There was a documentary (vice, I think?) with a woman with a genetic disorder that makes her look like tween. She says dating is really hard because there’s tons of creeps who are attracted to her only because she looks like a child, and the few good men she meets are always on edge about being seen having a romantic relationship with someone who looks like a child.

This is an extreme case, but all this to say that it happens.

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It exists, in a functional nation atleast, to ensure stability. You can’t just allow criminals who would harm others to walk around freely. So we have to rely on imperfect systems that sometimes can get it wrong. We take efforts to make them get it wrong less often of course, but it’s just something that happens.

This is why we have trials, and we treat a conviction of a crime as confirmation that someone DID do that crime not because it is correct 100% of the time, but because it is more often than not correct, and it is the only mechanism we have to determine someones innocence or guilt.

Socially, you are right that many people treat the justice system this way, but even a hazy familiarity with leftist criticism of the justice system would tell you that for many decades this has not been the only way it has been used and conceptualized. See, some people are uncomfortable with the idea of not knowing things for certain and need to have a final decree on what is true even if it’s not really certain, but you can and indeed should treat the justice system as a way of coming to the best answer that we can determine for the moment, keeping in mind that it might be wrong and indeed we might discover a more correct answer later. That’s a major reason why the death penalty is simply bad in most cases, because you can free someone who got a life sentence wrongfully, but you can’t un-execute someone. Why not just keep them alive? It’s not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things (famously, it is more expensive in many cases to kill them), and even if they never leave the prison, they might still have the chance to do something productive. Are you really that upset to be denied the satisfaction of a hanging when it’s not even a more effective deterrent anyway?

It’s totally possible to have a functional justice system without playing pretend that things are more certain than they are.

Personally i think that your the one being aesthetically communist while refuting any system that actually works to empower the workers.

I think China has lots of good feature. Do you know about their 12345 hotline? That’s pretty cool.

Let me guess your a big fan of european socialist communes that ultimately failed?

I, like Marx, am a fan of the Paris Commune, but I think that I like it less than he did. I don’t know which other specific communes you are referring to, since I assume you don’t mean literally any European commune. I’m not a big fan of the ones in Spain, I think they helped Franco win. I think this is a weird thing to bring up and shows how you’re very ready to do what you falsely accused me of by wildly extrapolating views than I never hinted at and do not hold. If there’s some specific bugbear other than Paris that I can help you with though, feel free to let me know.

Certain westerners tend to love socialism as long as it doesnt actually threaten capitalism in the slightest.

I like the Paris Commune because I see it as part of a productive, revolutionary project. I generally don’t like communes because I see them as borderline-nihilistic life rafts at best. I don’t begrudge the people in them usually, I just would discourage aiming one’s activism in that direction unless the commune is meant to be a base of activism because I believe the point needs to be the destruction of imperialism and capitalist society in favor of socialism.

But as soon as an AES state is successful they’re “Evil Authoritarians” lol.

I never said such a thing about China and I don’t use that word because I think it’s thought-terminating. I like plenty of things in contemporary China that liberals would call “authoritarian” though. For example, the Firewall was a great idea and they should maintain it, though of course the eventual aspiration is to take it down.

It’s just a coincidence that your views on China allign with US foreign policy interests right?

This is the one that really got to me. I don’t think that I said anything to hint in this direction and certainly don’t believe it. If you want to say that both I and the US State Department agree because we both say that China isn’t a perfect beacon of human flourishing then sure, you got me, I’m basically a white supremacist. I don’t think the State Department is interested in China combating revisionism and spreading revolution, which are two things I would like to see from it that I don’t expect to ever happen, but I don’t think that distinction matters to you.

But what really bugs me is that I think China, even as a revisionist state, is still the greatest historically progressive force in the world right now, and I very much do want to see it prevail over the US. I believe the term the kids use is “critical support.”

Couldn’t possibly be because they’ve purposefully cultivated that view among their people in order to support their own goals, and keep actual leftist sentiment under control, and focused on ineffective means of combating capitalism right? So keep on despising every country that is Americas enemy for being authoritarian. It’s such an easy position to hold when your in the west I’m sure nobody gives you push back on it. Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, etc would all agree with you. China bad.

