CEO of SoftBank-Backed Surveillance Firm Banjo Once Helped KKK Leader Shoot Up a Synagogue (medium.com) 181
Matt Stroud, reporting for OneZero: In magazine profiles and on conference stages, Damien Patton, the 47-year-old co-founder and CEO of the surveillance startup Banjo, often recounts a colorful autobiography. He describes how he ran away from a broken home near Los Angeles around age 15 and joined the U.S. Navy before working as a NASCAR mechanic. He says he became a self-taught crime scene investigator and then learned to code. Eventually, Patton helped build the digital infrastructure of what would become Banjo, a company that, in the past decade, has raised nearly $223 million, according to the investment data-sharing platform SharesPost, from prominent venture capital firms such as SoftBank. Patton has been the subject of profiles in dozens of publications; Inc. featured him in its April 2015 issue, and versions of his story have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Fortune, Fast Company, and the New York Times. He has told a version of his story to an online entrepreneurial program at Stanford.
With his long red beard, flat-brimmed baseball cap, and a penchant for motorcycles and off-road vehicles, Patton strikes a hardened, gritty profile among the hoodied techies of Silicon Valley. Patton's story and public persona are compelling. They are also incomplete. Documents available to the public and reviewed by OneZero -- including transcripts of courtroom testimony, sworn statements, and more than 1,000 pages of records produced from a federal hate crime prosecution -- reveal that Patton actively participated in white supremacist groups in his youth and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue. In an interview with OneZero, one of the people involved in that shooting confirmed Patton's participation. Patton has not previously acknowledged this chapter of his life in public.
With his long red beard, flat-brimmed baseball cap, and a penchant for motorcycles and off-road vehicles, Patton strikes a hardened, gritty profile among the hoodied techies of Silicon Valley. Patton's story and public persona are compelling. They are also incomplete. Documents available to the public and reviewed by OneZero -- including transcripts of courtroom testimony, sworn statements, and more than 1,000 pages of records produced from a federal hate crime prosecution -- reveal that Patton actively participated in white supremacist groups in his youth and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue. In an interview with OneZero, one of the people involved in that shooting confirmed Patton's participation. Patton has not previously acknowledged this chapter of his life in public.
Would I stereotype too much if I said it? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean... broken home, NASCAR, calling his company Banjo, and a KKK supporter... That guy's a walking redneck stereotype!
Re:Would I stereotype too much if I said it? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to endorse stereotyping people and being prejudiced against them, then go ahead. I seem to remember someone saying that was wrong though.
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If you want to endorse stereotyping people and being prejudiced against them, then go ahead.
There is a difference between judging people for what they are and judging them for what they have done.
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If you want to endorse stereotyping people
Everyone stereotypes.
and being prejudiced against them
Wow WTF? Where was his prejudice? Did you read a different post than I did?
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In other words, lighten up.
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Of course, if they didn't have skill or use they were worse than cattle. Very practical, I guess.
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I mean... broken home, NASCAR, calling his company Banjo, and a KKK supporter... That guy's a walking redneck stereotype!
Except he's also Jewish. Did not RTFA, did you?
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I am pretty sure it is ok to judge KKK members. I don't even think most conservatives would argue against this.
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The President and his administration are perfectly fine with Nazi and KKK support. So is much of the Republican Party. [wgntv.com]
What universe do you live in? Are you stupid, a Russian influenced troll, or a covert white supremacist? One way or another, you are mentally and ethically challenged.
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I am pretty sure it is ok to judge KKK members. I don't even think most conservatives would argue against this.
Well I dunno, I hear there were very fine people, on both sides of the synagogue shooting.
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Shooting up synagogues is not a "lifestyle preference"
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I don't even think most conservatives would argue against this.
Even a conservative? Race bating is effectively part and parcel of the Democratic Party platform. Pouring oil on the fire of race relations is not something that conservatives are known for.
Re: Would I stereotype too much if I said it? (Score:2)
LOL. I'm sure there are "very fine people on both sides."
