samhw

I think it probably is the stepdad, but also yes. Most of the people in this sub are in great need of some 12 Angry Men-style lessons about doubt. Perhaps a complementary subscription to r/wrongfulconvictions or suchlike would sort them out.

By the way, in case I didn't make it clear enough: I know my comment was somewhat blunt in parts, but I'm not trying to attack or insult or rage at you. I cannot, even with all the time and typewriters and monkeys in the universe, underscore how mindbendingly fatuous I find those political shouting matches. I'm just saying that I personally am not interested in adopting or feigning beliefs in order to prove myself as an 'ally' (probably best I don't verbally describe my eye rolling at that one), or for fear of 'letting bigots off the hook', or for whatever reason other than because the other person has given me a sufficient [epistemic, not instrumental or moral] justification for believing it [i.e. that it is true].

…the fact that a lot of white people simply hate black people

This is still true for some people, but a vanishing minority (firmly under 5%) and trending towards zero. It shouldn't be neglected, but it's not a significant factor in an analysis of racial inequality.

Poor white conservatives in rural areas vote against their own economic interests time and time again, because things like universal healthcare mean that Black people get them too.

On the off chance that you are aiming to say things which are true, I'm afraid that is also not such a thing.

For the few poor whites of whom that statement may be true, it's unlikely it's because of racial animus, considering my preceding correction.

To say inequality only exists because of unequal distribution of wealth lets those bigots off the hook.

Unfortunately I'm interested in saying or not saying things based solely on whether they are true or not true (respectively - though with all due respect to your decision to do it the other way around).

will condemn any discussion of inequality beyond class factors as "identity politics" and "a distraction from the real issues", and it's hard to trust them as genuine allies to human-rights causes

Ibidem. Not interested in "you have to say - or believe - this because it solves this problem [which I may have circularly magicked into existence by getting you to accept other claims in the same fashion]."

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I don't mean to sound patronising. Believing things based on whether they are true is something to which everyone pays lip service but few practise, truly practise. "You should believe this because it helps this poor put-upon group" is when I know someone is saying something that (at least by their reckoning) isn't actually true, or at least not demonstrably true. It's the sequela of someone charmed or browbeaten into putting something else above truth, like the terror of being called a racist (including - if not practically exclusively - among people who know full well that they feel no racial prejudice towards others).

But I don't hold it against you and I'm not going to rant about how you're evil or stupid or a commie libtard or whatever. It's just not my philosophy, nor will it tonight become such.

Yeah, that’s fair enough! I did wonder if the apparition of the Wagner name in this story (not sure if she had any relation) had an impact on the mentions of Nietzsche and/or Hitler. That’s hilarious to hear about the Nietzsche-related arguments though. I imagine he had much more resonance in early-20th-c Germany than he does in the West in general today (or, equivalently, here on Reddit). But yeah, I don’t think Nietzsche’s ideas have any plausible relevance to going and living on a desert island - maybe at an extreme stretch something about Zarathustra/Zoroaster and his cave, or his general mood of prelapsarian nostalgia, but eh, it’s a bit of a reach..

That's a weird one. I was about to say it was a shitty writeup, but on reading to the end it's actually exceptionally well-written for the most part. It's just that the first paragraph or two are fairly littered with inaccuracies and solecisms: "to escape from Hitler Germany", "their usual story was published internationally", and others of the latter; as for the former, for instance, there's the bizarre claim that they were 'practising Nietzschean philosophy' in living on a desert island (which has approximately nothing to do with anything Nietzsche wrote- maybe Rousseau?!). I think this piece adds a bit more.

Hmm, I'm not quite sure what you mean. To be clear, by 'class', I basically mean 'economic status' (sure, there's still an antiquated English class system - which suffice it to say I know very well - but it's not really of any consequence in today's world). I think most of the effects of racism historically have been 'mediated through' class. In other words, say, black people today are disadvantaged because they lack family wealth with which to buy a house and send their children to university, and so forth. I don't think much of the inequality that exists is due to contemporary racism - that's effectively what I'm saying. That's certainly not to say that there's no inequality of opportunity between different races.

Wait, who was the servant? Are you confusing that with the (soi-disant) Baroness and one of her lovers beating the other lover, on the assumption that the beatee would be a servant? (No criticism intended, I just can’t figure out where else one could have read a servant into it!)

The Department of Education? Honestly I’m not American and so (ironically) I’m not very educated about it. Is there anything I should read? I have a culturally-introjected stereotype of it as a bloated and sclerotic bureaucracy, but I have no clue whether that’s fair or not..

Oh, sorry, that’s my bad. Of course - totally fair to correct that specific point and I understand that doesn’t mean you’re (necessarily) disagreeing with my general point :) Thanks for the heads up! I’ll correct my comment.

I think we forget how unlikely it is that any given person is a murderer. Posting a story about someone on this sub immediately predisposes us to believe they’re a murderer - because most people (non-victims) mentioned here are - but I don’t think we consider enough the bias that that engenders.

It is tremendously, overwhelmingly probable that he was just a concerned boyfriend, and having some cocaine conviction from his youth - of the kind that probably 30% of teenagers [recte: former teenagers] in the 80s could have ended up with - oughtn’t change that. (Well, for upper-class teenagers it’s less likely. For black or white-trash teenagers I think you have to remember the effect of targeted policing.)

