"White Privilege" is a terrible phrase

It really shouldn't be called “White Privilege”

Semantics does make a difference, and the term “White Privilege” is one of those subtle ones that does a great deal of doing damage.  I get the concept in principle anyway, but the thing is, it isn’t really “Privilege,” or at least I haven’t seen any real examples that I would qualify as “Privilege.”  A “Privilege” is some sort of advantage that you get that the majority of others don’t get for some reason or other.  Commonly a “Privilege” is something that is earned, and when it isn’t earned, it has the idea of favoritism, cronyism, or prejudice.

The first point is that, like it or not, America is still a “White” majority country.  So if the majority of people are treated in a certain way, then the way they are treated is probably close to the average or the norm.  Granted, the idea of “average” and “norm” does have to take into account the disparity of treatment, and if you see that disparity as great, than the idea of “privilege” has greater weight, since the average treatment on whole could be a lot lower.  I don’t think that’s really true, especially if you adjust for income, but if this was the crux of my problem with the term, I’d say it was somewhat nit-picky.

The thing is, when people point out specifics of “White Privilege” it inevitably comes down to what I would call “mistreatment” of minority groups, rather than “privileged treatment” for whites.  Calling it “privilege” to be treated humanely, respectfully, and even compassionately and mercifully is overstating the case.  I don’t think that should be called “privilege.”  That should be called “expected.”  To be fair, it’s not like white people are treated like that all  the time either (particularly if they don’t appear to be part of the right economic group).  Unfortunately, all other things being “equal” (inasmuch as you can measure such things), the darker you are, the more likely you are to experience poor treatment from people and institutions that have power over you.

Privilege is really a bad word for what people are talking about.  The concept of a “Privilege” carries with it the idea of being able to have your “Privilege revoked.”  I don’t think that for most people the idea is for there to be more poor treatment extended towards “White” people, but rather that darker skinned people should be treated better.

White Terrorism

I'm not terribly sure why the FBI has decided that the latest Charleston S.C. attack by a White Supremacist on a historically black church is not an act of terrorism, but I suspect it has to do with a reticence to label white people as terrorists at this point in time.  In the past it was quite fine to use the term "Terrorist attack" for high profile events perpetrated by white folks.  But since 9-11, there seems to be a lot less enthusiasm for doing so.  It wasn't an immediate thing.  White militia types had been targeted as terrorists by the Feds, and been investigated, but I don't recall any prosecutions sticking since then.  I suspect this has to do with the problems the FBI had with prosecuting the Hutaree after they rather loudly proclaimed they had infiltrated and broken up a militia group that was planning terrorist attacks.  Their case was so bad that it was thrown out by the Judge presiding over it, and it really looked like the Feds were trumping things up.

Now for the record, I am against the legal repercussions that affect how an act is prosecuted, so hate crimes and terrorist crimes get enhanced penalties because of the reason for the actions.  The subjectivity of those definitions makes the system seem biased, which it is doing here.  To be fair, Hate Crime designations often do not appear to get applied to minorities when the attack seems to be racially motivated when the victims are white.  To me it seems that while the motivation for a crime can make a difference when evaluating how to punish, or even rehabilitate the individuals that committed the crime, the base level should be set at a particular bar, and can only be moved down from that.  Instead, we have a system where the base level is set by the prosecutor when they choose to make a charge and put enhancements on it.

Putting that aside though, seeing as we do have a system where a crime can be categorized as a hate crime or a terrorist act, the 2015 S.C. church shooting where 9 died seems to be clearly a terrorist attack.  It was murder.  It was pre-meditated.  It had a political motivation, which was the intent to incite an insurrection which would lead to a race war.  Now this may not be a particularly rational political motivation, but then it's hard to see the idea of an Islamic army overthrowing the United States as particularly rational either.  However, an investigation of a person with the agenda of a race war in the United States is pretty darn likely to wind up with an investigation of a lot of white people, and could very likely wind up connecting to law enforcement agents and political representatives.  If the South Carolina shooter is found to be a devotee of someone like David Duke, a self avowed member and former leader of the KKK, how far can the FBI take their investigation, and how willing are they to do so.  The trail for Islamic terrorists on the other hand isn't likely to lead to many high profile white folks, and will be far less likely to get much sympathy from any politicians in power, much less find any that share their views.  (If there are any openly Islamic Caliphate supporting elected leaders, or even candidates, I am unaware of them).

