The Problem with "Let Them Live"
I am, as readers of this blog are all too aware, addicted to social media. I know that it’s terrible and that I should avoid it, but it’s just so goddamn hard to give up. In the past two months, I stopped smoking pot after thirty years as a nightly smoker and stopped drinking alcohol. I had to stop smoking pot because of my dental implants, and I chose to give up alcohol because I was a nightly drinker as well. I had such a high tolerance that I never got drunk or even tipsy. I didn’t drink to get drunk; I drank because that’s what I’d done for a long time, and I am a creature of habit.
Quitting smoking pot and drinking alcohol cold turkey honestly wasn’t that difficult. Social media is way more difficult to kick than booze or smoking weed. It’s also just as insidious and destructive, if not more so.
I should quit social media because it does terrible things for my mental health, but I’m just not there yet.
That’s partially because while social media is overwhelmingly evil and destructive it does serve several useful purposes. As a perpetually struggling small businessman, I benefit from being able to promote my writing on Twitter and Facebook. I’ve also made good friends and collaborators through those hell sites, and I regularly write blog posts about the ugliness of social media.
A week back or so I made the mistake of looking at the comments on an article on TMZ about Cassie and her lawyer publicly expressing disgust over Diddy publicly flaunting his lavish lifestyle while being under investigation for all manner of unspeakable crimes.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the comments were overwhelmingly pro-Diddy and anti-Cassie. Commenters complained that it was petty for Cassie and her representatives to keep tabs on her ex and criticize his behavior when they should just let him live.
Comment after comment implored Cassie, the media, and the many other people credibly accusing Diddy of horrible crimes to let Diddy live.
The consensus seemed to be that if Diddy had done anything bad, then he would be arrested, charged with serious offenses, and then spend years, decades, or even the rest of his life behind bars.
The “Let him live” people take the idea of being innocent until guilty to surreal extremes. They put an insane amount of faith in an extremely failable American legal system and celebrities accused of flagrant misbehavior while casting doubt on everyone who accuses famous people of crimes.
The “Let him live” brigade does not seem to understand that only a small fraction of rapes are reported, even fewer are tried, and an even smaller percentage leads to prison time for the rapist.
Women who’ve been sexually assaulted are often reluctant to press charges or go public for any number of reasons. One of those reasons is an understandable fear that if they go public with sexual assault allegations against a powerful man, they will be subjected to a never-ending stream of invective about how they’re gold-diggers out for a quick, sleazy payday and/or attention.
The “Let them live” posture would make more sense if there was no concrete physical evidence that Diddy had viciously abused an ex-partner. Then these creeps could at least say that there was no clear-cut proof that Diddy is guilty of the horrible things he’s accused of.
But we all saw the horrifying video of a drunk and out-of-control Diddy assaulting Cassie, the same way we all saw Rhianna after Chris Brown viciously beat her.
Yet there are nonetheless people who think that Brown and Diddy have been treated unfairly and that we should all withhold criticism or judgment unless they’re convicted of serious crimes.
Every time I see an article about Chris Brown today, someone will bring up his past as a domestic abuser, and twenty apoplectic apologists will say that the Rhianna thing is ancient history and he was just a child himself when he abused Rhianna and it’s vicious and wrong to hold Brown responsible for things he did over a decade ago.
Even when there is incontrovertible proof of a powerful man’s abuse, there’s still a shockingly large percentage of the public who will passionately defend them while harshly criticizing the people they’ve abused as sleazy opportunists.
Hell, there are still people who defend Bill Cosby and think he’s guilty of nothing more than being a womanizer and hypocrite who was rich and powerful enough to be a juicy target for false accusations.
There are people whose sympathies will ALWAYS be with victimizers rather than victims. They’ll claim that all they really care about is fairness and people getting an opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law, but really, it’s all about protecting the powerful and punishing victims.
Nathan needs teeth that work, and his dental plan doesn't cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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