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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#211

Post by rendall »

slg wrote: post #114
kazinator wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa there, Roofus; have a Milk-Bone of information: "In 2017, users on the message-board site 4chan[40][41][42] aimed to convince the media and other people that the OK gesture was being used as a white power symbol. According to The Boston Globe, users on 4chan's /pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") board were instructed in February 2017 to "flood Twitter and other social media websites...claiming that the OK hand sign…

These are such weird arguments. The origins are irrelevant because it wasn't just a trick pulled on normies; white supremacists also fell for the joke. Once they started genuinely using the gesture it did become a symbol of hate. The Wikipedia article you linked says exactly that a few paragraphs below the paragraph you quoted.

> white supremacists also fell for the joke. Once they started genuinely using the gesture it did become a symbol of hate. [citation needed]

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#212

Post by snakeboy »

midasz wrote: post #197
snakeboy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality, these days -- along with most other so-called dog whistles it's quite effective in trolling reactionaries on the left. That's all. Everyone is in on the joke. If I'm Don Jr. or Charlie Kirk or whoever, my prerogative is to invoke liberal "tears" so yeah I'm gonna use all the dog whistle words like "thugs" and flash the OK symbol, because it scores them points with the right, multiplied by the amount of ou…

Sounds like a really healthy mindset.

It sounds like cynical politicians doing what they always do: pitting their followers against "the enemy" for personal gain.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#213

Post by ric2b »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #129
reducesuffering wrote: post #22

So when we do get rid of presidential pardons? We've seen "an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president." ~Mitt Romney And we've seen pardons put up for sale.[0] Is the US a nation of laws and due process or a Banana Republic where anyone can be acquitted of anything? [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/trump-pardons...

I think it's very good that you have them, so at least a select few people can get a second chance. Instead, you should get rid of ridiculous penalty stacking and plea deals, an often obviously unjust justice system, and a penal system that systematically violates the most basic human rights and standards of decency. No offence, but most of these pardons make perfect sense. Unfortunately, Snowden, Ulbricht, and Assan…

But do they have to depend on a single person? They should go through congressional approval to avoid such blatant corruption.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#214

Post by UncleMeat »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #125
apexalpha wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think people now use "OK", a sign used for years, to signal they are racist? I think you're the butt of the joke here...

A SCUBA diver here. Apparently we are all racist while submerged.

Context matters in almost all human communication. And humans are pretty good at negotiating context. Scuba divers won’t lose the symbol. But scuba divers also don’t protect a bunch of people posing with Richard Spencer and making the gesture.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#215

Post by FriedrichN »

FriedrichN wrote: post #74
reducesuffering wrote: post #22

So when we do get rid of presidential pardons? We've seen "an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president." ~Mitt Romney And we've seen pardons put up for sale.[0] Is the US a nation of laws and due process or a Banana Republic where anyone can be acquitted of anything? [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/trump-pardons...

I'm not a US citizen, but to me it seems to be ridiculous to give one person the ability to unilaterally make decisions on the lives of individuals. Not just these pardons, but also the barbaric rushed executions Trump performed. It appears to me to be antithetical to a democracy that claims to have a separation of power.

Funny how this gets downvoted without anyone giving a comment on why my statement deserves to be downvoted.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#216

Post by ric2b »

WalterBright wrote: post #111

It's important to note the reason the President has the power to pardon anyone for any reason is it's one of the checks and balances, the Constitution is full of them. It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions. Note that the President does not have the corresponding power to convict anyone. An interesting set of pardons was when Andrew Johnson pardoned all the rebels in the Confederacy, including Jeffer…

> it's one of the checks and balances

On the judicial, so it would be great if it was also subject to Congressional approval. It would still fulfill its purpose.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#217

Post by croon »

logicchains wrote: post #163
gigatexal wrote: post #72

The Trump saga lasted 4 years though it will probably take the rest of my lifetime for the US to heal from Trump and all the acolytes his administration emboldened; from the radical right, to enabling grifters, to draconian and in humane immigration policies (kids in cages, wtf?!?), and a whole lack and mistrust of science, not to mention the rise of QAnon and just the overall tarnishing of any semblance of American…

>kids in cages, wtf?!?) I'm sure you've heard this before, but Obama built the cages.

Under Obama:

If you commit a crime while having entered the country, you are charged in criminal court, meaning you are put in jail awaiting trial. Your kids can't be put in jail with you, thus they are taken care of separately.

If you don't commit a crime, you are charged in civil court and not put in jail awaiting trial, so your kids aren't taken from you.

Under Trump:

Charge everyone in criminal court [0], take away everyone's kids, despite evidence that it doesn't deter [1], because we are evil vindictive (inferred from facts) [expletive] (assumed).

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/27/far-more-im...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/borde...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#218

Post by rendall »

coldtea wrote: post #134
spacemanmatt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The white supremacy sign is a white power sign because white supremacists use it to signal each other. It is called a "dog whistle" because people like you cannot hear it accurately.

"Dog whistle" is a term bat-shit-crazy people and opportunists use to mark whoever they like on anything they can drum up. "You think what he said was inoffensive? That's because it's a dog whistle!". It's not that some dog whistles don't exist (e.g. upon secret societies, etc). It's that it's used as a weapon with the flimsiest of excuses. It's the 2020 version of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question.

To believe that dog-whistles exist as an actual thing used effectively, one would also have to believe:

a) A group of people (e.g. white supremacists) do not already know that the dog-whistler (e.g. a politician) is a member or sympathizer of their group

b) That this person who sympathizes with this secret group wants to signal sympathy with this secret group, but cannot do it directly (that is, by email or letter or direct contact), and so must somehow signal through public words and deeds

c) This signal will somehow, hopefully, be invisible to everyone who is listening except for members of the secret group

The prototypical example is politicians talking about "thugs" and "welfare queens" as dog-whistling a racist contempt for black people. I can definitely accept that using such language could be such a signal, especially with the context of aligned policy pronouncements, but it's pretty blatant and not a dog-whistle.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#219

Post by WickyNilliams »

roenxi wrote: post #172
yread wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can use context instead of absolute judgment. When done under water in a scuba suit, it probably means ok. When done when posing with Steve Bannon it probably means white power sign.

Having researched the issue carefully [0] I would suggest there is an alternative symbolic interpretation. One that goes something like "our opponents believe anything they read on the internet". Even if it is used extensively as a political symbol, it doesn't represent white power. It represents a political sub-group disrespecting their opposition for being gullible. Insofar as it even could represent white power -…

My take is that Poe's Law is bidirectional. You can't tell irony from extremism, nor extremism from irony.

It might have started as an ironic joke, but if it gets adopted earnestly by actual white supremacists (see the Christchurch shooter using it in court), then in some contexts it can be interpreted as a genuine symbol of white supremacy.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#220

Post by rijoja »

chandra381 wrote: post #30
rijoja wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... or maybe they are competent and knows how to advance the public good.

How does Anthony Lewandowski being pardoned advance any public good? I would argue it does the exact opposite.

He co-founded three major self-driving car programs. How is it not obvious that having a well functioning car industry would be beneficial to USA?
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