http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-justice-sessions-idUSKBN1671P3
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Wow, the old “that is not me.” She literally tells them she would never do what she already did.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Wait, what? It didn’t just “happen.” You did it do them.
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All authoritarian followers have split personalities. Outsourcing your thinking inevitably leads to a whole mess of cognitive dissonance.
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I love the post title which sounds like a chapter title from a Henry Fielding novel:
In Which Racists Blubber In Court As Judge Jails Them For Threatening Black Child’s Birthday Party With Shotgun
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That sums it up well. Take a bow, Melz. 
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A lot of people want to be recognized for the good people they imagine they are on the inside, not by the things they’ve actually done.
The thing is, if you’re a “good person” so deep down that it isn’t reflected through your actions then you’re not really a good person. That mean person the rest of the world sees? That’s who you really are.
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I wonder how the doctrine that all that matters is your personal relationship with Jesus Christ and not good works informs this sort of attitude. Not at a conscious level, but when you are surrounded by evangelical speech, how much of that is absorbed even if one isn’t a regular church-goer…
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Ever hear of the concept of “Cheap Grace”?
At the fundamentals of it, the concept is exactly what you’re talking about–the idea that Jesus will forgive you for your sins, without having to actually change your attitudes or behaviors.
(Interestingly… and worryingly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who discussed the concept, was writing in reaction to the attitude of cheap grace in 1930s Germany…)
A wonderfully accurate point from the Wiki page:
The notion of “cheap grace” has been used by Mike Lofgren to criticize the increasing dominance of the Christian right over the Republican Party coupled with what he saw as an increasing disregard within the party for other values: “But there is another, uniquely religious aspect that also comes into play: the predilection of fundamentalist denominations to believe in practice, even if not entirely in theory, in the doctrine of “cheap grace,” a derisive term coined by the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. By that he meant the inclination of some religious adherents to believe that once they had been “saved,” not only would all past sins be wiped away, but future ones, too—so one could pretty much behave as before. Cheap grace is a divine get-out-of-jail-free card. Hence, the tendency of the religious base of the Republican Party to cut some slack for the peccadilloes of candidates who claim to have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and reborn to a new and more Christian life. The religious right is willing to overlook a politician’s individual foibles, no matter how poor an example he or she may make, if they publicly identify with fundamentalist values.”
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All I have to say is this: Scootenfroody.
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Sounds like the kind of philosophical question that might take a few centuries of Catholic/Protestant violence to work out.
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Looks like a little old fashioned minding-one’s-own-business could have saved a lot of trouble here, effort too, taxpayer money, grief and mistrust.
To end it with the words of The best rider of the apocalypse, the big D. Trump: SAD.
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20 years?! Holy shit. That’s quite a lot for something that didn’t get anyone killed or raped. That’s the kind of thing you need to do here to get 20 years. But I know the US harsh harsh sentences, and it’s good to finally see them handed out to racist terrorists, rather than the usual victimless drug possession stuff.
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Stupid thing is Cheap Grace doesn’t require a master theologian do debunk, a teenager fresh from catechism should be able to. Not to discount that a lot of people will chose a path of willful ignorance in that regard, but I think a lot of it also can be seen in the parable of the prodigal son, one of the most well known parables. It’s a powerful story about forgiveness and even the worst sinner has value and avoiding competitive righteousness or jealousness at what other people are able to get away with, but it’s always bothered me that the youngest son’s repentance is assumed or implied, rather than spelled out. He basically gets off with a “I wouldn’t blame you if you disowned me”. Is that repentance, or atonement, or leave you with the feeling he’d do it differently all over again? No. As the parable is usually preached, it’s very easy to come away with the feeling that forgiveness always trumps repentance.
And it’s obvious that this has been the emphasis in Christian Right politics. A very literal interpretation that puts basics about belief and forgiveness above everything else (particularly including admonitions about conspicuous public displays of righteousness). In that worldview, they aren’t being hypocrites, they’re just following the bible.
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why wasn’t this charged as a hate crime? doesn’t the hate crime statute multiply the sentence?
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No, if the authoritarians truly believe in the authority, they won’t experience cognitive dissonance. These people do not seem to have been obeying a literal authority. It’s more like they got off the leash and were being bad for fun, as some children do, and then it turned out very badly because they were grown-ups with trucks, guns, and booze. That would go along with the blubbering.
I suppose if they’re Fundamentalists they could blame demonic possession.
my first thought.
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When we can count on the law punching all Nazis, then there will be no need to punch Nazis.
Unfortunately the Nazis end up un-punched far too often, which is what makes this particular instance so newsworthy.
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Sounds like maybe someone was stepping a bit out of line a bit, socially, and needed to be taken care of. You know, by some civic minded group looking to protect local college society…
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From the video on the news site:
“Because Georgia is one of the only states without a hate crime law, they were charged under the state’s street gang act […]”
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