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In other news, the chocolate ration has been doubled.
Except that's not really chocolate, is it?
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They post nonsense like:
Race bating is effectively part and parcel of the Democratic Party platform. Pouring oil on the fire of race relations is not something that conservatives are known for.
and pretend they've never heard of the Southern Strategy.
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He's going to claim richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater were Democrats next.
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You're the one who brought up conservatives. The original poster said "redneck stereotype." Unless you want to argue that all conservatives are "redneck stereotypes."
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You're the one who brought up conservatives.
No, I AM NOT. this comment above [slashdot.org] did.
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No. He is observing that a particular person for objective and documented reasons does, in fact, match well with a particular stereotype. That's the thing about stereotypes, there generally exists a group of people who match it. The problem only comes in when one generalizes it to claim (without objective criteria and documentation) that everyone sharing one or two such traits necessarily shares them all or they treat that broader group as if the stereotype applied to all.
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Will they let me be a SJW even though I'm judgmental and discriminatory? I have to ask, because I'm so judgmental that I judge and look down upon anyone who isn't judgmental. But I'm thinking I wanna be a SJW, since we obviously need more of that.
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There is a difference between judging people over something they have no control over and judging them over something they do. I do not have control over my skin color, my sexual orientation or my origin. I do have control over my political position, my religion or my membership in organizations.
You might see the difference.
Future MAGA hero (Score:2, Insightful)
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I liked it better back in the days before Trump when white supremacists were ostracized and had to keep their KKK affiliations secret. I guess this guy will soon be a hero on the MAGA circuit.
Nice to find the inspiration for this funny skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Yeah, can you imagine if Obama had kicked off his senatorial campaign at the home of a domestic terrorist whose organization was targeting black people? Man, you'd be incensed, right?
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Please do some further research you can find a lot of "coded" racist messages. Including his initial response about Mexicans calling them rapists and criminals, and he supposes that some are good people.
Most of the racist comments are now often more coded in a way, that it isn't like the 1950's outward hate. However, playing to stereotypes and images that there is an underclass of people, who happen to look and dress a particular way. We can have the token minority who dresses the way we do and talks with
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Racists on the right are proud. They boast about their racism as virtue signalling. It's never subtle.
Or you didn't notice the other sub-broup of racists on the right because they used coded messages and dog whistles.
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Sure thing, they're riding the invisible pink unicorns in my garage.
I won't try to convince you that your imaginary boogie-men don't exist any more than I'd try to convince another that his imaginary best friend in the sky doesn't exist. But I won't tolerate anyone who tries to make laws around such things.
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I don't recall suggesting a law be made here. Funny that you accuse me of imagining things. I only suggested that you might not be seeing people who don't want to be seen by outsiders. I stand by that.
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Ah, if we were capable of seeing things clearly, that ("effectively") would be the argument worth having. But we're not. We judge whether something is a good idea by who said it, and the results are either manipulated or forgotten to confirm our biases.
But I wil say this: the Left promised me that if Trump won, we'd have concentration camps for gay Muslim Mexicans. I've looked carefully, and there are zero "pray the gay away Jose" camps. Poorly done, Trump, not very effective.
Aside: can anyone explain t
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Re: Future MAGA hero (Score:2)
He WAS a Democrat, you barking dumbass.
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And then he learned, and changed. ;) He was always so unconvincing on "social conservative" issues that he had to pick Pence as his VP, which is sad for 2024 as Pence is rather unelectable.
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He WAS a Democrat, you barking dumbass.
Because he was a New York real estate guy, and he was effective at buttering up the New York political machine.
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And the best then about Trump is he sticks to what we elected him for, he doesn't "learn and change" to be a Democrat!
Despite the fact he was a Democrat for years? [wikipedia.org]
In a 2004 interview, Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat," explaining: "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats...But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans.
Not that I would pay much attention to what Trump says, as he lies pretty much every time he opens his mouth.
However, if you're defending Trump about anything, you're a fool.
