Letter to the Editor

[beschizza]

And our FB is moderated, too, by falc (Just more lightly)

[OtherMichael]

No, it’s not “fucking stupid” – it’s trying to figure things out.

If they are both victims, they are both victims. Their difference lies in degree.

And in a theoretical discussion, such a question is not “fucking stupid”, it’s very, very important, and the crux of the problematic.

We need to carefully interrogate what we are thinking about, because we don’t fully know.

If they are not both victims, then it’s an apples and oranges thing: “one is a victim, one is an asshole who views himself as a victim.”

The subtext to a lot of comments and jokes here (mine included) is that letter-to-the-editor-writer “is” a victim, thus making “it’s all his fault” an instance of victim-blaming, and exposing ourselvedsto ban-censure. Much of it is in jest, because we don’t really think of him (him?) as a victim. But… is he? And if so…

[OtherMichael]

#THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT POLICE BRUTALITY

#ITS ABOUT STUPID LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

#AND THE STUPID PEOPLE

#WHO STUPIDLY WRITE THEM STUPIDLY

 

once upon a time this thread was fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[anon50609448]

@francoisroux

zieroh completely deserved to be banned for mocking and being inappropriate towards Cory.

Read the thread above, this has already been addressed. To say someone is a ‘victim’ of temporary suspension from a website is really pushing the idea of ‘victim’.

@gaxxnet

However, if meaningful discussion of the topic isn’t allowed then probably it’s best not to encourage discussion of it in the first place.

Go read the actual threads.

“I don’t think it’s fair to condemn Wilson because the facts are too muddy. From what I’ve seen, the shooting was justified.” - Opinion that demonstrably will not get you banned (because you can find people saying things like this in the threads).

“Michael Brown was a thug who deserved to die.” - Victim blaming that quite rightly will get you banned.

If it’s really hard to spot the difference then I don’t think I can help much. Is there a grey area between the two? I’m sure there is, but if you are in the grey area then you are putting your ban/not-ban in a grey area.

If you actually look at the conversations you will see that this site does not ban dissenting views.

@francoisroux

I suppose not more than calling someone whom you have never met or spoken to, I quote(out of fear of the ban hammer), “fucking stupid”.

He didn’t call you fucking stupid, he said you made a fucking stupid comparison. Being able to make this distinction is necessary to having arguments about ideas. Yes, it’s not nice to be told that someone else thinks your ideas are stupid, but that could be merely because it’s not nice to realize that your ideas are stupid. “Smart people have smart ideas, only stupid people have stupid ideas” means never listening to anyone who disagrees with you.

@OtherMichael

If they are not both victims, then it’s an apples and oranges thing: “one is a victim, one is an asshole who views himself as a victim.”

Yeah, I’m going with that option here.

[gaxxnet]

@anon50609448

@gaxxnet

However, if meaningful discussion of the topic isn’t allowed then probably it’s best not to encourage discussion of it in the first place.

Go read the actual threads.

Thank you for the advice. I have read everything available on BB from the original post and haven’t been the FB page as I don’t use FB and don’t plan to start just to read posts that will annoy me.

@anon50609448

“I don’t think it’s fair to condemn Wilson because the facts are too muddy. From what I’ve seen, the shooting was justified.” - Opinion that demonstrably will not get you banned (because you can find people saying things like this in the threads).

“Michael Brown was a thug who deserved to die.” - Victim blaming that quite rightly will get you banned.

If it’s really hard to spot the difference then I don’t think I can help much. Is there a grey area between the two? I’m sure there is, but if you are in the grey area then you are putting your ban/not-ban in a grey area.

I totally see that there is a very big difference in tone between the two but the content is victim-blaming in both (presuming you remove the uncertainty from the first one) and on exactly the same criteria. You either contest that the officer made the right call based on some actions (or perception of actions) on the victims part or you don’t.

I’m also totally fine with the idea that it’s the level of civility of your wording that is important and will result in a ban or not.

