Medium’s comment system is a funny thing. As the OG Medium crew will remember, it’s possible to “clap” for comments that you like. The writer of the comment will then get a notification, letting them know that somebody appreciated what they wrote. And occasionally, like today, this means I’ll be happily reminded of a conversation I had months ago.
You are more of a lawyer than KL. 95% of the time you read my mind and say it 10 times better. Thank you for your decision to write with such eloquence and with such independence of thought. Mike the lawyer. By the way, there is an old saw among lawyers: "Simply to assume makes an ass of u and me." That is what KL is doing here.
"By the way, there is an old saw among lawyers: 'Simply to assume makes an ass of u and me.'"
😁 I was really surprised to see this "thought" process being advocated by a lawyer. I can't imagine she's been through law school without having ideas like these very throughly refuted. At least I hope so!!
Steve, lawyers are people too with all the cognitive biases and emotional attachments to preexisting narratives that all the rest of us have. Some are better than others at keeping them under control. Others simply don’t want to.
The other thing about lawyers is that at least the courtroom litigator type are professional rationalizers. They are hired to frame a narrative around a set of facts that serves their client’s agenda.
In short, I’m not at all surprised at KL.
I don’t know where you get your “fairness” gene Steve, but in you it is very highly developed. I am doing my best to spread the word about your writing and intellectual and moral prowess.
You are brilliant! I'm glad that there are still real thinkers! I have the feeling that thinking is actually soon "racist". Who does not adopt the majority opinion or dares to ask a critical question, is branded as a racist.
It is true that we should listen to each other instead of just trying to shout down the others. Only if we put ourselves and our opinions to the test again and again, we come a little closer to the truth. If others critically question us, then this acts as a process accelerator, provided that one is willing to listen to the criticism.
The problem for thinkers is that they often stand alone. Since they each form their own opinion, they cannot simply be assigned to a group. This independence confuses and frightens many people, so that thinkers are finally seen as a danger from both sides. The conclusion of both groups is then: These thinkers are "racists"....
"Since they each form their own opinion, they cannot simply be assigned to a group. This independence confuses and frightens many people, so that thinkers are finally seen as a danger from both sides."
Very insightful and true I think. Figuring out what somebody thinks off they deviate from the script from "their side" is harder than simply deciding they're the enemy/a racist/a TERF/a Right/Left-ist.
Here's to returning to world where simply thinking doesn't scare people.
It's sad that a lawyer can be so illogical, but I've seen a freshly-minted one doing something really dumbshit for similar reasons - taking part in a protest in downtown Toronto a few years ago over an alleged police killing of a black woman who fell from the balcony of a high-rise. No one witnessed it nor were there any cameras present and the idea that she was 'pushed by the cops' came about via an early family accusation, who then shortly after walked back on that and said no, they couldn't say they saw their loved one pushed. But Twitter Toronto was *aflame* with the murder story.
As the truth emerged it became clear she wasn't murdered; she was alone when she fell. She'd had a lot of acknowledged mental health problems and she'd barricaded herself on the balcony by blocking it with a heavy air conditioning unit. So she either fell or she jumped and we will probably never know which.
What pissed me off is the protest occurred at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020. Baby Lawyer had just graduated; his lawyer mother is a friend of mine. All these fucking idiots staged a protest when Toronto had gone into lockdown and social distancing and masking mode. The protesters, he reported, were masked and did their best to stay six feet away like responsible progressives; but when they got to Spadina Circle it became impossible. The thing is, *the protest was premature* at a time when we all needed to stay the fuck away from each other, and I told him that, because it didn't take long for the truth to come out, that the police were there but they couldn't get to her any more than the family could. The police were mostly guilty of not knowing how to handle a mental illness issue properly, which is as well-established here with other cases as it is in many other parts of North America.
This wasn't a George Floyd knee-on-the-neck protest; while those made me cringe for *pandemic* reasons as I saw them on TV I recognized that they were extremely justified and necessary; cops (too often) and pandemics don't care about lives. This was "dumbass protest because I read on Twitter she was murdered by cops so it must be true". Even if they hadn't scrunched up at Spadina Circle I'd have been pissed; *it wasn't necessary* at a time when we needed to not be congregating publicly.