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Yes, he sticks to what we elected him for. Was that hard to understand? His political view before he started his campaign aren't relevant to that statement, are they?
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Yes, he sticks to what we elected him for.
How is it going getting Mexico to pay for that wall? Is Hillary in prison yet?
At least he didn't take money for his campaign, like he said he wouldn't. Oh, hang on, did he lie about that too?
Of course he did.
Re: Future MAGA hero (Score:2)
I.e. stupid.
Yes he does, hence so many more Americans are dead.
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When Trump was forming his CV19 task force, the Dems were only talking about impeachment. Trump put measures against CV19 in his State of the Union address, and Pelosi tore it up. Trump banned travel from China very early, and the Democrats called him a racist.
SO, yeah, we don't have to guess what the Dems would have done, because we see what they did do: they ignored the problem for a full month after Trump started acting.
Re: Future MAGA hero (Score:2)
Just banning Chinese people, didn't work, silly.
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True or false: he said "The Mexicans" coming to America were rapists and drug runners, "some of them, I assume, are good people." That's a far, far cry "SOME mexicans are rapists."
"Some Mexicans are rapists" and "The Mexicans are rapists and some I assume are good people" are different statements with very different meanings.
Re:Future MAGA hero (Score:4, Interesting)
Hint: if you hear coded messages in Trump's words, and you share this with his detractors, while those ambivalent on him like myself as well as his supporters do not hear those messages...
"Ambivalent" my ass. Here you are commenting on another story, https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] , defending Trump's comment about injecting disinfectant by posting an MSN story touting treatment of coronavirus with hydrogen peroxide inhalation. Your link is broken though, because MSN retracted the story, likely after finding out that the person promulgating this therapy, Thomas E. Levy, is a well-known quack. Why are you so afraid to admit that you're a Trump supporter?
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Trump has a long history of racism going back to his dad. Anyone can google his racist incidents. And then there's the trope he was pushing that Obama wasn't born in this country, echoing the right wingnuts he needed for the election. These are some of the same right wingnuts pushing for the freedom to catch SARS-CoV-2 and bring it home to their families.
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I watched the video. He did say they were "fine people on both sides".
He also specified that he wasn't talking about the Neo-nazis or the white nationalists and that "they should be condemned totally" within a minute of that statement.
The huge problem with what he said is that the rally was organized by a WHITE NATIONALIST LEADER. That was the whole point of the rally, to bring together white nationalists, skinheads, neo-nazis etc. The white nationalists were the ones organizing the rally.
Actually the only people that had a permit to protest were the ones that simply wanted the statue of Robert E. Lee to remain. That was the whole point of the rally originally. I don't know if the counter protestors or the racist protestors were the first to make plans to disrupt this. But there were certainly "bad people on both sides" as he sta
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You mean back in the good old days when KKK Grand Dragons could ascend to respected Democratic leaders like Robert Byrd and spend 13 hours filibustering civil rights... yeah, those were the days.
Yup, those were the days. Long LONG ago. Times change and political parties change. What either party were 60 years ago has little bearing on what it is today.
Re:Future MAGA hero (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that as though the democrats haven't fully eclipsed the level of extremism on the right with their own mad dash to the left
Not so sure about that. Republican voters embraced the madness of Donald Trump, which Democrat voters now twice rejected the craziness of Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders polled pretty well against Trump.
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Pelosi, Schumer, AOC, Biden, Talib aren't even close to each other ideologically. Pelosi/Biden and AOC/Talib are almost as far apart politically as Biden is from Trump, so don't try to lump them together. The Tea Party revolt purged the Republican Party of many of their remaining moderates; the Democratic Party has had no such movement yet. The Bernie Bros have certainly tried, but there is a far, far wider spectrum in the Democratic Party than there is in the current Republican Party.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mark Wahlberg spent his youth stealing cars and snorting coke. He blinded and attempted to murder a Vietnamese shop owner in a racist fit. He was allowed to produce your kids favorite giant robot movies and is now a millionaire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To be fair, your own link says the second Vietnamese victim was already blind, having lost that eye in the Vietnam War by his own statements.
