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Trial by tears — 13 Comments

  1. True story.

    When I was 7 years old, there was an incident in which I nearly killed my father. My mistake was close to fatal for him but his injuries were moderate. The details are tattooed on my memory and I have told this to others over the years.

    One time several years ago, my family was telling stories and I told this one, about my mistake. My father spoke up and said he was the one who made the mistake.

    Even today, if given a polygraph or in court, I would be totally believable as I know my mistake was the cause. If my father was in the same position, so would he.

    No one else was around so no one else could testify. I have told my story to others throughout the years and they could say that I have been consistent in it and am credible.

    But with the inconsistent views we both believe, where can the truth be? And this is about an incident that really happened, we both know he was injured.

    This is why no one now can determine what happened years ago. I have doubts about someone who didn’t tell anyone for 30 years to accurately remember the event, including the perpetrator.

    One Forensic Files episode is about a wife who was beaten and raped who identified her husband of the deed and he was convicted despite his proclamation of innocence. He was not paroled since he wouldn’t admit to the crime.

    When DNA testing became more widespread, he was able to have the evidence tested and it pointed to another. He was finally released and the correct person convicted.

    An incident can happen and a totally innocent person convicted.

  2. Well, well, well.

    According to an article out today**, it turns out that “Research Psychologist” “Doctor” Ford was misrepresenting her credentials (starting with the first sentence of her prepared testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, no less), that she is not a licensed psychologist in the state of California, nor has she ever been, and, that, in fact in the ten days before her testimony the folks at Stanford made some seven revisions to her bio on their “Stanford Profiles” website, culminating with their changing her title:

    From: “Research Psychologist, Psych/General Psychiatry and Psychology (Adult)”

    To: “Affiliate, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science”

    ** https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/holy-crap-christine-fords-stanford-bio-page-was-altered-updated-10-days-before-hearing/

  3. I don’t know much about the Innocence Project, but their website claims 362 exonerations by DNA evidence, and 158 alternative perpetrators identified.

    Instead of believing the woman, and the subsequent investigation, this organization is working to release men convicted of rape and other crimes! I think somebody should report them to the SPLC.

    https://www.innocenceproject.org/

  4. Many, many times I have read about cases in which a woman who was assaulted and/or raped identified the wrong man, unintentionally. DNA evidence has saved many innocent men from prison.

  5. To echo eeyore’s thoughts, I’ve been considering lately how I would respond if someone asked me about a party in high school.

    I was no big partier, and I usually only went when I was dragged. Still, if you asked me who was at any given party, I couldn’t tell you. No lawyer would have to coach me to say “I don’t recall,” as all I could recall would be that the party wasn’t on Mars and there were no mountain lions present. If you asked me merely to remember any given party, I couldn’t tell you. Whose house was it? Dunno. How did I get there? Dunno. What did you do? Dunno. It’s all a complete blur (and not because I was drinking – I’m a teetotaler and always have been).

    I’m younger than Ford and Kavanaugh; high school was “only” twenty years ago for me. I remember about five things from the entire four years. My sense of time from my youth is a complete mess. For example, my brother and I were mugged and beaten by some trailer-trash dope gang in Washington state at some point, but I couldn’t tell you if I was 15 or 18 when it happened. Don’t remember. If I had to recall any of my assailants faces, I couldn’t do it.

    Outside of all of this, I have another observation that will make me sound callous. When did we become a nation of simpering pansies? I read a very good article at Quillette on the subject yesterday, wherein the author suggested roots in teachings that cut against depth psychology.

    https://quillette.com/2017/12/27/collision-reality-depth-psychology-can-tell-us-victimhood-culture/

    I think the author makes a salient point when she notes that somehow the unspoken, eternal scapegoat of our popular culture has become the idea of “suffering.” The problems stem from dissonance: there is no escape from suffering, and there is no living without facing it and accepting it as part of the struggle, but we treat it as somehow optional. The consequence is a constant banging of our heads against the wall of reality, which ironically only increases suffering unnecessarily.

