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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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What has she done to make you feel she is a psychopath?
psychopath
/sī′kə-păth″/
noun
I don't know the thoughts of the other user and idk if this makes her a psychopath, but she did oversee an effort to deny prisoners parole just to keep them in California's prisoner firefighter program to combat wildfires.
The program itself is fairly repugnant to begin with, as the prisoners don't really have a choice in the matter, it's tantamount to slavery, and her trying to keep people locked up to bolster it is vile. While California needed more firefighters to combat their wild fire issues, I don't think slavery is the right solution.
Does that make her a psychopath? I'm not sure. Our definition of anti-social behavior is fairly restricted to what is legal and what isn't and what she did was legal. But it damn sure is without empathy or remorse and, in a just world, promoting slavery would be considered antisocial behavior, in my humble opinion.
Source?
So you don't have to wait 40 minutes again, I googled:
And got a whole bunch of results...
https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-keep-nonviolent-prisoners-locked-up/
Especially with Lemmy being so much smaller, you really shouldn't just wait for someone to do it for you. "Teach a man to fish" and all that.
That article says Harris was acting on behalf of Govenor Jerry Brown as defense attorney. So just like OJ Simpson’s lawyers had to defend him because that’s their job regardless of their feelings. Lawyers can’t make decisions for their clients. They just argue on their behalf in court.
The call to relocate the overpopulated prisoners to the firecamps was not made by Harris but other lawyers that worked in the same office. They only suggested it as a temporary solution after the Supreme Court wouldn’t accept their solution to build another prison to address the overpopulation.
The Supreme Court suggested Govenor Jerry Brown release nonviolent prisoners to address the overpopulation. To be clear, this includes sex offenders, white collar criminals and arsonists just to name a few “non-violent” crimes.
Any decisions Harris made in this role were her job as a lawyer defending the previous attorney general’s decisions Govenor Jerry Brown. At least that’s what the article says. I can’t verify any of the claims because I don’t see any citations for them. But maybe that’s because I read it on mobile.
AGs are elected in California. She wasn't a Jerry Brown employee.
Attorney generals represent the state and state agencies in federal court. In this example Jerry Brown was the govenor and Harris was representing him in federal court because that is the job of an attorney general.
Jerry Brown is not the state and not her boss. Elected AG's regularly just accept rulings they believe are just, whether or not their governor wants them to. Brown in no way got to dictate what she would do.
He was the govenor of California at the time. It is an attorney generals job to defend the govenor in court. Whether or not to accept a ruling is the choice of the defendant, not the attorney general.
You can't just say "source?" at me like I'm some kind of search engine. We are two people having a conversation. Why not look around yourself before barking a command at another human? Do you talk like this to people in real life? This isn't reddit, this isn't debate club, I'm not doing that shit here.
Look something up, find out how I misremembered details of an event from years ago. Tell me the nuance I've missed. Notice the true elements and mention how you find them disturbing, but it's not as bad as my fallable brain recalled. Yanno, like how people talk? Jeez!
No. If you make a claim, you back it up or get disregarded. It's that simple. This is how we prevent misinformation from being spread. Stop being indignant over being lazy/irresponsible.
I mean, there's asking politely after specifying what you would like a source for....
Or you could reply to a paragraph of text with:
And hope the person both guesses what you're asking for and puts the time in to Google something for you and provide the link.
Asking nicely is more likely to get the help you're asking for.
Fair, politeness is definitely the way to go. I was more reacting to the apparent reluctance to actually provide a source to back up what they were saying after making some pretty serious allegations; it feels like with the times we live in, people ought to be more sensitive to the potential spread of misinformation. But you're right, the replier certainly could have been nicer about it.
Thank you for being understanding. I take far more umbrage with someone expecting to be some kind of MTurk Google for them than wanting more information on a subject. Also, I'm a person with responsibilities and tasks. And whims for that matter. I shouldn't be expected to promptly reply with something that is easily searched for. I'm not the primary source for this claim, clearly.
It's similar to people simply replying "recipe?" When someone posts food pics on a given social media platform. It's not strange to want tips on how to recreate something tasty, but for goodness sake, treat me like a human. At least say "oh wow that looks great! How did you make it?"
