I Know, Let’s All Pretend That Behaviour Doesn’t Matter

Still can’t believe that clown is real.

Mr Ford’s moral calculus was a little bizarre. As was the way in which his displays of progressive piety were hastily deleted – once it became apparent that his practised moral contrivance had reached a wider, less pretentious audience. Just as it was hard to miss the contrast between Mr Ford’s gushing pieties, aired from afar, and the views of local residents and witnesses, who, needless to say, were somewhat less accommodating.

And as noted in the original thread, I’m tempted to wonder if Mr Ford’s mugger-friendly philosophy extends to other violent crimes against women.

And they think they’re the good guys.

Well, in the case of Mr Ford, our self-styled champion of “social justice,” it’s not clear what the threshold of permissible resistance would be – assuming he thinks there is one.

I mean, if the wellbeing of habitual predators is apparently of such importance – at least equal to that of their numerous victims – then what kind of offence would be sufficiently egregious to justify resistance, thereby risking harm to them? Can our predator snatch your dog, your bag, your wedding ring? Or can he, being so important, press further – say, by violating your home in the night, as you and your children sleep? What particular nightmare would be a step too far? Alas, like so many of his peers, Mr Ford doesn’t say.

Some, like Mr Clive Stafford Smith, mentioned here, insist that the buzz of burglars should not be harshed with prison, especially if the burglar is a “young black person.” Indeed, he regards objections to being burgled as trivial, plebeian, and unsophisticated, while disdaining the victims’ expectations of lawfulness and justice as, and I quote, “idiotic attitudes.” So I’m guessing any physical opposition would, in his mind, be out of the question. Presumably, we should help the burglars carry away our possessions, lest they fatigue themselves.

Personally, I think such things are probably best nipped in the bud. Saves a lot of degradation and misery for the law-abiding. 

When someone is breaking into your house, you cannot know their intentions. Such criminals are often sociopaths, drunk, on meth etc. They cannot be guaranteed to merely want some of your stuff. 

Any attempt at home invasion should be treated as a mortal danger. If someone is willing to violate your home – and violate a very significant moral boundary – what other moral boundaries will they cross? And given, say, two or three seconds to think about it, how can you possibly know which ones they won’t cross?

To assume that a burglar armed with a crowbar is anything other than an existential threat seems foolish in the extreme.

Everything is a moral inversion with these people.

No one has any moral agency in their world, except the objects of their bigotries. 

Well, it’s curious how Mr Stafford Smith spends much more time chiding the victims of burglary, and the law-aiding generally, than he does the creatures who actually break into strangers’ homes and steal their belongings, and who do this over and over again.

The perpetrators, the aggressors, are offered endless excuses for their behaviour. The victims, however, are disdained as unsophisticated and low-status, with “idiotic attitudes.” Attitudes that Guardian readers should by implication find amusing and contemptible. Specifically, the belief that burglary is still in fact a crime and should still result in punishment, even when the burglar is “a young black person.”
 
In the interview, both Mr Stafford Smith and Ms Aitkenhead insist that being burgled has “zero” emotional impact and no real material repercussions – and is therefore trivial and unworthy of serious punishment. Which is much easier to claim if, like Stafford Smith, you’re from a very comfortable background of upscale boarding schools, costing a mere £12,000 a term.

Neither of our moral titans pauses to consider the impact of burglary, even repeatedly burglary, on someone who is, say, elderly and isolated, and perhaps uninsured, and who has no means of replacing whatever possessions were stolen or destroyed.

Instead, Mr Stafford Smith goes on to boast that he dislikes Conservative voters much more than muggers and carjackers, and Ms Aitkenhead claps along approvingly. The self-admiring duo casually insult the victims of crime as if doing so were a credential, proof of their elevation. 

This is who they are. 

Everything is a moral inversion with these people.

Well, as noted in an earlier thread,

It seems to me that a society in which thieves and thugs are forcibly immobilised and given a vigorous beating, with the criminal’s wellbeing as a fairly low priority, is morally preferable to a society in which the law-abiding just stand around, impotent and resigned, while waiting to be preyed upon again, and again, often by the same creatures, until they have nothing left to steal or destroy. Including their self-respect.

The first scenario may entail the injury, perhaps even the ceasing-to-be, of some sociopaths and habitual predators. The second scenario entails the demoralisation – in both senses – of the entire society. 

A process that, I’d suggest, is well underway.