Convictions on the Internet

I was reading a Newsmax article on Bowe Bergdahl yesterday discussing whether he should serve jail time for desertion. I don’t have much of an opinion about whether he’s guilty or not, that’s for the military court to decide. But I made the mistake of reading some of the 400 plus comments attached to the article.  As I read the first 100, I never saw one that was remotely sympathetic. More than half felt he should be lined up in front of a firing squad. The remainder:  “Bowe should rot in jail.” Nobody seemed to care he spent nearly five years being tortured as a captive of the Taliban.

It would appear Bowe has been convicted and sentenced in the court of internet opinion. So has President Obama for exchanging Taliban prisoners for Bowe. When the comments weren’t advocating a quick summary execution for Bowe, they wanted the firing squad aimed at the President. I feel partially responsible for this. I’ve spent the last thirty years working in the industry that put the World Wide Web in everyone’s pocket. Back in the Eighties, if I wanted to listen to domestic conspiracy or transfer of blame theories I had to order Jack Daniels at a dive bar or be held captive by a distant relative at a family reunion.

You know the kind of conversations I’m talking about. You’ve gone to a funeral and great uncle Clyde asks you out to the house for dinner and your dad makes a dumb ass remark like: “Wow it’s been a long time since I had potatoes like this.  We always have instant.”  Course that’s because mom really whips them with butter and milk rather than just mashing them in a bowl and dropping them on the table like Aunt Bennett. That’s when the fighting starts.  Mom rebuts, “You think I make instant?” She stops there, because she’s polite, and everyone with active grey matter in the room has perked an eyebrow at the idiot making the “Instant Potato” remark. But the baboon eyebrow flash politeness seems to leave on the table the premise that unenhanced wire masher pounded potatoes are better than butter-cream whipped potatoes. At least as far as the other ape species are concerned. Also the premise that we have been eating instant throughout my parents’ marriage and don’t understand what is good is established.

The conversations continue. Pretty soon, Uncle Clyde is making comments about African Americans. (He isn’t using that term.) Unlike dad, he notices the eye movements of the college grad baboon troop. “Oh,” he says, “Let me tell you something, I’m prejudice!”

“No shit!” One of us answers, smiling.

Acknowledgement of Clyde’s prejudicial point of view seems to establish the college grad faction accepts it.  (We do, only as a given.)  We pass the unenhanced potatoes around and glop lots of butter on them. There is no gravy.  Clyde makes ovations in our direction. “What are you guys doing with those fancy engineering degrees your parents and my fucking taxes paid for?”

I politely bored the table with particulars of my cube based coding job, editing out that my starting salary was more than what most of the other non-college grad relatives make after 30 years.  But I make the mistake of mentioning I get drug tested and don’t like that. I feel it invades my freedom. The conversation takes an ugly shift. There is a fray of accusations. All my uncles and my dad think I am an ungrateful fucking liberal. I’m what’s wrong with kids these days. I’m lucky to have such a nice job. The Depression gets mentioned. Then Clyde pounds his fist on the table, “Look, people who smoke pot are dead. You try and sell drugs to my granddaughter, I’ll take my gun and fucking shoot you. Am I clear?”

Attempting to swallow dry lumps of potato, the logical mind I spent six years training in philosophy, rhetoric, and sound engineering principals tried to put together the path where blame for the issues before our society had  been transferred to me. I didn’t come up with an answer other than I probably should have publicly corrected my dad about his instant potato comment.

On the way home that night, my only college educated uncle could tell I was disturbed. “Look we all know Clyde’s an asshole. But he’d give you the shirt off his back. Even if you were black.”

“Before or after he would shoot me?” I answered.

I never saw Clyde again. I was able to fly away to California, and outside of a dinner table, Clyde didn’t have much of a venue for his points of view. Had the internet been around in 1986, I could imagine Clyde tapping away at his IPhone volunteering to be on Bowe Bergdahl’s firing squad.

There were 400 some angry Clyde’s loose with the Newsmax article.  Thirty years since Clyde’s lumpy mash, I couldn’t be polite anymore.  I typed in the following: “You guys all sound like fucking assholes. If this were your kid, held and tortured by the Taliban, you’d be thanking Obama. So shut the fuck up.”

I checked back a few hours later, nobody had made any additional comments. Somehow I think I have Clyde to thank for stopping the conversation. 

I’m totally for public education. At every level. I can’t help but think Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County Kentucky is participating in a little remedial schooling right now. Mike Huckabee tried to explain her position by citing basic items taught in high school civics class Sunday on ABC’s  “This Week”. He seems to have fell asleep in a lot of history civics classes himself. This produced a weird interpretation of the Dred Scot case which basically said, prior to the 14^th Amendment, blacks (free or slave) were not citizens, regardless of being born on U.S soil. Not much else. As a result Dred Scott couldn’t sue for freedom for himself or his free state born children. He wasn’t a citizen. (Typical Supreme court avoidance of a bigger issue.)

