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thegreatmarijuanadebate · 4 years

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Is Legalizing Marijuana Destructive to Society? We will examine both sides of the controversial topic of whether to legalize Marijuana.

The million-dollar question seems to be is legalizing marijuana destructive to society or can we function and live normally in a society where marijuana is legal? The topic has been debated for years but even more now because of how popular and open people are with it in today’s society. Back then, people were not as open with using marijuana. There were not medical uses for marijuana or stores that could legally sell marijuana for recreational uses. In our society today, people are more expressive about their opinion when it comes to legalizing marijuana and fighting for the right to legally obtain marijuana without being considered a criminal. Then there are people who believe that marijuana is not good for our society. Others believe that marijuana should be kept as an illegal drug and those who obtain it should be criminally charged. They believe marijuana will negatively affect our society rather then add value to it. Today we will explore both sides of the great debate to further understand the viewpoints of many who have an opinion on the legalization of marijuana.

THE GREAT DEBABTE

The main issue on concerning the debate is whether marijuana should be legalized or not. More recently millennials significantly supported the legalization of marijuana. As of 2015, data shows “Millennials (currently 18-34) have been in the forefront of this change: 68% favor legalizing marijuana use, by far the highest percentage of any age cohort. But across all generations –except for the Silent Generation (ages 70-87) – support for legalization has risen sharply over the past decade.” Since 2015, states have proposed bills that would add laws on medical marijuana use and the recreational use of marijuana. States that have proposed legal the usage of medical marijuana is Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia. States that have proposed legal the usage of recreational marijuana is Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Because of COVID-19 states had to pause the voting process and up until 2021 states have resumed voting on the proposed bills. As of March 25, 2021 lawmakers in New York came to a consensus with Governor Andrew Cumo on legalizing marijuana. “Following several failed attempts, lawmakers in Albany struck an agreement with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to legalize cannabis for adults 21 and older, a move that officials hope will help end years of racially disproportionate policing that saw Black and Hispanic people arrested on low-level marijuana charges far more frequently than white people.” Those who are IN favor of legalizing marijuana believe that the government think they know what is best for people so instead of knowing forcing the collective to follow a particular rule, they should give them the option to legally engage with marijuana. As history repeatedly shows us is that race plays a huge part in who gets in trouble with the law or not. “According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black and White people use marijuana at roughly the same rates.1 And yet, Black people are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for a drug-related crime.2". If we look to philosophers like Douglas Husak who believe that the prohibition of drugs is counterproductive, he gives several reasons on why this is true. Husak is in agreeance with many others and what the United States’ history has shown us that “In the first place prohibition has always been aimed or selectively enforced against minorities. Contemporary statistics are shocking. Although whites and Blacks are roughly comparable in their rates of illicit drug use, Blacks are arrested, prosecuted, and punished for drug offenses far more frequently and harshly than whites. About 10 million whites and 2 million blacks are current users of illicit drugs. Five times more whites than Blacks use marijuana, and about four times more whites than Blacks use cocaine”. Another reason Husak introduces is how expensive prohibiting drugs are in 2005 “state and federal governments now spend close to $40 billion each year combating illegal drugs. Most of this money has been wasted.” Specifically concerning marijuana “in 2005, Milton Friedman and a group of over 500 other economists advocated for marijuana legalization on the basis that prohibition directly costs more than $7.7 billion per year.” Research shows that there is a considerable amount of tax paying dollars being spent on the prohibition of marijuana and other illicit drugs. So, considering what the data has provided us, another argument in connection with the expensive argument is “A 2010 Fraser Institute study found that legalizing and taxing marijuana could produce considerable revenue for British Columbia. Economist Stephen T. Easton estimated the annual amount at $2 billion.”

The debate of whether or not to legalize marijuana would not be a debate or a controversial topic if there was not an opposing viewpoint to legalizing the drug. Those who are NOT in favor of legalizing marijuana say that “Marijuana use harms more than just the person using the drug. [129] Societal costs of marijuana use include paying for increased emergency room visits, medical care, and addiction treatment for the uninsured; more victims of drugged driving accidents; increased crime; and a negative impact on health from secondhand smoke.” Those opposed believe that it will cause harm to society by adding to medical accident and an increase in hospital visits. Another reason is teen usage, “Marijuana is especially dangerous for young people, because human brains are not fully developed until around age 25 (four years past the legal age in states that allow recreational marijuana). [79][80] The American Academy of Pediatrics said that adverse effects of teen marijuana use include “impaired short-term memory and decreased concentration, attention span, and problem solving, which clearly interfere with learning. Alterations in motor control, coordination, judgment, reaction time, and tracking ability have also been documented; these may contribute to unintentional deaths and injuries.” [156] Studies show that students who use cannabis perform worse in school. There is also the fear of addiction, “Dr. Drew Pinsky, a board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist, said, “I’ve been treating cannabis addiction for 20 years. When people are addicted to cannabis, cocaine and alcohol the drug they have the most difficult time giving up is the cannabis.” [93].”.

My thoughts

After researching the topic whether marijuana should be legalized or not, I have concluded that if we were in a time like 10 plus years ago then the coins of legalizing marijuana would outweigh the pros. But now that we are living in a time where people are educated about marijuana, where it comes from, how it is used, and what it could be used for the pros outweigh the cons. With the data that I have researched marijuana does in fact destroy our society if anything it adds value to our society. This is because we live in a nation where there is an increasingly amount of people who use marijuana responsibly and love it. Also, there are people who don't use it but are educated enough to know that it does not hurt people or others around them. There are states that have legalized it and there are states that are currently creating bill's bad what allow for the legalization of marijuana. This shows how progressive our nation is becoming towards something that has been controversial four years. As a young African American woman, I can say that the research definitely explains to us how racial profiling and mass incarceration could slow down because of allowing people to use marijuana. There are so many people in our society that use marijuana and out of those people who use it African Americans are incarcerated and punished more for using marijuana. African Americans are looked at as criminals because now they have a criminal record because of something as small as using marijuana. The research provided shows that the cons tend to repeat their cells there is not much of a difference and each argument provided. What this tells me is that those who oppose legalizing marijuana cannot come up with a legitimate reason why it would be destructive to our society. So, what I think the research tells us is that we still have quite a way to go in figuring out whether or not to legalize marijuana, but we are definitely close as a nation to accepting that marijuana is not harmful to our society and that it can be legally used responsibly whether it is for medicinal usage or recreational usage. The question of whether legalizing marijuana is destructive to our society is still out on the jury to be answered but research is showing that the favor leans more towards those who are in support of legalizing marijuana.

Citations

Husak, Douglas N., and De Peter Marneffe. The Legalization of Drugs. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/14/in-debate-over-legalizing-marijuana-disagreement-over-drugs-dangers/

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/marijuana-legalization-update-early-2021-legislative-developments

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/nyregion/ny-legalize-marijuana.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/reasons-why-marijuana-should-be-legalized-721154 https://marijuana.procon.org/

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anastkantdhangar · 4 years

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Why India’s Social Milieu Needs An Urgent Contemplation

India, traditionally, has been offering astounding variety in virtually every aspect of social life - diversities of ethnic, linguistic, regional, economic, religious, class, and caste groups crosscut Indian society, which gives light to its very inclusive, secular and democratic character. But why there has been a social unrest lately?

India ranks 144th on the World Happiness Index out of a total 156 countries on the list, even behind the likes of Pakistan, ranked 66th, and Bangladesh, ranked 107th.

17th June, 2019, a 24-year old man called Tabrez Ansari was mob-lynched in Jharkhand. He was tied to a pole sometime around midnight, and was beaten brutally till 6 in the morning, and was also forced to chant Hindu sayings. As usual, police arrived late, Tabrez was taken to the hospital, where even his blood pressure was not recorded. He died four days later.

Kashmiri Pandits were victims to a similar unfortunate happening. They were forced to exodus from their own home, and ever since, Kashmir has been even more of a hot topic.

It was a similar mob which chased and killed Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh in December, 2018 in Bulandshahr. He was trying to control a mob that had gone on the rampage after cow carcasses were discovered nearby the locality. The same mob also raised slogans against the police during the unfortunate happening.

Back then, between 2015-2018 specifically, such things were done in the name of cows, an animal which holds a religious significance in Hindu mythology. Considerable amount of such happenings on the name of cow slaughtering frequently grabbed news headlines back then, and as a consequence, consumption of beef in India saw some low. When reports of cow being starved to death in official government shelters started coming in, and also about that stray cattle were destroying crops and farmers were not very pleased with it, politics abandoned cows. It is obvious that cows, along with other animals, need to be protected, also given the fact that dairy products are a must, there needs more to be done to protect and nurse them. But the project of fear and violence that had been started, still continues in various forms.

But, unfortunately, cases of mob-lynchings still take place in our beloved India. The very recent case of Palghar district in Maharashtra, where two Hindu saints, while being in police custody and being taken to Gujarat, were attacked by locals. Reports suggest that the rumors were spread in the area about a gang which abducts children, and on the suspicion of the same, the saints were beaten to death, while the act of police standing quietly beside raised many questions.

A particular section of society, including sections of media, left no stone unturned to give it a communal angle. And there is no denying that there are communal and casteist angles to most of such cases, but there is a larger angle to it. The fact that somehow normal and a routine act it has become to lynch anyone you disagree with, who is outnumbered, is a thing which we need to question. What message are we passing on to the youth? Aspiring to be a global superpower, what are we projecting ourselves as?

The Larger Picture

Democracy has space for various views, expressing dissent in a dignified manner, solving issues, but no democracy can justify use of violence or any arbitrary means to deal with dissent. The very feeling of people that they too are ours should not be compromised at any cost.

The fact that the frequency of such acts has increased in last few years outlines that a message has been passed on to the society, especially the youth, that to beat up someone who does not agree with you, or who expresses any or some form of dissent is a normal practice. Of course, there also has to be some manner and dignity in which dissent should be expressed in a democratic society. But to suppress dissent brutally should not be a solution in a civil society.

This the reason why a new debate had acquired the headlines for some time about whether and how India has been growing intolerant rapidly, but the media and the viewers, the public, a large part of it, did not pay much attention to it. This was and is, what I believe, still a relevant question to ask and explore.

A considerable section of the youth has grasped that dissent or disagreement can be or has to be suppressed, even if it needs violence, which is more than worrisome. This is very much evident owing to recent JNU Campus Violence amongst students back in winter during anti-CAA protests. And the youth today, is the future tomorrow, which is why this makes it even more worrisome.

This even stops many from expressing their views, fearing that might get beaten up by the people having other views, and by not letting other ideas to be out there in the society, the prevailing ideas of the authorities are being hailed as champions. This is where we are failing as a democratic society. We have stopped or started to prevent asking questions.

A democratic society is always full of different ideas, views and perspectives, that is the beauty of democracy. A democratic society always cleaves up, if a one and only idea prevails in the society, there has to be something wrong, we are never going to realize what's wrong in such a scenario, and we have contemporary examples of such autocracies. And there were reasons why human, with time, switched from monarchy to democracy, he liked the idea of discussing various angles and coming up with one which could be best, as it will cover as many as loopholes, angles and point of views as possible, for the best of interests for every section of the society.

