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this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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you know, good for her, i guess, but i absolutely fucking hate that they just paint this picture of her like a normal, well adjusted person who happened to get involved in some Weird Shit, because she has to have ignored or dismissed a LOT of red flags to get to where she was.
i'm glad she finally did her due diligence, but i don't think she deserves a glossy write up about how she did a little oopsy fucky wucky that may have made many children's lives measurably worse.
I have to mildly disagree here. Yes, some (I'll even go so far as to say the majority) of the blame falls on her for being willfully blind for so long, but there's also the fact that many of her colleagues simply tried shielding her from the information. Plus, in any case like this, you often don't know the true reality of the situation until you roll up your sleeves and start digging in yourself.
But I'm willing to give her a lot of credit. She was willing to have her beliefs challenged, she was willing to look at everything objectively, and she didn't follow her colleagues' lead in ignoring the evidence for their own political benefit because the facts didn't jive with their personal worldview (and apparently being willing to state as much, if only to her). That itself is a rarity in society today, where the only answer to extremism is more extremism, doubling down instead of compromising, and treating any attempt at admitting the other side may have a point as being a traitor to the cause. This holds especially true in the GOP, and even more so in places like Texas.
And in an area like that, I'd much rather have someone who at least seems to be willing to be objective and accept reality vs. yet another crackpot who wants a list of books banned because some of the words contain the letters G, A, and Y.
Also you have to allow people a way out. If you say they can never come back to reality, then they won't try.
It takes a lot to leave your social group, even if that social group is based on rage, lies, and bullshit. It's not entirely different from ex-Mormons or people leaving a cult.
Now is she actually gonna do something about her colleagues misleading her or continue being complicit due to willful ignorance?
Belief is a word for children. Adults either know or dont know. If you see an adult using the word believe youre staring at a red flag.
Every news she watched told her a certain picture of how the world was.
Every person she talked to swears to her that the world is a certain way (and, if she starts questioning, they get real suspicious of her and maybe might ostracize her from their social circle).
It would be weird if she had arrived at the truth on her own before this point. And usually, it actually takes a lot more than just reading over the primary sources and realizing that they don't say what the news and all her friends said they say, before someone realizes the truth.
She didn't ignore any red flags, because the red flags exist in reality. You're well acquainted with some information about reality that she's not privy to, and so in your mind it was easy to spot. For her, her world picture is carefully managed and curated, and the instant that she saw some information that it wasn't the way she'd been told, she realized the truth, told everyone (alienating more or less 100% of her former allies), and started working to try to put it right.
Don't hedge your support for her, would be my way of looking at it. She wants to stop the Nazis. Okay, sounds great. I wouldn't kick Eisenhower out of the wagon train because he's a Republican, while the shooting against the ones who want to kill you and me and also her, is still going on.
Don't let a thirst for justice get in the way of finding allies. It's about the school districts and their future, not the individuals trying to fuck them up with religious indoctrination.
So, it's not "good for her" as much as "good for those kids". And what she deserves or not is less important than those kids futures of being brainwashed or not. She's just one person, and punishing her would accomplish nothing helpful, you're not going to scare off her old friends that way or anything.
They didn't say anything about punishing her, just that she shouldn't be applauded for switching from an asshole to less of an asshole.
Personally I think we should always applaud learning if we want to encourage it further.
I'm not going to applaud someone for abusing someone less. She is still a committed Republican who just decided this particular approach in imposing her terrible views was wrong.
Sure, but I think improvement is worth acknowledging. We should not limit reward to just some kind of good enough.
People do not have to learn or grow, it is in no way required to be a live American citizen that exerts power in our system. If we want people to do it, it needs to be supported. Even if that is sometimes distasteful.
"Bob is kicking puppies less often than he used to, let's celebrate!"
-Carrolade
Afraid so. I believe in rehabilitation over punishment for criminals, with the goal being the eventual cessation of the behavior.
edit: Side note, not because I like it, but because it is necessary to fix our criminal justice system. We have a very abnormally high recidivism rate, where convicted criminals frequently go on to commit more crimes. Also, while relying on severe punishment may make us feel better, it does not actually work to reduce crime. It is also expensive.
So, as uncomfortable as it may sound, it's about treatment of the core problems with the goal of eventual release back into society. Even for animal abuse. It's a challenging issue, unfortunately.
Rehabilitation requires understanding that doing a thing is wrong. Gore shows no signs that she thinks the thing is wrong, just that the way that the extremist members of the party went about it was wrong, and that it impacted her personally.
I also support rehabilitation, but that isn't relevant in this case.
Not necessarily, no. You don't reduce recidivism by preaching right and wrong, you do it by cultivating healthy behaviors. Criminals, or republicans for that matter, are not afraid of punishment, and don't really care about right or wrong.
So, you need to kind of help them grow more healthy practices and adaptations, kind of like re-parenting them, since somebody screwed it up initially. It's ultimately selfishly beneficial to be a good person, and this can be taught. This is more effective than simply leaning on right/wrong like they're a young child or something.
I mean, do you not do bad things simply because "they're wrong", or do not do them because they would make your life worse in ways you can consider, and you have better alternatives?