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Then lawfare is the most effective tool 99% have to keep your otherwise-relatively-unbridled power (and mine, actually, if you're calling top 1% "wealthy") in c

Then lawfare is the most effective tool 99% have to keep your otherwise-relatively-unbridled power (and mine, actually, if you're calling top 1% "wealthy") in check. The alternatives are much messier and make our lives much shorter. And to be clear: you're right. None of the things Jones did were crimes. If they were, he'd have been in criminal court. Civil court is for restitution of wrongs between individual parties and resolution of disputes. When the strictures of law are broken, criminal court is involved; when someone is wronged, civil court is involved. And make no mistake: you can wrong someone with words. It is not a violation of one's freedom of speech that if a party goes around telling everyone you cheated someone out of a million dollars and you didn't, you can sue that person to (a) compel them to cease to lie and (b) make restitution for the damage those lies did to your reputation and opportunities. This is an old feature of the American judiciary, at least a thousand years old and inherited from England... And it's there because the alternative is more crime (because if you can't be made whole when someone's wronged you, you must logically take steps to prevent further harm by doing ill to the threat). The legal system handles more than crime. Nobody's "been bad" in every divorce or an estate settlement. And when someone is harmed by another individual in a way that doesn't have a specific stricture against it, we have civil courts to make the harmed person whole. (I'm a lot more interested in talking about Jones than Trump. Trump is a separate case entirely... For example, he was in criminal court, he was charged with falsifying business records, a crime because it strikes at the process of truth that the law depends on to regulate business, and he was convicted of doing so. Trump's circumstances are different enough to Jones's that there isn't any productive discourse to have in lumping them together. If you disagree with the criminal process of the courts of the State of New York, you are welcome to your opinion but you can discuss it with someone else. I hope the first question they ask you is what makes his case special as opposed to the other people in New York who were found guilty of NY Penal Law § 170.10).

quantadev 2y ago
> lawfare is the most effective tool Wow, I didn't expect you to openly admit you're in favor of lawfare, especially based on wealth discrimination; but after reading that stark confession in the first sentence it saved me some time, because I didn't keep reading past that.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  I mean, I chose to use your terminology for your convenience. Lawfare is also called "People exercising their rights under the law," And it shouldn't carry any negative connotation. But apparently some people have decided that it isn't good when individuals protect their rights legally. This is a weird post-legal era we live in, where it appears people hold the law itself in contempt. I'm not super excited to see what happens next, because we've tried alternatives to rule of law and they haven't generally worked great... > because I didn't keep reading past that. As, of course, is your right. I don't generally make these posts for individuals; I share these thoughts for the larger discourse on Hacker News. If, as an individual, you don't wish to use your time to consider this alternate viewpoint, it is your time.
  - quantadev 2y ago
    > lawfare is the most effective tool You knew precisely what the word meant when you used it.
    - shadowgovt 2y ago
      And I stand by my use of it. The Sandy Hook families were private individuals; the only thing they had in common is a man killed their kids and then another man told his hundreds of thousands of listeners, over and over again, that those kids didn't exist. They had no platform to shout down his lies. They had no corporation to fund an antidote to his lying. They had no resources to stop the harassing phone calls and death threats from the people Jones convinced they were monsters. What they had was a right, under common law in the United States, to not have their names dragged through the mud. And they took the man who did that to court and they won. In a country where, we should note, truth is an affirmative defense (and not one that Jones proffered, because truth was not on his side). This is the story of victory of the marginalized and powerless over a media mogul who hurt strangers for a buck. It is good that they live in a country where such people can hold the powerful to account. And hey. If injustice was done he can counter-sue to rectify it. Perhaps we should take note that he won't because the law is not on his side... They didn't wrong him.

quantadev 2y ago

> lawfare is the most effective tool Wow, I didn't expect you to openly admit you're in favor of lawfare, especially based on wealth discrimination; but after reading that stark confession in the first sentence it saved me some time, because I didn't keep reading past that.

shadowgovt 2y ago
I mean, I chose to use your terminology for your convenience. Lawfare is also called "People exercising their rights under the law," And it shouldn't carry any negative connotation. But apparently some people have decided that it isn't good when individuals protect their rights legally. This is a weird post-legal era we live in, where it appears people hold the law itself in contempt. I'm not super excited to see what happens next, because we've tried alternatives to rule of law and they haven't generally worked great... > because I didn't keep reading past that. As, of course, is your right. I don't generally make these posts for individuals; I share these thoughts for the larger discourse on Hacker News. If, as an individual, you don't wish to use your time to consider this alternate viewpoint, it is your time.
- quantadev 2y ago
  > lawfare is the most effective tool You knew precisely what the word meant when you used it.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    And I stand by my use of it. The Sandy Hook families were private individuals; the only thing they had in common is a man killed their kids and then another man told his hundreds of thousands of listeners, over and over again, that those kids didn't exist. They had no platform to shout down his lies. They had no corporation to fund an antidote to his lying. They had no resources to stop the harassing phone calls and death threats from the people Jones convinced they were monsters. What they had was a right, under common law in the United States, to not have their names dragged through the mud. And they took the man who did that to court and they won. In a country where, we should note, truth is an affirmative defense (and not one that Jones proffered, because truth was not on his side). This is the story of victory of the marginalized and powerless over a media mogul who hurt strangers for a buck. It is good that they live in a country where such people can hold the powerful to account. And hey. If injustice was done he can counter-sue to rectify it. Perhaps we should take note that he won't because the law is not on his side... They didn't wrong him.