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Mark Wahlberg doesn't run a surveillance company.
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people who do bad things still have a chance to do good things (charity work) along with other bad things (Transformers 4) in their lives.
He still has a lot of work to do making up for Marky Mark though.
the difference is we know what Mark Wahlberg is (Score:4, Insightful)
We know what Mark Wahlberg is. We don't know Damien Patton or what else is in his past.
Also, in my mind, there's a huge difference between a heinous act done informally and formally joining a group to perform heinous acts. It's like the difference between a married man having a sexual encounter and a multi-year affair with a group of swingers in the region. Both acts are cheating, but one is taking it to an extreme level. One is organized rationally, while another could be an impulse. A single attack is heinous, but could theoretically be an act of passion. Joining a group to organize and plan such attacks is far scarier. Pre-meditated is much worse, in my mind.
While never was particularly a Wahlberg fan, I am confident he's changed or, at the very least, we're not going to discover something new and heinous. There is a path to redemption, in my mind, but yeah....if I find out some person was in the Klan, they are going to have to go through a lot to prove to me they have changed their ways.
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It seems like the pendulum is starting to swing back to acknowledge what you're saying.
James Gunn, the director for Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel got fired from directing Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 because someone dug up inappropriate comments he made online more than a decade ago. Never mind that he acknowledged he originally made the comments in a poor taste effort to elicit a response by stirring the pot; never mind that he had already apologized for and retracted those comments years prior,
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Whalburg's "self discovery" required multiple people to be assaulted by him and one guy to possibly lose an eye. We can't allow that to be how people learn and grow and reform.
If he was properly reformed after the first incident then at least the later victims wouldn't have had to suffer.
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Either people are allowed to grow and change throughout their lives, learn from past mistakes and become better people through knowledge and self discovery, or they are scarlet-letter mongrels who must be shunned from society.
Yeah but you're talking about Mark Wahlberg. We're talking about a CEO. Clearly he got worse since his teenage days.
That's the CEO spirit (Score:2)
Things to do, people to kill ...
Stroud, he was a KID (Score:5, Insightful)
Since he served, I doubt that he has the same opinion. Now, if you have something on him from the last 20 years, sure, bring it up. Or if he denied it, or tried to twist it, then sure.
But if all you have is what a 16 y.o. snot-nosed kid did, well, you are just pulling a Fox/CNN news.
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Matt Stroud. Simply put, he was a stupid kid that was surrounded by horrible ppl that taught him hate.
Since he served, I doubt that he has the same opinion.
The article does mention that even while in the Navy he associated with skinhead groups (although in a statement he says he worked with LEO groups in hate group prosecutions, my guess would be they turned him and used him as an informant against those groups). But military service doesn't preclude extremism. A lot of the far right militia groups tend to target active/former military or LEOs for membership. And it's not limited to white groups either: the 2016 Dallas shooter was an Army veteran and had be
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Yeah but now he's a an adult he became a CEO. What's your excuse for *THAT* behaviour?
I wonder how much this cost? (Score:2)
Slashdot (Score:2)
For nerds? Check
Wait a second...
Private enterprise spying (Score:2)
Surveillance Firm Banjo Used a Secret Company and Fake Apps to Scrape Social Media [vice.com]
Nothing appears wrong now (Score:2)
He has turned his life around .. read his apology and it is heartfelt. So has the gunman with him. Thank God nobody died that day.
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Funny how the owner of a surveillance company had to be "surveilled" to find this out about him.
Re:guilt by association N times removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Guy who's involved in a hate group and takes part in shooting up a synanagogue founds and runs a shady surveillance firm. Yup, nothing to worry about there, just PC nonsense.
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Guy who's involved in a hate group and takes part in shooting up a synanagogue founds and runs a shady surveillance firm. Yup, nothing to worry about there, just PC nonsense.
So says some random guy posting on a shady website using a false name.
