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Oh, pish. We're more than happy to condemn young cyber-bullies who hound kids to suicide without blaming the person committing suicide. If the act of making som
by scarmig 14y ago
Oh, pish. We're more than happy to condemn young cyber-bullies who hound kids to suicide without blaming the person committing suicide. If the act of making someone's life unbearable is enough to blame bullies for a suicide, then surely it's the same for the prosecutor.
Note that this doesn't rely on the victim's age: regardless of whether a 26 year old can be blamed more for suicide than a 16 year old, that doesn't change the fact that we should give similar blame to the external factors in both cases. Indeed: most tormentors of teens are themselves teens, so they, if anything, deserve less blame than a sociopathic adult prosecutor hellbent on career advancement, damn the consequences.
Also: the implicit attack on Aaron's character is uncalled for. You know nothing at all about the quality of his character. You should keep in mind that many of us here did know him. If you feel the need to engage in "man up" rhetoric in some pointless display of how hard-nosed and pragmatic you are, you should keep in mind it's a reflection more on you, not the person-object you're leveraging to establish your own status.
- Volpe 14y agoWhile I agree with your sentiment. I'd also say we are wrong to condemn young cyber-bullies. There are things in life that create adversity, then there are ways of dealing with adversity. I think conflating the two, makes it difficult to discuss. That said, clearly the two are related, but it is correlative, not causative.
- scarmig 14y agoI agree: plenty of people here have been bullied and came out relatively unscathed. Often the bullying survived was worse than what drives others to suicide. It's messy, because you can't tell in advance the likelihood of your "being a dick" turning into "instigated a suicide," because something minor for some people--nasty rumors on Facebook or a felony charge--might be life-rending for others. But just because something is uncertain doesn't mean you have to treat the worst case as equivalent to the typical or median case. We treat drunk driving much more leniently than vehicular manslaughter while drunk. That's the lens I view the government's role through.