I'm just finishing up "The Book of Matthew" about the Matthew Shepard 'gay hate crime' crucifixion-on-the-fence thing and it's just appalling how much it was NOT a hate crime (or a crucifixion) but a mass collusive coverup of a drug deal gone bad at the crux, and a dealer (Matthew) who 'knew too much' about something going in in the Wyoming meth trade and who *was afraid for his life* days before the attack because of the people he'd pissed off in the drug ring. The 'gay panic attack' was a story the two perps and their girlfriends cooked up to mask the whole drug involvement and dealing experience (the killer was a meth dealer too, like Shepard) and the media just ran with it without doing a lot of investigation. Plus there was a coverup with the police as some of them were, not surprisingly, involved in the meth world themselves. Oh and one other fun fact: Shepard and the killer had had sex several times; the dealer was bisexual and Shepard wasn't the only man he'd ever had sex with. No one had ever known him to be homophobic.
So when people damn the 'lamestream media', well, there are plenty of ways you can point to the MSM and observe how they no longer do their jobs with the high journalistic standards I remember from when I was a journalism student in the Jurassic Age (the '80s) and we were taught standards that are clearly no longer being adhered to today.
The left doesn't help either, latching onto an early narrative with the tenacity of a Jack Russell terrier regardless of any facts or points that come out later. Guilty of racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc. until proven innocent. And there is no evidence they'll accept that proves innocence.
"So when people damn the 'lamestream media', well, there are plenty of ways you can point to the MSM and observe how they no longer do their jobs with the high journalistic standards"
Oh God this is so true. I understand, at least in part, why distrust in the media is so high right now.. They're absolutely complicit in this trend of assuming the narrative of a story before the facts are known. I'd just have hoped that a lawyer might be capable of a higher standard.😅
Still, the distrust is too widespread. I always tell people, "Run your sources through Media Bias Fact Checker, or check out the centre of their spectrum to see who's least biased. You'll find a high commitment to factualism goes hand in hand with it."
Your back and forth with KL makes me nostalgic for the nights as a kid when I’d see Dan Rather on the telly. Hell, after more than 2 decades spent in sales, customer service, and tech support, I feel like I don’t even know how to have a real conversation anymore. Everything, for so long, has been about “overcoming the No” that even a normal conversation about where to get or what to have for dinner can, for me, turn into a debate about why something is better than something else and why the other person should agree with me and I hate that.
Having a conversation that is as open and civil and exploratory within a subject as what you and KL had is something I miss desperately and long for again. But how to detox from the mindset of “overcome the No” from years spent in an industry meant to take a person’s mind and change it to what you want it to be is something I struggle with daily. I envy you your ability to engage in such open and free discourse where you state your piece and viewpoint without trying to make the other person feel somehow wrong for theirs.
That was a lot of rambling. I hope that made sense.
"That was a lot of rambling. I hope that made sense."
😁 Yes, it made perfect sense. And I agree. It's always so nice to have a conversation where we don't see eye to eye but we don't get into a fight. My faith in humanity gets a little top-up every time.
Very well reasoned Steve QJ. I very much appreciate you saying that it very well may have been racist, but that we shoudln't assume it was without evidence. I tried to make similar argumets at the high school where I teach when the horrible violence agianst the folks in the massage parlors came up, but it was very difficult to say the least.
"I tried to make similar argumets at the high school where I teach when the horrible violence agianst the folks in the massage parlors came up, but it was very difficult to say the least."
Haha, yep, sadly you'll face significant pushback for acknowledging nuance nowadays. People get scared by questions that don't have black and white (sometimes quite literally) answers. Yet here we are, a year later, and no racist motive has been found.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for many years. In 1969, while I was in Vietnam, the Marine Corps started recording "interracial incidents." A light green Marine and another light green Marine, or a dark green Marine and another dark green Marine could get pissed off and fight and it was a fight. But if a light green and dark green Marine had the same beef, and got in a fight, it was an interracial incident. While not explicitly stated that it was about racism, it was implicit. It led to where we are ib your story.
The thing is, assumptions are easy. Yesterday, I was in a sporting goods store. A large group of black people came in and spread out beyond the capacity of the employees to monitor them. In a few minutes they reassembled and went out the door without buying anything. A remark from someone made it clear that they were concerned about shoplifting. Was it a racist assumption or the "tactic"? Maybe a bit of both. By the same token, if the people in question just split up to speed a search and they left when they didn't find what they were looking for, might they have considered the profiling a microaggression? I could understand that.
There's a store my wife won't shop in anymore because she was followed around. In her mind, they thought the little brown lady (her) might try to steal something. Was she right? Who knows? Assumptions are easy. Maybe they wanted to be ready to assist her. Improbable but possible in that store.
"But if a light green and dark green Marine had the same beef, and got in a fight, it was an interracial incident"
Yeah, this is infuriating. All this does is further the lie that there's something fundamentally different about us because of the colour of our skin.
