An Evolution: Without #PresumptionOfInnocence we open the door for #CollectiveGuilt

Why #MeToo and its offshoots represents everything that drove me into the opposition to everything it stands for.

Why Not Me? was a fantastic satire of the political
system by Al Franken using himself as the punchline.
Nowadays he has literally become the punchline and should
resign from public life.

The Al Franken and Roy Moore scandals have dug up old episodes from the past that were key in muddying up the political landscape for decades. Growing up in the 1990s, I remember distinctly as a 10 year old hearing reports in the news of the Paula Jones sexual harassment allegations, and of course living through the Monica Lewinsky scandal changed the way Americans as a whole related to sex and politics. I grew up with two divorced parents that agreed on nothing apart from their deep admiration for Bill Clinton and by extension his wife Hillary. For me the Clinton sex scandals were a footnote from history for two reasons:

• All of my schools, whether public and parochial of which I attended both, had teachers that taught social studies from a decidedly socially liberal standpoint. Even the better ones.
• The Clinton sex scandals had virtually no effect on people's political beliefs. It became fodder for political jokes, but very few people changed their stances on one issue or another.
•  By the time the Lewinsky scandal was in full bloom in 1998 Clinton had been reelected and the only contingency left to remove him from office was impeachment which he brilliantly maneuvered around.

Also remember that when President Clinton left office, I was still only 15. My exit from liberalism began in 2000 with the sore loser meltdown of the Al Gore campaign and his blaming of the much more dignified and principled Ralph Nader, but that was not an awakening, it was in fact almost a beginning of hibernation. I would not find a political identity for several years. The beginning of that was in 2008 with the candidacy of Ron Paul which ignited my curiosity towards reforming our system of law and government to remove the coercive and abusive tendencies of both the military industrial and intelligence complex and the welfare state. 

My breakthrough point

This slow growth of consciousness of what my personal preference for a more prosperous and free society would look like went into overdrive in 2014-15. That was when Rolling Stone published "A Rape on Campus", a story so egregiously unverifiable and demonstrably negligent in its fact checking that it was awarded the Columbia School of Journalism's award for the "Worst in Journalism" for 2014. "A Rape on Campus" was a lurid retelling of an account by an anonymous accuser aliased "Jackie" that claimed that she had been gang raped on September 28, 2012 at a Phi Kappa Psi party on the University of Virginia campus. It also accused UVa administrator Nicole Eramo of sweeping the charges under the rug. It turned out that not only did the rape not occur, but the party at which it was supposed to have happened never took place, and that Eramo had never fielded any complaint from "Jackie" to begin with.

This drove me to write this in April 2015. Personally, this was what would be for me the so-called "red-pill" moment. "A Rape on Campus" revealed to me that not only could supposedly accredited journalists publish stories that were at best poorly researched, and at worst malicious mudslinging but that indeed they could do so without consequence. The story's writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely was never fired from Rolling Stone, and the magazine's founder and publisher Jann Wenner has never expressed remorse for what it did to the falsely accused. Everything that has come since then, whether it is the charges against Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Donald Trump, or others, has accentuated just how poorly media outlets cover sexual assault allegations.

Saving the 

The key flaw that is blatantly obvious at this point is that the political opinions of the accused are often used to frame whether a) the charges are credible and b) there should be any consequence. This type of categorization is the opposite of the principle that harkens back to Roman law of "Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat" or "he that accuses must give proof, not he that denies", what has since then become known as the Presumption of Innocence. In recent years throughout the western world consumers of media have been pulled into a deep ethical chasm: How do we react to stories about figures we dislike heavily without stirring the pot and creating a societal prejudice that could complicate or possibly poison legal proceedings?

Recently I engaged in a frenzied back and forth email exchange with a decidedly liberal friend regarding the investigation of Donald Trump's ties to Russia. In many of his points and counterpoints he attempted to use instances where Trump could be shown to be dishonest or appears to lie as proof that his credibility is so low that he is bound to be tripped up for some other crime during the Robert Mueller investigation. In addition he used several media sources like the Washington Post and New York Times that pointed toward Russian tampering in the election but could not find evidence to tie it to Donald Trump. Such a person using media reports with no direct evidence to validate his own personal prejudices against a public figure is bound to be disappointed.