You know, the irony here is that you’ve fallen into a much more comfortable position, believing that there is a state that is Marxist superpower on the rise to be the global hegemon and lead to world communism. Yeah, you are being contrary to the neoliberal establishment, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t ultimately falling back on something that feels very secure, and I wouldn’t blame you if that was why, since it was part of why for me. Still, I do not presume to know.

DPRK bad

I think it’s funny that you jump to this one, because the DPRK (while historically progressive and worth supporting over the RoK!) is so non-Marxist that it’s not even revisionist. They openly reject dialectical materialism, embrace the explicitly permanent perpetuation of class society, and hardly even meet traditional ideas of what socialism in general is, even in what they profess, unless you use a standard so lax that it almost includes the European socdem states that we both hate (though the DPRK is historically progressive and they are not because of their respective relationships to global imperialism). I can elaborate quite a lot on this (it’s something I’ve already talked a fair bit about on this account, so you can also look up my past comments), and I can just as easily argue against the various myths the west smears them with.

I apologize for the late reply. I was putting off responding to this but I’ve seen it enough times in my inbox by this point.

takes a single word someone says and tries to read entire worldviews into it.

Least important part first to get it out of the way: it’s pretty difficult to interpret “deserves” another way from how I did, and you fail to actually present a distinct meaning from my interpretation either in your last comment or here, you just sort of deflect to talking about something else while either tacitly relying on exactly the understanding of “deserving” that I explained, or talking about things consequentially instead with no relation to that term. You have failed to demonstrate that I was incorrect, you’re just doing motte-and-bailey argumentation.

This isn’t some matter of trivia or being woke, when you say “kill them if they’re convicted” you are effectively signing off on killing some number of innocent people and preventing retrials in the case of new evidence, which is a problem with the death penalty generally.

Much more interestingly, in the very same sentence as you make this accusation of me, you say:

Typical westerner who says all AES states are bad

I talked about China being revisionist, and you extrapolate it to this view, something I never said and do not believe. I don’t even think China is “bad,” at least pragmatically, and I have probably as much admiration for Cuba as you do. You took me speaking poorly of China and incorrectly overgeneralized it to my whole view of China, and then incorrectly overgeneralized that to my whole view of every nominally-socialist state everywhere, and came up with a bunch of cute details that I’ll get to in a moment. Maybe you’re the one who’s shadow-boxing in this circumstance?

Not making statements as to the effectiveness of the American justice system.

As at least one other person noted, you keep saying “people who are in prison” and things like that. You even keep saying it in this comment. The simple fact of the matter is that “people who are in prison” is not a subset of “people who are guilty of the crime they were accused of,” it’s an intersecting set. But nonetheless, you talk about how “people who are in prison” “deserve” mutilation, death, etc.

Then talking about rehabilitation for people like that as if its the same thing as rehabilitating an emperor who was ignorant and insulated, and whose crimes were systemically taught to him as a good thing/necessary his entire life.

These people went against what is societally acceptable in their own societies.

This is an interesting argument, but I think you’re giving Puyi a little bit too much credit here. He was aware of Japan doing colonialism and more. It’s also worth noting that he was 28 when he became a puppet emperor on behalf of Japan (though he had been a chief executive for two years prior), something far removed from being the sovereign of China that he was theoretically groomed to be and taught to value and a disgrace to his imperial predecessors (themselves despicable monarchists, but we’re meeting people where they’re at, right?). It was a cynical choice made for his own benefit.

In the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Puyi testified as a witness and claimed that he was held by the Japanese against his will (Behr, 273). It was clear to the judges that Puyi was saying what was needed to protect himself. Edward Behr, the author of The Last Emperor, described Puyi as “showing himself to be a consistent, self assured liar, prepared to go to any lengths to save his skin” (278).

https://www.pacificatrocities.org/blog/prince-puyi-chinas-last-dynasty

Ironically for our conversation:

There is also extensive reporting on him being such a sadistic little shit that even his handlers had the wrangle him a little, but I won’t dwell on that because he was a minor then.

