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A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

quillette.com

121–130 of 209 posts

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#121
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even after all that exegesis, your presumptive point remains obscure. The top-level comment is relevant because it happens to describe the malicious credulity of the journalism consumers who chose to believe the mass graves narrative.

I don't think my point is obscure at all. It is, simply, that C.S. Lewis didn't write that quote to exhort people to skepticism of all wrongdoing; he was instead reminding people not to invent wrongdoing to impute to strangers by dint of them being "enemies". The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is. Again: when Lewis wrote this, he was talking about the Nazis , the authors of many of the worst crimes in hist…

> The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is.

You’ve misread me/my intent, i’m afraid.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think my point is obscure at all. It is, simply, that C.S. Lewis didn't write that quote to exhort people to skepticism of all wrongdoing; he was instead reminding people not to invent wrongdoing to impute to strangers by dint of them being "enemies". The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is. Again: when Lewis wrote this, he was talking about the Nazis , the authors of many of the worst crimes in hist…

> The quote, here, was ill used, as it so often is. You’ve misread me/my intent, i’m afraid.

Certainly more than just possible. Could you say how?

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Reminds me of the story of the 11 year old who was raped and had to cross state lines for an abortion. Unless it happened again already, it was a 9-10 year old, depending on whether you are referring to when she was raped or when she had left the state to get an abortion. > Too many people treated it like a political point tally. Side1: If your political position is enacted, Bad Thing will happen, hurting people. S…

> Unless it happened again already

Odds are it has.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#124
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now a step further. Does loving your enemy mean not punishing them? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment—even to death. If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and accept the punishment. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a person for their crimes or a Chris…

personalism shot/chaser: bonhoeffer’s “on folly”.

I said downthread that it might be hard to come up with a more inapposite quote for a story about skepticism of wrongdoing, and you'd've one-upped me here. :)

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's misleading to say that "men can't have babies" is taboo. What you're actually referring to is a semantic argument about gender identity, and the one-sentence version just omits that context so it can "look" objectively true.

Quoted post unavailable.

If I admit that it's taboo, I've proved you wrong? That's backwards. Or if I admit that a biological man can't have a baby? Which, yes, I do admit (barring sci-fi-ish implant science I'm not informed on), but that doesn't prove you wrong either. Regardless, I'm confused about your point - if you're referring to people who literally think that biological men can have babies, it's hard to believe that you think they are so prevalent that they pervade all of public space. Unless you just mean that the unqualified act of declaring they can't in public will provoke a negative reaction, which seems reasonable - without context, that declaration is most often used as part of an implication that we should hate or mistreat certain people, whereas I, for example, am saying it in an honest/relevant (in my opinion) context.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#126
post #103
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, the "media bias fact checker" lists the NY Times as "High Credibility"[0] despite its sensationalized/false reporting about a "Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada."[1] [0] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/ [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kamloops-mas...

There’s not a huge gap between a mass grave and a mass of unmarked graves. Both show a disregard for human life. Quillette writers love to get on a high-horse about such discrepancies, while ignoring everything wrong with the right-wing media in America.

I'd say that there's a fairly huge gap between a mass grave, and a bunch of distortions in the soil that are detected by the radar that may (or may not) actually be graves.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Reminds me of the story of the 11 year old who was raped and had to cross state lines for an abortion. Unless it happened again already, it was a 9-10 year old, depending on whether you are referring to when she was raped or when she had left the state to get an abortion. > Too many people treated it like a political point tally. Side1: If your political position is enacted, Bad Thing will happen, hurting people. S…

More like Side3: Bad Things will happen sooner or later. So the report of a Bad Thing at a politically useful time is helpful even if it’s loosely supported. Because Bad Thing will happen eventually regardless.

Edit: I don’t think the time of the reports was particularly helpful. The day before the story was verified, someone had published an op-Ed in NYTimes titles “Laugh at my abortion with me.” Nobody’s laughing about a preteen being raped.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#128

I don't really see anything in what I read as a wonderful genocide denial piece of the likes you see on catholic news sites right now, about how the decision to exhume or not exhume is being taken with a lot of care and the decisions lie with the tribes on how to do this. It sounds like at the Kamloops site, they're working on an archaeological dig. [1] These things take time for reasons of doing what may involve the…

People die at schools esp. boarding schools of all kinds, all the time, of normal causes. There aren't really allegations that somehow these schools 'killed people' in the 1960's (i.e. in living memory as you suggest) - or even in the past (when people died at much higher rates than normal population of illness etc.) and your choice of words very clearly misrepresents the situation, which is actually the issue presented in the article: how people lie about serious and inflammatory issues.

There were major revelations about a century ago that Aboriginal children were dying at higher rates than otherwise, mostly due to tuberculosis, which spread rapidly at the shcools over a century ago - it was a 'huge controversy' even in 1922 - when the government commissioned an investigation into the situation. [1]

Also, note (same reference) that deaths from aboriginal kids since WW2/1945 is basically the same as death of kids from the general population overall, which abnegates some idea of even accidental physical genocidal acts due to systematic oppression. These facts, which adds nuance to the situation, create a more realistic dynamic to the historical situation than your choice of words (similar to those in the press) would imply. Hence - misrepresentation and hyperbole.

Residential School history matters, factually.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#129
post #117
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I had omitted sourcing in my original comment but here: > Dr. Jonathan Arden, the former Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia was hired by Smith's widow as part of her lawsuit to have her husband's suicide ruled "in the line of duty". His report stated that the "acute, precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he suffered on J…

She hired an expert to get the ruling “line of duty” because it changes and increases his life insurance payouts. It also gives her access to survivors benefits and a slew of other things like part of his pension.

Yes, it was a precedent breaking ruling - which tend not to be given out lightly. That is a strong indicator that during this motion all of the evidence was under even higher scrutiny.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#130

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as po…

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Does anyone care about an arbitrary other person? Sounds unlikely. Even at the 99th percentile of people, I think the most effort I'd expend to make their life better is zero. And, to be honest, I think most people would spend less than $1k to save an arbitrary life. Given that, it sounds rather trite.

Even if they did care (unlikely as that is), there is no way to intervene in an arbitrary 11-year-old's healthcare.

The scope of action is in the design of the society that permits harm as defined in one way or the other. And that's politics. So people are acting in the only way that makes sense.

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