Comment by KoftaBob
1 year ago
Do you have some concrete examples of these reigns placed on our freedoms that most people apparently aren't intelligent enough to realize?
1 year ago
Do you have some concrete examples of these reigns placed on our freedoms that most people apparently aren't intelligent enough to realize?
Most of it these days is less about being intelligent enough and more about whether you're positioned to encounter or hear about a "chilling effect" [1]. Historians will probably only ever be able to debate order-of-magnitude estimates of how many students gave up protesting because of the Kent State shootings, or how many writers "self-censored" because of PRISM/XKeyscore [2], or how many people decide not to exercise their Second Amendment rights because they don't want to risk being categorized as "armed" in a police encounter [3] [4].
One example that's a bit more concrete is the combination of pre-trial detention and plea bargains. These form, in effect, a punishment for exercising one's right to a fair trial, a punishment that exists because our court system is quite far from having the capacity to properly handle the sheer volume of prosecutions that occur [5].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
[2] https://pen.org/report/chilling-effects/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
[5] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/26/plea-bargainin...
As an attorney, I find your plea bargain argument unpersuasive. Major themes in the criminal justice system are acknowledgment of guilt and acceptance of responsibility. These are going to work against you after spending a year claiming you didn’t do it if the jury decides you did.
Well... I think the NSA should be abolished!
If you're a heterosexual white male, you probably won't notice them. You'll also probably not care for that any non-heterosexual white male might feel differently. For everyone else, we have loads of examples of how not free they are at times. Heaven help you if you "fit the description".
So… no?
Just race and sex baiting with vague allusions, but not actually a specific example when asked…?
If you can't think of any specific examples on your own, then you're just not really trying very hard.
Try driving while not white in certain cities and see how free you feel. Try being a naturalized citizen or first gen to see how free you are in certain cities. Try being a female and looking to make your own health care decisions in certain states. Are these less vague allusions enough for you?
Freedom does not mean the opposite of being in jail. There's a lot of freedoms that are taken away from people purely based on race/sex whether you want to call it baiting or not. They still exist as problems.
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