I've definitely been in stores many times where I've been blatantly followed around by security. It's annoying to say the least. And some, I wouldn't go back to either. I just don't waste my time wondering whether it's racism or not. What do I gain if it is and I guess right? I'd just rather put people who don't really affect my life out of my mind.
While we need reminders to check our presumptions I don't think it's possible or even useful to suppress them entirely.
With Trump missing no opportunity to refer to COVID as the "China virus," with many publicized attacks on Asians that were indisputably racially motivated, a multiple murder by a white man is very possibly another one. Resentment against masks and vaccinations is intense, however irrational and frustrated hate looks for targets.
There's a war on against presumption, generalization and many other logically useful albeit not 100% accurate modes of thought. I see this as a lot more dangerous than a hasty presumption. Those people were murdered.
"I don't think it's possible or even useful to suppress them entirely."
I'm not talking about suppressing them, I'm talking about recognising them as presumptions and not treating them as fact. If you get into a fight with an Asian guy tomorrow, should we just proceed on the basis that you're a racist? Or should we be smart enough to try to understand your actual motivations?
Nobody is disputing that those people were murdered. It's a question of trying to accurately understand *why* it happened.
No of course you aren't seeking to suppress them but many, many are. I find your counsel to examine presumptions carefully to be sound advice but I know you've run across the SJW creed that "all generalizations are bad," whereas in my view generalization is the most potent tool we have for making sense of the world.
I mentioned on FB that I was considering rehoming one of my parrots but really didn't want to hand him over to a Vietnamese family. I was attacked for the "racist" assumption that "all" Vietnamese are indifferent to animal neglect (some of them didn't know I live here and thought I was bringing them into mention for no reason but bigotry).. But the reality that Asian cultures in general and Vietnamese in particular don't share the love of animals so common in the US ands UK is a Statistically Defensible Presumption (I use this phrase a LOT); this is a place where people eat dogs, knowing full well that every one of them is a stolen pet.
If we're inhibited from stating objective fact, we're in big trouble.
You have a far lower chance than I of getting malignant melanoma; the people I live with have about twice your chance. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptionally light-skinned African Americans whose susceptibility is as grave as mine, but on average ... etc. There are people who will bare their teeth at the opening sentence of this paragraph. You aren't one of them.
You are more of a lawyer than KL. 95% of the time you read my mind and say it 10 times better. Thank you for your decision to write with such eloquence and with such independence of thought. Mike the lawyer. By the way, there is an old saw among lawyers: "Simply to assume makes an ass of u and me." That is what KL is doing here.
"By the way, there is an old saw among lawyers: 'Simply to assume makes an ass of u and me.'"
😁 I was really surprised to see this "thought" process being advocated by a lawyer. I can't imagine she's been through law school without having ideas like these very throughly refuted. At least I hope so!!
Steve, lawyers are people too with all the cognitive biases and emotional attachments to preexisting narratives that all the rest of us have. Some are better than others at keeping them under control. Others simply don’t want to.
The other thing about lawyers is that at least the courtroom litigator type are professional rationalizers. They are hired to frame a narrative around a set of facts that serves their client’s agenda.
In short, I’m not at all surprised at KL.
I don’t know where you get your “fairness” gene Steve, but in you it is very highly developed. I am doing my best to spread the word about your writing and intellectual and moral prowess.
You are brilliant! I'm glad that there are still real thinkers! I have the feeling that thinking is actually soon "racist". Who does not adopt the majority opinion or dares to ask a critical question, is branded as a racist.
It is true that we should listen to each other instead of just trying to shout down the others. Only if we put ourselves and our opinions to the test again and again, we come a little closer to the truth. If others critically question us, then this acts as a process accelerator, provided that one is willing to listen to the criticism.
The problem for thinkers is that they often stand alone. Since they each form their own opinion, they cannot simply be assigned to a group. This independence confuses and frightens many people, so that thinkers are finally seen as a danger from both sides. The conclusion of both groups is then: These thinkers are "racists"....
"Since they each form their own opinion, they cannot simply be assigned to a group. This independence confuses and frightens many people, so that thinkers are finally seen as a danger from both sides."
Very insightful and true I think. Figuring out what somebody thinks off they deviate from the script from "their side" is harder than simply deciding they're the enemy/a racist/a TERF/a Right/Left-ist.
Here's to returning to world where simply thinking doesn't scare people.
It's sad that a lawyer can be so illogical, but I've seen a freshly-minted one doing something really dumbshit for similar reasons - taking part in a protest in downtown Toronto a few years ago over an alleged police killing of a black woman who fell from the balcony of a high-rise. No one witnessed it nor were there any cameras present and the idea that she was 'pushed by the cops' came about via an early family accusation, who then shortly after walked back on that and said no, they couldn't say they saw their loved one pushed. But Twitter Toronto was *aflame* with the murder story.
