74x12
Well-Known Member
I'm sure some conservative judges do it too; but don't kid yourself about liberal judges.
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The Dark Side Of American Life
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Aštra’el
Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
In other words, choose a political team to support exclusively, and hope they fix your life for you... to make up for the inability to adapt to one’s environment, a deficiency of personal responsibility, a lack of drive to work hard enough to improve your own life, and a reluctance to accept that humans are not equal now and never will be.
No.
Your life is in your own hands. The world does not care about you or your problems, nor should it. It is on you to improve your own life however you can, however you will. You can not expect your favorite politicians to deliver you from the harsh realities of human existence.
epronovost
Well-Known Member
I would personally say that you are overly simplistic and largely prejudiced about liberals and their views on justice and punishment. Yes, liberals in general oppose harsh prison sentence and retributive justice and instead favor restorative justice and more flexible sentencing. I would like to note that liberals are mostly opposed to long sentences and even the criminalization surrounding so called "victimless crimes" like drug possession and consumption. They do also oppose life in prison without possibility of parole except on some very rare occasions and are against the death penalty. They do favor harsher sentencing on sexual crimes and for high financial crimes though as well as harsher sentences on violent crimes committed with weapons so the idea that liberals are opposed to harsh sentences is overly simplistic. Liberals largely opposes "terminal sentences" and mandatory minimum sentences as well as support the decriminalization of some drugs and drug-related crimes. Though this is far from being universal. Be careful not to make overgeneralization of that sort. It would be equally inadequate to say that conservatives wish to impose harsher sentences on all crimes and criminalize more anti-social behaviors. It's true in some cases, but not in others.
epronovost
Well-Known Member
If you say to someone "I don't care; that's how things are", then you by the same axiom grant the freedom to others to not care about you, your feelings and your beliefs. Why should the people you don't care about, care about your beliefs and values? If a group of people can force you to provide resources for a wider community, you are ****ed. You gave them the permission, even the moral sanction, to adapt to their cruel environment by taking your resources and skills for their own benefit by force. If you don't have to care about them, neither do they and if they don't care about you, nothing prevents them from harming you.
On another note, nothing prevents people from adapting to harsh circumstances by working hard and using their skills to creating and manage public institutions to pool resources and create mandatory networks of help and protection as to "tame" the environment and make it more gentle.
Not our lives, but to manage our complex shared society that has many challenges. Democrats are forward looking and work to plan for future challenges, like fixing infrastructure. Republicans just wait until things break before they recognize it needs fixing. That is inefficient. This is 2022, not 1876.
Like adapt to a pandemic that is out of control because the president denies it's real. People die, businesses go out of business, kids can't go to school. Citizens shouldn't have to adapt to incompetent and corrupt leadership.
Our lives are better when our society functions well. Look up social contract theory. No one lives on their own abilities like you're in wild Alaska. You want clean water. You want safe roads. You want safe food. You want police and fire department ready to help you. You're not on your own.
A more disturbing question is, is a homeless person going to have a better life in prison than outside where he/she will frequently go hungry, won't have a place to take shelter in freezing winters etc.?Never mind, I got it:
Did a Hungry Homeless Man Who Stole $100 Receive a Far Heavier Sentence Than a White-Collar Thief? (snopes.com)
"We were able to confirm Brown pleaded guilty to first degree robbery on 14 January 2009 and was sentenced to 15 years hard labor without the possibility of probation, parole or suspension of sentence, according to the Caddo Parish court clerk’s office. Brown is currently housed at Madison Parish Detention Center until the end of his sentence in 2022. According to a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Brown has the possibility for work release in 2018, meaning if granted he can leave detention to work during daytime hours."
wtf.
PureX
Veteran Member
They are speaking, but all they say is that all this greed and injustice is just the status quo. It's just humans being human. So we should learn to live with it. Even embrace it if we have to, to survive in it.
They are the capos in the death camps. Serving the killers to save their own lives. Because they think that's what the 'smart ones' do. The 'smart ones' survive however they have to. Even if that means enabling the killers. This is what modern "conservatism" has turned into in the U.S., ... selfishness as a mode of survival. Selfishness that they pretend is "freedom" because they don't want to see what they have really become.
Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
That's the American spirit!
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
That's what you get when you depend on an AI like COMPAS.
74x12
Well-Known Member
I don't believe that's accurate. I used to live in California; we used to watch in frustration as judges let rapists go with a slap on the wrist.
epronovost
Well-Known Member
Do you have any example to illustrate this? The only example I could find was the famous case of Brock Turner which we already discussed. I'd like to note that the judge of this particular case lost his job in a recall election and the law on rape was tighten and made more severe to include digital penetration in its definition of rape. The prosecution on that case recommended a six years prison term.
Aštra’el
Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
They might want to reassess their perspective as to crimes and sentences.
Irishman faces 20 years in jail after exposing himself on flight to New York
Irishman faces 20 years in jail after exposing himself on flight to New York
The US is not "the world."
Does it?
When I look at every decade, the darkness is there.
It's hard to discern variation in the level because
the nature of it varies, eg, Jim Crow, military wars,
war on drugs, pandemics, manifest destiny.
The funny thing is that they are capos in a system they developed. Republicans are a party whose primary goal is power. It is political, and they have lost any sense of public service and duty to the citizens of the USA. They and their complicit media spread rhetoric to whip up confusion, hate, and disinformation that ends up hurting everyone, mostly over Covid, masking, vaccinations, and public safety these days. It's morally reprehensible, and it is the fault of conservative voters.
So how does adapting to bankruptcy or living in poverty or seeing the wealthy accumulate more money drive evolution? Or letting the poor not get healthcare until their conditions are life threatening and perhaps they will die off before having children? Explain what you mean in reference to human beings.
PureX
Veteran Member
Conservatives were always trying to conserve the status quo because they were benefiting the most from it. Conservatism has always been a sociological paradigm based on greed and selfishness, even as the adherents claimed they were all about maintaining peace and order and prosperity. And the republican (conservative) party in the U.S. has always been the party of the wealthy; for the wealthy, and for those who wanted very much to become wealthy.
But when the democratic party and it's politicians embraced equality and equal rights as an ideal back in the 1960s and 70s, the racists, sexists, and xenophobes among them couldn't abide it. And so they turned to the only alternative they saw; the republicans, and began looking for excuses to join and support them even though the republican party had no interest in them other than their desire to vote against the democrats (now become the much-hated 'liberals' by these disenfranchised bigots). But slowly and steadily those racist, sexist, xenophobic new republicans began to influence and even to take over the republican party. And their hatred for democratic 'liberals' has since combined with the traditional republican greed and selfishness as a way of life, creating a party that's being fueled by an array of humanity's worst inclinations.
And no one knows how to stop it.
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Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
So doesn't cooperation. Empathy likely comes from the success of social species working together to manage the continuation of life through tumultuous change.
So you ignore trends. I don't.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/things-are-getting-better-really-they-are#