For authors on the left (other than Arundhati Roy and Alan Sokal) that's pretty much the same thing. But what the years of studying something gives one is the ability to respond intelligently to a question or an objection. Scornful dismissal, my dear Dennis, is what is ridiculous, especially at the Brecht Forum where you are not, I am guessing, surrounded by a bunch of right-wingers.
> and therefore know what they're talking about, as opposed to your
> random audience member at the Brecht Forum (where this happened),
> who just pulls stuff out of the air, or some less fragrant locale.
You don't know that.
>
>> Let's head over to the self-service ;-) calculator:
>>
>> Total for violent offences (murder, assault, rape) = 460500
>> Total for ambiguous category (robbery) = 177900
>> Total for arguable non-crimes (drug, property, public offences) =
>> 600900
>
> What's ambiguous about robbery. The dictionary definition: "Law: the
> felonious taking of personal property from someone using force or
> the threat of force." If someone robbed me at gunpoint, I'd want to
> see the guy go to jail. Sorry if that sounds indelicate.
>
> And I wouldn't mind seeing the guy who stole my father's car go to
> jail, either. We had to spend a few thousand bucks to replace it,
> and that fucker is still walking the streets. I'm sure he faced
> challenging circumstances, etc., but you steal a car, you should go
> to jail. And what about someone who breaks into your house and
> steals stuff?
They have more than once. And I don't want them to go to jail. Does that settle the argument, then? Since when did we on the left believe in dictionary definitions and the letter of the law? Jordan wants to know what the difference is between the threat of violence and actual violence is. Or rather, employing every form of evasion he claims that there is no distinction. This, again Dennis, is what is ridiculous.
I am in a good mood today... so I am going to throw in 70% of all robberies to you. That ups your total to 585030, without adjusting for wrongful convictions and so on. Still short of the 600k who might well be found innocent (to borrow a word from the anonymous woman) by real left criteria that looks beyond the current legal system and its definitions.
> Most poor people don't break into houses or steal cars. In fact,
> poor people are more likely to be victimized than nonpoor people.
> How about fraud? That's a property offense too. Shed a tear for
> Bernie Madoff, do you?
You don't get it. The point is not about individuals.
>> We can look at it another way: unless you are given to some sort of
>> crude biologism or equivalent over-simplification, you are
>> confronted by the paradox of US incarceration rates which match
>> some of the most repressive regimes in the world -- the very
>> regimes w.r.t which we, including writers of great books, would
>> quickly proclaim innocence for a good number of those it imprisons.
>> Yes?
>
> No. Most of the people behind bars committed the crimes of which
> they were convicted.
Most of the people behind bars, last I read, the vast majority. In a real
> That makes them not "innocent."
Yeah like Gandhi. Nelson Mandela. Of course the next shallow response (from someone) will be an indignant: "are you claiming that the dude who stole my diamond ring is a Gandhi?". No, I am not. What I am claiming is that these sort of inferences ("they did something for which they were committed" -> "they are not innocent") are contentless in the context of left analysis. Worse, they are part of the tools of oppression.
> But like I said a little while ago, American society produces such
> people in very large numbers, through poverty, racism, and violence.
> They're not intrinsically bad, though there are almost certain to be
> violent and otherwise nasty people even in the best possible society.
That's a bit impenetrable to me... if they are not intrinsically bad, and they are the product of a society steeped in poverty, racism, and violence, why is it inevitable that they will be violent and nasty even in the best possible society?
And further, this claim that American society is so vile, so degenerate, that it produces an overabundance of violent and nasty people: here hold this for me will ya... its a might heavy sack, and the label says "burden of proof".
> If you run around demanding the abolition of prisons, most people
> will think you're either risible or dangerous. That's ok, I suppose,
> if your approach to politics is that you keep struggling on in the
> hope that something, someday is going to turn up, and persuasion has
> nothing to do with it. If you don't think that, you want to worry
> about sounding risible or dangerous.
My approach to politics is to post on mailing lists!!! I did pay good money to move up from there to sounding risible and dangerous! ;-)
>
>> --ravi, way over quota
>
> You won't go to jail. This time.
>
Awesome. And if you promise to join us for lunch, I promise to tamp down on the violence and nastiness!
--ravi
-- Support something better than yourself ;-) PeTA => http://peta.org/ Greenpeace => http://greenpeace.org/ If you have nothing better to read: http://platosbeard.org/