only gets Fox?
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This is entirely performative. Her lawyer is coaching her to state all these things. As soon as her sentence is expired, she’ll repudiate all those “things she learned” and go right back to her insanity. How do you suddenly “learn” that invading the Capitol by force is wrong?
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You’ve got the basic bones of abolitionist political framework here or at least one that is more restorative than the current system, but it might need a little elaboration. So everyone gets arrested? By whom? Where do they stay while they are reading and watching things?
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Is she actually making the argument that watching Schindler’s List is equivalent to spending several months in jail?
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I hope she’s being sincere. Since she’s familiar with travel to DC, she should pay a visit to the Holocaust Memorial and Museum. It hits a person in a way that just isn’t possible with Schindler’s List.
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My initial reaction was that this is some sort of cynical ruse. Like she thought, “What do those anti-Trump people like? Jews and Blacks. I’ll watch some movies about that, and pretend I’m one of them, now.” It’s hard to shake that feeling.
If the story’s true, it’s pretty weird - “I learned a little bit about something in the world, and suddenly I’m no longer a Trumper!” I mean, is she saying that she was a Trumper because she was a hard-core white supremacist, but after some glancing contact with reality, she’s suddenly a different person?
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