lavendertook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lavendertook) wrote2018-10-06 08:04 pm
lavendertook) wrote2018-10-06 08:04 pm
Entry tags:
The Presumption of Innocence as Gaslighting, and oh Kylo-no!
Being falsely accused of sexual assault has got to be, in part, infuriating, if indeed you think that's what is happening to you. But even if you are falsely accused (2 to maybe 10% of sexual assault accusations), it is still nothing compared to being sexually assaulted and having your personhood violently and intimately reduced to someone else's whims and assumption of greater personhood. Nothing. Nada.
False accusation when at a height of power, which is what the presumption of innocence here assumes, such a source of ultimate angst for the Republicans as Collins affirmed yesterday does not undermine your ability to survive and perform to your abilities like being assaulted and abused does--of course this is backed up by science and you have to actually embrace scientific method to believe this and many Republicans do not.
Being falsely accused could undermine the height of your aspirations, but not your ability to survive--there is a major difference there. Only the extreme privilege of being wealthy, connected, white, and male could make someone think otherwise.
And Collins is an example that you can lack one or two of those identities, and think the same. There are always every kind of exceptions as well. When you do possess all those identities, it is far easier to just not care and convince yourself that you are thinking of due process and the presumption of innocence. It is so touching how deeply they care about the innocent! How that shows in their choices . . . and the bridges lacking infrastructure updates they are selling.
I keep saying it, and maybe it's my good luck speaking in only being sexually molested and harassed innumerable times as almost all girls, women, otherly gendered folk, many young boys, and some men are, and not sexually assaulted, but the gaslighting is the worst and that's what the lying is about. Foisting a false reality on all of us in order to protect the abusers--and it's very much the same whether the form of abuse involves a sexual component or not. But they are not even trying to do it well here, because even they themselves are having a difficult time believing their stories and many of them feel no need to lie to themselves. They are letting their power alone speak for the primacy of the reality they are trying to impose on us, as Kylo-no did on the stand. Survival of the fittest, which means the dude with the most money wins, their only creed. Ability to be cruel is evidence of their fitness, at least they hope it is.
I don't want to direct my anger at Collins to a greater degree than her mostly white male fellow Republicans who voted to confirm Kavanaugh--she's in no way worse and deserving of being thrown out of office, and to lose public approval than her misogynist party for whom she chose to perform as scapegoat in taking to the podium yesterday. She works as cover for them to absorb our anger--do not forget to distribute that anger evenly. She was speaking for all of them and at cost to herself, no matter how deserving of her fall we deem her.
At every turn these brave, brave men hid behind women, while trying to deny us any power. Remember that--they are not as powerful as they are using their lies to make themselves appear. Writing now is helping me fight off their thin veneer of power--there really are more of us and if we can vote them out before they lift their guns in a publicly organized effort against all of us--as of now, we're not there yet--there is still hope, though it is more rapidly being taken form the most vulnerable of us.
To say that you believe Blasey Ford, and still give the presumption of innocence to Kavanaugh is not possible and is an Orwellian twist of language. And the false premise that underlies this contradictory twist of reality through language, is that Kavanaugh is on trial in a court of law where the presumption of innocence is the law. He is not.
He is going through the process of being interviewed for the most secure and important job in the US of being on the SCOTUS. There is no law, or even tradition that says the presumption of innocence must be upheld for him, or that the scope of what they use as deciding factors of his character are restricted to what the ridiculously restricted FBI probe finds--such a lie of an investigation it was, they didn't bother to last the week they scheduled it for.
Additionally, there is no moral imperative to uphold the presumption of innocence when there are so many accusers and his own writings and that of his friend Mark Judge's published book's proclamations repeatedly show his sexist views of women and support and upholding of rape culture, and just plain lies. If his condescending turn of US Senator Klobucher's question back on her was not enough evidence of his especial belligerence toward women. He did not even try to apologize for past transgressions--not something Trump would approve of him doing, so he didn't.
Yes, it's very difficult indeed to be falsely accused of sexual assault, but if you have sympathy as you proclaimed for the violation of body and soul your accuser suffered, and yet she presented in such tempered speech, you had all you needed to temper your own anger on the stand. It is not a super human feat to tamp down your anger and consider the plight of others, and if it is, then surely Blasey Ford should be the one being confirmed to the Supreme Court, having performed to higher than super-human standards. Maybe we should embrace their logic and start campaigning for this just turn for our real hero, and do the same for our hero Anita Hill.