The Core Youth Issue

India’s 65% population comprises of people aged 35 or below, making it potentially one of the youngest country in the world, but what’s fresh in them?

A child learns most of the civil and moral values at home, he learns what he sees, and tends to practice the same, this is the normal scenario. What he learns through the education system, along with his moral values, is somewhat an outline of what kind of a person one is, how one’s attitude is. And India’s education system has been questioned ever since.

The Indian government’s very own draft education policy tells us that National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) rates 68% of our Universities average or below average, and 91% of our colleges are rated average or below average. These second-and third-grade colleges would have produced generations of average or below average students and scholars.

Today’s youth of India has been in the making for decades. A great deal of efforts must have been put in to finish off all the curiosity and hunger for knowledge and information. The youth no longer wants to understand why a system made them spend lakhs of rupees studying, when at the end most of them could not find jobs which could even earn them Rs.20,000 per month, but still are repaying their education loans. It is the official data released back in 2018 that around 67% families in India survive with a monthly family income of Rs. 10,000 or below.

Those who demand information, who understand their world, those who question the status quo, are the ones who sustain democracies. Can we expect such democratic ideals from the youth of a country where 91% colleges and 68% Universities are average or below average? 65% of Indians might be under the age of 35, but there’s little sign of anything fresh in their thinking. Their minds are not young. They were first burdened with great ignorance, and now they’ve been blinded by communalism.

With 91% colleges being second and third rate, it was inevitable that the youth is kept away from the realm of knowledge. This must have had a large say on why WhatsApp University became so popular, the very messages people received on their private chats must have felt to them that they now had an access to knowledge, the very fact that it was so easily accessible, made it very impactful. Lies and misleading information designed to prejudice them and incite them to violence now began to reach their smartphones as personal texts.

Fear Of Speaking Out (FOMO FOSO)

Our Lok Sabha has passed amendments to Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act last year, that gives authorities the power to declare any individual a ‘terrorist’. After it was amended, many social workers who have worked for the under-privileged for years, and raised important issues which was not in the best of interests for the authorities, have been imprisoned under UAPA.

As an obvious consequence, many have held themselves back to not speak out on issues they would have spoken on otherwise, the fear of intolerance of some sections of the society which may turn ugly and the fear of trolls of social media of the great IT Cell may also have been the reasons for the same.

There was a very popular dissent outrage in the form of protests in the form of anti-CAA-NRC protests. Protests in cities and college campuses took place across the nation, some also turned ugly as violence broke out in certain protests. To counter anti-CAA-NRC protests, pro-CAA-NRC protests were also being held in various parts of the country, which was first of its kind. The national lockdown owing to the coronavirus pandemic has brought the topic to a stop, but during this lockdown, various student leaders of anti-CAA-NRC have been charged under UAPA.

JP Narayan addressing a rally during JP movement in 1974. Many scholars speculate that the real Emergency started not in 1975, but in 1974.

In the history of independent India, its hard to remember any other popular mass protest where people across the nation came to roads to express dissent to the authorities, only one such example crosses our minds - the JP Narayan movement in 1974, during the time when Indira Gandhi used to be the PM of India, which mostly included students, and was ultimately suppressed after imposition of Emergency in 1975. But owing to a new practice we have accepted of labeling every sound that questions the authorities as anti-nationals or leftists.

India has had a history of patriarchy, which still prevails in many forms. Women in India, historically, have not been provided equal rights and recognition as men do. In such a nation, be it in the name of anti-CAA-NRC, such a large all-women protest of a scale as big as Shaheen Bagh is a very, very rare thing. Irrespective of our political affiances and interests, the fact that historically deprived women actually came out and led a mass protest on their own, which lasted for more than 3 months and has come to a haul owing to the pandemic, this certainly deserved some thoughts.

Motive of the protest, political interests and such stuffs can be and should be questioned, but in the process we should also give some recognition to things which are rare and important.

We all may share different political thoughts, different political affiliations, but at the end of the day, we all belong to one nation, and our ideas should be for the best of interests for our nation and its people as a whole.

#india #indian government #Indian Media #indian youth #dissent #politics #society #ndtv #India Today #CNN #bbc #new york times

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thelastranger · 5 years

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Retirement

This was inspired by a prompt by @ranger-melany who asked about Crowley and Halt retiring. I really enjoyed writing this!

Halt and Crowley were old now, not so old that they couldn't fight and shoot but old enough that they could feel it in their bones when they fought. They loathed to retire, to leave the corps; they had given so much to the corps. The corps was their life, but they couldn't be rangers anymore. Reflexes that were just one second slower could get a ranger killed. Halt always thought he would give his life for Araluen, die defending it, but he was glad to have been proven wrong.

They weren't completely out of the corps. Crowley still helped out with paperwork and Halt would occasionally take over a fief for week or two when a ranger was injured. Gilan and Will were in charge of the corps now and asked for help constantly. The two retirees were only really retired in name; they kept busy with the corps and with family matters. Crowley liked to call it consultant work. Halt thought that made it sound pretentious.

A routine developed between Halt and Crowley. Help out with the corps or Duncan and Cassie then reward themselves with a nice leisurely coffee or lunch every once in a while. Sometimes Maddie would join them, those were fun times. The young ranger kept them updated on all the new ranger gossip and liked to listen to their stories, hoping to gain some valuable information she could use as a ranger. They frequented the tavern more and more as their duties lessened and the days grew just a tiny bit harder.

Today was a special day. Halt and Crowley were celebrating Crowley's (un)official retirement. Of course he was still helping out, but as Crowley liked to put it "I don't have to deal with you herd of cats and the paperwork you never do. I can quit whenever I like."

They were known around the Blue Canary not as ranger but as genial old men who tipped rather well. And they liked it that way.

The Blue Canary is packed today, the place is hopping. Usually that's a good thing, but the energy in the place seems a little off. Like everyone is slightly on edge and waiting for something to happen. Halt and Crowley picked up on that energy as soon as they walked in. A larger number of strangers were sitting down at the bar with a large number of bottles in front of them.

Watching the men out of the corner of their eyes, Crowley and Halt slide into their normal booth, greeting some other regulars on the way. Almost immediately, a serving lady pulled up right next to the table. Normally Rosa seemed extra cheerful and glad to see the two rangers, but today she seemed anxious.

"What'll be boys? Normal meals?" Rosa was in a hurry it seemed. Every other day Rosa would chit-chat with them for a few minutes. She was never this brief. Crowley noticed her eyes dart over to the group of strangers. Ah, of course. Halt noticed it too.

"Our regulars would be great, yes. Say Rosa, is that group of fellas bothering you and the others?" No one could say Crowley didn't beat around the bush.

Rosa smiled, but it seemed strained and she pushed her dark curly hair back. "No, no. It's just that they're drinking too much too early. That tends to lead to trouble."

"Well, if trouble starts, Halt and I can stop it quicker than a ranger's arrow." Halt nearly rolled his eyes at that. Crowley accompanied his words with a goofy smile and arm flex and Halt did roll his eyes. They pretended to be harmless old men, but Crowley was laying it on bit thick like he always did. And like always, it worked.

"We'll beat em up for you. No worries."

Rosa let out a short laugh, some of the tension disappearing in her shoulders. The thought of the two kind old men beating up a gang of drunks was a bit ridiculous, but she appreciated the thought. She slid their coffees towards them.

"I'll let you know when." Rosa went off towards the bar before being reluctantly flagged down by another table.

Halt took a deep sip of his coffee. It was nice and hot, nothing added to it. Crowley's, on the other hand, was full of milk and he was debating on adding honey and sugar to it. It was a big cause of disagreement between the two friends. After a couple minutes of comfortable silence, Halt leaned back like he was contemplating something.

"Why can't we be the type of old people that sits in chairs outside and complains all day to the young people? Ya know, instead of threatening to beat up a group of strangers in a bar." Crowley leveled a look at Halt. Halt already complained to the young people, he didn't need to retire to do so. And Halt complaining about beating people up was the most hypocritical thing Crowley had ever heard. And he lived through Morgarath's political machinations.

"Halt, that sounds absolutely lovely, but I'm afraid that you attract danger wherever you go. We'd never be able to sit down."

"Wherever I go? Me, attract trouble? I seem to recall that you were the one who started a bar fight the first night we met." Crowley had to admit that was true, but he continued on. The constant bickering and one upping of each other was just what they did.

"Well, I seem to recall you getting drunk one night and committing treason against our dear friend Duncan and then getting banished as a criminal." While that event had been very painful at the time, it had become somewhat of a joke over the years. Crowley in particular found it very funny. Duncan, not so much.

"I'm not the one who disguised himself as a washer woman and had bandits chasing after him when they found you out."

"Whaddya mean? You were right there next to me being chased! And you made the better washerwoman anyways."

"I guess trouble follows both of us around." Crowley grunted, which Halt knew meant he was right, Crowley just didn't want to admit it.

At that moment, Rosa came back with their meals. A bowl of stew was slid in front of Halt and a plate of biscuits and gravy slid in front of Crowley.

"Need us to beat them up?" asked Halt, only half joking. He got a strained smile. The men had been making more noise and Halt could see the outlines of dagger underneath their tunics. The situation was getting dangerous.

"No, no," Rosa absently looked over her shoulder back at the men. "At least not yet."

The pair of men exchanged glances. It was more serious than they thought.

"We'll take the bills now." Rosa already had the bills prepared and the men took them gratefully. The tavern was almost empty except for the drunk strangers, Halt and Crowley, and a few stragglers.

The meals were a good price and Halt fished out some coins and Crowley did the same. Now came the next part of their routine. The disagreement over tipping. Halt looked over at Crowley's tip for Rosa. It was pretty generous, but it could be better.

"Pay Rosa more, why don't ya? I know how cheap you can be, but you can afford a better tip."

"How do you know I'm cheap?" exclaimed Crowley, only pretending to be affronted.

"You spent fifty years managing the corps coffers and you never sprang on the good coffee grounds. And I never got a pay raise in all my years of service," Halt peered at Crowley over a steaming cup of coffee. "If anyone deserved a pay raise, it was me for putting up with you all these years."

"Well, we can't all be an Hibernian prince who married a top diplomat. We're not all accustomed to money."

"Believe me, I know."

"I was actually waiting on you to pick up the tab Mr. Moneybags. Since you can afford it."

Halt gave a dramatic sigh and threw some more money down on the table, as did Crowley.

A second later, the group of drunk men stood up and pulled out their daggers. The leader had a short sword.

"Give us all the money in this place." said the leader, slurring his words only a little. Behind the bar, the cook and Rosa looked frightened. All noise in the tavern had dropped.

"The... the cash is in the back of the bar." stammered Rosa.

"Go get it then!"

As Rosa edged her way to the lockbox, she made eye contact with Halt and Crowley. Crowley nodded at her to continue on with what she was doing. It was best if she cooperated for the time being. Halt looked down at the coins on the table and looked at Crowley. The pair knew instantly what Halt was going to do.