As the truth emerged it became clear she wasn't murdered; she was alone when she fell. She'd had a lot of acknowledged mental health problems and she'd barricaded herself on the balcony by blocking it with a heavy air conditioning unit. So she either fell or she jumped and we will probably never know which.
What pissed me off is the protest occurred at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020. Baby Lawyer had just graduated; his lawyer mother is a friend of mine. All these fucking idiots staged a protest when Toronto had gone into lockdown and social distancing and masking mode. The protesters, he reported, were masked and did their best to stay six feet away like responsible progressives; but when they got to Spadina Circle it became impossible. The thing is, *the protest was premature* at a time when we all needed to stay the fuck away from each other, and I told him that, because it didn't take long for the truth to come out, that the police were there but they couldn't get to her any more than the family could. The police were mostly guilty of not knowing how to handle a mental illness issue properly, which is as well-established here with other cases as it is in many other parts of North America.
This wasn't a George Floyd knee-on-the-neck protest; while those made me cringe for *pandemic* reasons as I saw them on TV I recognized that they were extremely justified and necessary; cops (too often) and pandemics don't care about lives. This was "dumbass protest because I read on Twitter she was murdered by cops so it must be true". Even if they hadn't scrunched up at Spadina Circle I'd have been pissed; *it wasn't necessary* at a time when we needed to not be congregating publicly.
I'm just finishing up "The Book of Matthew" about the Matthew Shepard 'gay hate crime' crucifixion-on-the-fence thing and it's just appalling how much it was NOT a hate crime (or a crucifixion) but a mass collusive coverup of a drug deal gone bad at the crux, and a dealer (Matthew) who 'knew too much' about something going in in the Wyoming meth trade and who *was afraid for his life* days before the attack because of the people he'd pissed off in the drug ring. The 'gay panic attack' was a story the two perps and their girlfriends cooked up to mask the whole drug involvement and dealing experience (the killer was a meth dealer too, like Shepard) and the media just ran with it without doing a lot of investigation. Plus there was a coverup with the police as some of them were, not surprisingly, involved in the meth world themselves. Oh and one other fun fact: Shepard and the killer had had sex several times; the dealer was bisexual and Shepard wasn't the only man he'd ever had sex with. No one had ever known him to be homophobic.
So when people damn the 'lamestream media', well, there are plenty of ways you can point to the MSM and observe how they no longer do their jobs with the high journalistic standards I remember from when I was a journalism student in the Jurassic Age (the '80s) and we were taught standards that are clearly no longer being adhered to today.
The left doesn't help either, latching onto an early narrative with the tenacity of a Jack Russell terrier regardless of any facts or points that come out later. Guilty of racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc. until proven innocent. And there is no evidence they'll accept that proves innocence.
"So when people damn the 'lamestream media', well, there are plenty of ways you can point to the MSM and observe how they no longer do their jobs with the high journalistic standards"
Oh God this is so true. I understand, at least in part, why distrust in the media is so high right now.. They're absolutely complicit in this trend of assuming the narrative of a story before the facts are known. I'd just have hoped that a lawyer might be capable of a higher standard.😅
Still, the distrust is too widespread. I always tell people, "Run your sources through Media Bias Fact Checker, or check out the centre of their spectrum to see who's least biased. You'll find a high commitment to factualism goes hand in hand with it."
mediabiasfactcheck.com
Your back and forth with KL makes me nostalgic for the nights as a kid when I’d see Dan Rather on the telly. Hell, after more than 2 decades spent in sales, customer service, and tech support, I feel like I don’t even know how to have a real conversation anymore. Everything, for so long, has been about “overcoming the No” that even a normal conversation about where to get or what to have for dinner can, for me, turn into a debate about why something is better than something else and why the other person should agree with me and I hate that.
Having a conversation that is as open and civil and exploratory within a subject as what you and KL had is something I miss desperately and long for again. But how to detox from the mindset of “overcome the No” from years spent in an industry meant to take a person’s mind and change it to what you want it to be is something I struggle with daily. I envy you your ability to engage in such open and free discourse where you state your piece and viewpoint without trying to make the other person feel somehow wrong for theirs.
That was a lot of rambling. I hope that made sense.
"That was a lot of rambling. I hope that made sense."
😁 Yes, it made perfect sense. And I agree. It's always so nice to have a conversation where we don't see eye to eye but we don't get into a fight. My faith in humanity gets a little top-up every time.