We won't even consider the lies uttered and the partisan speech that should disqualify you in any governing body that truly valued fair and balanced views to rule our courts.
We won't even consider how you used the schema that your family is being dragged through hell, only to twist it to say you will never stop fighting, twisting the logic of the schema to non-functionality to make clear it is your choice, and your choice alone to drag your family through hell, not the media and politicians, so focused you are on your own advancement and power and that of your master, making clear your wife and children are yours to command and subordinate to your wants. Did he even once say how much he wanted to serve all the American people?
This was not a criminal trial--this was a trial for the privilege of owning a position on the highest court of the land. Even the repeated appearance of misconduct and nonjudicial behavior is enough for disqualification, as the ABA, Justice Stevens, and other judicial bodies have concurred, and disqualification is not relegated to the lowest standard of presumption of innocence. No one believes this is the best we can do--I doubt any of the Republicans supporting him believe that--that's not their goal--making a show of their current power, making a mockery of our institutions is their goal, while they grab fistfuls of cash any way they can.
We must not let them rend the fabric of the reality we see before us. There are more of us in the reality-based community and we must focus on the shear numbers of us to get to the polls over all the lies and tricks and false realities they use to block us and vote as many of them out and as many of us in as we can.
They are afraid because they are fewer and must use every trick to hand. And tricks is all that Trump is--the veteran of the showtime contradiction of reality TV, the best venue for cruelty designed for entertainment since public executions fell out of fashion, and the king of bankruptcy. They are our sorry past--the only group for whom America was the presumed greatest. We need to be our best for all of us, not better than someone else.
We must vote in November to keep them from holding us back from all we can be and do, with their selfishness, greed, and violence against the vulnerable, taking a shared place in the world and working to wrestle the planet from the brink of destruction. Then we can talk about judicial impeachment and what that might entail.
Onward! Complaint and manifesto out.
False accusation when at a height of power, which is what the presumption of innocence here assumes, such a source of ultimate angst for the Republicans as Collins affirmed yesterday does not undermine your ability to survive and perform to your abilities like being assaulted and abused does--of course this is backed up by science and you have to actually embrace scientific method to believe this and many Republicans do not.
Being falsely accused could undermine the height of your aspirations, but not your ability to survive--there is a major difference there. Only the extreme privilege of being wealthy, connected, white, and male could make someone think otherwise.
And Collins is an example that you can lack one or two of those identities, and think the same. There are always every kind of exceptions as well. When you do possess all those identities, it is far easier to just not care and convince yourself that you are thinking of due process and the presumption of innocence. It is so touching how deeply they care about the innocent! How that shows in their choices . . . and the bridges lacking infrastructure updates they are selling.
I keep saying it, and maybe it's my good luck speaking in only being sexually molested and harassed innumerable times as almost all girls, women, otherly gendered folk, many young boys, and some men are, and not sexually assaulted, but the gaslighting is the worst and that's what the lying is about. Foisting a false reality on all of us in order to protect the abusers--and it's very much the same whether the form of abuse involves a sexual component or not. But they are not even trying to do it well here, because even they themselves are having a difficult time believing their stories and many of them feel no need to lie to themselves. They are letting their power alone speak for the primacy of the reality they are trying to impose on us, as Kylo-no did on the stand. Survival of the fittest, which means the dude with the most money wins, their only creed. Ability to be cruel is evidence of their fitness, at least they hope it is.
I don't want to direct my anger at Collins to a greater degree than her mostly white male fellow Republicans who voted to confirm Kavanaugh--she's in no way worse and deserving of being thrown out of office, and to lose public approval than her misogynist party for whom she chose to perform as scapegoat in taking to the podium yesterday. She works as cover for them to absorb our anger--do not forget to distribute that anger evenly. She was speaking for all of them and at cost to herself, no matter how deserving of her fall we deem her.
At every turn these brave, brave men hid behind women, while trying to deny us any power. Remember that--they are not as powerful as they are using their lies to make themselves appear. Writing now is helping me fight off their thin veneer of power--there really are more of us and if we can vote them out before they lift their guns in a publicly organized effort against all of us--as of now, we're not there yet--there is still hope, though it is more rapidly being taken form the most vulnerable of us.