"Ah, Pauline's gonna kill me."

"Not if we get killed first." And with that, Crowley brought his fist down on the table. At the same time, Halt poured out the last remains of his money onto the table.

The leader of the would be bandits spun around and faced two men who seemed to be old and harmless. And rich apparently if the money on the table was any indication. The bandit made sure his friends were keeping an eye on the lockbox before speaking.

"Stick em up geezers and push the money over." A sword point was stuck in Crowley's face.

Crowley put on a scared look and went to push the money over, hands trembling. Halt tenses and his hand slides under his cloak towards his double scabbard.

"Come on old man, we don't have all day!" The sword was jabbed closer towards Crowley's face.

Everyone was looking at Crowley and Halt. The cook looked pale and Tosa was frozen in place. The tension in the room could be cut with a knife. Crowley looked at Halt.

"It's never a quiet day with you." That was the signal. With that, Halt exploded into action.

Halt lunged at the bandit, startling him and Crowley rushed at the assailants at the bar. The sword is slammed onto the table, scattering the money on the floor. Half of the robbers turned towards Crowley and the other half rushed to their leader's aid, the money all but forgotten.

At the bar, Crowley smiles as he sized up the robbers. Three men, slightly above average build, untrained. And, it seemed, hesitant to attack an old man even when the old man in question had showed some skill. Never mind their hesitation, Crowley would start the dance.

Halt had slammed the leader onto the table and the other two robbers were circling him. One darted towards him and Halt swung his fist into his gut and grabbed the man in a headlock. As Halt was doing this, the other robber jumped on his back.

"Oof!" Halt let out a rush of air. He bent over backwards and slammed the man onto the table.

Halt felt the grip on his back release and he started beating up the bandit in the headlock. The man makes no attempt to fight Halt even a little and Halt looks over at Crowley.

He sees Crowley punching the bandits, and instantly it's like they're young again. Fighting Morgarath, reinstating the corps, beating uo bandits. It all comes back to Halt and when he looks over at Crowley and his hair is bright red again instead of the dull grey. Crowley looks over and catches Halt's eye. He sees Halt as he first did fifty years ago. A dark haired, scowling Hibernian beating up a criminal. It's like no time has passed.

Barely two minutes pass and all the robbers are on the floor unconcious. The cook fled to grab the nearest authority and Rosa was looking shocked pressed up against the bar.

Crowley looked at her. "I told you we'd take care of those men."

All Rosa could do was stare at him and Halt. She had thought their offer was a joke. The door burst open and in walked a ranger. She stared at the mess the two men had made and then stared at the two men. Halt was holding his back and Crowley seemed to be nursing a black eye.

"You know these men are wanted bandits, right? You're going to have to fill out some paperwork for this incident."

Crowley called back to the ranger. "We know Maddie, we know."

Halt groaned at Crowley. "We're never going to get to retire are we?" Not that Halt was complaining too much, but if he kept fighting strangers, Pauline would be displeased.

Crowley gave a tired smile, holding back a wince as his grin split his bruise. "Nope!"

#Ranger's Apprentice #Halt O'Carrick #Crowley Meratyn #Maddie Altman #RA fanfic #Prompt #Not super canon compliant but nothing I write really ever is

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arcticdementor · 4 years

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked why it is that the Woke won’t seem to have a debate or discussion about their views, and I’ve been meaning to write something about it for ages, probably a year at this point. Surely you’ll have noticed that they don’t tend to engage in debates or conversation?

It is not, as many think, a fear of being exposed as fraudulent or illegitimate—or otherwise of losing the debate or looking bad in the challenging conversation—that prevents those who have internalized a significant amount of the Critical Social Justice Theory mindset that prevents these sorts of things from happening. There’s a mountain of Theoretical reasons that they would avoid all such activities, and even if those are mere rationalizations of a more straightforward fear of being exposed as fraudulent or losing, they are shockingly well-developed and consistent rationalizations that deserve proper consideration and full explanation.

…

There are a number of points within Critical Social Justice Theory that would see having a debate or conversation with people of opposing views as unacceptable, and they all combine to create a mindset where that wouldn’t be something that adherents to the Theory are likely or even willing to do in general. This reticence, if not unwillingness, to converse with anyone who disagrees actually has a few pretty deep reasons behind it, and they’re interrelated but not quite the same. They combine, however, to produce the first thing everyone needs to understand about this ideology: it is a complete worldview with its own ethics, epistemology, and morality, and theirs is not the same worldview the rest of us use. Theirs is, very much in particular, not liberal. In fact, theirs advances itself rather parasitically or virally by depending upon us to play the liberal game while taking advantage of its openings. That’s not the same thing as being willing to play the liberal game themselves, however, including to have thoughtful dialogue with people who oppose them and their view of the world. Conversation and debate are part of our game, and they are not part of their game.

…

The first thing to understand about the way adherents to Critical Social Justice view the world is just how deeply they have accepted the belief that we operate within a wholly systemically oppressive system. That system extends to literally everything, not just material structures, institutions, law, policies, and so on, but also into cultures, mindsets, ways of thinking, and how we determine what is and isn’t true about the world. In their view, the broadly liberal approach to knowledge and society is, in fact, rotted through with “white, Western, male (and so on) biases,” and this is such a profound departure from how the rest of us—broadly, liberals—think about the world that it is almost impossible to understand just how deeply and profoundly they mean this.

In a 2014 paper by the black feminist epistemology heavyweight Kristie Dotson, she explains that our entire epistemic landscape is itself profoundly unequal. Indeed, she argues that it is intrinsically and “irreducibly” so, meaning that it is not possible from within the prevailing system of knowledge and understanding to understand or know that the system itself is unfairly biased toward certain ways of knowing (white, Western, Eurocentric, male, etc.) and thus exclusionary of other ways of knowing (be those what they may). That is, Dotson explains that when we look across identity groups, not only do we find a profound lack of “shared epistemic resources” by which people can come to understand things in the same way as one another, but also that the lack extends to the ability to know that that dismal state of affairs is the case at all. This, she refers to as “irreducible” epistemic oppression, which she assigns to the third and most severe order of forms of epistemic oppression, and says that it requires a “third-order change” to the “organizational schemata” of society (i.e., a complete epistemic revolution that removes the old epistemologies and replaces them with new ones) in order to find repair.

…

Bailey’s point is clear: the usual tools by which we identify provisional truths and settle scholarly disagreements are part of the hegemonically dominant system that, by definition, cannot be sufficiently radical to create real revolutionary change (a “third-order” change, as Dotson has it). That is, they can’t reorder society in the radical way they deem necessary. The belief, as both scholars explain in different ways, is that to play by the existing rules (like conversation and debate as a means to better understand society and advance truth) is to automatically be co-opted by those rules and to support their legitimacy, beside one deeper problem that’s even more significant.

The deeper, more significant aspect of this problem is that by participating in something like conversation or debate about scholarly, ethical, or other disagreements, not only do the radical Critical Social Justice scholars have to tacitly endorse the existing system, they also have to be willing to agree to participate in a system in which they truly believe they cannot win. This isn’t the same as saying they know they’d lose the debate because they know their methods are weak. It’s saying that they believe their tools are extremely good but not welcome in the currently dominant system, which is a different belief based on different assumptions. Again, their game is not our game, and they don’t want to play our game at all; they want to disrupt and dismantle it.

…

Debate and conversation, especially when they rely upon reason, rationality, science, evidence, epistemic adequacy, and other Enlightenment-based tools of persuasion are the very thing they think produced injustice in the world in the first place. Those are not their methods and they reject them. Their methods are, instead, storytelling and counter-storytelling, appealing to emotions and subjectively interpreted lived experience, and problematizing arguments morally, on their moral terms. Because they know the dominant liberal order values those things sense far less than rigor, evidence, and reasoned argument, they believe the whole conversation and debate game is intrinsically rigged against them in a way that not only leads to their certain loss but also that props up the existing system and then further delegitimizes the approaches they advance in their place. Critical Social Justice Theorists genuinely believe getting away from the “master’s tools” is necessary to break the hegemony of the dominant modes of thought. Debate is a no-win for them.

Therefore, you’ll find them resistant to engaging in debate because they fully believe that engaging in debate or other kinds of conversation forces them to do their work in a system that has been rigged so that they cannot possibly win, no matter how well they do. They literally believe, in some sense, that the system itself hates people like them and has always been rigged to keep them and their views out. Even the concepts of civil debate (instead of screaming, reeeee!) and methodological rigor (instead of appealing to subjective claims and emotions) are considered this way, as approaches that only have superiority within the dominant paradigm, which was in turn illegitimately installed through political processes designed to advance the interests of powerful white, Western men (especially rich ones) through the exclusion of all others. And, yes, they really think this way.

…

Secondly, the organizing principle of their worldview is that two things structure society: discourses and systems of power maintained by discourses. Regarding the systems of power, their underlying belief is genuinely that of the Critical Theorists: society is divided into oppressors versus oppressed, and the oppressors condition the beliefs and culture of society such that neither they nor the oppressed are aware of the realities of their oppression. That is, everyone who isn’t “Woke” to the realities of systemic oppression lives in a form of false consciousness. Members of dominant groups have internalized their dominance by accepting it as normal, natural, earned, and justified and therefore are unaware of the oppression they create. Members of “minoritized” groups have often internalized their oppression by accepting it as normal, natural, and just the way things are and are therefore unaware of the extent of the oppression they suffer or its true sources. In both cases, though in different ways and to different ends, the falsely conscious need to be awakened to a critical consciousness, i.e., become Critical Theorists.

Adherents to this worldview will not want to have conversations or debate with people who do not possess a critical consciousness because there’s basically no point to doing such a thing. Unless they can wake their debate or conversation partner up to Wokeness on the spot, they’d see it as though they’re talking to zombies who can’t even think for themselves. Unwoke people are stuck thinking in the ways dominant and elite powers in society have socialized them into thinking (you could consider this a kind of conditioning or brainwashing by the very machinations of society and how it thinks). We will return to this aspect of the problem further down in the essay.

…

Again, it is difficult to express from within the liberal paradigm (to their point, I guess) just how fully and profoundly they believe this. Their view constructs, in fact, a metaphysics of discourses that, in some sense, becomes the operative mythology underlying all of society and its operation. Because of the already critical orientation of the postmodernists and then the further amplification of taking on Critical Theory much more fully later, Critical Social Justice views this metaphysics of discourses in a very particular way with regard to the moral valence of how discourses are constructed.

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That’s a bit complicated, I admit, and so a simplification of this idea is that adherents to Critical Social Justice see discourses—ways we think it is legitimate to talk about things—as the true fabric of reality and thus the core site of ethical consideration. This is their mythology, in a nutshell. As such, they will not be willing to participate in any process that reinforces, maintains, upholds, reproduces, or legitimizes the unjustly dominant discourses, as they see them. Supporting those is, in fact, just about the highest sin one can commit in the Woke faith. The discourses must instead be engineered into a state of perfection—God’s Kingdom through Perfect Language—and it would not be permissible to engage in any behavior or process that allows oppression to be spoken from or into our discourses. Conversation and debate with people who speak from and in support of the dominant discourses would certainly therefore be considered highly problematic, and anyone who participates in it intentionally or even neglectfully would similarly be problematic.