The more important thing is that it wasn’t part of his grooming to sell off his country in mass land seizures, enslavement, promoting the racial supremacy of the Japanese, and criminalizing any dissent against them. Even Unit 731 was operating within Manchukuo, his jurisdiction, and he surely wasn’t reading their “lab reports,” but it seems unlikely that he knew nothing about it. He nonetheless went along with all of it and then tried to evade responsibility however he could once it was over. If you actually care about his rehabilitation under Mao, Puyi did go on to accept responsibility for his actions and didn’t pretend to just be an ignorant child, even if there were things that he was unaware of and ways that his perspective was warped by his environment.

Anyway, enough about Puyi.

These people went against what is societally acceptable in their own societies. To harm children in the most despicable way possible in order to fufill their own desires.

You say this, but preying on minors is pretty normalized among some parts of society. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about all the radio hits about fucking kids, or the child bride laws in some states, etc.

Regardless of how nice to might sound to say we can just “Fix” them we cant. We don’t know how. If one day we figure out WHY they do what they do, and how we can fix them then sure we can do that. But its not something we know how to do.

This is absolutely bizarre. As you yourself seemed to mention, the main issue here isn’t the medical condition, it is their response to it. The “why” is a question of decision-making, of personal conduct and values (and expectation of punishment or lack thereof). There is no grand mystery here, they are criminals in the same way that a wife-beater is a criminal, because they made bad choices. It might take more effort to unpack on a case-by-case basis, like with other domestic abusers, but there’s no magical curse that makes them unable to choose the right thing.

To let them walk the streets again registry or not is untenable. Did you read the article i sent you? . . . You would what? Put them in jail for a few years then put them on a list, release them, and hope they don’t do it again? That is absolutely irresponsible and ridiculous.

I would put them in prison to be rehabilitated until they are rehabilitated, and if they refuse then they’re stuck there for life. I’m not saying we have a fixed 3-year sentence and then release them, it’s a question of if and when a given individual can be released (which, for the record, I expect would take longer than 3 years).

It not only allows those very people to go commit the same crimes again, but tells others who might think of doing those crimes that they will survive it even if caught.

I know you love when I consider word choice, so I’ll do it again: “Survive”? I knew I was right to make the bail reform comparison; you’re talking like a miserable boomer. The death penalty isn’t a very effective deterrent, this has been shown again and again, and it’s especially bad in the case of prosecuting sexual violence, because if you’re already going to die for being convicted of molesting someone, why not just kill them too and avoid leaving a witness?

Even if you think I’m completely in the wrong on rehabilitation, you are independently demonstrating that you’ve completely sacrificed critical thinking or looking at evidence in favor of the most ill-considered “kill the baddie” reflexes because, idk, perhaps it’s cathartic to you or something. If you cared about victims, you might try actually reading about this subject. This defective reasoning is very compatible with the defectiveness of “deserving” as a moral framework, btw.

The people in jails for it are the ones who DID act on it.

And also some innocent people, statistically.

It’s the action that gets them arrested.

It’s getting charged that gets them arrested and conviction that puts them in prison. There is a strong correlation to committing the crime, but you’re not considering that the justice system is not overseen by an omniscient God.

As for you refusal to see my point on the justice system i will remind you America is not the only country on earth. Why would i bring up America centric issues like its justice systems tendency to wrongfully convict when talking about a global issue. On top of that the justice system in any nation does not exist to get 100% of its convictions right all the time anyway

Excellent, so we agree that you have no point because America’s problem is quantitative and all of these systems are fallible. I apologize for using an obvious and familiar example to you, but I’m glad you were able to extrapolate from it.

I have a bit more to say, so bear with me 1/

3/

Sorry for the third comment, but I wanted to tag someone without throwing walls of text at them.

@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net Sorry for tagging you in an unrelated conversation, but you made some excellent comments a little bit ago on how Chinese economics has abandoned Marxism and is mostly Keynesian now (with some Austrian school freaks somehow being allowed to make a case?). I tried to find your comments but could not, do you think that you could direct me to them? I think our comrade here would benefit as well from this information.