I don't know exactly how an investigation into a terrorist crime is done, but I would think that it means that the FBI has to go and look at all the contacts and associates, even online ones (and probably in particular online ones for someone that may not have many face to face associates that share their particular brand of hate), and in South Carolina, a state that has a state level law to keep the Confederate Battle Flag flying in front of the Capital building, that could wind up with the FBI investigating a lot of people that are in positions of authority throughout the state, and that would not be very politically positive.  And the FBI is not above politics.

Hillary's Private e-mail

The Clinton's are no strangers to scrutiny, and the latest revelation regarding Hillary's private e-mail server and the fact that she used it exclusively during her time as Secretary of State and had direct control over which communications to release as "relevant" to her time in that office seems rather indicative of her mindset.  There is a certain egotism and narcissism that seems virtually required nowadays in anyone that wants to be President of the United States, and of course a need to control things.  It seems pretty clear that based on the timing of the creation of the e-mail servers, Clinton fully intended to keep control of her e-mail communiques.  The fact that she only got around to sharing her e-mails after she had left her position as Secretary of State and Congress had requested her records two years after her tenure shows that she:
a.  Never really considered the law and the requirement that her communiques be handed over to the National Archive, Basically she didn't think it was important
b.  She hoped that the records would never be questioned, or that they could at least be kept under her control indefinitely.
c.  She felt that it was important to keep control of her messages, so she (or persons she trusted) could review them and seek to avoid any unflattering or politically damaging information from coming to light.
d. As always, there may be some combination of the above, or of course some other reason that hasn't been posited.

Now, Hillary has claimed that it was more convenient for her to handle her e-mail using this method, so she could do her copious personal e-mailing and Secretary of State e-mailing using the same account.  That rationale seems pretty thin though.  With the volume of e-mail that went through her account, it seems likely that she had to have some way to sort through them when reviewing them (or I guess when her aides were reviewing them).  Her reassurances that the system was secure sound quite "Clintonian" since she isn't giving any specifics regarding what safeguards were in place, but she does assure us that the house where the server resided was protected by the Secret Service.  We can rest assured that no one broke into her house and stole her server.  As far as threats from remote hackers, as well as questions as to what sort of backup methods were used for the server data remain unanswered, and she currently appears to be resisting any investigation of those safeguards (or lack thereof).

Is this the sort of action that should damage her credibility, or viability as a Presidential Candidate?  In the real world, not likely.  Hillary supporters will continue to support here, and haters are still gonna hate.  There is no particular challenger to Hillary at this point, at least for the Democratic nomination (the Republicans have a weak field at best).  She isn't going to be prosecuted over this, but it is probably troubling to those that who aren't particularly Hillary supporters, but can be potentially won over.

It seems that the best spin on this is that Hillary was both arrogant and lazy, and either didn't have any advisers that were willing to warn her about how her policy could be viewed, or that she wasn't willing to accept that criticism/overrode it.  The thing is, the type of person that manages to become a Presidential Candidate is also the kind of person that is likely to have that kind of arrogance, so a lot will have to do with who her challenger is.  There are worse spins on this of course, but it doesn't seem possible to completely write this indiscretion off.  The only question is how serious you see it as being.

I expect this will blow over, unless some further revelations come to light.  If some e-mails wind up being released that were not turned over that at least imply that she was seeking to avoid detection of something more sinister, but at this point that seems rather unlikely.  Still, if some enterprising hacker out there does have that sort of information available, they could be waiting to reveal it at what they consider a more opportune time.

Where is your Constitution NOW!

A lot of people talk about how great it is to have Constitutional Protections in the United States, but there are constant examples of Constitutional Rights being violated with impunity, and there is basically nothing that any individual citizen can do about it.
Now there is a question as to what sort of communications are public, and what sort are private, and the nature of the Internet rather muddies that distinction, but for review, the Fourth Amendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Given the connectivity that modern technology grants us, and the way our communications are entrusted to third parties, the question then becomes whether there is a violation when the government accesses communications between parties when there is no warrant.  A purely physical example of such a potential violation would be for the government to intercept mail at a post office and read it without an express warrant to do so.

"But wait!" you exclaim.  "Tampering with U.S. mail is by statute a Federal Crime as per U.S. Code Title 18 Part I Chapter 83, Section 1703."