…

Thirdly, adding to this is a theme we draw out significantly in the eighth chapter of Cynical Theories: they believe all disagreement with them to be illegitimate. If we followed from Dotson in the paper named above and another slightly earlier one (2011) about “epistemic violence,” it could be pinned on what she calls “pernicious ignorance.” Robin DiAngelo would call it “white fragility” to disagree. Alison Bailey refers to it as an attempt to preserve one’s privilege under the kind of term George Carlin lived to make fun of: “privilege-preserving epistemic pushback” (four words, twelve syllables, one hyphen). Further, Bailey said all attempts to criticize Critical Social Justice thought, because they come from that “critical thinking” and not the “critical theory” tradition (within which they’d obviously agree), generate “shadow texts” that follow along but don’t truly engage (in the correctly “critical” way; i.e., agreement with her). Barbara Applebaum said similar in her 2010 book, Being White, Being Good, wherein she explains that the only legitimate way to disagree with Critical Social Justice education in the classroom is to ask questions for clarification until one agrees (which, you might notice, isn’t disagreeing at all).

In general, as mentioned a bit earlier in the essay, if you disagree, you either have false consciousness or the willful intention to oppress, and so your disagreement isn’t genuine. Only disagreement that comes from a Critical Theory perspective would be genuine, but this isn’t actually disagreement with the Woke worldview, only with superficial aspects of how it is playing out. The Woke view genuinely is that unless you agree with the Woke worldview, you haven’t disagreed with the Woke worldview in an authentic way, and therefore your disagreement cannot be legitimate. Read it again: unless you actually agree, you didn’t disagree correctly (cue Jim Carrey as the karate teacher defending against the knife attacker).

…

Fourthly, the Critical Social Justice view sees people who occupy positions of systemic power and privilege and yet who refuse to acknowledge and work to dismantle them, to the full satisfaction of the Critical Social Justice Theorists, to be utterly morally reprehensible. They are racists. They are misogynists. They hate trans people and want to deny their very existence. They are bigots. They are fascists. They are “literal” Nazis. Not only that, they are willfully so, and their main objective is to defend and spread their hateful ideology in the world. If you truly believe this about the people you’ve been asked to have a conversation with, would you be about to help them do that by giving them a platform and lending your own imprimatur to them? Of course not. Such views are not even to be tolerated, much less entertained, engaged with, platformed, or amplified.

Furthermore, because of the theories of complicity in systemic evils that live at the heart of Theory, such a stain is automatically contagious, in addition to whatever real damage it does to further its advancement into the world. As they tweet, so they are: “ten people at a table with one Nazi is eleven Nazis at a table.” And not only are they supposed to endorse the platforming of that by sharing a stage with people they see this way, but they’re supposed to do it in ways that the dominant system, which is all of those things as well and their guarantor, approves of and advances its own interests through. These horrible ways include civil conversation and debate, which aren’t happening.

To give you some idea of just how extreme they are in their fear of being associated with people “on the wrong side of history,” there is a (somewhat fringe) concept within the Critical Social Justice worldview called “non-consensual co-platforming” (two words, nine syllables, one hyphen). What this concept describes is the following situation. Imagine that a Critical Social Justice Theorist were to publish an essay in the New York Times Opinion column this month, and a couple of months from now, I were invited to do so and did. Now we’re both people who have essays published in the New York Times Opinion column. The logic of “non-consensual co-platforming” would be that the editors of that column did a bad by putting me, a known undesirable, in the Opinion pages where there is also a Woke purist, obviously without having first got her consent to have been “co-platformed” with me in the same publication. (This example is rare, but more common is the same claim made about being platformed to speak at the same conference.) Now, the Woke purist is in the unpleasant situation of having been published in a place that is willing to sully its own reputation later by the publication of some deviant rascal. This is how seriously they take the stain of guilt by association.

…

As a fifth and final point, since this is getting pretty long already, remember that Critical Social Justice activists tell us more or less constantly how exhausting it is to fight this constant uphill battle in which no one takes them seriously (read: fight shadows of their own nightmarish projection). They tell us constantly about the high emotional labor costs of doing the “work” they do (and never being taken seriously for it). To invite them to a public conversation or debate is to ask them to get exploited in this way for other people’s benefit by getting up on stage in a dominance-approved paradigm with a bad-faith moral monster who just wants his opportunity to reinforce the very dominance that exhausts them in front of an audience who not only doesn’t but can’t actually get it, unless they already do. Again, that’s not happening. Even if very handsomely (read: ridiculously and exorbitantly) paid for their “emotional labor” to subject themselves to this situation, the other four points make it a nonstarter (and would drive up the price to basically literally infinity).

In Sum

One of the biggest mistakes we keep making as liberals who do value debate, dialogue, conversation, reason, evidence, epistemic adequacy, fairness, civility, charity of argument, and all these other “master’s tools” is that we can expect that advocates of Critical Social Justice also value them. They don’t. Or, we make the mistake that we can possibly pin Critical Social Justice advocates into having to defend their views in debate or conversation. We can’t.

These principles and values are rejected to their very roots within the Critical Social Justice worldview, and so the request for an advocate to have a debate or conversation with someone who disagrees will, to the degree they have adopted the Critical Social Justice Theoretical ideology/faith, be a complete nonstarter. It’s literally a request to do the exact opposite of everything their ideology instructs with regard to how the world and “systemic oppression” within it operates—to participate in their own oppression and maintain oppression of the people they claim to speak for.

These facts about the Critical Social Justice ideology extend from the microcosm of engaging in debate and conversation to each of those specific “master’s tools” a—science, reason, epistemic adequacy, civility, etc.—every bit as much as they do to the whole system that these tools combine to form: liberalism in the Modern era. This is a system that advocates of Critical Social Justice repeatedly tell us must be dismantled in the sparking of a “critical” revolution that replaces the whole of it, including its basic epistemology and ethics, with Critical Theory.

The hard truth is this: if you don’t yet understand this, you don’t know the fight we’re in or have the slightest idea what to do about it.

#james lindsay #new discourse #read the whole thing

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turnermcg · 4 years

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Vote vote vote

I am exhausted. That debate gave me a headache. I genuinely feel sick thinking about our current president, and I am so anxious when I consider what could happen in the next 35 days.

That being said, I am going to happily and enthusiastically vote for Joe Biden. I need to look my children in the eye and tell them I voted for a candidate who cares about all Americans - black and white - and not only himself. I couldn't live with myself if I tried to justify policy disagreements as a reason to not vote for Biden. The beautiful thing about voting is everyone who has been given the right to vote gets to decide what it means to them. For me, voting for Joe means peace of mind, knowing I made the right and just decision.

I hope my faith in this country and our democracy is not in vain. I need to know we - Americans - can reject hate when we see it so blatantly on display. I can appreciate differences of opinion, and I can respect prioritizing different political concerns. What I can't understand is voting for someone who is a bully. Someone who uses a man's personal struggles with addiction as an attack strategy (not the man running for office, mind you). Someone who will call on a group of violent racists to "stand by" if things don't go his way. If you can genuinely live with voting for the president, I urge you to reconsider.

Although I've got lots of thoughts about the political strategy and rhetoric on display tonight, I'm going to rest now. Doing the work of democracy is hard, but it is vitally important. And taking time to process and protect your mental health is something we as a country need to do more of (and normalize it, too, people).

Long story short, I am exhausted tonight. But I am never too tired to vote my heart, vote my conscience, vote my values.

#debates2020 #BidenHarris2020 #PresidentialDebates2020 #Vote

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bearer-of-the-light · 5 years

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Think twice before shouting your virtues online – moral grandstanding is toxic

by Joshua B. Grubbs 14 January 2020 The Conversation https://theconversation.com/think-twice-before-shouting-your-virtues-online-moral-grandstanding-is-toxic-128493

In an era of bitter partisanship, political infighting and ostracization of those with unpopular views, Americans actually agree on one thing: 85% say political discourse has gotten worse over the last several years, according to Pew Research.

The polarization plays out everywhere in society, from private holiday gatherings to very public conversations on social media, where debate is particularly toxic and aggressive.

For psychologists like myself, who study human behavior, this widespread nastiness is both a social problem and a research opportunity. My colleagues and I have zeroed in on one specific aspect that might help explain America’s dysfunctional discourse: moral grandstanding.

Moral grandstanding

The term may be unfamiliar, but most people have experienced moral grandstanding.

Examples of moral grandstanding include when a friend makes grand and extreme proclamations on Twitter about their deepest held values regarding climate change, for instance, and when a campaigning politician makes bold – but clearly untrue – ideological claims about immigration.

Philosophers coined the phrase to describe the abuse of so-called “moral talk” – an umbrella term encompassing all conversations humans have about our politics, beliefs, values and morals.

Usually, people engage in moral talk to learn from, connect with or persuade someone else. They might say of their decision not to eat any animal products, for example, “I am vegan for environmental and animal rights reasons.”

Moral grandstanding occurs when people use moral talk, instead, to promote themselves or seek status. So a moral grandstander might say, “I am vegan because it is the only moral decision. If you care about the planet, you can’t eat animal products.”

For moral grandstanders, conversation is a means to an end – not a free exchange of ideas.

A desire for respect from our peers is normal in humans, as are the desires for safety, love and belonging. Social scientists have traced the evolutionary origins of status seeking to prehistoric times.

Moral grandstanding, however, is a special kind of status seeking. It implies that someone is using conversations about important or controversial topics solely to get attention or impress others.

Severed ties and broken relationships

Just because someone touts their virtues – whether on Twitter or in conversation – does not mean they are morally superior to everyone else.

In a recently published study conducted with a team of other psychologists and philosophers, we asked 6,000 Americans a series of questions about who and why they share their deepest moral and political beliefs with. People who reported sharing beliefs to gain respect, admiration or status were identified as grandstanders.

Almost everyone indicated they had some history of grandstanding, but only a few – 2% to 5% – indicated they primarily used their moral talk to promote themselves.

We found that moral grandstanders were more likely to experience discord in their personal lives. People who reported grandstanding more often also reported more experiences arguing with loved ones and severing ties with friends or family members over political or moral disagreements.

People who indicated using their deepest held beliefs to boost their own status in real life also reported more toxic social media behaviors, picking fights over politics on Facebook, for example, and berating strangers on Twitter for having the “wrong” opinions.

Philosophical accounts of grandstanding strongly suggest that moral grandstanders behave less morally than other people in other ways, too. They are more likely to rudely call others out for not being virtuous enough, systematically disparage entire groups of people and hijack important conversations to serve their own purposes.

When the natural human desire for respect leads people to seek status in situations when they would be better served by listening, it seems, this behavior can drive friends, family and communities apart.

Other reasons for discord

The rise of moral grandstanding isn’t the only reason discourse in the United States has taken a turn for the worse.

Politics have grown extraordinarily polarized, which is both a cause and effect of social polarization. Politically active people feel more animosity and less trust toward “the other side” than they have in generations.