It's all so unseemly. [clutches pearls]
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I wouldn't trust me to run a surveillance firm. I'd trust me to do it even less so if I was you.
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I'm not sure most people trust CEOs. Rather the opposite, I'd think. This guy is apparently "folksy." People trust people like that too readily.
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That's how modern political correctness regime works on the political mainstream in anglosphere countries. If you are ever be found guilty of anything that can be even remotely associated with ultimate crime of racism, you are branded for life as definitionally evil.
It's a modern witch hunt.
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That's how modern political correctness regime works on the political mainstream in anglosphere countries. If you are ever be found guilty of anything that can be even remotely associated with ultimate crime of racism, you are branded for life as definitionally evil.
It's a modern witch hunt.
Except if you're politically useful, like the governor of Virginia [wikipedia.org]. Then you get a pass.
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As pointed out by AC " all but one of those Southern Democrats remained Democrats. The South started voting Republican to distance themselves from the KKK and their political arm the Democrats."
Besides, Byrd was from West Virginia, which is not a Southern state. Also, we're not going back 70 years. Byrd was lauded until after his death in 2010.
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Ahahahaha! Boy, talk about historical revision. You learn that on Prager U?
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When a "witch hunt" now means nothing more than any privileged white guy gets his panties in a bunch, I really cannot care.
Personally, I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt for what this guy did when he was 17. But, no, I do not like surveillance companies, and that alone is enough for me to want to be cautious about the man employed as CEO.
The bottom line: it is on him that his present life style choices are giving Neo-Nazis a bad name...
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What I want to know is if this guy has any signs of regret for such action as a teenager.
There was stuff that I did as a Teen that I regret, if pressed on it I can explain in detail why I regretted it (For me it is mostly action Not taken). There are some things that I did that I didn't regret, and I am proud of, however, some people may have issues with the fact that I did do it.
So did this guy regret what he did, or did he regret getting caught? Being 17 at the time, I can see getting caught into someth
Re:guilt by association N times removed (Score:4, Informative)
Well, yes. If you drive your buddy to a synagogue knowing he intends to shoot it up, you are guilty by association, just like if you drove him so he could sell drugs.
Now I will grant that being a teenager is a mitigating factor, but participating in an act of terrorism isn't like joy riding or smoking weed. It's not even remotely normal. We've put sixteen year olds in Gitmo for things they did when they were fifteen.
While I don't think teenage terrorism should preclude all future participation in society, it's reasonable for an act like that to follow you around for the rest of your life, particularly when you are in a position to have access to sensitive information. Just like it would if you were 17 years old and driving your buddy to rob a bank.
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I know. I'm using the word the way you were using it in "N times removed". He was guilty of participating in a terrorist act, so at the very least it would be direct association with a criminal.
That itself is not a crime, but it is a lapse in judgment.
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"N times removed" applies to Softbank and everyone else. The reason for a story like this is to try to imply guilt-by-association for associates, in order to influence them. Otherwise those people would just say "we don't know anything about that" and forget about it. Because they truly don't know anything about it. And if they know about it now, it truly has zero to do with them or with anything -- it's some dumb thing a wayward teenager did a quarter century ago.
Re:guilt by association N times removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think committing a violent hate crime 30 years ago is "some dumb teenager doing some dumb thing"; not at 17. At 17 I knew better than that.
Every teenager inferior to your memories of yourself deserves ... what? What lifelong penalty do you think these less-than-yourself teenagers should be subject to?
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If the world finds out what I did on BBSes when I was 17...
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I don't think committing a violent hate crime 30 years ago is "some dumb teenager doing some dumb thing"; not at 17. At 17 I knew better than that.
Every teenager inferior to your memories of yourself deserves ... what? What lifelong penalty do you think these less-than-yourself teenagers should be subject to?
The length of the penalty is a very important question, but it's only half of the question. The other half is what is the threshold for the seriousness of the offense that should trigger these long penalties? Shoplifting is very different from first-degree murder. Shooting at an assumed to be empty synagogue is different than spray painting the same synagogue. It's perhaps this question of the seriousness of the offense that is the key question that determines how an audience might view what the current
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What lifelong penalty do you think these less-than-yourself teenagers should be subject to?