Very well reasoned Steve QJ. I very much appreciate you saying that it very well may have been racist, but that we shoudln't assume it was without evidence. I tried to make similar argumets at the high school where I teach when the horrible violence agianst the folks in the massage parlors came up, but it was very difficult to say the least.
"I tried to make similar argumets at the high school where I teach when the horrible violence agianst the folks in the massage parlors came up, but it was very difficult to say the least."
Haha, yep, sadly you'll face significant pushback for acknowledging nuance nowadays. People get scared by questions that don't have black and white (sometimes quite literally) answers. Yet here we are, a year later, and no racist motive has been found.
I wish more of the contributors on Medium were this measured. I don’t just read my issues of The Commentary, I SAVE them.
Here's one. Long, but you'll be glad that you read it if you do. https://asgussow-69031.medium.com/the-test-your-trayvon-my-trayvon-our-trayvon-88517d6f1a37
Thanks for this. Followed him on Medium. Check me out at https://cyberwyrdmedia.com/
This has been a pet peeve of mine for many years. In 1969, while I was in Vietnam, the Marine Corps started recording "interracial incidents." A light green Marine and another light green Marine, or a dark green Marine and another dark green Marine could get pissed off and fight and it was a fight. But if a light green and dark green Marine had the same beef, and got in a fight, it was an interracial incident. While not explicitly stated that it was about racism, it was implicit. It led to where we are ib your story.
The thing is, assumptions are easy. Yesterday, I was in a sporting goods store. A large group of black people came in and spread out beyond the capacity of the employees to monitor them. In a few minutes they reassembled and went out the door without buying anything. A remark from someone made it clear that they were concerned about shoplifting. Was it a racist assumption or the "tactic"? Maybe a bit of both. By the same token, if the people in question just split up to speed a search and they left when they didn't find what they were looking for, might they have considered the profiling a microaggression? I could understand that.
There's a store my wife won't shop in anymore because she was followed around. In her mind, they thought the little brown lady (her) might try to steal something. Was she right? Who knows? Assumptions are easy. Maybe they wanted to be ready to assist her. Improbable but possible in that store.
"But if a light green and dark green Marine had the same beef, and got in a fight, it was an interracial incident"
Yeah, this is infuriating. All this does is further the lie that there's something fundamentally different about us because of the colour of our skin.
I've definitely been in stores many times where I've been blatantly followed around by security. It's annoying to say the least. And some, I wouldn't go back to either. I just don't waste my time wondering whether it's racism or not. What do I gain if it is and I guess right? I'd just rather put people who don't really affect my life out of my mind.
While we need reminders to check our presumptions I don't think it's possible or even useful to suppress them entirely.
With Trump missing no opportunity to refer to COVID as the "China virus," with many publicized attacks on Asians that were indisputably racially motivated, a multiple murder by a white man is very possibly another one. Resentment against masks and vaccinations is intense, however irrational and frustrated hate looks for targets.
There's a war on against presumption, generalization and many other logically useful albeit not 100% accurate modes of thought. I see this as a lot more dangerous than a hasty presumption. Those people were murdered.
"I don't think it's possible or even useful to suppress them entirely."
I'm not talking about suppressing them, I'm talking about recognising them as presumptions and not treating them as fact. If you get into a fight with an Asian guy tomorrow, should we just proceed on the basis that you're a racist? Or should we be smart enough to try to understand your actual motivations?
Nobody is disputing that those people were murdered. It's a question of trying to accurately understand *why* it happened.
No of course you aren't seeking to suppress them but many, many are. I find your counsel to examine presumptions carefully to be sound advice but I know you've run across the SJW creed that "all generalizations are bad," whereas in my view generalization is the most potent tool we have for making sense of the world.
I mentioned on FB that I was considering rehoming one of my parrots but really didn't want to hand him over to a Vietnamese family. I was attacked for the "racist" assumption that "all" Vietnamese are indifferent to animal neglect (some of them didn't know I live here and thought I was bringing them into mention for no reason but bigotry).. But the reality that Asian cultures in general and Vietnamese in particular don't share the love of animals so common in the US ands UK is a Statistically Defensible Presumption (I use this phrase a LOT); this is a place where people eat dogs, knowing full well that every one of them is a stolen pet.
If we're inhibited from stating objective fact, we're in big trouble.
You have a far lower chance than I of getting malignant melanoma; the people I live with have about twice your chance. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptionally light-skinned African Americans whose susceptibility is as grave as mine, but on average ... etc. There are people who will bare their teeth at the opening sentence of this paragraph. You aren't one of them.