Social media itself seems to accelerate conflict, creating echo chambers of likeminded people that are galvanized against others and driving cycles of outrage that quickly escalate and stifle public participation in important conversations.

So ending moral grandstanding won’t magically fix the public debate in the United States. But tamping it down would lead the country in a more productive direction.

How to handle moral grandstanding

Consider assessing your own conversation style, reflecting about what you say to others and why. When you enter into contentious territory with someone who differs in opinion, ask whether you’re doing so because you’re genuinely interested in communicating and connecting with your fellow human – or are you just trying to score points?

Thinking honestly about your engagement on social media – ground zero for moral grandstanding – is particularly important.

Do you post controversial material just for likes and retweets? Do you share social media posts of people you disagree with just to publicly mock them? Do you find yourself trying to one-up the good deeds of someone else to make yourself look good to people whose respect you crave?

If so, then you may be a moral grandstander.

If not, you can still fight moral grandstanding by recognizing and dissuading these behaviors in others. Given that moral grandstanders crave status, respect and esteem from others, depriving them of the attention they seek is probably the best deterrent.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years

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The European Copyright Directive: What is it, and why has it drawn more controversy than any other Directive in EU history?

During the week of March 25, the European Parliament will hold the final vote on the Copyright Directive, the first update to EU copyright rules since 2001; normally this would be a technical affair watched only by a handful of copyright wonks and industry figures, but the Directive has become the most controversial issue in EU history, literally, with the petition opposing it attracting more signatures than any other petition in change.org’s history.

How did we get here?

European regulations are marathon affairs, and the Copyright Directive is no exception: it had been debated and refined for years, and as of spring 2017, it was looking like all the major points of disagreement had been resolved. Then all hell broke loose. Under the leadership of German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Axel Voss, acting as "rapporteur" (a sort of legislative custodian), two incredibly divisive clauses in the Directive (Articles 11 and 13) were reintroduced in forms that had already been discarded as unworkable after expert advice. Voss's insistence that Articles 11 and 13 be included in the final Directive has been a flashpoint for public anger, drawing criticism from the world's top technical, copyright, journalistic, and human rights experts and organizations.

Why can no one agree on what the Directive actually means?

"Directives" are rules made by the European Parliament, but they aren't binding law—not directly. After a Directive is adopted at the European level, each of the 28 countries in the EU is required to "transpose" it by passing national laws that meet its requirements. The Copyright Directive has lots of worrying ambiguity, and much of the disagreement about its meaning comes from different assumptions about what the EU nations do when they turn it into law: for example, Article 11 (see below) allows member states to ban links to news stories that contain more than a word or two from the story or its headline, but it only requires them to ban links that contain more than "brief snippets"—so one country might set up a linking rule that bans news links that reproduce three words of an article, and other countries might define "snippets" so broadly that very little changes. The problem is that EU-wide services will struggle to present different versions of their sites to people based on which country they're in, and so there's good reason to believe that online services will converge on the most restrictive national implementation of the Directive.

What is Article 11 (The "Link Tax")?

Article 11 seeks to give news companies a negotiating edge with Google, Facebook and a few other Big Tech platforms that aggregate headlines and brief excerpts from news stories and refer users to the news companies' sites. Under Article 11, text that contains more than a "snippet" from an article are covered by a new form of copyright, and must be licensed and paid by whoever quotes the text, and while each country can define "snippet" however it wants, the Directive does not stop countries from making laws that pass using as little as three words from a news story.

What's wrong with Article 11/The Link Tax?

Article 11 has a lot of worrying ambiguity: it has a very vague definition of "news site" and leaves the definition of "snippet" up to each EU country's legislature. Worse, the final draft of Article 11 has no exceptions to protect small and noncommercial services, including Wikipedia but also your personal blog. The draft doesn’t just give news companies the right to charge for links to their articles—it also gives them the right to ban linking to those articles altogether, (where such a link includes a quote from the article) so sites can threaten critics writing about their articles. Article 11 will also accelerate market concentration in news media because giant companies will license the right to link to each other but not to smaller sites, who will not be able to point out deficiencies and contradictions in the big companies' stories.

What is Article 13 ("Censorship Machines")?

Article 13 is a fundamental reworking of how copyright works on the Internet. Today, online services are not required to check everything that their users post to prevent copyright infringement, and rightsholders don't have to get a court order to remove something they view as a copyright infringement—they just have to send a "takedown notice" and the services have to remove the post or face legal jeopardy. Article 13 removes the protection for online services and relieves rightsholders of the need to check the Internet for infringement and send out notices. Instead, it says that online platforms have a duty to ensure that none of their users infringe copyright, period. Article 13 is the most controversial part of the Copyright Directive.

What's a "copyright filter?"

The early versions of Article 13 were explicit about what online service providers were expected to do: they were supposed to implement "copyright filters" that would check every tweet, Facebook update, shared photo, uploaded video, and every other upload to see if anything in it was similar to items in a database of known copyrighted works, and block the upload if they found anything too similar. Some companies have already made crude versions of these filters, the most famous being YouTube's "ContentID," which blocks videos that match items identified by a small, trusted group of rightsholders. Google has spent $100m on ContentID so far.

Why do people hate filters?

Copyright filters are very controversial. All but the crudest filters cost so much that only the biggest tech companies can afford to build them—and most of those are US-based. What's more, filters are notoriously inaccurate, prone to overblocking legitimate material—and lacking in checks and balances, making it easy for censors to remove material they disagree with Filters assume that the people who claim copyrights are telling the truth, encouraging laziness and sloppiness that catches a lot of dolphins in the tuna-net.

Does Article 13 require "filters?"

Axel Voss and other proponents for Article 13 to remove references to them from the Directive in order to win a vote to remove them in the European Parliament. But the new text of Article 13 still demands that the people who operate online communities somehow examine and make copyright assessments about everything, hundreds of billions of social media posts and forum posts and video uploads. Article 13 advocates say that filters aren't required, but when challenged, not one has been able to explain how to comply with Article 13 without using filters. Put it this way: if I pass a law requiring you to produce a large African mammal with four legs, a trunk, and tusks, we definitely have an elephant in the room.

Will every online service need filters?

Europe has a thriving tech sector, composed mostly of "small and medium-sized enterprises" (SMEs), and the politicians negotiating the Directive have been under enormous pressure to protect these Made-In-Europe firms from a rule that would wipe them out and turn over permanent control over Europe's Internet to America's Big Tech companies. The political compromise that was struck makes a nod to protecting SME's but ultimately dooms them. The new rules grant partial limits on copyright liability only for the first three years of an online service's existence, and even these limits are mostly removed once a firm attains over 5m in unique visitors (an undefined term) in a given month, and once a European company hits annual revenues (not profits!) of €10m, it has all the same obligations as the biggest US platforms. That means that the 10,000,001st euro a company earns comes with a whopping bill for copyright filters. There are other, vaguer exemptions for not-for-profit services, but without a clear description of what they would mean. As with the rest of the law, it will depend on how each individual country implements the Directive. France’s negotiators, for example, made it clear that they believe no Internet service should be exempted from the Article’s demands, so we can expect their implementation to provide for the narrowest possible exemption. Smaller companies and informal organizations will have to prepare to lawyer up in these jurisdictions because that’s where rightsholders will seek to sue. A more precise, and hopefully equitable, solution could finally be decided by the European Court of Justice, but such suits will take years to resolve. Both the major rightsholders and Big Tech will strike their own compromise license agreements outside of the courts, and both will have an interest in limiting these exceptions, so it will come down to those same not-for-profit services or small companies to spend the costs required to win those cases and live in legal uncertainty until they have been decided.

What about "licenses" instead of "filters"?

Article 13 only requires companies to block infringing uses of copyrighted material: Article 13 advocates argue that online services won't need to filter if they license the catalogues of big entertainment companies. But almost all creative content put online (from this FAQ to your latest tweet) is instantly and automatically copyrighted. Despite what EU lawmakers believe, we don’t live in a world where a few large rightsholders control the copyright of the majority of creative works. Every Internet user is a potential rightsholder. All three billion of them. Article 13 doesn't just require online services to police the copyrights of a few giant media companies; it covers everyone, meaning that a small forum for dog fanciers would have to show it had made "best efforts" to license photos from other dog fancier forums that their own users might report—every copyright holder is covered by Article 13. Even if an online platform could license all the commercial music, books, comics, TV shows, stock art, news photos, games, and so on (and assuming that media companies would sell them these licenses), they would still somehow have to make "best effort" to license other user's posts or stop their users from reposting them.

Doesn't Article 13 say that companies shouldn't overblock?

Article 13 has some language directing European countries to make laws that protect users from false copyright takedowns, but while EU copyright sets out financial damages for people whose copyrights are infringed, you aren't entitled to anything if your legitimate posts are censored. So if a company like Facebook, which sees billions of posts a day, accidentally blocks one percent of those posts, that would mean that it would have to screen and rule on millions of users' appeals every single day. If Facebook makes those users wait for days or weeks or months or years for a ruling, or if it hires moderators who make hasty, sloppy judgments, or both, Article 13 gives those users no rights to demand better treatment, and even the minimal protections under Article 13 can be waved away by platforms through a declaration that users' speech was removed because of a "terms of service violation" rather than a copyright enforcement.

Do Article 13's opponents only want to "save the memes?"

Not really. It's true that filters—and even human moderators—would struggle to figure out when a meme crosses the line from "fair dealing" (a suite of European exceptions to copyright for things like parody, criticism and commentary) into infringement, but "save the memes" is mostly a catchy way of talking about all the things that filters struggle to cope with, especially incidental use. If your kid takes her first steps in your living room while music is playing in the background, the "incidental" sound could trigger a filter, meaning you couldn't share an important family moment with your loved ones around the world. Or if a news photographer takes a picture of police violence at a demonstration, or the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and that picture captures a bus-ad with a copyrighted stock-photo, that incidental image might be enough to trigger a filter and block this incredibly newsworthy image in the days (or even weeks) following an event, while the photographer waits for a low-paid, overworked moderator at a big platform to review their appeal. It also affects independent creators whose content is used by established rightsholders. Current filters frequently block original content, uploaded by the original creator, because a news service or aggregator subsequently used that content, and then asserted copyright over it. (Funny story: MEP Axel Voss claimed that AI can distinguish memes from copyright infringement on the basis that a Google image search for "memes" displays a bunch of memes)

What can I do?

Please contact your MEP and tell them to vote against the Copyright Directive. The Copyright Directive vote is practically the last thing MEPs will do before they head home to start campaigning for EU elections in May, so they're very sensitive to voters right now! And on March 23, people from across Europe are marching against the Copyright Directive. The pro-Article 13 side has the money, but we have the people!

Take Action

Stop Article 13

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/19/the-european-copyright-directi.html

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jdwstaten-blog · 5 years

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The Individualistic Environment of the Internet

The digital creates an environment in which individuals are able to ignore forms of challenge to their views and create their own cult of individual. Today, individuals can remove ideas that disagree with their own from the public forum via a range of techniques. Internet users can seclude themselves from the outside world and become immersed in a world that reflects their opinions rather than truth and fact, as their ideas are legitimised and facts decried as "fake news". But how does the internet do this, and is the internet entirely to blame for this?

