If you've done nothing wrong, do you have nothing to fear?

1. 67

   ptosisposted 7 years ago

   If you've done nothing wrong,  do you have nothing to fear?
   
   Over-criminalization: good people exercising poor judgment. Should public resources be wasted on the use surveillance to investigate petty 'crimes'? Jason Dewing of update New York was found guilty of violating a law that did not exist. Do you set off the red flags in metadata surveillance via data exhaust of your internet use? Felony creep exists due to inflation and thresholds have remained the same for decades.
   
   

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2. 84

   Express10posted 7 years ago

   You asked a valid question but you have already answered it with Frank Zappa's quote. Some folks truly are damned if they do and damned if they don't. A good example is the man lying on the ground with his hands up who was STILL shot by a police officer when he was no threat to anyone, not being threatened and was a daily guardian of the young mentally disabled in his care.
   
   But back more closely to your question. Yes, often our laws are badly written and randomly enforced or as you point out, there is sometimes enforcement of laws that do not exist or are even so outdated, prosecutors drop the case. However, no one ever seems to fully reimburse the accused for their time & money spent/lost, even if that person was sent to jail or prison & found to be innocent. So, yes people rightfully do have things to fear even when they've done nothing wrong.

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   1. 67

      ptosisposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Great answer!

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3. 85

   tamarawilhiteposted 7 years ago

   Liberals say that they are good, tolerant, kind, intelligent, moral, rational. This is branding, not reality, but the news media is biased left, so it reinforces this narrative.
   This narrative means those that aren't liberal get labeled bad, intolerant, mean, stupid, irrational, haters.
   The hate speech movement sounds good, "let's punish those who say kill X group", but the end result is "you posted conservative views, those views are based on hate, ban that speech and punish him for uttering it".
   You get the same double standard in real life when Twitter even allows hateful hash tags like
   #killallcops
   #killallwhites
   #KillAllMen
   #killallwhitemen
   but bans Milo Yianapolis for arguing with a black actress from Ghost Busters after a negative movie review and calls her a him, a woman who herself was unpunished for Tweets bashing all whites.
   In such an environment, people should be afraid and angry that whole classes of ideas are being punished under the guise of protecting specific classes of people. We know it isn't out of respect of all people, or you wouldn't see hash tags like those above tolerated much less the calls for violence associated with them, or the #polarbearhunting and #KnockOutGame hash tags with videos of where blacks try to knock out whites with one blow to the head, not caring about the brain damage and death it causes.
   When one side says "your criticism of illegal immigration undermining rule of law is racist, ban hate speech, you can't express your views anymore", you get the more extreme demagogues standing up because they are the only ones able to express the views more polite society still holds but can't express.
   (Yes, SJWs, Donald Trump's rise is your fault for calling everyone who disagreed with you bad names and tried to get the more prominent ones fired, so they resort to the last person standing who says what they think.)
   And everyone who is afraid of persecution for thought crimes ends up afraid of the state, for being punished for saying the wrong thing, or even more immorally, saying something that one demographic group can but their group isn't allowed to say.

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4. 50

   bradmasterOCcalposted 7 years ago

   The Wrong Man is a painfully true story and not one of his customary fabricated suspense yarns, through the simple expedient of walking before the camera and telling us as much (this introductory appearance replaced his planned cameo role as a nightclub patron). The real-life protagonist, musican Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, is played by Henry Fonda. Happily married and gainfully employed at the Stork Club, Balestrero's life takes a disastrous turn when he goes to an insurance office, hoping to borrow on his wife's (Vera Miles) life insurance policy in order to pay her dental bills. One of the girls in the office spots Balestrero, identifying him as the man who robbed the office a day or so earlier. This, and a few scattered bits of circumstantial evidence, lead to Balestrero's arrest. Though he's absolutely innocent, he can offer no proof of his whereabouts the day of the crime. Lawyer Frank O'Connor (Anthony Quayle) does his best to help his client, but he's up against an indifferent judicial system that isn't set up to benefit the "little man." Meanwhile, Balestrero's wife becomes emotionally unhinged, leading to a complete nervous breakdown. As Balestrero prays in his cell, his image is juxtaposed onto the face of the actual criminal-who looks nothing like the accused man! Utilizing one of his favorite themes-the helplessness of the innocent individual when confronted by the faceless bureaucracy of the Law-Hitchcock weaves a nightmarish tale, all the more frightening because it really happened (the film's best moment: Fonda looking around the nearly empty courtroom during his arraignment, realizing that the rest of the world cares precisely nothing about his inner torment). Hitch enhances the film's versimilitude by shooting in the actual locations where the real story occured. His only concession to Hollywood formula was the half-hearted coda, assuring us that Mrs. Balestrero eventually recovered from her mental collapse (she sure doesn't look any too healthy the last time we see her!) Watch for uncredited appearances by Harry Dean Stanton, Bonnie Franklin, Tuesday Weld and Charles Aidman.

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