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This is probably a good day to have this discussion actually. In San Francisco an undocumented immigrant admits that he fired in illegal weapon that results in

This is probably a good day to have this discussion actually. In San Francisco an undocumented immigrant admits that he fired in illegal weapon that results in the death of an innocent woman, but due to technicalities apparently supported by evidence I'm not familiar with, he is acquitted of the more serious charges and will be deported for the 5th or 6th time. Republicans are angry, and would rather a situation in which he gets some serious punishment. There are good reasons why he can't be tried again for the same incident with different charges and why they can't just charge him with conflicting accusations and let the subsequent investigation and trial determine which ones stick. Democrats have generally disagreed, largely because he's been picked up as an argument for stronger immigration laws and enforcement And yet there's also a similar movement among liberal circles towards ruining people's lives because of accusations that have not been proved until rules of law because they're obviously scum, just like Republicans think this guy is. In general we seem to have abandoned the rule of law everywhere but in most actual courts of law because of people we want to villify. And they're often actually terrible people, but we're on a slippery slope that we can't see because all the rhetoric is playing on people's emotions.

pjc50 9y ago
The court of public opinion is usually a last resort. Generally the accusers don't want to go public - after all, then their name is attached to the thing forever too. And they get a lot of abuse as a result too. If you don't want this stuff dealt with in public, the procedures for dealing with it in private have to work. And hitherto they generally haven't.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Well unfortunately the court of public opinion is pushing actual legal systems in directions that I think a lot of people are unhappy with too. I think it's the court of public opinion that we need to fix because of the impact it has elsewhere. I'm not generally a fan of Jeremy Clarkson's politics, but I think he makes a good point that we often think many of the people around us in public are morons but that being judged by a jury of those morons is a good idea, as opposed to being judged by the mature, experienced and very well-educated judge. Now obviously I'm not against juries and I'm not for authoritarian centralized judicial systems, but generally both conservatives and liberals seem increasingly willingly to trash people's reputations or call for harsh punishments because of an accusation and they only care for a methodical process of reviewing evidence and testimony and maintaining innocence until proof of guilt if they like the person. I mean police shootings are another issue like this - listen to the public discourse and virtually everyone has made up their mind about what should happen before any video is releases, and when video is released everyone sticks to the decision they already made before seeing it. Maybe we never had it, but most people seem to have lost the ability to withhold mental judgment until seeing it, and instead of people who think some shootings were understandable and others were abuses of authority, you have a lot of people who think they're virtually all one or the other.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    What is the Internet Mob capable of? Go ask the person that Redditers highlighted as "guilty" in the Boston bombing. He didn't do anything wrong, and ended up dead as a result. Its also why Reddit now does livethreads to control Doxxing and finger pointing.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Also (unable to edit my original reply now) - I'm not saying this stuff shouldn't be dealt with in public. If the appropriate private channels haven't addressed the wrongdoing, your right to go public should absolutely be exercised if the victim is okay with all the unpleasantness that usually entails. I'm just saying the public they go to needs to be a bit more pragmatic and fair than lynching a person they assume did something they don't like (or on the contrary, turning a blind eye because of politics that sway them the other way). The problem is the way people react, not the fact that it was taken public. Private channels should have worked too - that's also a problem.

pjc50 9y ago

The court of public opinion is usually a last resort. Generally the accusers don't want to go public - after all, then their name is attached to the thing forever too. And they get a lot of abuse as a result too. If you don't want this stuff dealt with in public, the procedures for dealing with it in private have to work. And hitherto they generally haven't.

TallGuyShort 9y ago
Well unfortunately the court of public opinion is pushing actual legal systems in directions that I think a lot of people are unhappy with too. I think it's the court of public opinion that we need to fix because of the impact it has elsewhere. I'm not generally a fan of Jeremy Clarkson's politics, but I think he makes a good point that we often think many of the people around us in public are morons but that being judged by a jury of those morons is a good idea, as opposed to being judged by the mature, experienced and very well-educated judge. Now obviously I'm not against juries and I'm not for authoritarian centralized judicial systems, but generally both conservatives and liberals seem increasingly willingly to trash people's reputations or call for harsh punishments because of an accusation and they only care for a methodical process of reviewing evidence and testimony and maintaining innocence until proof of guilt if they like the person. I mean police shootings are another issue like this - listen to the public discourse and virtually everyone has made up their mind about what should happen before any video is releases, and when video is released everyone sticks to the decision they already made before seeing it. Maybe we never had it, but most people seem to have lost the ability to withhold mental judgment until seeing it, and instead of people who think some shootings were understandable and others were abuses of authority, you have a lot of people who think they're virtually all one or the other.
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  What is the Internet Mob capable of? Go ask the person that Redditers highlighted as "guilty" in the Boston bombing. He didn't do anything wrong, and ended up dead as a result. Its also why Reddit now does livethreads to control Doxxing and finger pointing.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
Also (unable to edit my original reply now) - I'm not saying this stuff shouldn't be dealt with in public. If the appropriate private channels haven't addressed the wrongdoing, your right to go public should absolutely be exercised if the victim is okay with all the unpleasantness that usually entails. I'm just saying the public they go to needs to be a bit more pragmatic and fair than lynching a person they assume did something they don't like (or on the contrary, turning a blind eye because of politics that sway them the other way). The problem is the way people react, not the fact that it was taken public. Private channels should have worked too - that's also a problem.