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You're all morons. He's not guilty yet so there's no reason to worry about who's defending him.
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Jun 14, 2019 01:00
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MixMastaTJ posted:Ffs, y'all making the most obtuse slippery slopes possible. People who profit off unjust systems are deserving of social ridicule. The American legal system is a corrupt institution designed to oppress the lower class. Those who profit off entrenching it deserve judgement. No, the argument is that the state needs to actually prove this, and follow the rules in doing so. I realize this sounds crazy but the role of an attorney is not actually to provide moral vindication for the client. Are you thinking of a publicist? Because I would kill for that gig in your idiotic fantasy where Weinstein is railroaded and saddled with incompetent representation, because that's exactly the same as not being convicted at all as far as public interest is concerned.
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Jun 14, 2019 08:00
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VitalSigns posted:That's fine my argument is that disapproval of the powerful is a prerequisite for changing the system that benefits them. It's not though. In fact, to the extent this disapproval is grounds for petty bitching on the internet, it's actually worse than useless: it makes you stupid. Here we have yet another irreducible social contagion ("greed") for which the proposed solution is individual moralizing, a recipe for loving nothing as always, but what's specifically odious about this case is that it sent you sprinting to the right, shedding every worthwhile principle of liberal legal tradition along the way. For what? To get one loving guy who's already going down. Consider a little strategy, please. Public shame is no antidote to private excess. That's precisely the system in which the Weinsteins of the world thrive. It's the one that already exists: "if this gets out, I'm finished". There are two predictable responses to this system: 1) to hate you, Mrs. Lovejoy, and 2) fraud, secrecy, and manipulation. Do you really think you can play the latter game better than the private sector professionals? The pre-requisite for politics--any politics--is action, not thought.
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Jun 14, 2019 15:59
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:And when they get off on crimes well shucks guess they just literally bought their way out of being punished thems the breaks The responsibility for securing convictions is on the state, though. Placing this responsibility on the private sector and the moral scruples of individual attorneys is a strategy that is guaranteed to both fail and appeal intensely to fifth graders who say things like "I think when someone does a good thing it's good".
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Jun 14, 2019 17:53
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VitalSigns posted:No I'm arguing the results of the rich buying justice are bad too. If this is true then not only should he be Weinstein's attorney, he actually deserves every penny. If everyone who defends a factually guilty person is subject to your infantile "heuristic", then the people who defend guilty clients can and should command a higher dollar figure--it is, after all, their reputation on the line. Cool system you've invented for rich rapists to thrive in and absolutely no one else.
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Jun 14, 2019 18:42
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VitalSigns posted:lol ok The lawyer is one the setting the fee, you dipshit, not Weinstein. And if his fee has to account for the wrath of the mob then he may as well only represent the richest clients he can get. I don't give a gently caress who you criticize, my whole point is that it's worthless. Your condemnation is expedient and self-promotional, and your fantasy is that it matters. That's what I dispute, the delusion that shame can be leveraged for social good in lieu of politics. Your critique of "greedy lawyers" convinces everyone else that they are a necessity. How could they be anything but in a world populated by you and your strawmen?
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Jun 14, 2019 19:04
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Nevvy Z posted:So if he thinks we should change the rules, which is politics, then he is fine? Because I think we should change the rules but that shame is fine in the meanwhile. Shame is what makes it impossible to change the rules. This kind of slacktivist posturing absorbs useful energy, it doesn't motivate it, and if you want people to move it behooves you to give them a direction to move in. You should validate the dedication to principle--even if in the case of Weinstein's attorney it is a lie (it isn't)--because the principle helps more people than it hurts, and actually does disproportionally benefit the poor as a class even when it's helping the rich as individuals. And anyway Vital Signs and the kind of shrill online nitwit he typifies are so personally repellent that they could make nuclear annihilation sound appealing just by being against it. Look at the alternative being proposed: we should recruit public defenders to represent the rich. Wow cool, you mean I get to pay for law school, bill 40 bucks an hour defending scumbags, and I have to answer to the Internet if my client is found not guilty? Do I at least get to carry a gun? This isn't just a bad way to change the status quo, the status quo is actually already better, which explains why this argument runs to the far right and indulges in all the old mythology about the legal profession that used to be the province of Dirty Harry flicks. At least now the intrinsic motivations--the rule of law, defense against the excesses of the state, admiration for the values if not the reality of the criminal justice system--result in some good being done, if just out of some perverse sense of noblesse oblige and even if it does mask something like "greed" (and to state the obvious you'll never, ever be able to accurately judge where the line is drawn). If you're going to have a legal system, you may as well have one where a-moral dedication to the rules and principles of law is the basis for it's prestige. At least that system is capable in theory of convicting Weinstein in a way that might make some kind of impact on popular consciousness. The best possible outcome in this case actually is that Weinstein's sleazy high price lawyers argue cogently and passionately that his victims are all whores who traded blowjobs for fame and they are repudiated by the jury. Anything less than that will be fart in the wind in terms of moving the social needle, including haranguing his defense team over their choice of clients.
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Jun 14, 2019 19:50
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VitalSigns posted:Well slacktivist posturing is what you're doing now, so either (1) you do believe that it does something useful in which case great then I too am doing something useful or (2) you don't believe it does something useful but you do think it's not actively bad or harmful in which case great then I too am not doing something actively bad or harmful so there's no problem. The point is not that slacktivist posturing is wrong, and therefore goo goo gah gah you're a bad person. That's your brand of sophistry, not mine. The point is your non-viable worldview can't survive the outdoors, which closes every avenue other than moral preening and political deferrals. You can post on the internet and appear to others as someone who moves through a corrupt system uncompromised, because no one can prove you're lying. People who actually do things--say, as defense attorneys--have no such luxury, which is both why they have absolutely no reason to be moved by your appeals and nothing to learn from your infantile math on the balance of right and wrong.
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Jun 14, 2019 20:28
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 11:17 |
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VitalSigns posted:ok but anyone in power can make this argument that people who aren't them just don't understand what it's like. Maybe a parallel justice system that caters to the rich and operates by completely different rules of money and influence and connections than the justice system the rest of us face is a really really lucrative deal and really hard to pass up! I'm willing to bet it is for the people who benefit from it, I just don't care because I think it's bad that they benefit from it. It's not just people in power. Everyone gets the doctor's note, if you're being even remotely honest about it. Everyone is a product of their environment, making the best of what they have, they were stressed that day, their mother was controlling, their father was a drunk, they didn't know better, hormones, mental illness, culture of whatever, prescription meds, mortages, mouths to feed, jobs to do, bosses to answer to. That's why focusing on the actions of any one individual is pointless and counter-productive, as is dragging politics down to this abysmal level of on-brand do-good-ery. If your issue is with the professional class, take it up with the whole. Don't feign concern about the system as an argument for vaporizing [some guy].
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Jun 14, 2019 21:14
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