I have no real opinions about the late Chavez one way or another, but could we at least wait until we find out if he was guilty?
Go here to read one of a tidal wave of stories all but cheering the same thing.
The same is true of Les Wexner, Ohio's biggest bad boy billionaire. Founder of that Playboy Mansion version of Woolworth, Victoria's Secret, he shockingly has been implicated in the Jeffery Epstein case. Granted, there could be more behind Wexner's alleged activity than the accusations behind Chavez. Nonetheless, note what is happening. Like Chavez, there has been a push - aided by local media that clearly loves the new messaging - to have Wexner erased from various locations bearing his name. The biggest being the Wexner Medical Center. And as far as I know, Wexner hasn't even been charged yet.
It makes me think of the Kavanaugh hearing. Remember when that batch of inquisition loving Leftists openly declared that we have to get over our obsession with things like presumption of innocence, burden of proof, and all that due process rubbish? Oh, in dusty old courtrooms those might work. But in the real world, we'll have no more of it.
The motto of the whole 'woke' era post-liberal left is 'we judge, we hate, we condemn, we eradicate.' They almost seem proud to execute judgement and pass out punishments before we even know if anything happened. We saw that during the Minnesota ICE deflection. A story would break that something happened, someone was shot, or anything, and those on the Left swarmed social media demanding the ICE officials' heads before we even knew if anything happened, much less what.
Even when I was in college, there was still a certain amount of 'hurray for the West and the American experiment' sentiments floating about. Even if we were focusing more and more of the sins thereof. And chief among these triumphs was not only our legal system for all its flaws, but the ideals behind it. Especially such ideals as presumption of innocent (a big one).
So much so that I recall a CNN broadcast ages ago in which Larry King interviewed John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted fame. Walsh, whose son Adam was brutally murdered, never held back his anger and contempt for criminals. Which led Mr. King to sort of chastise him. King reminded him of the common view I had heard my whole life, the view I learned in school and our greater societal pool: That these things transcend the courts and should be the basis for how we conduct our very lives. Just like censorship starts in the heart before it ever reaches the State, so it was with all the values we were supposed to embrace. We embrace them on principle, because it's upon those principles that our blessed way of living is based.
Well, sorry Mr. King. That ship sailed years ago. Kavanaugh was the first time I heard sitting politicians, journalists and other activists (including, but not limited to, Christians) openly and proudly lecture me on the need to get over this whole innocent until proven guilty rubbish. Apparently your culpability is based upon what group is accusing who and why. Now it's so engrained that people don't even pretend to pretend. In fact, people increasingly appear to resent even having to judge. Just point a finger and execute the sentence. Yet think on it. If one of the most universally celebrated values of our civilization - innocent until proven guilty - can be discarded in barely a decade, imagine what other ideals we imagined had passed the 'no turning back' point in history will go the same way.
Again, not saying Chavez wasn't guilty. or that Wexner wasn't part of the alleged Epstein sex slave ring. I'm just saying that it would be nice if we could put the Left's lynch mob and media pitchfork brigade on pause until we at least take steps to determine if there was actual guilt. But I fear not.
One by one, we're seeing the post-Western Left dismantle and knock down the pillars and assumptions, values and core ideals of the Christian Western Democratic tradition. Things most of us imagined were locked in and etched in stone no matter how far off the rails we went. Whatever crazy happened in our society, I think we believed these core values would keep certain pillars of the West intact. Well, not so much apparently. The staggering thing to see is how many Christians seem to have jumped on this bandwagon of bypassing evidence to execute judgement. But then, it's been shocking to see how many Christians have warmed up to this whole 'boy did we get obsessing about forgiveness all wrong' development in these post-BLM years. Nonetheless, that's the people of God for you. Just roll out a golden calf and then grab some popcorn.
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteChavez was "canonized" by a witless sentiment willing to overlook glaring evidence like the brutality of his thugs toward dissident farmworkers and harsh language toward "wetbacks", all known and complained about at the time, to no avail. In with the witless sentiment, out with the witless sentiment (although Huerta's story seems pretty damaging). To the Left, people are no more than flags to wave to rally the troops or threaten the opposition, and flags that get damaged (or too old to be useful) get burned. That's been going on since 1918. What's new is the number of idiots who now think that way.
I think sometimes they hold info back about them as well, if they are still doing good for the cause. I mean, we all knew about Harvey Weinstein. I remember radio shock jocks making jokes about his supposed infractions, but it was all OK. Same with Bill Cosby. Do I believe all of the women are liars? No. Nor do I believe they all suddenly emerged following his infamous Pound Cake speech. My hunch is that they knew about these things all along, but sorry about your luck ladies, he's convenient. The minute he ceased being convenient - in Cosby's case by suggesting black Americans have an obligation to try to shape up and play it straight - they turned to the women who up to that point had been ignored.
DeleteIt wasn't an absence of proof that was notable in BK's case. It was the absence of any evidence at all bar the claims of a woman who routed her complaint through a member of the House to avoid legal exposure for misleading the committee, who allowed her lawyer to tell cock-and-bull tales of her 'fear of flying' as a maneuver in the scheduling of her testimony, who told a story in 2012 to supposed counselors which was inconsistent with the one she was pushing in 2018 (as to the number of assailants and the year), who was contradicted by every other person who she named as having attended the gathering in question, and who could not (even with the aid of the major media and the Democratic Party's oppo research crew) could not present evidence she had ever met the two men she accused. . Kavanaugh was able to unearth his appointment calendar for 1982, hiding in some basement. Neither her name nor her chum Leland Ingham's name were on it; neither were their initials. Leland Ingham later said with the schedule she was keeping in 1982, she could not imagine having a bloc of time to attend an afternoon gathering like the one described. How flimsy does a story have to be before you stop taking it seriously.
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You'll also recall Kavanaugh's street-level detractors shifting gears (while admitting nothing at all) and peddling the claim that BK was an emotionally unstable drunk.
Heck, I can do better than that. I remember when the great scandal became the Ice Cube Throwing Disaster of BK's college days. Really. I don't know if you remember that. When someone said he got drunk and threw ice cubes at someone. Beyond him being drunk, they tried to act like the throwing of ice cubes was some felonious assault. It was all a lynch mob of course. The thing I most remember, however, was when the Jesuit magazine America withdrew its endorsement of him. Not because it believe he was guilty. But because his confirmation could cause distress for pro-abortion women (that's not how they said it, but that is who they meant). In other words, better and innocent man's career be torpedoed. We definitely turned a corner as a society, that's for sure.
DeleteThe Jesuit weasels insisted that Blasey's accusations be 'firmly disproved', then offer no example of what form that might take 36 years after the fact. That Leland Ingham (her friend) had no memory of such a gathering and that the only known connection between CBF on the one hand and BK and MJ on the other was that they lived in the same county (which, at the time, had a population of 500,000) with her house six miles from the one and eight miles from the other evidently was not sufficient 'disproof'.
DeleteI'm no lawyer and admit I could normally be counted on to miss some nuances in a court case. But even my amateur eyes and ears were stunned at the lack of meaningful evidence that was being called credible. A decades after the fact accusation with virtually no corroborating evidence and what appeared to be problems with what little evidence she presented. But again, it was then that we were told it's not a question of guilt or innocence, and we really need to stop obsessing about burden of proof and presumption of innocence anyway.
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