When IDF soldiers were accused of gang-raping Palestinian prisoners, people staged protests and politicians gave speeches in support of the soldiers. And not with the position that the soldiers didn’t do it, but that the soldiers acted within their rights when they did.

That says everything anyone needs to know about the Israeli attitude toward the sexual assault of non-Israelis.

What’s a “Carrington” or a “Robinson” in the first place?

I wouldn’t presume to speak for anyone else, but I’m a human, and I thought the rest of us were too.

I don’t think whether or not they’re “good” people and the clients they end up representing have anything to do with each other.

It’s just a part of their job that they end up sometimes representing people who are charged with, and potentially even obviously guilty of, heinous crimes.

And their code of ethics specifically demands that they do their best to represent their client’s interests regardless of any and all other considerations.

So even just there, it could be the case that one defense attorney is a vile scumbag who gets off on the idea of freeing obvious criminals and it could just as easily be the case that another defense attorney is a veritable saint who sincerely believes that all people are fundamentally good and that it’s their purpose in life to help anyone who needs it, no matter who or what they’re deemed to be.

Both of those things undoubtedly exist, and pretty much any position one might imagine between the two, so I don’t think there’s any way to correlate who they represent and their own qualities.

Now all that said, I certainly couldn’t do what they do, and specifically because I couldn’t effectively represent someone who was certainly guilty. But that’s just me.

Funny how the Republicans, after four years of posing as the conscience of government, have gone completely silent on the subject of corruption.

Think it might be because their Republican president is already far and away the most corrupt president in US history, and likely at least in the running for the most corrupt national leader in human history?

IMO literally took his place.

My theory is that the DNC and the Dem establishment, in order to ensure that they can mouth leftist platitudes without the risk of actually advancing leftist interests and thereby alienating their big money donors, always have at least one or two ringers - people who, for one reason or another (most likely because they’re bribeable and bribed or extortable and extorted) can be counted on to, when necessary, cast the vote(s) that ensure that the Republicans don’t quite lose.

So Fetterman, just like Manchin (and Sinema) before him, is doing exactly what he’s supposed to do.

No.

My immediate reaction is that if it’s not genuinely sincere, it’s meaningless.

It doesn’t really matter if that’s true or not - the mere fact that that was my first reaction means that it’s a doubt that would continue to haunt me, and that’s more than enough of a problem all by itself.

Tyrants don’t come to power by mandating submission. They come to power by criminalizing dissent.

Quite seriously, as someone caring for a parent with dementia, that’s entirely typical behavior.

Well… you know… except the scale is a bit different for someone who isn’t the fucking president.

I just don’t make u-turns at busy intersections, specifically because they’re problematic.

If I need to go back the way I just came, I make a left into a parking lot, turn around there, then pull back out onto the street, or if that’s not possible, I simply go around the block.

My view is that doing unnecessary things that interrupt the flow of traffic is always a bad idea.

Of course. Gambling is a hallmark of civilizations in decline.

The Polymarket thing is a bit different though. It’s built on a foundation of saps hoping to strike it big, but it promarily benefits insiders, who are turning their knowledge into financial windfalls.

Just another of the privileges afforded the wealthy and empowered few.

Absolutely not - it’s a good idea

It would be a 2:1 ratio of kidney beans to black beans.

Perfect.

The Toddler-in-chief threatening to throw an apocalyptic tantrum over something that he fucked up in the first place.

He not only needs to be removed from office - he needs to be on a psych hold. He’s deranged and dangerous.

Methinks they doth protest too much

It’s increasingly obvious that the classified dicuments thing wasn’t just an oversight or even merely an attempt to profit, but a significant and almost certainly treasonous criminal act with sufficient evidence that they have no hope of fighting it, so can only try to bury it.

Causing harm to civilians in order to coerce the submission of a government is the very definition of terrorism

Well… yeah. I thonk it’s fairly self-evident that individuals have different threaholds for suspension of disbelief, and that the thresholds even vary between subjects with a given individual (for example, it’s harder to maintain suspension of disbelief relative to an area in which one has expertise).

But that’s not really relevant - I just included “acceptably” to be more precise and accurate.

The relevant part is the core idea that the mechanism by which at least some seemingly rational people support blitheringly insane and factually unsupportable political views is not really some combination of prejudices and biases by which they convince themselves of the nominal truth and correspondence to reality of their beliefs, but by engaging in suspension of disbelief - by entirely switching off the parts of their brain that measure truth and correspondence with reality, just as I do when I read a novel or watch a movie.

I certainly don’t know that to be the case, but it’s a fascinating possibility

…there might well be something to that.

Yes - exactly as you say, research needs to be done on suspension of disbelief.

And thanks for sharing that fascinating idea.

Not quite.

Suspension of disbelief refers to the act of essentially switching off the parts of ones mind that check for truth and reality, and simply following a narrative on its own terms, whatever they might be.

It’s not that truth or reality are unnecessary under suspension of disbelief - they aren’t even relevant.

I think this is a fascinating idea.

And I just tried to explain it to a friend and she didn’t get it, then I came back to the thread to find respondents who didn’t get it in the same way she didn’t.

She kept trying to warp it into something like confirmation bias, even though I kept trying to get her to see that the significant thing about suspension of disbelief is that truth and reality don’t even enter into it - they aren’t even meaningful concepts.

The only thing that’s necessary when disbelief is suspended is that the narrative remain acceptably internally consistent. Whether itt true or not or corresponds with reality or not is entirely irrelevant, since the entire process of expectng and testing for those qualities has been set aside.

Again, that’s a fascinating idea. I’ve long suspected that Trump is unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood, but that that was a consequence of his narcissism and egotism - that effectively the only measure he has for truth or falsehood is whether he believes something to be true or not - that the concept of consensual reality isn’t even coherent in his entirely self-absorbed internal reality.

But I’ve long wondered how the at least somewhat more sane people following him manage it. Something like confirmation bias would only work up to a point that Trump has long since gone beyond.

And I think you might be on to something - just as I do when I sit down to read a novel or watch a movie or a series, when they start engaging in politics, they switch the parts of their brains that track truth and reality entirely off and instead just follow along with the narrative, whatever it might be.

It came down to a choice between making some logical and reasonable and obvious changes to benefit the bulk of humanity or protecting the obscene privilege of a relative handful of psychopathic shitweasels, and the shitweasels won.

Note that that could also serve broadly as a description of the end days of Dynastic Egypt, Imperial Rome, Ancien Regime France and the Russian Empire, among others.

Let’s do a thought experiment here.

Pretend that the answer is no - they do not have that right.

Okay - now what? If they don’t have the right to do that, then that means… what exactly? Are they to be arrested if they try? Are you somehow granted the right to kill them if they try? Is there any reasonable method by which they can actually be denied that right?

Yes - all people have a right to feel however they feel and to voice their feelings. Or more precisely, nobody can possibly have the right to stop them.

The thing they don’t have a right to is your attention, concern, sympathy etc. You’re entirely free to grant or withhold those things as you prefer.