I agree that naming a thing causes it to exist, even if only in our imaginations, but that is not always a good thing, IMHO.seamusTX wrote:I feel differently about the issue.Charles L. Cotton wrote:There is no such thing as road rage;
When we name a thing, it exists, even it is only in our imagination. Saying "road rage" is a lot easier than saying "using a motor vehicle to threaten, intimidate, harass, or assault someone."
I certainly don't think such acts are in any way excusable or less serious than criminal assaults that are carried out face to face with a weapon. They are worse for being cowardly.
- Jim
Example: "Hate Crime." From anyone's point of view, why should an assault and battery be more egregious because the victim belongs to a racial minority, or a non-traditional sexual preference? I understand that the intent of such laws is to discourage people from victimizing minorities, but the message that they send is that my life and health, as a middle aged white male, is somehow less valuable and that the other's is somehow more valuable and more deserving of protection. I am thinking specifically of the Matthew Shepard in Wyoming. What happened to that kid shouldn't happen to anyone, regardless of whether they are gay, straight, white, black, Muslim, Christian, or Jew. The men who did that to him hated humanity, not just gays. They were fully capable of doing the same thing to anyone else who held their scorn. But the same could be said for anyone who would commit acts of brutality. Tell the families of the 168 killed in the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the 800+ who were injured, that Timothy McVeigh didn't hate humanity. He hated humanity enough that he was willing to kill and maim all those people, simply because they worked in, or had reason to visit, the building owned by the government on which he was waging his private war.
Matthew Shepard's killers aren't any different from James Byrd Jr.'s killers, nor were they any different from Reginald and Jonathan Carr. However, there is one difference between these three murder trials. The first two were reported as hate crimes and tried that way, particularly in the media. In the case of the third trial, the judge went out of his way to suppress any notion that this was a hate crime, and reporters refused to report on that aspect of it, although the facts of the case manifestly indicate that it was, in fact, a hate crime. Why were the Carr brothers not charged thusly? Because they are black, and all five of their victims that night were white, who were chosen as victims because they were white. Let me make clear that I am equally outraged by all three cases - regardless of the race or sexual preferences of the perpetrators and their victims. ALL of it is evil.
But, while ALL of it is evil, authorities and their enablers in the media pick and choose what they will call a hate crime and what they won't - when they are almost always a crime of hate - because political sensibilities and the fear of offending one group or another interferes with the administration of justice. Thus, the legal concept of "Hate Crime" is a bad idea because it is selectively applied, denying justice to some deserving victims, and granting special exemption from hate crime prosecution of select perpetrators based on their race. So in this case, while naming a thing succeeds in putting a face on it, the real world consequence of naming that thing is to deny justice to deserving victims, and to withhold retribution to equally deserving scum-bags.
The Annoyed Man rests.