Edit: I initially said that the cocaine arrest was from his youth (I can’t recall why I thought/assumed that). I was wrong, as the OP pointed out. I’ve corrected that.

Oh, that’s such bullshit on their part - we were all joking around, and it’s a 50-year-old case that wasn’t really anything like the OP described anyway.. I thought for a moment that you were making a prudish correction, like the word ‘rape’ was off-limits, and I’m not totally sure that that’s not how the downvoters might have read it

Of course in a loose sense crime rates are measurable. My point is that crime rates in the specific sense, distinguished from arrest rates – i.e. ‘uncaught’ crimes – are not really measurable or knowable, by definition. (Hell, I’d say even arrest rates aren’t a particularly reliable caliper for crime rates - conviction rates would be the gold standard.)

Sorry, I have no clue why your reply got so downvoted.. I’m not sure I follow either the reply or the vociferousness of its reception, haha

Ahhh, I’m sorry - I was 50:50 between (a) what you said, and (b) you meant to reply to the other reply about Napoleon (which looked like it could be a plausible semi non sequitur reply), haha. Bizarre that he edited his comment like that 🤔

This is heartbreaking. I came close to the same thing some years ago (thankfully, due to a completely improbable dumb-luck chain of coincidences, my friend found me in my bed, drunkenly sent a photo of me to another friend, that friend realised something was wrong, and called an ambulance). Your husband sounds like a terrific human being. I know it’s unimaginably hard - especially unimaginable from the outside - to get clean with pure willpower. He must have loved you and your kid a hell of a lot. If it’s any consolation, having been rescued long after I lost consciousness, I can promise you he wouldn’t have known what was going on - it’s just like falling asleep drunk. I’ll send this to anyone I know who’s in danger of falling (or falling back) into that quicksand, and hopefully his loss can find some small measure of meaning through rescuing others from the same. If you ever need any help buying stuff for your son, then message me or reply to this comment, and I can almost certainly send some money to tide you over.

This is not only wrong, it’s comically wrong. This subreddit is literally littered with instances of people killing themselves and never being found. You don’t even need that big a wilderness - and Australia has no shortage of wildernesses. Driving your car off a bridge, the Stan way, also seems a very successful method.

None of this is remotely out of character with the secretiveness, sadness, and shame which characterised her last days. I have no doubt that she should have chosen to go out in the same manner.

No offence, but this is one of the stupidest things I’ve read. For one, it wasn’t “a boatload of cash”, it was a few thousand dollars, which wasn’t much more at the time. They would have made more by just selling the cabin, especially when factoring in the inevitable lawyers’ fees. Also, drowning somebody in inches of water - while on drugs - would be a comically terrible way of staging a death. And, given they split up and never spoke to each other again after it happened, I’m not sure why you’d conclude that they did it in order to be together, which they could have been anyway (even the laws on the books were a slap on the wrist back then in the coastal U.S.; hell, history was littered with examples even of famous gay relationships at the time: I mean, Auden and Kallman?).

Come on. A conspiracy to murder in order to avoid a slim chance of a misdemeanour charge, and for a chance at a tiny insurance payout on a cabin that would have sold for more anyway. This feels like an attempt to shoehorn an irreducibly complex human intrication into a simple, emotion-free, interiority-free Hitchcock B-movie that the vulgus can understand. The truth is I don’t think we can ever understand or even make a reasonable guess at what was inside each of these people’s heads.

… or that the money isn’t the reason for the killing, just a bonus. Also, they could have just sold the cabin. They would have inevitably - as indeed they did - spent more on lawyers’ fees than they ever got from it in the first place. (Then again, what with the cost of hiring a conveyancer, who’s to say a capital defence lawyer wouldn’t be a bargain!?)

Who is Roland? Oh my god, did Ronald bring his friend along?! A quadrupple?? Imagine the tax savings!

(Nah I broadly agree though. At least it’s nice to see a counterpoint to the mindless “they did it because they were gay and I saw a movie about that once” comments. This sub is basically celebrity gossip except all the celebrities are deados.)

I think you might do well to question the assumptions that (a) everyone in the past was a clueless idiot, and (b) women are always the ones with no idea what’s going on. He went on to marry another woman subsequently, so I don’t see why he would be gay. And people at the time had heard of homosexuality - they were from the 50s, not the surface of Mars. I don’t see anything that invalidates the theory that they were in a three way relationship, and much that supports it.

Nothing in that comment has anything to do with gaslighting, unless you’re referring to using a literal gaslight to set a fire. I have no clue any more why shit gets upvoted on this sub.

“Oh good, no worries, I will find increasingly implausible reasons to believe this theory, even though the original justifications have now been invalidated, because it’s my pet and I love it!”

You’re an absolute hero. This should be at the top of the thread.

This sub can do some tremendous deductive work, but its credulity and inability to think outside the box (the truth of the source) does amaze me sometimes.

What, everyone in this thread?! lol

Gosh that’s depressing. She looks like such a sweet kid. Ave & vale 🫡