To which I reply, "Wow you know your Federal Statutes, or your Web-Fu is pretty decent.  But, who investigates and prosecutes such violations?"

"Well, the Department of Justice does..." you reply, already seeing where this is leading.

"And if the Department of Justice is the one that is reading the mail, who investigates and prosecutes?"

Exactly!  So, let's pretend that you as are someone that suspects that this is happening because some intrepid reporters managed to uncover a local government mail tampering scheme in your town.  The reporters had managed to sneak into the adjunct facility at the mail processing center, and identified the machines that were being used to scan the mail, and even gotten some documentation from the Justice Department detailing the operation.  Well, you can try and investigate, but you have pretty limited ability to do so.  It's not like you can get a warrant and storm into their offices and take their stuff, but you can file a civil suit.  That means you get to spend a fair amount of time and effort filing the suit, but the problem is that since you have only a limited amount of evidence regarding the crime against you/your community.  At that stage you get to have a judge review your case.  And at this point you can have your civil suit thrown out for "Lack of Standing," because you don't have "sufficient evidence" that you (the plaintiff) have suffered some sort of "injury," and/or a dismissal based on the possible disclosure of "State Secrets."  So, if the State wants to keep its unconstitutional activities secret, you can't use the court system for redress...

http://news.yahoo.com/judge-rules-nsa-warrantless-search-case-221514259.html


So, if you believe the Constitution protects your rights even from the Government, WHERE IS YOUR CONSTITUTION NOW?

Brian Williams, lies, false memories

The latest celebrity that I have noted that is having trouble with memory issues or lying is Brian Williams.  Now, I tend to believe that Brian Williams was lying along with the help of having created false memories over time.  Research into memory formation and access shows that memories are fairly pliable, and I am guessing that different people have different levels of susceptibility to this phenomena.  This really isn't anything new, people that are exposed to the same events can have dramatically different recollections of what happened, and who did what.  This tendency has created all sorts of confusion and is probably a big motivating factor in the development of writing and all manner of recording devices through human history.

Froin what I can tell, Brian Williams is a journalist who has done a lot of work, and gone to all sorts of places to be in the midst of events and report on them.  He's also a telegenic guy, which is important because of the medium, and he delivers reports in a way that people like to receive them.  He is a reflection of the society that enriches him, and it seems highly likely that he is earnest, and believes what he says and reports.  Media consumers respond to that, and he makes a good living doing something that he seems quite honest and sincere about.

Thing is, he's more of an actor, a face, than a reporter/chronicler, and he apparently has entered enough of a bubble that he doesn't have his own credibility fact checked for him.  For most people, this isn't a big deal, and even for people in the entertainment/media business it's kind of secondary, but Brian Williams is marketed as a Journalist, and as an "on the scene" journalist, he's also marketing/branding himself (or at least he has been marketed/branded as) as a credible source of information.  His story seriously damages that brand.  It is yet to be seen if that brand will be able to recover.  Personally I think it won't, and he will have a fair amount of time on his hands, but given the nature of contractual obligations, NBC may be able to mitigate this and keep Williams on in a major capacity, but if so, it will be based on viewership, and I don't think that Williams will get much support on his behalf.  The narrative that Williams had a perfectly normal and natural memory reconstruction that he believed is rather subtle, and it certainly doesn't eliminate the possibility that he sensationalized/embellished/lied in order to increase his standing/popularity/cred as the man who goes where the story is despite the danger.

There is a deeper problem, or revelation anyway, and that is that NBC's news department should have fact checked this story the first time it was told, and they didn't.  Or if they did notice, they hoped that the story would disappear, but that seems rather unlikely, since Williams told the story publicly more than once.  This chain of events leads to a further zeitgeist of network news being "infotainment" rather than it being an attempt to inform and explain.  How this will translate when it comes to ratings is a question that will be answered in time, but at this point it seems that the tide is turning very much against those that inform and explain when it comes to that level of exposure.

It's going to be interesting to see how the medium evolves from here when it pretty much becomes a "trust no one" sort of mindset.  I suspect that we are already seeing that though, and the way it seems to be shaking out is that people kind of know that they are probably being lied to, so if that's going to be the case, they want to be hearing the lies that they like.  Of course, we may already be there.