Dred Scott got drug out of the grave by Huckabee in reference to the Kim Davis case. Somehow Mike thought Lincoln defied the laws, courts, and other stuff in that case. Interesting, Lincoln wasn’t in any elected office in 1857 when the ruling came out.  The Dred Scott case was one of the catalysts that led to the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. But free open debate, isn’t exactly defying the law, its practicing it. (First Amendment.)

Not happy with picking on the founder of his party, Huckabee next took aim at Gavin Newsom for defying the law in San Francisco over gay marriage. This was of course true. Gavin did commit a policy misdemeanor by issuing licenses for same sex marriage, but stopped when ordered by the courts. Huckabee apparently forgot or decided to use his super former minister powers to change the history of the Newsom following court orders part. He claimed Newsom continues to defy the law.

Newsom’s goal was to start the policy debate that lasted eleven years before gay marriage became fully legal.   To be honest, when Gavin Newsom came up with his slick hair idea, I was flummoxed.  Men and women were being fired from the army for just being gay, marriage seemed a minor issue.  Point to all this is, Huckabee seems to be having trouble remembering basic history when he doesn’t agree with the result of a political process so he manufactures his own version. If he wants to be President he might want to bone up one basic history with Sarah Palin.  

Huckabee and Palin probably should visit Kim Davis in jail, and take advantage of the educational opportunities while Mrs. Davis is in self-imposed government care.  I doubt this was Davis’s last visit. There is has been a lot of hoopla about the government (quickly extended to President Obama himself) picking on Kim Davis’s for her enforcement of a now defunct Kentucky law. She seems to interpret it based on selective reading of 5000 year old campfire stories and selected parts of the Constitution.  She’s hardly being repressed, discriminated against as Christian, or “picked on.”  The clerk from Rowan County can stop the picking anytime she wants. All she has to do is say she will agree to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Huckabee (this was his defense of Davis) seems to feel, while the Supreme Court has made their ruling, they should give adequate time for the Kentucky legislature to pass laws that instruct county clerks to change marriage licenses forms from Name of wife:__________;  Name of husband__________, to Name of spouses____________. Until the Kentucky legislature, has had time to make changes, Kim Davis isn’t defying the court she’s just following current Kentucky law as it exists. It sounded a lot like a white governor in the south in the 60’s explaining why he couldn’t integrate schools. He went on to babble at length that courts don’t get to make or change laws.

The founding fathers installed the judiciary (specifically the Supreme Court) as they understood there would be disputes about law interpretation. The courts are the point of arbitration. The administrations duty is to enforce the rulings of the court.   The court does indeed get to modify law. Certainly when one law conflicts with another. In this case the 14^th and 1^st amendments, and a defunct law of a state which was determined to be superseded by the 14^th amendment.  

Huckabee and Davis seem to feel this struggle is to save sinners from entering government sanctioned common property, economic pooling and inheritance agreements.  More importantly saving Kim Davis from being party to a contract for merged property, which apparently, might cause her suffering for eternity. I wish nobody an eternity of damnation. The quickest way to avoid that, is remove yourself from the sin. Davis seems unwilling to do that. Rather, she is determined to save all citizens of her county from this mass sin. More power to her.

Kim Davis certainly can try and start a drive to define marriage in the constitution. That is what it would take to change the current issue with gay marriage. I guess that is what she is attempting. Suffering in a jail for some time could be a good catalyst and rally cry for that movement. I just hope she has the 10-12 year fortitude to pursue her goal. Martin Luther King invested quite a bit of his life time in such a struggle. Course, in the end, what the hell difference does it make if two peoples relationship is recognized contractually by the state to anyone? So far it only seems to have generated lots of bits on the internet from religious zealots who think they have the right to enforce their beliefs on everyone via government. This kind of government enforcement of religion led to countless blood baths and civil wars in Europe for hundreds of years. Wars based mainly on whose interpretation of 5000 years of campfire stories were most correct. Really, one group of people’s interpretation of poorly written stories is more valid than the others, so I can oppress or kill you? No, the founding fathers separated church from state for that reason.

It seems to me the judge who imprisoned Kim Davis handed out the wrong punishment. She still doesn't seem to understand the Constitution. Neither does Mike Huckabee. I would suggest if the problem persists, the judge sentence them both to court ordered 12th grade American Government class. As they apparently napped last time they took it, I would suggest assignment of proctors to tap them when they doze off.