Schoolyard bullying in those days was good for a trip to the principal's office, and maybe detention for a few afternoons.
No, it's actually a felony to gather a mob to attack someone with a pair of scissors because you think he's gay. It's not a "schoolyard prank", it was an act of gaybashing that apparently had a long-term effect on everyone but the sociopath who instigated it.
Rather than fight the battle over issues, it is easier to just attack an opponent's character.
Character is an issue. I mean, what else is there? Romney can't be judged on his record, because he has a record of taking both sides of all positions.
I dunno, I guess I don't see how you can argue that the fact that a Presidential candidate formed a mob to assault a teenager for appearing to be gay is just some trivial issue. You know, most people manage to get through their teenage years without fomenting a hate crime.
It was also done 40 years ago when the normal opinion of gay people was unfavorable to say the least.
Great, but Mitt Romney isn't running to be the President of 40 years ago, he's running to be the President of 2013. And plenty of people 40 years ago never formed a mob to assault a kid for looking like he was gay. In fact, the vast majority of people did not do that. And in particular, Barack Obama did not do that.
A President who had, 40 years ago, formed a lynch mob to kill a black man accused of rape would certainly have been following the social norms of the time, as well. But having done such a thing 40 years ago would be inherently disqualifying for the Presidency in 2013. There's only one President and 375 million Americans; I don't have any problem restricting the office to those whose sense of equality and social justice has been ahead of the curve.
Him and some friends tackled a dude and cut his hair. That's what happened.
Right, and that's assault and battery with a deadly weapon. We're not overstating anything at all; what Romney did was incite a mob to commit assault and battery with a deadly weapon. It's just that simple. There's no "safe" way to hold somebody down and cut their hair off with scissors; somebody kicks this way or bucks that way, and those scissors might have winded up in that kid's eye socket. That's why the crimes of assault and battery exist - it's actually not ok to do stuff like that, because of the risk of injury.
Stop it...
Just hypothetical. Your two criteria for dismissing the event were that it happened 40 years ago, and that it represented popular attitudes towards minorities at the time.
But that's not an excuse. Some things are wrong no matter what people thought at the time.
But realistically, our opinions at 18 can change over the years.
What's the evidence Romney's have changed? This seems to be, in fact, the only thing he's never changed his mind about.
So much so that you can champion a cause with even greater concern having once known the true nature of being opposed to it.
And it's your contention that Romney has now become a champion of gay rights? What's your evidence for that?
I don't understand someone who thinks it's cool, or whatever, no big deal, to get a mob to tackle a guy, hold him down, and wave a fairly dangerous sharp object around his face and eyes. Is it some kind of "no harm, no foul" to you? Because it turns out, the guy actually was harmed by it.
I once got choked out by a dude in the park cuz he wanted to show everyone that the sleeper hold worked and I was the smallest one there. I'm not going to call that attempted murder.
I didn't say Romney was guilty of attempted murder. I said that he committed an assault with a deadly weapon, because that's what happened.
You were assaulted, too. Dudes in the park shouldn't just come up to you and choke you out. That's not something that it's ok for people to do, Oni!
Well, I don't know if you can say that just because he doesn't support gay marriage. My mom doesn't support gay marriage.
I don't get it, I guess. So it'd be ok for Mitt Romney to get a mob together to bully me, but it wouldn't be ok for me to use the law to fight back?
The notion that the victims of bullies have to sit there and take it, that they can't be allowed to do anything to fight back - that's an impulse of yours I just don't understand, Oni.
It's assault with a deadly weapon because it meets, in every respect, the characteristics of that class of crimes. Your argument seems to be that it's not technically an assault because it happened 40 years ago, or that the actors involved were all rich kids at prep school, or something. I'm not really clear on your legal reasoning, there.
But, yeah, there's your impulse - we couldn't possibly do something so unfair as to bully the 18-year-old son of a governor and his buddies for some prep school pranks, right?
You'd be a real pussy in my opinion if you couldn't make the effort to stand up to some bullies, at a prep school mind you, and instead run to the authorities.
Would I? When I fight, I fight to win - not to score Man Points. Fighting to win means fighting with every tool at my disposal. And if one of the tools I had at my disposal are a bunch of bruisers in blue with guns, backed up all the way to the steps of the courthouse by a massive institution called "the law", well, I fail to see how that's any different than when Mitt Romney decides that he's not man enough to cut another kid's hair all by himself and incites a mob to help him do it.
I'm saying fight back.
And I'm saying that one of the ways I would fight back is to get some big burly men to fight for me, so that when I strike I do so with overwhelming force, and I fail to see any way in which overwhelming my opponent with numbers and force is any different than what Romney did.
OR... you can man up and hit me back.
In a fistfight, I might just do that, or I might pull my piece and blow your ass away. It would depend on whether I thought I was in a friendly test of skill and strength, or a fight for my life. If you showed up with overwhelming numbers and brandished a deadly weapon, guess what, I wouldn't "hit you back" - I'd fight with every tool at my disposal to destroy you, including the police, courts of law, legal instruments, knives, guns, whatever. Hell I'd go after your credit rating and rape your mother in front of you if I thought it was something I had to do to eliminate you as a threat.
But assault can be me pushing you in the mall. Are you gonna run to the cops and yell out assault in that situation too?
Yeah, maybe. How about you don't fucking push me at the mall, and neither of us will have to find out?
The way to stop that is to handle it like a man and fight back.
Getting the law involved is one of the ways that you fight back.
