O_O
I didnt say nor imply any such thing.
Good day.
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I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you did. You did no such thing.
It was meant as a statement of exasperation since I was tired and upset by a lot of the ongoing discussion.
Again, sorry.
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How convenient.
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I don’t know if this alone is enough to be considered a hate crime in Michigan, or if it’s part of a pattern than can be so identified, but here’s a PDF I found from the state itself giving statistics showing that it takes hate crimes seriously: Michigan Hate Crimes in 2007.
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Strictly speaking, I don’t think qualifies as a hate crime, due to that being an elevation of something that’s already a crime due to hate-based motivation.
If this is part of a pattern, it could be something like harassment, which would then be a hate crime.
Sorry, but not understanding how this is inappropriate and antisemitic makes it automatically antisemitic.
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They’re just signaling their intent to be nominated someday to the Supreme Court, like Neil “Fascism Forever” Gorsuch.
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Because as I’ve previously theorized, the conservative mind cannot grasp the basic idea of context.
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My long-term pet theory as well. That and something about a willful refusal to acknowledge and deal with explanatory context.
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I think it’s probably because they view it as trying to weasel around the argument: “I have the right to own a gun, so therefore I have a right to bring it to my kid’s school play. That’s already settled, so all you’re doing by saying there’s some special circumstance is trying to find a way to chip away at my fundamental rights.”
Personally, I blame Abrahamism. It encourages a binary thought process of commanded vs prohibited, rather than a complex and nuanced one based on principle.
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Abrahamism certainly makes sense as one underpinning. “Why, you ask? Because God said so, that’s why.”
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[quote=“apalatn, post:82, topic:94793, full:true”]
Honest question: The Young Republicans have a poor reputation, and from everything I’ve read on BB, a pretty well-deserved one; do they have this sort of reputation among young college students?[/quote]
Going back to prehistoric days, yes, they had that reputation amongst the students on my campus. The term “troll” wasn’t in use then, but they were regarded as a collection of attention-hungry arseholes who weren’t “cool” enough to get into frats and sororities. These bitter HS debate-club nerds (a lifelong condition) also perpetrated obnoxious stunts to show how different and edgy they were (now it’s to show that they’re not “politically correct”). From my conversations with current students it doesn’t sound like much has changed over the years – if anything that perception has hardened into reasonable expectation.
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There was a YR at my college gaming club ten years ago. He made quite the impression: incited so much drama that we ended up loosing nearly a quarter of the group’s population, including nearly all of the women in the group (surprise, surprise), and was a general all-around asshole. I remember playing Settlers of Catan with him once, and he actively cheated in trades, to the point where we called over another member of the club to act as a trusted third party where he was concerned.
This was a fellow who took joy in the simple pleasures of life, like finding that, as the president of the club, which was basically supposed to be a not-serious position (college gaming club, hello!), by the actual letter of the club constitution, he could not be dismissed from his position without his consent, and had full authority to be (ab)used as he saw fit, including getting to verbally abuse the club officers who couldn’t get rid of him, especially the female officers.
The only reason I didn’t join the exodus was that I had already been part of the club for a year while he’d been off in DC as an intern for Dubya, and I had roots in the group by that point.
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It’s wrong all over.
If they’re so young and dumb as to be ignorant of the potential flow and impact of their words, they need education and pity, plus perhaps a good whipping with a strong Michigan leather belt to ensure the lesson sticks in the manner to which they appear to wish us to become acclimatised,
If they are aware of the carry of their words, they cannot claim sanctuary in ignorance, and deserve deep gouging from their souls.
In either circumstance, they are fools and dolts, protected by the carefully constructed laws that they seem so intent on dismantling.
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Welcome to BBS. Please do stick around. We’re all a bit cranky and on edge (well, most of us anyway) lately for lots of reasons but we value open-minded and honest contributers, even ones we disagree with. (To a point. Actual Nazis need not apply. 
)
I don’t think most of us disagree with you on anti-Spam for example (there’s always someone who thinks ad-blockers are always 100% evil, for example). It’s a good idea to be careful with anything that looks like doxxing though. For lots of reasons that are a bit off-topic here.
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Thanks, I am planning on sticking around. I enjoy open-minded debate. 
As far as the doxxing, I promise to be good. 
I came to BB originally years ago as a reader due to Cory’s writing and activism, but never got around to joining the BBS. Too much going on with my life in other regards. Life has changed, better/worse, who can tell at this point.
Thanks for the welcome, I look forward to participating here.
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Not defending these kids…but keep in mind this is CMU <g>: In 2007, four nooses were discovered hanging in a CMU chem lab. The nooses were formed from medical tubing, not rope, and might have been hanging for a week before anyone called attention to them.
When the story broke, I made a disgusted noise in front of two CMU grads. “What’s the big deal?” We went online, where they encountered – for the first time – the horrors of lynching. They were both shocked and sickened, but firmly believed that whoever had done this was ignorant of the historical legacy of the nooses. (“Let’s face it,” said one. “Central’s good for a party, but not all that great for an education.”)
After an 8-month investigation (local and state police, FBI, local and state prosecutors, etc.), the self-reporting perp was not charged – he had simply been reacting to a course’s “excessive” workload (“Let’s just hang ourselves”), and genuinely had no idea there was a broader context to his actions.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all if these YR jamokes share the same inherited ignorance of what lies beyond their white middle-class fishbowl existence.
What would surprise me is Central actually responding to this latest wakeup call with a day or two of U.S. history teach-ins or a 2-credit required freshman seminar on Michigan’s tricky relationship with racism… Our smaller communities tend to be populated by hobbits, with Ted Sandymans far outnumbering the Merrys and Pippins. (F’r’instance in Betsy DeVos’ home town – a city the local Chamber of Commerce used to boast had more churches than gas stations – 1,500 turned out for an ad hoc protest against her nomination; about 5% of the population.)
[edit: weird, couldn’t make a less-than sign html entity stick]
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Nooses being inextricably associated with lynchings is a fairly recent phenomenon, at least outside the South. When I learned how to tie them (around 1990?) it wasn’t uncommon to idly leave one up in an exaggerated expression of frustration — “kill me now please.” Absent any racist context, it never would have occurred to anyone to take it as a threat. It was like having a crucifix on the wall over your headboard, versus burning a cross on a black family’s lawn.
If the person that did this was high at the time, i’d buy that, otherwise no.
Comedy is all about context, that joke works because it deliberately crosses the line of acceptability, it could be safely deployed in a context where everyody understands that nothing being said can be taken seriously and all bets are off. It requires buy in, you actually have to feel a bit bad for making the joke, otherwise, the joke becomes too literal, it actually becomes about killing jews.
This was deployed without context, without buy in and indiscriminately, the joke itself was presented as funny because its true rather than its funny because its mean. The best argument you can make is that the person who did this was unthinking, but that is actually more damning, because then you must accept that the person who put this out there expected it to be funny in and of itself.
Its sad but saying someone’s stupid for making a joke still means that person is stupid and thus incapable of offering defense. Maybe a heartfelt apology, an admission that something was learnt here would let us judge intent fairly, otherwise, the action itself can only be mean spirited and hateful, even without and especially because we cannot judge intent, only appropriateness.
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This is one of those situations where a zero tolerance policy towards student violence is regrettable
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