vonbaronhans
Most of the comments in here are from 2mo ago, seems like, but I’ll give it a shot.
Michigander here. Lived most of my adult life here, but was raised in Illinois and bounced around for a bit in my 20s.
Started out with the standard rural Midwest set of beliefs (plus a few nutty ones like young earth creationism), but after a great many years of transformation I now consider myself a leftist (and/or socialist depending on my mood) and generally progressive dude.
Love me some tech, anime, video games, jazz, ttrpg, and so on with the nerd stuff. I also draw on the odd occasion, even a few commissions under my belt, but don’t expect much. No academic or professional training here.
I do have an academic background in Japanese, Psychology, and general Social Science study methodologies, though I work primarily in IT these days.
I look forward to the discussions here!
Yeah the difficulty in applying any sort of speech law is that context matters so much.
I would call the Proud Boys, for example, Nazis. Or maybe neo-nazi. But one of the examples in this article is how Putin is dehumanizing Zelensky by calling him a Nazi. The only difference is that the PBs are, in fact, neo-nazi fascists based on virtually any academic definition or set of criteria on offer, while Zelensky doesn’t fit any accepted definition.
I have to imagine a law that could regulate dehumanizing speech would be nearly impossible to construct without being entirely toothless or prone to being gamed by bad faith actors (the exact people we’re trying to stop).
I’d love to be proven wrong though.
So like, this is something that bothers me.
Why hide behind a more academic definition of “racism” when someone calls a white person an “Anglo devil” or something similar? I think it is pretty inarguably bigoted and dehumanizing along racial lines, y’know, the colloquial definition of racist?
White supremacy is a thing, absolutely, but why would we want to automatically side with the jerk insulting people based on their race?
Calling all Russians Nazis is obviously wrong, too, not siding with that person either. But why is a race-based insult somehow “justified”? Can’t they both just be being shitty?
I don’t give a shit about civility politics, but this attitude is just weird to me. Bringing systemic level critique (which is valid don’t get it twisted) to justify one side of a small interpersonal scuffle is bonkers.
in 1938, a New York Times reporter warned: “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labelled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’.”
Quote second hand sourced from:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/americanism-us-writers-imagine-fascist-future-fiction
I wouldn’t call either of these particularly secret, but whatever, they’re fun.
Excess material = a very large shit, often multiple shits.
Trip insurance = using the bathroom before getting in the car, whether it’s needed or not. I came up with this one as a child, and it’s now in widespread use in my extended family, especially with the nieces and nephews.
Intent may not be relevant for your example, but a lot of US law does have different crimes and levels of criminality that depend on intent.
For example, if I kill someone on accident, that’s usually categorized as manslaughter. If I kill someone on purpose, that might be murder. Depending on how much premeditation went into, it might be murder in the first degree, which comes with the most severe punishments.