    Many interesting theories have been put forth to account for how we worked ourselves into such an untenable state, but I have a suspicion that it relates to the enlightenment project hitting a plateau. We’ve reached the limits, more or less, of what science can do to alleviate suffering across the board (physical, mental, socioeconomic), and the next big “breakthroughs” in these areas – curing cancer, some version of a “happy pill” or advanced VR or AI, etc. – are stalled out on the problem of complexity.

    Now we’re stuck grinding our gears with new problems created as side effects of new advancements, in addition to the timeless problems of life – such as economic scarcity and the biological plinths of the sexual marketplace – and we’re used to saying, “Hey, this is problem – invent something!”

    The problems pile up, our sensitivities finer than ever in human history, and combine with ideals of progress that shade into the utopian proportionate to our sense of internal degradation – and boom goes the dynamite.

    This is, at least, one way in which to account for the perverse teachings pointed out in the article above as central to victimhood culture. Half of our society, not coincidentally the working half pretty much left to their own devices, has assimilated, more or less, the notion of suffering into their world-picture. The other half sees that as evil, as condoning it, promoting it, or taking a kind of sadistic glee in it (I’m trying to charitably interpret them as sincere). But when we go off publicly and some actor says Republicans love rape, we’re not really talking about what we’re really talking about.

    They’re angry at a view of life that does not reject suffering or view it as entirely negative, from Satan. I’d go so far as to say it’s incomprehensible to them. And likewise, their view, the view that suffering is superfluous and must be avoided at all costs, is incomprehensible to us on the right side of things.

    And to use the word “irony” again – the irony here is that the right is sincerely concerned with minimizing the unnecessary suffering caused by fleeing from suffering, both to oneself and to others, while the left is completely heedless to the trail of destruction they leave in their wake.

    Which leads to my final observation. Might this not be a big reason why so many good-hearted, earnest people find it difficult to move to the right? I dare say it seems self-evident to a lot of people that a view of life so (apparently) comfortable with suffering must, ipso facto, be on dangerously friendly terms with it.

  6. You would think that, if you were making serious accusations that would most likely ruin a person’s life, destroy his reputation, and derail a Supreme Curt nomination, you would strive to be as accurate as possible in the facts you presented to bolster your case against him.

    According to another story out today,** Ford also apparently lied about another key aspect of her testimony, and that was the date when she remembered and disclosed the details of the supposed attack.

    She testified that it was during a couples counseling session in 2012, when she was explaining that the reason she had insisted on adding a just finished second floor to their house and a second front door, was because of the trauma she had just recalled from almost 40 years ago, and how she needed another escape route.

    Trouble is, the real estate records seem to indicate that that remodel was done in 2007-08 and certainly was done, according to pictures of her house–2nd door and all–by 2011, not 2012.

    Why would she claim to have recalled and told people the details of her supposed attack in 2012 and how it was tied to the just finished 2012 remodel of her house, when that remodel was actually completed in 2007-2008 or, at the latest, 2011?

    ** https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/breaking-christine-ford-caught-in-major-lie-photos-prove-house-updates-occurred-much-earlier-than-senate-testimony/

  7. The Democrats have become the Party of Evil, the new Nazis. They insist on an inversion of all that we hold dear.
    They must be put down like the rabid dogs they are, and I say this in conviction that such a moment will arise, most likely provoked by them. We have been living with these dirty dogs for over a century, why? All presidential assassinations since Lincoln in 1865 have been by Leftists.

    Leftists have incrementally taken over the Federal bureaucracy, where most have tenure equal to a Supreme Court justice until they choose to retire on obscenely fat benefits. See James O’Keefe’s recent Project Veritas revelations.

