Absolutely. But they’re so mentally unable to process this that they’re talking about themselves in the third person and in the past tense, as if other people did these things. “I would never walk up to you and say those words to you. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
When you’re on the back of a truck with a gun and a mob, it’s easy to “other-ize” humans. One-on-one, as one mother to another? She’s sorry ‘that happened’. But even then, she can’t take responsibility. Other people did those things. Not her.
I would have gotten kicked out of that courtroom for my loud laughter at these #whinylittleb-tches (to use Maher’s hashtag for the President* and those whose racism he’s emboldened).
re: Cory’s recent ruminations on nazi punching… who needs to punch nazis when we can still count on our justice system to punch them for us, according to the law?
This is just a tiny bit of sunshine in a very dark winter. Thank you judge!
I think it’s more of “The kind of person who gets sent to prison” is not me. They were expecting to a have a lifetime of using black people as punching bags for their own amusement and getting away with it, and now going to prison see a future much different from the one they were looking forward to (“That is not me” being the kind of person who suffers these kinds of consequences, because before being arrested I was perfectly OK with what I was doing). They have remorse because they realize now that it wasn’t worth this outcome, and I bet they secretly wish they had done everything exactly the same (instead of not at all) except without brandishing guns since they likely would be walking around free today.
Here’s the thing…they don’t. They think that what they’re doing is right and proper, and NECESSARY. What they realize is that it is illegal and that they face opprobrium from a large segment of society if it is revealed that they do it. The masks they hide behind are, to them, evidence that THEY are the ones being persecuted.[quote=“StoneyMahoney, post:11, topic:95999, full:true”]
Reality check - armed, racist parades through the streets are NOT okay, no matter how many of your friends agree with your point of view, and you’re going to prison. YOU are the bad guys here, and that really shouldn’t be a shock to you, should it? Oh… wow.
[/quote]
No, most of the people who engaged in this armed racist parade got away with it just fine. But getting out of the truck and POINTING a gun at children is too much, even in the South.
I think It isn’t. It is bad character, plain and simple.
What you are seeing here is two people devolve into emotional toddlers, as escape behavior after escape behavior fails to get them off the hook. This is two-facedness, this is the mask of civility stripped off. These are not grown ups.
This is exactly, exactly why we send people to prison.
Unfortunately what they encounter when they get there isn’t particularly rehabilitative, so I fully expect these two to emerge even more full of hate and possibly covered in the tribal marking of the gang they were just convicted of being in.
When driving north on I-71 out of Cincinnati Ohio, you will see a barn by the side of the highway proudly painted with a confederate flag. This is the home of the (now former) Grand Wizard of the local KKK chapter. He was in no way ashamed of who he was or his beliefs.
A guy on my dorm floor in college was a kid from Alabama whose family had been in the Klan since the Civil War. His take on things was that the Klan wasn’t around to persecute all black/Jewish/gay people, just the ones who ‘get out of line’, a sort of citizen’s militia in places where the cops are too lazy/corrupt to do their jobs. He was surprised at how horrified we all were of his inherently racist beliefs, as they didn’t seem strange to him.
I’d have asked him why he doesn’t feel compelled to persecute regular white people who “get out of line”.
Way back in the late 90s one of the Phelps kids either worked at or was somehow involved with the computing scene at KU (Kansas University). You could bump into him on some generic IRC channels. This was before the Westboro Baptist church really was a national thing. He had a similar belief system that “didn’t seem strange to him.”
I lived in the South for a time and noticed that even the most ignorant and obnoxious racist fucktards still had black friends. After some observation I noticed a couple of dichotomies.
One was that the white racists basically had a default setting of “black=evil”, but if they knew the black person personally, they had in effect been vetted and found to be the exception, “not evil”, and therefor different from “the rest of them niggers” and acceptable.
For the most part black racists had a similar default but it played out a little differently depending on the situation. In general the same sort of vetting occurred, but if there was a clear advantage to being seen as friends with a particular white person they would be a lot more flexible about what was acceptable and even defend the most outrageous behaviour.
And then there was a significant percentage of both sides who were as sincerely non-racist as they could be, (social programming not-withstanding), yet still had the same vetting process. Ironically it was for people of their own color. I.e. was it safe in private to show that they were accepting of all or would they get a beat-down for “not showing their true colors”?
It’s this really wierd and fragile system, like two badly out of balance wheels on the same shaft somehow staying in a rhythm that doesn’t destroy the system, yet still horribly dysfunctional.
Him: This resembles what the police do some places, I wonder if their punishment is more for “you can’t do that as a civilian” than “this is a bad thing to do”.
You: patronizing insults