To say that you believe Blasey Ford, and still give the presumption of innocence to Kavanaugh is not possible and is an Orwellian twist of language. And the false premise that underlies this contradictory twist of reality through language, is that Kavanaugh is on trial in a court of law where the presumption of innocence is the law. He is not.
He is going through the process of being interviewed for the most secure and important job in the US of being on the SCOTUS. There is no law, or even tradition that says the presumption of innocence must be upheld for him, or that the scope of what they use as deciding factors of his character are restricted to what the ridiculously restricted FBI probe finds--such a lie of an investigation it was, they didn't bother to last the week they scheduled it for.
Additionally, there is no moral imperative to uphold the presumption of innocence when there are so many accusers and his own writings and that of his friend Mark Judge's published book's proclamations repeatedly show his sexist views of women and support and upholding of rape culture, and just plain lies. If his condescending turn of US Senator Klobucher's question back on her was not enough evidence of his especial belligerence toward women. He did not even try to apologize for past transgressions--not something Trump would approve of him doing, so he didn't.
Yes, it's very difficult indeed to be falsely accused of sexual assault, but if you have sympathy as you proclaimed for the violation of body and soul your accuser suffered, and yet she presented in such tempered speech, you had all you needed to temper your own anger on the stand. It is not a super human feat to tamp down your anger and consider the plight of others, and if it is, then surely Blasey Ford should be the one being confirmed to the Supreme Court, having performed to higher than super-human standards. Maybe we should embrace their logic and start campaigning for this just turn for our real hero, and do the same for our hero Anita Hill.
We won't even consider the lies uttered and the partisan speech that should disqualify you in any governing body that truly valued fair and balanced views to rule our courts.
We won't even consider how you used the schema that your family is being dragged through hell, only to twist it to say you will never stop fighting, twisting the logic of the schema to non-functionality to make clear it is your choice, and your choice alone to drag your family through hell, not the media and politicians, so focused you are on your own advancement and power and that of your master, making clear your wife and children are yours to command and subordinate to your wants. Did he even once say how much he wanted to serve all the American people?
This was not a criminal trial--this was a trial for the privilege of owning a position on the highest court of the land. Even the repeated appearance of misconduct and nonjudicial behavior is enough for disqualification, as the ABA, Justice Stevens, and other judicial bodies have concurred, and disqualification is not relegated to the lowest standard of presumption of innocence. No one believes this is the best we can do--I doubt any of the Republicans supporting him believe that--that's not their goal--making a show of their current power, making a mockery of our institutions is their goal, while they grab fistfuls of cash any way they can.
We must not let them rend the fabric of the reality we see before us. There are more of us in the reality-based community and we must focus on the shear numbers of us to get to the polls over all the lies and tricks and false realities they use to block us and vote as many of them out and as many of us in as we can.
They are afraid because they are fewer and must use every trick to hand. And tricks is all that Trump is--the veteran of the showtime contradiction of reality TV, the best venue for cruelty designed for entertainment since public executions fell out of fashion, and the king of bankruptcy. They are our sorry past--the only group for whom America was the presumed greatest. We need to be our best for all of us, not better than someone else.
We must vote in November to keep them from holding us back from all we can be and do, with their selfishness, greed, and violence against the vulnerable, taking a shared place in the world and working to wrestle the planet from the brink of destruction. Then we can talk about judicial impeachment and what that might entail.
Onward! Complaint and manifesto out.
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I was listening to a progressive radio station that comes out of Berkeley, KPFA.
Here's a link to one thing that I found very interesting a few days ago, and you might too. If not this one, look around there and have a listen. You can also listen online, live. I believe this is what Trump, et al, are doing now, and why it's more important than ever for good folks to fight it.
How Fascism Works
Fascist politics are running rampant in America today and spreading around the world. Yale professor Jason Stanley talks about the ten pillars of fascist politics, and the history of how it rises. Guest: Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of several books including his latest How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-4-2018/
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Smokey said thanks! :)
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In the last 24 hours Trump has been stepping up the rhetoric even further. He just tweeted this:
"You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern."
I'm having trouble with the Twitter link, so I'll link to Joe Jervis for your reference.
http://www.joemygod.com/2018/10/07/trump-democrats-are-too-dangerous-to-govern/
I hope we still have an election.
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