How we use the Internet

In Western civilisation, a social shift is taking place, the results of which are too vast to truly comprehend, especially within one sentence. The arrival of the internet as a staple of everyday life has changed the way people communicate, organise their days, entertain themselves and more. The internet is used to bring power to homes, find people new jobs and even to discover potential soulmates. It has become not only a staple of daily life, but integral to it, with users who are disconnected from it for long periods of time feeling disconnected from the world itself.

The Importance of Debate

Debate is vital to democracy. Debate is also vital to co-existence and co-operation with others, even when you find you might disagree with them. The internet does allow this. With so many people connected, people are able to share their different experiences and both the joys and hardships that they face. Anonymity may make a user less trustworthy, but it may also protect them and allow for their voice, that would normally be censored, to be heard around the world. That is why the #MeToo movement was able to thrive on social media, as well as suppressed voices in the recent Hong Kong protests to be heard on the other side of the world. Barnidge (2018) argues that political disagreement on social media is not so different to political disagreement in face-to-face conversation. However, whilst this may be true of more typical conversational debate, it ignores the taboo subjects that are rarely discussed outside of the internet, due to the need for anonymity. The internet allows for more honest debate in which people are able to speak freely without damaging their public face.

Why Are We So Open Online?

Whilst all internet users reside within cyberspace (Jordan, 1999), it is important to remember that beyond certain examples (such as Skype or FaceTime), we are unable to directly see one another within said cyberspace. We are instead represented by our avatars, sometimes pictures of us, or the things that we like and with pictures of ourselves or again, something we enjoy, these avatars are our personalities condensed into an image and a name. What they are not is human. Because of this, when we interact with one another, through our avatars, within cyberspace, we do not see another person, only another avatar. This can lead to something of a dehumanising effect and we become less aware of the person we are communicating within behind the avatar. As John Gilmore notes: "On the internet, nobody knows you at all, on the Internet nobody knows what your race is or your sex." (This was later popularised by the internet meme On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, a cartoon by Peter Steiner of the New Yorker). Because of this, we become less inclined to see that person as someone within the real world. As proven by Milgram (1963), when we are unaware of the individual, we are less likely to care about inflicting pain on to them. Perhaps then this is why harassment online runs so rampant and we are so quick to attack those with whom we disagree. This has led to a perceived break down in discourse as people become disenfranchised from debate. The internet age has come to be seen as a time in which debate in inescapable and constant when they do not want to constantly defend their own opinions or attack the opinions of others, instead wishing to simply share their viewpoint with like-minded individuals.

Block Buttons

Most social media platforms have a system in place that allows for the blocking of other users. Although it is dependent on the website as to what exactly the block function entails, the block feature normally allows for one user to prevent the content uploaded by another user from appearing on their profile. Social media companies do not comment on when and how the block feature should be used but instead appear to allow the user base to determine for themselves what would constitute a reason for using the block feature. What these companies do comment on is their ability to block an individual’s access to their site, usually through the report function.

The reason given by social media companies tends to remain the same, whether it be Facebook who claim they block individuals from the platform to: “Combat harmful conduct, and protect and support our community” or Twitter who state they remove content on grounds of: "copyright or trademark violations, impersonation, unlawful conduct, or harassment.” Perhaps then users should be using these parameters to determine what they block on the platform. Perhaps the largest issue with these guidelines however is the use of “harmful” in Facebook’s case and “harassment” in the case of Twitter as both of these terms and what is required of them is subjective. Whilst there are obvious cases of harassment such as death threats, it is up to the user to determine whether or not something like name calling is to be considered harassment. Because of this, what we unfortunately find now is that the block function is used by individuals, not just to block those who harass them, but more simply to block those who they disagree with.

Discourse is beginning to break down and this is a danger to Western society’s foundational material. As Mutz (2006) tells us: "Political disagreement is an important concept to democratic theory because it is believed to promote tolerance of the other side." So, the question arises: does the block function, in its ability to close off debate without resolution or compromise, pose a threat to democracy? Already the US court system has had to make a legal decision regarding the block function on social media regarding President Donald Trump and his personal Twitter account. Judge Naomi Budgewald ruled in a lawsuit against President Trump that it was unconstitutional for the sitting president to block Twitter users who were critical of his presidency as it violated the first amendment to the US Constitution. The First Amendment exists to protect the liberties of free expression that were important to the young democracy and remain important to democracies around the world today. Yet the block function was viewed by the court as a threat to this basic democratic function. We now have a situation whereby people are closing down debate, in part because it is so constant, and instead choosing to create echo-chambers in which their viewpoints are never challenged and instead regularly validated.

Echo-Chambers

An echo-chamber is the name given to a space, cyber or physical, in which the views of an individual are to be shared without critique and instead praised by like-minded individuals who are saying similar things. These occur when social media users create accounts and interact with other accounts, providing they agree entirely with what the other accounts say. This leads to users no longer reading what they disagree with or what challenges them and instead reading only validation for their beliefs. Therefore, when an individual encounters a text with which they disagree, they refuse to see its merits and instead use the validation they received from the echo chamber to disregard the challenging text (this is partially what has allowed the phrase “fake news” to become more widely circulated even when the text is objectively factual).

Deplatforming

Deplatforming is the process in which a large group of social media users come together and pressure the platform provider to remove another user from the platform. This can take place across the media (such as TV and Physical Publishing) but is particularly found within social media. Because so many people are willing to discuss their opinions more freely, as previously discussed, they are more likely to anger other users who may come to disagree with them. The offended users may sometimes believe that the topic this user is discussing is one that is too harmful to continue on the platform and so will protest the platform, asking it to remove the offender. What this often leads to however is further division as users begin to take sides between either the offender or the offended, leading to more aggressive and uncomfortable debate then began. If the offended group are successful in deplatforming the offending user, a further issue may occur: the idea may go underground. This tends to occur when ideas are considered taboo by larger society. Individuals who agree with this view but feel that they are not safe in discussing it within certain parts of the internet, will instead begin to discuss it elsewhere (usually on less monitored websites such as 4chan). Here echo-chambers form and grow, allowing the taboo idea to be more widely circulated and validated.

The Seclusion of the Internet

Perhaps the biggest fear to have grown out of the internet and its continued involvement in our lives is the fear of addiction. Internet addiction is not currently a recognised health problem by the World Health Organisation, yet it continues to be considered an issue, particularly in the media. According to Rees, Wilridge et al. (2019), "PSU (Problematic Smartphone Use) was reported in approximately one in every four CYP (Children and Young People) and accompanied by an increased odds of poorer mental health." The study further went on to argue that this was leading to an unhealthy mental health and decrease in social skills. The internet secluded us from the physical world, but it also has the ability to seclude us in the virtual world...

The internet, in its vastness, has created a series of pathways for every individual who uses it and that are each unique to them. Whilst we are all connected, and our paths might cross more easily, so too has our individual life paths never appeared so obvious. No two people interact on the same sites, in the same order for the length of their individual lives. We have become more secluded on our individual pathways, sharing less time together in the same places. This has only furthered emphasised our individualistic nature, as we become more engrossed in our own interests and care less for those around us (both physically and virtually). Some people may determine that the people around them are worthless and become so attached to just a few of their beliefs, that they will do anything to protect them.

The Dangers of Seclusion

Arguably the most frightening aspect of the internet is its ability, not just to connect us to individuals, but to connect us to the most dangerous individuals in our society. Extremist groups have easier access to their next recruits. YouTube is the most common place for propaganda to be found, with the site having to regularly undertake new methods to take down such material (thereby raising a free speech debate around extremist material and its similarity with hate speech). Pedophilia is also able to run more rampant online. Children often have access to the internet unsupervised and the seclusion they feel (particularly teenagers who already tend to feel secluded) is an easy target for pedophiles who look to give their targets validation before exploiting their trust and naivety.

The Seclusion of the Novel

But the idea of young people spending long periods of time engrossed in something, not pertaining to the real world, is not a new phenomenon. Novels have long had a similar effect and the child and teenage audiences have led to the creation of book markets specifically targeted towards them. Books, like the internet, transport people to another dimension, where they are able to explore another world. This transportation sees readers become, typically, more secluded as they search for somewhere quiet to read and choose to stay away from family members and friends for a few hours to enjoy their imaginary world.

Furthermore, whilst the words read in a novel may be identical, what we envision is not. A novelist is only able to go so far in transplanting their vision into their reader's head. What we therefore get is a system like the internet in which we live in an alternate world, for purposes of escapism, for long periods of time. Veltkamp even argues that this transportation increases our empathy saying: “fiction influences empathy of the reader, but only under the condition of low or high emotional transportation into the story.”

The idea of cyberspace is really not so different from the imaginary worlds we create when reading so why would the effects on children's brains, and their ability to emerge themselves into it, be so different? In fact, is it not more likely that the positive effects of fiction are also to be found due to the emotional transportation of the internet?

Of course, with a novel, children are unable to communicate with individuals who might exploit them, but they also miss out on communicating with friends and developing physical world bonds outside of their family. Though it should also be remembered that if children have a healthy amount of screen or reading time, then they should also have opportunities to explore relationships in the physical world be it in school-time, or other events aimed towards children.

Can it really be said that the seclusion created by the internet is so different from the seclusion created previously by the novel? Humanity has always strived to escape to somewhere different, the internet is arguably a new way to attain this.

Internet Gaming

Perhaps the most immersive form of entertainment through the internet is gaming and particularly the game Fortnite. Fortnite belongs to a fairly new genre in gaming known as the Battle Royale genre of games in which players (usually 100) are dropped into an environment and must pick up items on the island in order to survive, all the while fighting to become the last player alive. Fortnite is the most popular of this genre with an install base of over 250 million users across the seven platforms it is available on and at a recent World Championships, the 16-year-old winner took home $3 million. However, the game's popularity has led to countless reports claiming it causes violent behaviour in the children that play it, as well as other anti-social behaviours that come from long periods of seclusion. Is the game's main mode, in which players must defend themselves from other users for risk of losing, a rather helpful analogy in discussing how secluded people can become on the internet? Quite possibly. Even the game's modes in which players can fight alongside other players encourages tribalism as they still must fight over players in order to stay in the game.

Alternatively, however, Fortnite should perhaps be commended. After all, the game also encourages creativity (especially with its unique building aspect), co-operation (with regards to its co-op team-based modes) and puzzle solving. Furthermore, the game allows for new friendships, has created a new form of employment for several of the game's best players (several of whom have played the game as part of charity fundraisers) and created an exciting new brand for kids and even parents to bond over (with some parents even playing together once their children have gone to bed). Just like many entertainment franchises, Fortnite creates something well known that encourages people to create and share their ideas with others, creating and reinforcing friendships.

Not all internet gaming revolves around conflict either. Many games such as the Animal Crossing and Pokémon series have online elements that encourage players to work alongside each other. Whether this be building towns in Animal Crossing, capturing the various eponymous creatures in Pokémon or simply exploring the worlds of both games, these games, as well as others, offer players the chance to co-operate and succeed together.

