Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Sun Jul 08, 2018 10:04 pm
Seabass wrote:
Well, it is down to he said/she said, but given everything I know about Trump worshippers, I'm inclined to believe the witnesses over MAGA punks.
The 'Anonymous sources' thing aside, I don't need a round of Chinese whispers to justify my condemnation of Trump and his cronies. The Whataburger incident is notable for it's social media traction (and yet this sort of social conflict is probably being played out across the nation every day), but I'm reluctant to condemn or praise one party over the other on the basis of a video snippet and a sketchy third party report. When others hold this kind of thing up as a test of who's side I'm on I tell them that I'm under no obligation to fulfill their definitions - charitably is a far better operating principle I feel, not least because when an action fails the charitably test it remains failed.
I tend to agree with your position on this Brian. If the little shit with the hat was mouthing off to the douchebag who took the hat, then we can all understand how verbal slights and insults can escalate into physical confrontation.
As a matter of the law, though, if the kids were having an unsavory or racist conversation - making jokes based on race or using racist lingo -- whatever - it is not legal justification to take the hat or throw a drink on someone's face. Hence the douchebag's arrest at some point after the incident. Even if the little shit was joking about lynching black people, the legally acceptable response is to respond with words, or to ignore the little shit.
It's similar to when someone gets confronted in a restaurant, or cursed out by a sushi chef, by those who may hate shitbag A, B or C. It would not be legally acceptable for the shitbags to attack the folks who are speaking using offensive verbiage.
For me, it comes down along the lines of how I raise my kids. Sometimes, other kids say or do things that upset us. Sometimes, they may even say mean things. But, we don't control what other people say, and what they say is not something we ought to take personally. It's about them, not us. It's not acceptable to hit someone or throw things at them or take their stuff because they say something we don't like, or that is "bad." Being able to step back from what other people think and say, and to be strong enough to coexist with people who think and say bad things, is one of the first steps to maturity.
This is also one of those areas that it behooves us to apply the shoe on the other foot test. If roles were reversed, and someone was sitting in the booth with a Nation of Islam symbol on his hit, and he started talking about clearing whitey out of the country, would that warrant someone taking the hat and throwing a drink in the guy's face? To me, no. The Nation of Islam guy would be a racist little shit, sure, but so be it. It's a free country.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