    America is in a fight for its survival. If we lose, the best country ever created will sink into the morass occupied by all the others. That includes the disgusting, morally relative Euros and Canada, and the UN member countries (all minus one-the USA, and perhaps Japan), most of which are dictator-run. Then we will have globalism (all bow down) run by the ChiComms.

  8. This development may be only be a sidetrack, but two men have contacted the Senate Judicial Committee staff and told them they were the boys who were involved in the incident with Dr. Ford.

    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/27/two-men-claim-responsibility-christine-blasey-ford/

    This certainly bears further investigation and I hope it will be part of the FBI’s probe. The men may be delusional, or trying to confess to something they have felt guilty about for decades, or trying to seed the trail with confusing information. Since Blasey Ford seemed so credible, it may be a case of mistaken identity. Stranger things have happened.

    If it these unidentified men’s claims seem credible, could it be that Blasey Ford has forgotten or that for some reason she felt a need to bring down Judge Kavanaugh for some long ago incident in which she felt he humiliated her. He became a well known Republican lawyer and judge, just the opposite of her ideology, and she saw a chance to humiliate him. So, she named him as the boy who assaulted her. Far fetched I know, but this case is an enigma and requires thinking outside the box.

    Another item of interest is that Dr. Ford’s parents and siblings have been strangely silent and have not openly supported their daughter/sibling. There was an indication, though slight that Blasey Ford is somewhat distant from her parents. Then there is this: “Paula and Ralph Blasey are registered Republicans. Not only is their party taking Kavanaugh’s side; many of their neighbors are, too.” Then there’s this: ““She didn’t always get along with her parents because of differing political views,” Russell Ford said. “It was a very male-dominated environment. Everyone was interested in what’s going on with the men, and the women are sidelined, and she didn’t get the attention or respect she felt she deserved.””
    You can read more about it here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/christine-blasey-fords-own-family-has-been-nearly-silent-amid-outpouring-of-support/2018/09/26/49a3f4a6-c0d6-11e8-be77-516336a26305_story.html?utm_term=.609640b83ab9

  9. Dave on September 29, 2018 at 3:03 pm at 3:03 pm said:
    was there someone in the old testament who was falsely accused of rape?
    * * *
    This kind of got left behind – not exactly what Dave remembers, but close.

    “Susanna and the Elders” is a chapter in Daniel; is in some canons but not all (Jewish and Christian), and is sometimes labelled as “Apocrypha”. It is very likely the first detective story in ancient literature, as well as being an example of unbiased jurisprudence, and is certainly topical today, although some of the roles are reversed in an ironical way.
    It has long been one of my favorites.

    There are a couple of other stories of women accused of sexual sin, who are either exculpated (OT) or forgiven (NT), which makes the Bible pretty much unique in ancient and even not-so-ancient history.

    Wikipedia:
    As the story goes, a fair Hebrew wife named Susanna was falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs. As she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lustful elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, threatening to claim that she was meeting a young man in the garden unless she agrees to have sex with them.

    She refuses to be blackmailed and is arrested and about to be put to death for promiscuity when the young Daniel interrupts the proceedings, shouting that the elders should be questioned to prevent the death of an innocent. After being separated, the two men are cross-examined about details of what they saw but disagree about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover.
    In the Greek text, the names of the trees cited by the elders form puns with the sentence given by Daniel. The first says they were under a mastic tree (??? ??????, hypo schinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to cut (??????, schisei) him in two. The second says they were under an evergreen oak tree (??? ??????, hypo prinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to saw (??????, prisai) him in two. The great difference in size between a mastic and an oak makes the elders’ lie plain to all the observers. The false accusers are put to death, and virtue triumphs.

    ????? stuff is all Greek

  10. Dave on September 29, 2018 at 3:03 pm at 3:03 pm said:
    was there someone in the old testament who was falsely accused of rape?
    * * *

    Joseph (at age 17!), by Potiphar’s wife. Genesis ch. 39.

  11. Pingback:Congressional hearings and the presumption of innocence

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