SallyShortyPnts wrote:
And
[bad guy] has been charged with a richly deserved assault charge.
I guess hearing that the President can “grab ‘em by the pussy” gave Mr. [jerk] permission to “swat her in the ass”.
My sincere hope is that this does not turn out well for him.The guy behaved like an ignorant, disrespectful, fool. No argument there.
Should this sort of action be criminalised? Perhaps. I'm not going to get into discussing that, its peripheral to my points.
Point 1: Labelling someone a "bad guy" is unwise. It plays into the illusion that things are black and white. This idea should never make it past children's stories. In fact it shouldn't exist there either since most people seem unable to move past it. Grown-ups SHOULD know better, but often don't. It's rather worrying and telling that the US president regularly dumbs his messages down to literally labelling people "good guys" and "bad guys". In fact it's not just worrying, it's frankly terrifying. It's how mob rule is perpetrated and the guy doesn't even need to disguise it.
People do foolish, dangerous, harmful, ignorant, selfish, or offensive stuff. The same people often do kind, helpful, generous, selfless, and caring stuff. The fiction is that people are good or bad - they are neither. They are people and they do things that are have both positive and negative impact on the common good.
The good guys and bad guys fiction creates the biggest offences against humanity, beyond the topic of this thread. Where do you think terrorism, ethnic cleansing and any number of other atrocities comes from? It's typically the result of believing there are two clearly defined sides, and that it's reasonable to pick one. I submit that there are very few people who want to be "evil" or who think it's great to be a "bad guy" - maybe just a handful of pathetic wannabe gangsters. As the saying goes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." We have different ideas about what's good or bad. If the belief is sincere, the person isn't "bad", the idea is. The best way to eliminate conflict, is to eliminate the fiction of good guys and bad guys. That doesn't mean you have to condone whatever someone does, just that you at least try, not to oversimplify it.
Point 2: When you say you hope it does not turn out well for him, what do you mean? Are you saying his pain and suffering is a good thing? That's horrible! His suffering isn't going to help anyone. It'll just make the world that little bit worse. It may well just make him bitter and lead to further negativity to others later. Revenge isn't justice. Revenge isn't good. Hoping for his unhappiness, if that was your meaning, is evil pretty much by definition, and worse than his actions ever were (in my most humble opinion).
Punishments are only justifiable where the punishment has an
effective and necessary deterrent function, either to the individual concerned or society as a whole. Some level of punishment may be appropriate here. And a sincere public apology is certainly warranted. I don't see why he should lose his job unless there was some specific intolerable link between this action and his occupation. What he did was wrong and disgusting, but there are degrees of severity and I think this falls short of deserving incarceration or arbitrary loss of employment. Loss of respect and trust? - Yes.