However, to call it out for victim-blaming as the reason for the ban seems to throw into question the pointfulness of discussion on the topic. It simply isn’t possible to make a reasonable case for the officer without laying some blame at the feet of the victim. If you can’t make a reasonable case for the officer then is there any realistic point in the discussion?

@anon50609448

If you actually look at the conversations you will see that this site does not ban dissenting views.

I totally agree that BB is something of a champion of free speech and upholder of anti-censorship etc and that the discussions are, on the whole, very well moderated. However, I think that’s the reason for being watchful of situations like this rather than a reason not to be.

The trouble is that a topic of this nature really is, at it’s core, an issue of where blame lies for a situation - whether it was with the officer in question or if it was with the victim. If it isn’t possible to make the case that the blame lies with the victim then there is no meaningful discussion to be had.

Now - before anyone jumps on the “but he said it in a really nasty way” cart - let me say that I’m totally fine with someone being banned for being an uncivil **** and if that were the stated reason for the bad I’d have no concern whatsoever with it. I think my concern is the stated reason for the ban was that it was blaming the victim and I can’t see any way for someone not to do so and also to take one of the diametrically opposed positions on the topic at hand. So - if the standard is applied to all posts then the discussion becomes an echo chamber.

In this case the discussion continued with a number of people blaming the victim and wanting to uphold the officer’s side but doing so in a more civil manner. They weren’t banned because they were civil when blaming the victim for their circumstances. Again - I’ve no problem with that. I just have a problem with the stated reason for the ban rather than the actual reason and the fact that there is a difference between the two.

[Mausium]

At the very least, your life.

[Mausium]

@gaxxnet

However, there’s not much point me taking that stance if a counter-stance is prohibited. The discussion just isn’t a discussion under those circumstances.

As with everything in life, it’s not what you say but how you say it.

People who can’t see the difference between a stance and the structure of that stance are always perpetually shocked and pearl-clutching and blame everything but their own inability to communicate properly.

It’s really not as difficult to avoid disagreeing without driving trollies as you claim.

[Falcor]

I’ll remember that you said that.

[jsroberts]

@gaxxnet

I totally see that there is a very big difference in tone between the two but the content is victim-blaming in both (presuming you remove the uncertainty from the first one) and on exactly the same criteria. You either contest that the officer made the right call based on some actions (or perception of actions) on the victims part or you don’t.

I’d say one of the main differences is the reason why someone might agree with these statements. “Michael Brown was a thug who deserved to die.” suggests that even if he were alive, he just got lucky and he shouldn’t be trusted. “I don’t think it’s fair to condemn Wilson because the facts are too muddy. From what I’ve seen, the shooting was justified.” is not saying that MB deserves to be dead, but that if you fight with an officer, you face a very real risk of being shot. From the officer’s perspective, if MB was being very aggressive and if the DW is correct that there was a fight for his gun and MB was advancing at the time of death and DW had reason to believe that he would be attacked again, shooting MB may have been justified. In this opinion, there’s enough uncertainty to reject the claim that MB was definitely murdered as there is enough benefit of the doubt to allow an alternative narrative.

I think this is similar to the difference between “the video of MB at the store show that he was a felon who deserved death” and “the video and the fact that he was walking down the middle of the street with the cigarillos may give some more credibility to DW’s claim that he was acting irrationally”. You’re going to get opposition with any of these views, but I think the softer versions don’t go as far as to say that he deserves what he got - just that a really unfortunate thing happened and that his actions may have been a factor. Police don’t carry guns to dispense justice, but rather to defend themselves and the public. If someone says that DW had a sufficiently credible fear for his safety or that of the public, I don’t think that is blaming the victim to the same extent.

[FunkDaddy]

@gaxxnet

I totally see that there is a very big difference in tone between the two but the content is victim-blaming in both (presuming you remove the uncertainty from the first one) and on exactly the same criteria. You either contest that the officer made the right call based on some actions (or perception of actions) on the victims part or you don’t.