Here's an article from the Daily Beast about this, tho there's a number of other publications that wrote on the same subject if you're curious about reading about it through different lenses.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kamala-harris-ag-office-tried-to-keep-inmates-locked-up-for-cheap-labor
Edit: FWIW, I don't think these claims are all that serious in the sense that this kind of practice is common in the USA. Prisoners are slaves and are forced into all sorts of varied labor, be it firefighting or being literally leased out to farms as agricultural workers. This is done explicitly (as in, the prisoners aren't given a choice to not work) and implicitly (where they're given a choice to rot in a cell in inhumane conditions OR work outside the prison for far less than minimum wage, which they can only spend at the prison commissary. This is a form of coercion). It's vile and abhorrent, but not uncommon, so I don't think it's all that strange to posit that someone in her role would engage in that kind of behavior.
Does that imply that many people in charge of overseeing prisoners and their activities in America are psychopaths or show psychopathic tendencies?
Perhaps.
Harris was acting on behalf of Govenor Jerry Brown as defense attorney. So just like OJ Simpson’s lawyers had to defend him because that’s their job regardless of their feelings. Lawyers can’t make decisions for their clients. They just argue on their behalf in court.
The call to relocate the overpopulated prisoners to the firecamps was not made by Harris but other lawyers that worked in the same office. They only suggested it as a temporary solution after the Supreme Court wouldn’t accept their solution to build another prison to address the overpopulation.
The Supreme Court suggested Govenor Jerry Brown release nonviolent prisoners to address the overpopulation. To be clear, this includes sex offenders, white collar criminals and arsonists just to name a few “non-violent” crimes.
Any decisions Harris made in this role were her job as a lawyer defending the previous attorney general’s decisions Govenor Jerry Brown. Most of what you are accusing her of doing was actually done by other lawyers that were from the same office.
This kinda feels like a "Just Following Orders" point.
If I were asked to do something as unethical as promote slavery or participate in a process that accomplished that, I'd refuse and resign.
On one hand, I understand that this kind of behavior is wildly common in the American justice system and far more people than just Harris are complicit in these sorts of abject horrors. She's not special for this.
But on the other, I still think it requires a certain lack of morality and contempt for humanity to be a willing participant in it.
Again, she didn’t do what you are claiming she did. The accusations are that her coworkers did. I don’t know why you are ignoring this point.
Fair point. I'm all for sources and requesting sources, but doing it in a polite manner is valuable to the overall health of the platform.
Thank you
If that other user couldn't infer what "Source?" meant in response to their comment, then I they're an idiot. Saying it nice is more PC, but clarity was definitely not the issue.
Oh, no, I understood very clearly what they were demanding. But I'm not a search tool. I'm a person, treat me like such. Heck, if they had just replied "Hey I tried searching for more info about this but I couldn't find any. Where did you see that?" I'd be far more accommodating than being treated like a machine thats openly accepting commands. They can search for these things faaaar more quickly than I can reply to a comment and probably get more info out of putting in all of 10 seconds of effort.
That reddit debate mentality nonsense is toxic and I ain't playing that game.
To each their own. I agree with the other person. If you come out and make a bunch of claims, the onus is on you to support it, otherwise you're just blowing smoke. Calling people out to source these claims is the best way to combat misinformation, a major issue on these platforms where anyone can make anything up. I do think that asking nicer is better, but I don't think that just saying, "Source?" is particularly rude or unnecessary. It was a neutral comment that has been taken as an attack.
Also, I didn't say you didn't understand, I said if you didn't understand you'd be an idiot given the context of your original comment. That was in counter to the post I responded to making it seem like there was a question about what Source that person was referring to.
So you made it up. Got it
Slavery as a punishment for crime is legal as per the american constitution. Which absolutely vile, but america refuses to change their bit of paper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution?wprov=sfti1
I want to point out that psychopathy is a colloquial term, not a clinical one. The most popular set of criteria, the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised, is not empirically reliable or valid. Its creator Robert Hare has made a lucrative career out of convincing the world (and the prison system) that psychopaths are Definitely Real. The PCL-R is used to justify harsher punishments and longer prison sentences, and it's completely made up.
Yeah, "not 20 years past retirement age" is a pretty low bar to clear, but at least we did it.