In the midst of that more technical scandal, the Hollywood sexual abuse scandal has sprung into the forefront of the media focus. The Weinstein scandal was a key landmark in the media's posturing as regards sexual harassment scandals in public. Weinstein was not only a movie industry superpower producer, has been a central figure in Hollywood Democratic donor circles for the Clintons, the Obamas, and for down ballot candidates. Noted feminist journalist Michelle Goldberg, in a guest Op-Ed for The New York Times, in turn attacked Republicans for "Phony Weinstein Outrage". Goldberg argued that whereas liberals are trying to live up to their commitment to stopping sexual assault and rape, conservatives openly flout those conventions. Her main conclusion in that piece was this: 

"Still, Weinstein’s disgrace is a sign that even if patriarchal sociopathy is more pervasive than we like to imagine, it can be defeated when a culture adopts other values and is forced to live up to them."

 In reality this statement only means this: Even after decades of public pandering to a narrative of women's rights, the Democrats and their voters continue to sustain and validate behaviour completely counter to the feminist agenda when it is convenient for them. This pretense to being at least open to correcting these behaviours in American society on the part of Goldberg has held true in her case. Following the publishing of the Al Franken allegations she openly called for him to resign. However, this her statement on this now:

"The feminist Jacobin in me thinks: Who cares? Replace them all with women! But I doubt this frenzied moment ends with the collapse of patriarchy. Like Rebecca Traister, a New York magazine writer, I worry that there will be overreach and then a fierce and ugly backlash, as men — but not only men — decide we can’t just go around ruining people’s lives and careers by retroactively imposing today’s sexual standards on past actions. Besides, as more and more men get swept up in this moment of reckoning, we’re going to have to figure out some mechanism by which those accused of offenses that fall short of assault can make amends and get their lives back."

Feminism as the ultimate shield

She fails to see that her McCarthyist behaviour with regards to sexual impropriety and transgressions among men hasn't led to an improvement so far, and never will. If she were to really do some introspection it is possible that she would discover that many of the people that have publicly supported feminism have used it as a smokescreen to conceal their own personal misconduct. Worse than that, they have used the "woman card" just like others have used the "race card" to attack figures that have nothing to do with prejudice against women and minorities. It is exactly that type of tactic that was used to smear Bernie Sanders supporters as "Bernie Bros" during the 2016 presidential campaign, when in reality whatever other flaws he may have Sanders has never been a sexist or a racist and his supporters run the gamut of different sectors of the American public.

Goldberg should also take stock of the fact that even if she has lost faith in Franken, plenty of her liberal colleagues see no problem in waving off the charges as a small price to pay for having a dependable ally in a position of power. Writing in the Washington Post, hard-core anti-Trump feminist Kate Harding is entirely comfortable with an admitted harasser remaining in office: 

"It would feel good, momentarily, to see Franken resign and the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, appoint a senator who has not (as far as we know) harmed women. If I believed for one second that Franken is the only Democrat in the Senate who has done something like this, with or without photographic evidence, I would see that as the best and most appropriate option. But in the world weactually live in, I’m betting that there will be more. And more after that. And they won’t all come from states with Democratic governors and a deep bench of progressive replacements. Some will, if ousted, have their successors chosen by Republicans."

Harding goes on to say that she fears that the swamp will be drained of dependable women's rights political allies and replaced with older white men of the Republican brand. This is a pathetic endorsement of the two party duopoly, especially given the fact that Franken is himself an old white man. The fact of the matter is that the GOP does possess some diversity, although it also remains chock full of antiquated fossils that have no consciousness of the public demand for a full reform of the political system. The Democrats possess plenty of diversity, but are willing to maintain a system based on fraud that renders their diverse "leadership" mere pawns that exploit their own communities.

The answer that I would have to these problems would probably not be acceptable to Goldberg, Harding, or any of the other feminist puppets that are now running around like headless hens. But the answer is NOT to prop up a corrupt and cynical established order like they are trying to do.