The Information Superhighway

The internet is one of the defining inventions of the 20th Century and has had a transformative effect on Western society in the 21st Century. Communication and the spread of information has become available, quite literally, at the speed of light and on a global scale, especially among the Western World. These individualistic cultures are more connected and understanding between them has become easier.

This has created a cultural monotony as the various Western societies share their values more freely than ever. The internet is a connecting service that allows for quick and easy access to information. It is worth bearing in mind that the internet is not a unique entity or a metaphysical reality but simply a tool that, whilst advanced, still requires human input.

Collectivist Culture and the Internet

Whilst Western civilisation is seen as an individualistic culture, other cultures have been identified as collectivist. These cultures typically involve a larger community aspect and see success not as the product of the individual, but of the larger community. The question now is: has the internet made these communities more individualistic? Unfortunately, the answer is inconclusive as many of these traditional communities tend to be more rural and therefore less connected to the internet, whilst the urbanised communities have already become westernised due to the need to adapt to the global market. Still, we can see that even the rural, traditional communities in second world and some third world countries have gained new access to the internet and use it in much the same way those in rural first world communities use it (that is to say, largely on an individualistic basis). The internet is allowing the movement of ideas more quickly than ever, much as empires did in the 19th and 20th centuries and with this comes a colonisation not of land and resources, but of thought as ideology can spread faster than ever (somewhat like Christianity did in 19th century Africa due to British missionaries). This colonisation can be seen, at least in part, when examining the growth of western social media companies within emerging nations. Already Facebook has over 139 million users within Africa and many of the issues the internet issues that are said to threaten Western civilisation, are said to be doing the same within Africa. There are fears that Facebook is “undermining democracy in Africa” as “fake news” starts to become more prevalent

The Arab Spring

In 2011, the Arab Spring occurred across the Middle East. Uprisings in nations such as Tunisia, Libya and Egypt began that saw to alter the regimes that had taken hold there. These nations have all in the past been described as more collectivist communities than Western society and yet social media was highly influential in the genesis of these revolutions. Several groups used social media to come together and organise larger protests with a strategic purpose. With the aid of social media, revolutionaries were able to garner support from first world nations, leading to a NATO response in Libya, as well as aid in several other North African and Middle Eastern countries. The impact of social media in this situation cannot be underestimated as several videos of demonstrations and atrocities led to the eyes of the world turning towards situations they had long previously abandoned. What should also be noted however is the fall out that followed the demonstrations. Today three countries, or one fifth of countries involved in the Arab Spring, remain locked in Civil War, in part because whilst groups were able to use social media to overthrow the larger governments, none held a majority or even a sizeable minority within the national populace. The divisions that were always there between people have become more obvious, just as they political divisions in Western democracies have grown in the past ten years, a trend that has been largely put down to social media’s influence.

The Individual Behind the Avatar

The internet is arguably the largest collaboration of human work in existence and has seen billions of people contribute to it, despite its young age. When we discuss the internet, we have to remember that the people behind it are ordinary people. The infrastructure of the internet may be held by the Silicon Valley elite, but those who use it and populate the internet with content are the user base. This user base uses the internet as an extension of their pre-internet society and whilst becoming more integrated within the internet, the line between these two societies has become more blurred.

A Distrust of New Things

The distrust of the internet can be likened to the distrust of the written word observed in Ancient Greece. Socrates argued that the written word would "create forgetfulness in the learner's souls." A similar argument that can be found today regarding the internet, due to its ability to recall information at a moment's notice (and has previously been made by Daniel M. Wegner and Adrian F. Ward). Yet perhaps it would be fair to say that these individuals feel threatened by the changing world as it challenges a society in which they were the most powerful. Whilst the written word did ultimately change our society, it largely began what we now call civilisation. Perhaps the internet will be just as revolutionary for our society and therefore, like the written word before it, just as unfairly distrusted. Perhaps we are on the precipice of a new age that shall see humanity and its existence transform in a new way that as of yet is unknown. Or perhaps this is just a fluke and we shall abandon the internet as we collectively determine it to be too dangerous to continue. A new form of communication is a rare phenomenon for humanity, it is up to us to decide whether to embrace or destroy it.

Is it all the Internet's Fault?

It would be easy to say that the internet has created a more divisive, vitriol filled social climate, but to say so would be to scapegoat the human condition. In truth, we do not like to read what we disagree with and we have a dislike of things that are too different to ourselves. When we disagreed with newspapers, we changed the newspaper we read. When we did not like the change, a novel had made to a character, we put the book down and we told others that we did not enjoy it. The digital is not a new creation that has made us dislike one another, it has simply amplified and sped up the rate at which we hear things, both contrary to and supporting our opinions. It is true then, the digital creates an environment in which individuals are able to ignore forms of challenge to their views and create their own cult of individual, but no more so than any other environment. When an environment is created in which people of different ideas come together, there is always a way for people to walk away from debate and look for those who reaffirm their beliefs. Neo-Nazism in Post-War America and Europe and Islamic extremism grew without the aid of the internet. They grew, as any extremism does, by targeting those without cause and giving it to them. The internet simply allows this to be done on a faster and larger scale today. In truth, the internet simply speeds up the terrible things that humanity are willing to say and do to one another. In other words: the digital is not the problem, humans are.

Bibliography

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katmstanton · 6 years

Text

Fatherhood - Ch. 30

After a few fluffy chapters with “Fresh Start” I felt you guys needed some tears and angst again. Sorry for toying with your emotions as you read both! This one is a bit longer than normal as I did not want to cut it in half.

Tags: @madpanda75 @mrsrafaelbarba @obfuscateyummy @sweetsummertime99 @julie-yard @esparza-army @dreila03 @ctfarhan @surrealdiaries @tiredrainbi @lyssa1385 @theoofoof @msnyc @imagine-rafaelbarba

Chapter 30:

“Mr. Barba, it’s good to see you again. Please, come in.” Dr. Miles stated as he allowed Rafael to enter his office for their weekly therapy session.

Langan had made sure Rafael had seen Dr. Miles immediately after the court hearing to help get the services started. Rafael agreed but only after Langan and Carisi discussed with him that if he wanted to fight for Jake to return to his and Olivia’s care at the next court hearing the following month he needed to show the court he had complied and did it timely and actively.

“Hmph.” Rafael grunted as he made his way into the dimly lit office before taking a seat in the loveseat opposite Dr. Miles.

As he sat he felt the air leave him once again. He knew what the doctor was going to want to discuss with him and he did not know if he had it in him or even if he wanted to open old wounds.

“Rafael, we have seen each other for what.. 3 or 4 weeks now? Why don’t we move to something a bit deeper?” Dr. Miles started as Rafael let out the remaining breathes he held.

“Tell me about your father.”

Rafael shuddered at the question and his already grumbly mood became worse as he twiddled his hands. He stayed still for what felt like an hour but he knew it only to be a mere few seconds.

Dr. Miles did not say or do anything during that time and instead watched him. He hated being watched like this, hated having to reopen wounds he had sealed so well with books and sarcasm.

In the end he took a shaky breath before speaking. He knew if he didn’t talk and didn’t participate it would mean the worst for Jake and he refused to allow that to happen.

“Mi padre era mi padre. He is not someone I allow take up my life. At least not anymore.” Rafael stated shortly.

“I would object, wouldn’t you? I would argue he has and still does “take up” your life. I want you to think about a memory you have of him and tell me what you feel.”

Rafael didn’t say anything and instead fiddled with his hands once again before allowing his mind to think back to his childhood. To the memories he had tried so hard to forget and never remember.

“Mami hice el equipo de debate!” Rafael exclaimed excitedly as he ran into the kitchen from school.

He had just started middle school and while he had Alex and Eddie to run the streets with he was far too eager to start working to become the next Judge.

It wasn’t until he turned the corner towards the living room that he saw it. The look on his mother’s face as his father stood over her with a hand out like he had just slapped her across the face.

“Debate team? Are you a wimp?” His father started as he turned towards him.

“Ningún hijo mío estará en un equipo de debate. Es hora de que te pongas de pie.”

His breath caught as he remembered just how his father’s ring felt across his face and how the welts and scabs from the belt left marks on his back and hip that he still had to this day.

“What do you feel, Rafael?”

“Fear. Sadness…” Rafael started as he kept his eyes shut trying to think of a happy memory to change the subject with no avail.

“Go on.”

“Anger. I am angry. No, I am furious. I was just a kid. A kid who had to watch his mother get beat and a kid who still has the welts and marks to this day.” Rafael stated through clenched teeth as his eyes stayed shut.

“Do you ever find that this anger boils over and causes harm to others?”

When Dr. Miles spoke Rafael’s eyes snapped open and with a glare filled with fire he eyed the doctor down before he spoke through clenched teeth.

“I am not my father. I would never lay a hand on my mother, on Olivia, on any woman. I would never allow my children to know the feeling of a belt or the feeling of their father’s anger and resentment towards them. I would rather die than put a hand on Jake and Noah.”

“I never said you would, Rafael. I only asked if your anger boils over and causes harm. You are the one who inferred I meant physical harm. Think about your words, your actions. Have you ever done or said something out of anger without thinking?”

Rafael knew what Dr. Miles was referring to and as he thought back to the first time he met Ms. Fields and Jake at his apartment.

“Our judge has ruled that Jacob is able to stay with you while the paternity test and legal paperwork is completed in order to officially transfer custody to you. That is, if you wanted him to stay here. If not, he will go back upstate with me and return to the group home.”

Barba’s head snapped up at her with a look of pure hatred and vengeance. There was no way he would force Jacob back to a group home and back into a world of being an orphan. Whether or not Jacob was his biologically he knew Jacob deserved more in life than being bounced between homes and orphanages.

“He will stay here.”

Barba stared at her with fire in his eyes and all she could do was nod in agreement.

“The next availability for a DNA test isn't for another month -“

“-I’ll get it done here by Monday.” He interjected her.

“Mr. Barba, I know you are anxious to know the results but there is a process and we are not able to get it done before the scheduled time.” Ms. Fields replied getting annoyed at his attitude.

“Ms. Fields, I am the ADA for Manhattan. I work with the NYPD, FBI, and Homeland Security everyday. I do not need a lecture in government bureaucracy. I live it everyday.”

He knew he had been a bit angry at the situation and knew he tended to allow his words to cut people at their core. It was his speciality, always had been. It was how he worked his way to the ADA’s office and how he held such a high record as a lawyer. He knew exactly what to say and when to say it to cut the deepest.

He sighed as he replayed the exchange and the rest of the visit to Dr. Miles.

He spoke of how angry he was at finding out about Jake and that he never even knew about him.

He spoke of how Ms. Fields had made him angry by how she kept talking about money and costs when it came to Jake’s basis needs.

He spoke about how his heart shattered that evening as he sat in the quiet of the apartment listening to Jake move around in the night as he found himself not only as an individual but also as someone who was at yet another home.

