There are a lot of words and concepts in the world that are bad. just one example of this is the suffix “ist”.
- sexist
- racist
- white nationalist
- ageist
- exhibitionist
- bigamist
- chauvinist
Depending on your own personal circumstances it is easy to pick a side of an argument and feel strongly about it. Sometimes over the years opinions may change (or may not) but anything that is written down will haunt you forever. All of this came to mind when I was recently reading that former judge kavinaugh’s spot on the federal court will need to be filled and that his possible successor had indeed written down a few things back in the day. It appears that successor, judge Neomi Rao, had apparently written in the 1990s that victims of date rape were partly responsible if they’d been drinking.
It is bad is to blame the victim for the behavior of others. This particular argument of blaming the victim may sound to be reasonable until you really considered analogous situations to see just how a specious argument this is.
Perhaps the way to try and disprove that this position would be to “accept it” as case law and then see how this precedent would affect different cases.
Not so smart “smartphone”
A person is walking across the street at the crosswalk like some sort of zombie staring at his smartphone. The driver is driving at a constant rate and the pedestrian gets hit by a car.
Result
The driver argues that the pedestrian was not paying enough attention and is responsible for being hit by the car.
Assault
While discussing politics it becomes apparent that the two people do not agree. One of them instead of taking the time to make a strong argument uses this as an opportunity to make statements about the other person(person is stupid, looks ugly, isn’t intelligent, …) Nobody likes hearing these types of things and so he hits the other guy. Can you imagine how this would play out in court?
Result
If he hadn’t been such of a jerk I wouldn’t have had to hit him.
I would imagine that it is possible to create other situations and “blame” the victim to a certain degree as well.
It is important that we don’t lose focus.
It is important that everyone tries to be responsible for his or her actions. It would be frustrating to watch someone taking an excessive amount of time crossing the road, especially if you are in a hurry or have an appointment, but this is not illegal behavior. In my opinion is you are being very short-sighted if you are not paying attention to the world around you.
The same is true for having a discussion or argument and hitting the other person. It is sad that people get so emotional that they lose control but it still isn’t illegal to be a jerk. It is also legal to be an incredibly arrogant asshat although who wants that as a reputation.
Getting back to the main premise of “is the victim at fault” when he or she has been drinking. It is bad style for anyone male or female to get drunk to the point that you lose control but you shouldn’t be penalized for that legal behavior – especially when the other party is doing illegal behavior. In general no matter what situation is taking place you might want to keep the following in mind.
Discretion is the better part of valor.
It is pretty much a truism that nobody loves yourself as much as you do. As pessimistic as it may sound it is best if to a certain degree you have a small bit of skepticism in mind in all situations.
On a lighter note
Not all words ending with “ist” has to be a bad word.
- technologist
- nutritionist
- agriculturalist
Depending on the situation, perhaps living next door to an exhibitionist might be a silver lining.
