This is movie script material right here.
Part of this story was adapted as part of the Vietnam war documentary Tropic Thunder, although they took some artistic license
The Incredibly Stupid One
61–70 of 86 posts
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#62This reminds me of Jeremiah Denton, a POW in that same war who was interviewed on TV to explain that the prisoners were being treated humanely. As he gave the verbal answers his captors expected, he blinked his eyes in Morse Code: – ––– •–• – ••– •–• • T O R T U R E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rufnWLVQcKg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Denton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code Epilog: A few years ag…
> It made me think how so few of us in each country really wanted to fight these wars. I don't know about that, I do think it shows that the lives lost to fight 'American Imperialism' were mostly a waste, as Vietnam today is largely indistinguishable from if South Vietnam had won/continued. There's no US bases there I suppose, but USSR did have bases after the war. They also lost hundreds of thousands afterwards as b…
We probably should count Viet Namese soldiers and civilians killed, on both sides, and Cambodians and Laotians, and probably even victims of Khner Rouge.
Then, all the forests wiped out with Agent Orange, and the long-lasting dioxin contamination. I have not seen any accounting of species driven to extinction by this treatment. Probably many were not even catalogued first.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is that okay now that he is donating money to cancer research? If someone was an asshole, but has decided to stop being an asshole and try out "being a nice person" instead — then your choice, as an onlooker, is between either encouraging them in their new take on life; or pushing back due to their past actions. Through your actions, you can choose to live in a society where "turning over a new leaf" like that is e…
No, because one of those options incentivizes people to do whatever it takes to get to the top, ethics and harm be damned, then once they get there to turn over a new leaf and be canonized as a saint while reclining on a pile of ill-gotten gains. Most sociopaths won't get to the top, though. They'll just do the first half where they hurt people, then lose it all. You can watch them on twitter now, hawking crypto and…
What is your alternative? Lock em up? Better to get all of them and a few more than let a single one go free…?
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#64Irrelevant to the content of the article, but worth pointing out that this project is funded by the proceeds of crimes committed at Drexel Burnham in the 80s. Michael Milken and his brother Lowell undoubtedly do good through their philanthrophy, but the cynic in me suspects that it is primarily an attempt to rehabilate their image and is treated as a business expense. Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wr…
> it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons though My take on this is that no, it doesn't. Philanthropy is useful regardless of the source. But it also absolves you of no guilt, and the shitty things you did in the past are still shitty, and you shouldn't expect people to like you any more just because you're donating to charity. (Although maybe people who know you personally can judge better whether you…
I don’t think you can just draw a line in the timeline and say “the philanthropy after the crime is useful and therefore justified”.
You have to look at the chain of causation.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#65Irrelevant to the content of the article, but worth pointing out that this project is funded by the proceeds of crimes committed at Drexel Burnham in the 80s. Michael Milken and his brother Lowell undoubtedly do good through their philanthrophy, but the cynic in me suspects that it is primarily an attempt to rehabilate their image and is treated as a business expense. Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wr…
Not sure if spewing badly written propaganda about the bloodiest war of invasion America ever waged could be considered doing good
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#66Irrelevant to the content of the article, but worth pointing out that this project is funded by the proceeds of crimes committed at Drexel Burnham in the 80s. Michael Milken and his brother Lowell undoubtedly do good through their philanthrophy, but the cynic in me suspects that it is primarily an attempt to rehabilate their image and is treated as a business expense. Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wr…
Seems morally consistent. We were the bad guys in Vietnam and this is an article about a soldier who went above and beyond in extreme situations to further our rampage. Of course Milken was just a selfish criminal with powerful friends, and Hegdahl was fighting for a principle (even if that principle was to create a firebreak out of Korean, Vietnamese and Cambodian corpses to protect the world from Communism.)
