Every once in a while I remember to look at the Advice Goddess blog, and see what she's writing about. Found a link at Insty to this post on the SWAT raid that resulted in the death of Tarika Wilson. She concentrated on one point in the post:
Who Places A Lower Value On Black Lives?
Would that be a police officer who accidentally shoots and kills a black woman, or that woman herself, a mother of six children by five different drug-dealing fathers, who takes up with yet another drug dealer?
That woman's most recent boyfriend, Anthony Terry, was arrested and pleaded guilty in March to charges of drug trafficking. And yes, before him, all the fathers of her children were drug dealers...and this according to her mother!
Her point is a good one. She was wrongly killed; doesn't change that it was her own actions that had her in that house at that time.
Of course, the usual suspects are making this into a 'black lives have low value here' thing; that's what the usual suspects do. Ignore all the other cases all over the country with people of all races being victimized by wrong address, bad tip or badly carried-out raids: that doesn't fit what they're pushing. And Miss Alkon is catching all kinds of the usual stuff from the 'progressive' types: "You're a racist, you hate blacks," etc. Added to this, the Wiki page on her having stuff added, along with the above, that she's a tranny, and any other thing the morons can slander her with. AND, in a usual tactic by these people, spam and other attacks on her site. She's done two bad things, you see: she's pointed out that Wilson(female, so Alkon must be self-hating woman) was in that place, in that situation, due to her own choices and actions AND she criticized the refusal to hold women like this responsible for what they do, choices they make.
Few years back, when Mike Tyson was on trial for rape, I made the mistake of saying something to one of the women at work along the lines of "What did the girl think was going to happen when she went with him?" For which I caught hell for 'blaming the victim'. I said no, if he raped her then he should go to jail for that crime: that doesn't change the fact that even though he'd been hitting on every woman in the place all night, specifically asking for sex in many cases, and that made her a fool for going to his room with him.
That just pissed her off worse. "So if this happened to your daughter, you'd blame her!" "No, I'd support her and do what I could to get the rapist in prison(or a grave; that part unspoken); but I'd also ask her "What were you THINKING when you went with him?" " That was simply Not Acceptable; you're not supposed to hold a woman responsible for her actions, even to say "You made a bad decision".
Either you're intelligent and responsible, or you're not; you can't have it both ways. People can play the word game that you're both, but life won't. One way or another, it always catches up to you.
4 comments:
Those who are not willing to accept blame for their failures do not deserve credit for their successes, either.
"Empowerment" is a two edged sword.
From Richard Roberts' long but excellent essay, "The Tao of Gun":
* It is hypocritical to affirm that human beings are responsible for their reality and at the same time ask the State to take away guns to make the world safer.
* There are no victims. There are no oppressors. We are responsible for our own self-defense, our own well-being and our own problems.
ho ho my friend arre you baiting me? you can bet your life I had the same conversation with my wife and with both of my daughters... many times over... you and you alone are responsible for your safety. if you allow yourself to be in a situation where you can be compromised... you are at fault. But of course thanx to Sam Colt and John Moses and of course Bill Ruger there is no need to feel at risk in our society, however there are many things that you can choose to do to compromise your ability to react to danger if you can't make good choices, carry in condition two.
I love me some Rugers.
Thanks so much for the link. And per the comment above, I am just as hard on myself. I wrote this in my syndicated column:
But often, the victim does bear some responsibility. Take me, for example: I used to live in a pretty isolated section of downtown New York City, just past a big UPS garage. I had a rule that I’d only take Greenwich Street home when the UPS guys were there loading and unloading. After moving to California, I came back to visit and lah-dee-dah wandered down Greenwich late one night -- followed, unbeknownst to me, by some creep who ran up behind me and helped himself to a big grope. I screamed and thrashed, I ran, I was fine. Did I tell myself I was a victim? No, I told myself I was a moron -- and resolved to never again meander around New York City with my street smarts dangling off some palm tree back home.
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