I mean, what you're saying makes no sense. If it's a fight, why wouldn't I fight to win? And if I'm fighting to win, why on Earth would I be so stupid as to take any weapon at all off the table? If you come at me, you better fucking believe that all the force I can muster, beg, borrow, and steal is going to crush you like a kitten in Delaware.
I stand up to bullies and I'm quite proud of that.
So why tie one of your hands behind your back when you do it? Why on Earth would someone as loathsome as a bully merit that kind of honorable consideration?
I agree with you Oni, if schoolboys tried to trim my hair, I'd certainly fight back.
Sure. Why not fight back with every tool at your disposal, including the law?
From the responses you been getting, it SEEMS people like Rahvin, if they ever witnessed their girlfriend being violently and repeatedly gang-raped, I'd imagine they would just cower submissively, accepting the assault while "You memorize faces and names, and you call the cops" afterwards.
How lucky their girlfriends are.
So you'd fight back with your fists - which almost certainly won't work - and eschew fighting back with the legal means at your disposal, which includes big guys with guns who could put those rapists away for life or even put them in a grave?
How lucky your girlfriend must be, that you'd rather die on a hill than make a difference.
There's much I don't understand about you, Dronester, including your obsession with principle over results.
I think the emotional toll of doing absolutely nothing while my girlfriend was being attacked would be too hellish to live with.
Who said anything about doing nothing?
I don't believe Oni ever stated that either.
That's exactly what Oni has stated, and what you stated - that you both consider it a supreme act of pussying out to get the cops involved when people assault you or your girlfriend, and that when Mitt Romney gets a bunch of his boarding school asshole buddies together to attack you with scissors, it's just not cricket to do anything but try and fail to fight off five or six guys with nothing but your bare fists.
Me? Yeah, maybe I fight them with my fists. Or maybe with a knife or a gun. Maybe I succeed, or maybe I fail and they leave me bruised and battered. Guess what, leaving me alive was their biggest mistake, because now I'm coming back with as much force as I can muster. Maybe that's ten of my buddies, each with a tube sock full of quarters. Or maybe that's the monolithic force of law that I can bring down on them, because they've "technically" - that is, actually - committed assault and battery with a deadly weapon.
I don't understand how you seem to sway so many participants in this forum Crash.
Because I'm apparently better at reading statements in plain English than you are, and it shows. Nobody thinks you're the one who knows what he's talking about, because don't do the work that would take.
BTW, I am saddened that Kucinich has recently decided to stop running for office. It seems you have joy in that.
I have not in my life ever given two shits about Dennis Kucinich, and to the extent that he's been One Of Our Guys, I'm actually somewhat dismayed that he's giving up. I offer him only as an example of what is accomplished when one is completely unwilling to work with one's own side, when one makes perfect the enemy of good enough, when one binds themselves up in a straightjacket of unwavering principle - absolutely nothing.
This doesn't seem to be "fighting back" in the way Oni or I are asserting.
It's fighting back with the cops, which have guns and outnumber the rapists, which strikes me as likely to be more effective than Rahvin's pair of fists to their knives and brickbats, or whatever.
But again, you're not actually interested in saving your girlfriend; you're interested in dying on a hill for your principles. Or, more accurately, in getting other people to die on a hill for your principles. (You could never be troubled to do it yourself.)
Thank you for conceding that "fighting back" with cops is not the way Oni and I are asserting.
I'm not sure what you think I'm conceding. I agree that fighting back with the cops is exactly not "fighting back" according to you and Oni. Earlier you denied having said that, so thank you for conceding that you are, in fact, taking that position.
But that's what I'm getting at, however. Why don't you consider it "fighting back"? Swinging the law at somebody is swinging a pretty big stick. If you're in a fight for your life, or a fight for someone else's life, why wouldn't you swing the biggest stick you can get your hands on?
Re: Superior reading comprehension skills? Grand irony
Yeah, unlike yours and Rahvin's other false accusations above, this time Crash, you sure quoted my ENTIRE post Message 188 "EXACTLY."
I guess I'm puzzled by your sarcasm, here, because I did quote your message 191 in its entirety, unchanged. Here, I'll do it again:
quote:Thank you for conceding that "fighting back" with cops is not the way Oni and I are asserting.
I don't recall claiming that I quoted 188 in its entirety, but it was only four lines. I quoted the part that was relevant to my argument; your own post appears on the same page so it's hardly possible for me to play a context trick. Anyone can just scroll up and see what you said.
Look, you understand that your posts here are persistent, right? That if you say something, and then deny saying it, we can just go back to the first thing and see that you're lying, right?
Seriously Crash, I remain bewildered by your "ability" to sway people on the forum.
Probably because you're also bewildered by the notion that your posts here form a persistent record of your statements. I dunno, seems like a pretty simple idea to me.
I haven't heard much from the right about Obama admitting to using cocaine.
Really? I'm pretty sure I hear about it constantly:
Not just talking about it, but writing about it, too:
quote:In spite of all the mean, though true, things I say about Obama, I can't help feeling sorry for him. After all, his Kenyan father deserted him when he was just a baby. Then, because that had worked out so well, Obama's ditzy mother then married a Muslim and moved to Indonesia. Eventually, Obama and his mother were deserted by his stepfather, which led to Obama's mother dumping 10-year-old Obama on his white grandparents in Hawaii. It was there that young Barack took up basketball, marijuana and cocaine, while seeking out radicals, revolutionaries and Communists as pals and mentors.
The truth is, with that kind of dysfunctional background, Barack Obama could easily have turned out to be a serial killer. Still, one can't help thinking that if only he had, today he'd probably be in prison, instead of the Oval Office, and none of us would have to worry about what awful thing he's going to do next.
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