“Rafael, you have come a long way since the days you remember when you think of your father. You have grown into a man who is more worried about a boy he didn’t even know was his or not than about allowing the anger take control and lash out. Although, you did say and do some things, you did not allow the anger to fully take over.”

As Dr. Miles spoke Rafael watched his thumbs as he twiddled with them for the hundredth time since entering the office that day.

It was something he did when he was nervous or when he was upset and had no idea when he started. The earliest memory of doing such was as a kid when he heard his father yelling or punching things.

“Rafael, I do not believe you have a true anger management problem.” Dr. Miles stated and Rafael’s eyes snapped to his in surprise.

Up until that point in his life many had attempted to label him “angry” when he had to discuss his father. His mother tried to get him to see someone after his passing but after one session he refused to go back.

The doctor had inferred he desired the chaos and that the reason why his father’s coma was hard on him was because he did not want to leave that time of his life. He had politely told the therapist to leave him alone as he spit words to him in spanish as he walked out, never to return.

Now, sitting in front of Dr. Miles, he was telling the same stories and working through the same issues and he had finally found someone who saw him as himself and not his father.

“You don’t?”

“No.” Dr. Miles stated as he sat his notepad beside him before leaning towards Rafael.

“Rafael, I believe, while yes you have a temper, you actually are suffering from a form of PTSD due to the abuse your father did to you as a child.”

“That’s crazy. I haven’t been to war or anything.” Rafael started to say before Dr. Miles cut him off.

“Rafael, I have been watching you at every session. Watching as you fiddle with your hands and how you react to certain things. Do you know what I have observed?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before continuing.

“You are calm and while you don’t want to be here you do participate. You talk about Jake, Olivia, and Noah and the struggles you deal with everyday. You talk about how losing Jake made you feel. You have even discussed the passing of your grandmother. However, it is only the mention and discussion of your father or the idea of abuse that you get upset or angry. It is only during those times you fiddle with your hands and twitch. You become very anxious during those times.”

As he spoke Rafael could feel the weight being lifted off him. He did not know why but all he knew is that while Dr. Miles spoke and talked to him he felt his body relax and he felt something lift of his shoulders that had been there all his life. He finally felt okay with who he was and the anxiety he never let anyone see.

Rafael didn’t say anything as Dr. Miles continued to talk to him. He stayed quiet and listened to everything he was being told.

In the end, he and Dr. Miles agreed to meet the following week and during which time Rafael would try something new to help with his stress and anxiety when it flared.

The two discussed sudoku or puzzles as a way to allow his very Type-A brain to do something productive while also allowing it to relax. Dr. Miles had also ordered, much to Rafael’s disagreement, he cut back to only 1 or 2 cups of coffee a day and try to not have any on the weekends.

“Thank you, Dr. Miles.” Rafael stated as he went to leave.

The two men shared a slight smile as they shook hands and as Rafael walked out the office he felt something new building inside him, something different. He felt calmness

#rafael barba #Olivia Benson #Barson #barson fanfiction #law and order svu fanfiction #law and order svu

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theliberaltony · 6 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

There’s a lot of news right now about conflicts within the Democratic Party, and similar stories will likely continue to pop up for the next two years. Much of this is normal and unsurprising. The American political system has only two major parties, resulting in those parties being large and internally diverse — a political reporter could write a “Democrats divided” or “Republicans divided” story virtually any day of any year. And the Democrats are in a complicated place politically at the moment, having just won a major election but not the presidency, which would give the party one single person to rally around.

All that said, it’s worth unpacking these divides among elected Democrats. Not because they will necessarily hurt the party in November 2020, but because those divides will explain a lot of what happens day-to-day until the presidential election and potentially afterward. These conflicts are often hard to understand — factions and officials have incentives to obscure both the existence and the specifics of their differences. Many labels have lost their utility by becoming too broad and oversimplified; the term “progressive,” for example, has become virtually meaningless to describe different kinds of Democrats, since politicians as different as Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both define themselves as progressive.

So here’s a short guide to the various factions of the 2019-20 Democratic Party, based on my reporting and conversations with Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill, on the various presidential campaigns and at liberal-leaning activists groups.1 The goal is to better reflect the disagreements playing out among party elites in the real world, which aren’t well captured by “liberal vs. moderate” or other broad terms like that.

We have generally ordered these blocs from most liberal to least:2

The Super Progressives

Very liberal on economic and identity/cultural issues, anti-establishment. (Anti-establishment is a very fuzzy term, but in this piece, what I’m referring to is people who see part of their role as not just attacking Republicans, but also highlighting what they see as shortcomings of the Democratic Party itself.)

Prominent examples: Ocasio-Cortez , Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan

People in this bloc generally see the Democratic Party as too centrist and too cautious. This bloc is pushing for very liberal policies on economics (for example, its members favor a plan that would put all Americans in a Medicare-style system for health insurance). But unlike the next bloc, they are also pushing for very liberal stands on issues around identity and race (they support abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.)

In short, this group represents the most left wing of the modern Democratic Party on both of the main policy areas occupying U.S. politics. Moreover, its members are aggressively pushing their vision even when other Democrats balk.

This is a fairly small bloc in terms of Democratic elected officials–I don’t think any of the current Democratic governors or senators fit into this group.3 That’s partly because policies like abolishing ICE are fairly new, so Democrats who did not run in the 2018 cycle did not have to take a position on them. But it’s also not yet clear that you can win statewide (or nationally) with this kind of across-the-board-very-liberal politics.

The Very Progressives

Very liberal on economic issues, fairly liberal on identity issues, skeptical of the Democratic establishment.

Prominent examples: Bill de Blasio, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren.

This group has much in common with the first, particularly on economics. The Very Progressive group’s distinguishing characteristics are being a little less aggressive and less focused on identity issues and a little more willing to play nice with the Democratic Party establishment. 4

I don’t expect Sanders or Warren, for example, to come out in favor of abolishing ICE during their presidential candidacies. (Look for language like “restructuring” or “starting over.”) But people in this bloc are onboard with the economic liberalism of the Super Progressives and are worried the Democratic Party is too cozy with corporate America.

A good illustration of the dividing line between the first two blocs and the rest of the party was the debate over Amazon getting tax breaks from New York for moving part of its second headquarters there. Ocasio-Cortez and Warren were among the most prominent opponents of offering benefits to Amazon, while less liberal Democrats like Cuomo generally are less wary of the Democrats building ties with major corporations.

The Progressive New Guard

Liberal on both economic and identity issues but also somewhat concerned about the “electability” of candidates and the appeal of ideas to the political center; generally rose to prominence after Barack Obama was elected president.

Prominent examples: Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Jay Inslee, Beto O’Rourke.

I consider the vast majority of Democratic members of Congress and Democratic governors either in this group or the one that comes next. The people in this group (and the next one) are often reacting to the ideas of the two more progressive blocs instead of really driving the party’s vision themselves. Abrams and O’Rourke, in particular, are talented politicians, but I don’t think either of them has a defined ideology in the way that Sanders does. Booker, in the midst of the 2020 presidential campaign, has embraced Medicare for all and the Green New Deal. But if he is the party’s presidential nominee, I would expect him to hedge on those issues — “I support the aspiration of Medicare for all” or some such — in a way Ocasio-Cortez would not if she were the candidate.

But what makes this group distinct from the next bloc of Democrats is a kind of performative wokeness, both on racial and nonracial issues. Its members are adept at speaking to a Democratic Party that is increasingly a coalition of minorities and whites with liberal views on gender and racial issues. They aren’t dismissive of the young activists pushing the Green New Deal, as some in the next bloc are. And wokeness is also illustrated in how this bloc sees the electorate. The Progressive New Guard wants to appeal to white, working-class swing voters, but it sees another path to Democrats winning in purple states: mobilizing nonwhite voters and white millennials who might not vote at all if the candidate does not inspire them.

The Progressive Old Guard

Solidly center-left on both economic and identity issues, but very concerned about the “electability” of candidates and the appeal of ideas to the political center; generally rose to prominence before Obama was elected president.

Prominent examples: Joe Biden, Cuomo, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer.

People in this bloc are often considered “moderate,” while those in the previous one are tagged “liberal,” but I’m not sure these two groups have huge policy differences. I’m not convinced, for example, Biden would pick meaningfully different Supreme Court justices than Harris or O’Rourke. But the Progressive Old Guard presents itself much differently than the new guard. The old guard is less willing to placate the party’s most progressive wings. The defining phrase of this group might be “how do you pay for that?” With the Super Progressives and Very Progressives seemingly ascendant, this bloc is deeply concerned about the party going too far left. That’s in part because this bloc, more so than the Progressive New Guard, sees the path to the Democrats winning as largely about wooing white swing voters in the Midwest, not mobilizing nonwhite voters in states like Georgia.

The Moderates

More conservative and business-friendly than other Democrats on economic policies; somewhat liberal on cultural issues; anti-establishment.

Prominent examples: Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Rep. Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.

Some of the members of this bloc recently voted for a bill to expand background checks for gun purchases, which was championed by Pelosi, but then also supported a GOP-backed amendment to the measure that would alert ICE when an undocumented immigrant tries to purchase a gun. The moderates supporting that idea infuriated both Pelosi (she argued Democrats need to work as a team and not join with the GOP) and Ocasio-Cortez (she objects to empowering ICE.)

But criticism from Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi may be a feature, not a bug, for these members. Many of them represent competitive (purple) districts and states. Some of the Democrats in this bloc may be, in their hearts and minds, just more conservative than other Democrats. But virtually all have a political incentive to play up their differences with Pelosi and particularly Ocasio-Cortez — to tell their constituents essentially, “I’m a Democrat, but not that kind of Democrat.”

Conservative Democrats

Skeptical of liberal views on both economic and cultural issues, often supportive of abortion limits, generally from conservative-leaning areas.

Prominent examples: Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.

This is probably the smallest wing of these six. But it’s an important one. Democrats may need more Democrats in this mold to win any of the three governor races in 2019 (Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi) or to gain seats in state legislatures in the West and the South. This wing, I think, will punch above its weight in the national debate about where the Democrats are headed — because these Democrats will likely be those pushing loudest for it to avoid the policy stands of the Very Progressives and the Super Progressives. And they will have a compelling argument — by being elected, Edwards was able to expand Medicaid to more than 400,000 people in a very red state, a real policy change Ocasio-Cortez can’t make.

Even these categories are broad and imperfect. You could argue for more or fewer and might dispute some of the politicians I have included in the various groups. But I think this captures something essential about what is happening in Democratic politics right now.

I didn’t intend to have six blocs when I started writing this story. But six (two on the left, two in the center and two to the right) is apt in describing where the Democratic Party is right now. The two most liberal groups have a ton of new policy ideas and energy, and they are determined to push the party left. But the Democrats have a majority in the House in part because of moderate Democrats winning in closely contested districts, and the party probably needs more moderate, and even some conservative, Democrats to gain ground in gubernatorial and Senate seats. Trapped in the middle are the party’s congressional leaders and most of its presidential contenders, facing pressure from the party’s left and the right.

Over the next year two years, divides that crop up among Democrats will likely break along some of these factional lines.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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