Emphasis mine

There is so, so much more than a difference in tone, which is why you openly required @anon50609448 to change the content of one to make it like the other. But the change you require doesn’t achieve that, not even a little bit.

One is an opinion that the police shooting was justified based on an opinion of the evidence. There are justified police shootings. That’s a fact of life.

The second is not that, not even a little bit and tone has nothing to do with it.

But I’ll leave @anon50609448 to it if she’s willing, because she’s better at explaining it than me.

Can you spot why that one is victim blaming and the other isn’t before she shows you? Without demanding the criteria and content be changed midstream? Give it a shot.

@gaxxnet

It simply isn’t possible to make a reasonable case for the officer without laying some blame at the feet of the victim. If you can’t make a reasonable case for the officer then is there any realistic point in the discussion?

Yes, you can. Justification of one is not blame of the other. It might be difficult for people to realize that distinction & carry on with discussion, but who cares?

You could probably page up, wiki or google to learn these distinctions, but maybe @anon50609448 will lay them out for you.

[HMSGoose]

@marilove

I grew up more around wild jack asses

ohhhhh, that’s why you’re so good on threads like this…

[anon73629133]

@timquinn

If anyone doubts the effectiveness of the moderation here they only need to go to the Facebook version of the same post and read the comments there.

oh my goodness. it’s like a bizarro boing

[OtherMichael]

@timquinn

If anyone doubts the effectiveness of the moderation here they only need to go to the Facebook version of the same post and read the comments there.

Facebook what ??? Linky, please?

[SteampunkBanana]

“Everybody needs a little time away,” I heard her say, “from each other.”

[anon50609448]

@gaxxnet

I totally see that there is a very big difference in tone between the two but the content is victim-blaming in both (presuming you remove the uncertainty from the first one) and on exactly the same criteria. You either contest that the officer made the right call based on some actions (or perception of actions) on the victims part or you don’t.

I don’t agree that both are examples of victim blaming. Maybe the issue is less around the word ‘victim’ and more around the idea of ‘blaming.’ To say that you think Wilson was justified is not at all the same thing as saying you think that Brown got what he deserved, and you can completely say the first without saying the second. I think this comes back to the idea of talking about actions vs. judging people.

To use a very different example, think about how we would discuss a suicide. It’s undeniable that the person who committed suicide caused their own death, but if you came into a thread and said, “Well, Robin Williams just got what was coming to him,” then you could expect a ban for that. Even if you said it in a completely civil way, like, “I understand that people are upset by the death, but it’s only logical: people who kill themselves deserve to die.” It’s not just being civil, people aren’t always that around here either - on either side of any discussion.

But I think @jsroberts has an important point above: If you say that Michael Brown deserved what he got then you are kind of saying that it’s better that it happened. If you say that Michael Brown got shot because he was a thief you are saying that from the moment he took those cigars it was find and dandy to kill him. Once you narrow it down to specific actions in the moments preceding his death that factored into Wilson’s decision to fire, you are talking about how a tragic unfolded, which is completely compatible with the idea that it would have been better if things had ended differently.

[Mausium]

@anon50609448

I don’t agree that both are examples of victim blaming. Maybe the issue is less around the word ‘victim’ and more around the idea of ‘blaming.’

Really, the issue revolves around the callousness of an individual and no matter how they attempt to insincerely ruleslawyer around, they never deny their ill-intention, only try to find out how someone else “got away” with something entirely different.

To them, there’s no lessons to be learned on their part, only a scramble to justify their terrible beliefs.

[suavefucker]

Yea that’s on point. And this may bear repeating:

“To say that you think Wilson was justified is not at all the same thing as saying you think that Brown got what he deserved, and you can completely say the first without saying the second.”

[cub]

isn’t saying one made their own bed victim blaming?

[anon73629133]

@cub

isn’t saying one made their own bed victim blaming?

No.

Being told “that behavior is not welcome here” does not fit most reasonable definitions of “victim.”

[Leila]

@jlw

Dr. Bronner’s Soap

OMG!! You’re right. Dorian Johnson should endorse products!!!