Nice to see that someone gets it
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because one of those options incentivizes people to do whatever it takes to get to the top, ethics and harm be damned, then once they get there to turn over a new leaf and be canonized as a saint while reclining on a pile of ill-gotten gains. Most sociopaths won't get to the top, though. They'll just do the first half where they hurt people, then lose it all. You can watch them on twitter now, hawking crypto and…
What is your alternative? Lock em up? Better to get all of them and a few more than let a single one go free…?
Yes, there's no middle ground between locking everyone up and letting people keep billions in ill-gotten gains /s.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#68Irrelevant to the content of the article, but worth pointing out that this project is funded by the proceeds of crimes committed at Drexel Burnham in the 80s. Michael Milken and his brother Lowell undoubtedly do good through their philanthrophy, but the cynic in me suspects that it is primarily an attempt to rehabilate their image and is treated as a business expense. Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wr…
Drexel was shut down by order of one certain ambitious NY Assistant AG by the name of Rudy Giuliani. The indictment? Criminal prosecution for statutory civil offences of two counts of failure to file stock transfer forms that by the letter of the law impose a fin e. Sentence: 12 years in federal. Appealed and won. Key witnesses for the prosecution included the convicted fraudster Ivan Boesky. RICO was the act abused to overnight shutter the single most critical liquidity provider to the savings and loans industry. American Thrifts to almost the last were bankrupted instantly. Cost to the taxpayer for the bailout? Cheap at four trillion.
Edited extraneous adjectives and sp
Oh and Lowell Milken, Mike's brother, was charged before anyone else by Giuliani in a overt and well documented hostage manipulation. Lowell never held operational executive office sufficient to have any involvement with the affair and his indictment was dropped. I should probably also note that Mike infamously never spent money on lifestyle and had to be brute forced into upgrading dress and toupee. Anyone on the street as successful as Mike and not spending money will have accumulated substantial wealth even if you don't count the Rodeo drive era. Much of which wealth went into settling civil suits.
Edit2: Giuliani's correct job title at the time
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Santa Monica and often walk past the Lowell Milken Family Foundation (which is close to the posh downtown). I always kind of smile and think about the story of how the Milken Family completely reinvented itself. Michael Milken, for context, was paid the highest yearly salary in the history of the world (~250M in one of his highest years if I remember correctly). He served 2 years in prison, his fine was 600…
At some point punishment has to end and you move forward in life. The justice system would be a lot more fair if this was applied equally.
Since this is a matter of ill-gotten gains, reparations instead of punishment should be in order.
The process of: do crime - get rich - do minor prison time and pay a minor fine - spend 10% of your remaining riches to rehabilitate your image - be a rich and respected person
That process should not be possible. As long as you are sitting on money gotten through crime, you shouldn't get respectability back. If you do want to turn over a new leaf, start giving back.
Re: The Incredibly Stupid One
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Santa Monica and often walk past the Lowell Milken Family Foundation (which is close to the posh downtown). I always kind of smile and think about the story of how the Milken Family completely reinvented itself. Michael Milken, for context, was paid the highest yearly salary in the history of the world (~250M in one of his highest years if I remember correctly). He served 2 years in prison, his fine was 600…
> Is that okay now that he is donating money to cancer research? If someone was an asshole, but has decided to stop being an asshole and try out "being a nice person" instead — then your choice, as an onlooker, is between either encouraging them in their new take on life; or pushing back due to their past actions. Through your actions, you can choose to live in a society where "turning over a new leaf" like that is e…
As a sibling comment points out, there is always a tradeoff between forgiveness and commitment, forgive too much and you incentivize people to take advantage of you (why not? You always forgive in the end), but forgive too little and you incentivize people to go all-in once they make one initial mistake.
Abrahamic religions solve this by imagining an entity capable of deciphering all of your intentions perfectly and delegating the task of granting forgiveness to it, but this perfect oracle is obviously not realizable in practice. Even the communities that worshipped this entity fervently had to contend with the Prisoner's Dilemma nature of the problem of forgiveness frequently, and they solved it no better than others. It's a really difficult problem.