For violent hate crimes I'm sure I can come up with plenty of lifelong penalties. It's just a shame many of them don't extend to juvi.
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I don't think committing a violent hate crime 30 years ago is "some dumb teenager doing some dumb thing"; not at 17. At 17 I knew better than that.
Every teenager inferior to your memories of yourself deserves ... what? What lifelong penalty do you think these less-than-yourself teenagers should be subject to?
If you shoot up a synagog, perhaps you don't get a life of success and adulation. Certainly not if you didn't do your time.
And yes, I knew as a teenager that such shit was pretty close to unforgivable. This isn't some "teenage prank, too young to know better" situation.
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If the shootings resulted in the deaths of any human at the synagogue then how are life long consequences inappropriate?
That's a question, not an answer. What punishments do you want to inflict on which people for what behavior when they were teenage idiots?
Re:guilt by association N times removed (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not for you to decide. It is for a jury and duly appointed judge to decide, based on the facts of the individual case.
You are second-guessing people that had a far more complete set of data to work from than you do, and you sure seem like an idiot for it.
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Henry Hyde got a full pass for "youthful indiscretions" that were committed when he was age 41. So why wouldn't a 17 year old?
Behold the ethos of right wing politics. It's OK if you are on that side. Now if you were someone like Barack Obama and did this -- that's a different story.
Re:guilt by association N times removed (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think committing a violent hate crime 30 years ago is "some dumb teenager doing some dumb thing"; not at 17. At 17 I knew better than that.
A 17 year old white runaway in Tennessee in the late 80s/early 90s is very likely to fall in with a very bad crowd, since that's exactly the type of person extremist groups tend to target. That kind of person is vulnerable, looking for help/support, and at 17 still easily swayed.
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I understand that to a rich, sheltered asshole such as yourself, 17 years old is obviously an age where person is fully grown and actualized, so you can feel superior that you had it under control.
In real world on the other hand, brain development ends in mid 20s, and full formation of empathy isn't usually done until around 20-ish mark. That's before societal issues, like not having a stable home, good social environment outside the home and so on. You know, things that slow down and even arrest developmen
Re:guilt by association N times removed (Score:5, Insightful)
is society better off with a kid like this (yes, a kid. he was 17) carrying that baggage around forever and never being able to get a job, go to school, or whatever? What are the odds he would have committed some other crime and wound up in jail for the rest of his life?
Or, would you accept that people who are dealt a shit hand early in life often do get mixed up with a bad crowd, and/or make bad decisions -- but can be redeemed?
Had he knocked over a liquor store or actually murdered someone at 17, would the narrative be the same? Or would it be "here's a guy who turned his life around, and look at him now".
I am eagerly awaiting the 'whataboutism' that shall ensue from this post.
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Excellent question. It would be really interesting to see the reaction to this if this guy had been a black gang member in his teens.
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And, in particular, whether "he was just 17" would be accepted as a strong argument for a gun crime.
Frankly, I am willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, and others who make similar mistakes at that age. But we know there are a lot of people who give the benefit to him because he is white, and would never do so for someone darker skinned.
Re:guilt by association N times removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that 17 year old teenagers do dumb fucking shit all the time, of varying severity. Maybe you didn't, because you came from wildly different circumstances.
However, your post shows that you are still capable of at least saying really dumb shit, as you clearly do not believe that people can become further enlightened after their teenage years.
You should be celebrating people that grow beyond mistakes of the past instead of scolding people for mistakes they made long ago, and have not repeated since.
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NYT’s In-Depth Investigation Of The Allegations Against Biden Reveals That He’s A Democrat [babylonbee.com]
Dems Rush To Defend Kavanaugh After He Puts On Joe Biden Mask [babylonbee.com]
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Write "shaygetz" for ... it has a long "a".