The mail from Robert has piled up a bit. And I feel really bad about that. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be better in the future.
So, first of two letters:
Dear Electronic Friends:
Thank you all so very much for your letters and emails of support. I am answering each of you individually (I have the time, oddly) except–
If you send me a JPay message and don’t incolude a postal address, I have no way of responding to you. I receive JPay messages, I cannot send them. I should have made this clear; my bad. (We criminals are notoriously bad at judging the consequences of our actions).
Ergo, for the several people who have written me and to whom I woudl joyfully give the courtesy fo a reply – please write again and include a mailing address. I WILL respond!
Thanks!
Best wishes, Robert
(Information about using JPay to contact Robert, and also about writing Robert via the post office, can be found in comment #8 in the comments of this post.)
And another letter followed:
Dear Barry –
Another spectacularly gorgeous day here. A long-time inmate once told me ” the sun shines only in 4-Mile” – meaning that this is the nicest facility in the local DOC complex, which is true – but in fact we do get a lot of actual sunshine. You Oregonians probably have heard of sunshine – it’s the stuff coming off of the Yellow Sky Demon who bedevils you fog eaters.
Your friends are starting to piss me off. They keep sending me incredibly generous gifts of money and then providing me with no way to personally thank them. That is unbelievably graveling to me, as it puts me in the position of owing gratitude and not being able to discharge the debt.
Well, screw them. I’m going to thank them publicly, with your connivance of course. Could you please post this for me? (If you say no, I’ll break out of prison, come to Oregon, and smack you. I know where you live, you know.) Edit/redact names as feel moved.
“Dear RonF, SimpleTruth, Elusis, and Mythago –
I want to thank you effusively for your help in the financial arena over the last month. Your assistance has given me a huge psychological boost – someone cares! – and has permitted me to, among other things, get adequate personal hygiene supplies, correspond regularly and stresslessly (I say it’s a word) with friends and family, order thermal underwear for the imminent Colorado winter, get gloves and walking shoes so that I can exercise out-of-doors, and get a document notarized to facilitate my transition out of prison.
It’s also allowed me to do something that I had put out of my mind as simply being impractical. My daughter’s 12th birthday is October 23. I had planned to send her an apologetic letter with a promise of an actual gift at some future date; a hollow-sounding promise from a father who has let her down, and badly.
Instead I am sending her a birthday card and some money for her to elect a present.
I don’t know if I can express how much it means to me that I can do that. Ronald, with your gift you expressed a wish that it would make things easier for me. Being able to get my kid a birthday present does a lot more than just make things easier. Your kindnesses remind me that people can be good.
If any of you ever need a kidney, you let me know. That’s how much easier you’ve made it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you a million times.
(And Simple Truth, I’d be delighted to answer your letter – which made my whole day – if I knew where to write. Amp probably grows slightly weary of being my amanuensis.)
Best wishes to the entire Alas! community,
Robert
Thanks to everyone who sent to his canteen fund. I’m a starving grad student buying groceries with my visa card, so your reward is in Heaven for picking up my slack.
@brian:
I’ve been in your place, to the point that no one gets Christmas presents and they might get a birthday present if it’s a good month. All I will say is that it’s so rewarding when you can finally give back, even if it’s just a little. I hope a little windfall comes your way soon to keep you from having to go too far into debt.
Amp:
Thanks for sharing! Here I was, thinking Robert had decided I was a complete weirdo for writing him. Well, he was still right about that, but he can at least write me now and tell me himself.
Thanks for sharing that.
I can’t really think of anything to say in a letter, but if someone else writes to Robert, tell him I said hi.
Simple truth, it sounds like you have been using the print an email service. How much is that per page? I’ve been mailing rob articles and tbh between the hassle of taking oversized envelopes to the post office and surreptitiously printing 15 page letters on my work printer it’s a bit of a pain. Down side is that if I have too much convenience, I’ll drown the poor guy in words
brian:
I was using JPay, which is the electronic system and just babbling my own words at him. It costs one stamp a page, and stamps (bought through their site, of course) cost 2.50 for five, or a little cheaper if you buy more.
You can attach things, but it’s very limited (.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmp format but no larger than 1024k (1MB)). You probably couldn’t attach PDFs of articles, but you could probably copy and paste the text of a website or unlocked PDF.
At least you’re giving him good reading. :)
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-asks-how-do-people-get-new-ideas
Thanks, i got frustrated trying to figure out jpay and was carrying on like grandpa Simpson at the end. Articles like this work out cheaper to send by yestertech then. Thank God for old fashioned options.
I haven’t been reading Alas for a while so came on this and went “what the…” “how the…” “why the…” a couple of times. I’d like to send my best wishes and hopes for an early release date to Robert and ask if there’s any more practical help I could offer? I’m not sure what’s still needed or wanted at this point, being clearly way behind the times.
Hi, Dianne!
You can find all the posts about Robert’s recent troubles here (there’s only three posts so far).
You can definitely help! There are two things Robert really needs: Letters, and money. He needs letters because the connection to the outside world is really meaningful to him. I know he’s very much appreciated all the communications he’s gotten from “Alas” readers.
The second thing Robert needs, frankly, is money. A lot of basic needs for prisoners are only available in the prison commissary – well, for details, just see the letter from Robert in the post above these comments.
To send Robert a letter through the mail, use this address:
If you’d rather send him an email, you can go to Jpay.com and enter Robert’s state (Colorado) and his DOC Number – 165970 – into the search fields. (Sometimes I’ve had to do this twice before it worked). Then you can use your debit card to send him an “email” (he’ll actually get it in the form of a print-out) or to send him money, or both. The cost of sending email is not expensive, it’s actually similar to the cost of postage. If you contact Robert via Jpay, be sure to give him your mailing address – he can’t use Jpay, so the only means he has for writing back to you is to send you mail through the post office.
So…. Robert.
I’ve been discussing this series of posts with a few friends, and either I’m in a really weird enclave of conservatives-who-don’t-know-they’re-conservatives, or I am really missing something. So I’m asking as below. Though that said, I will not even squeak if a mod deletes this, since for all I know you’re all his besties and don’t want to discuss anything negative:
Were folks personal friends with Robert before he ended up in prison? If so this all makes perfect sense. Or are the letters/donations/thoughts things which are because he ended up in prison? I’m getting that sense for a lot of responses, which is much more confusing to me.
If you weren’t friends with him before, what made you choose to help Robert rather than someone else (not in prison) who is generally having trouble with rent, or food, or medical care? Or rather than another prisoner who you believe was wrongfully convicted (plenty of those around;) unjustly imprisoned; unjustly refused parole; or anything else?
I should clarify that I don’t think it’s wrong or improper to help him (or anyone else,) even slightly. I am just trying to understand the motivation, which is alien to me.
G&W:
I have no objection to your post about Robert, but I’m wondering why you put it on an open thread, rather than on the thread about Robert.
Would you mind if I moved it to that thread?
(I tried asking you via email, but your email address bounced.)
Simple: I didn’t think it was appropriate to put on a thread full of people who were supporting Robert–I wasn’t even sure you’d want to keep it at all. But of course you can move it where you wish.
i haven’t sent him money or a letter or anything, but I may well. I’m not his personal friend and he has often driven me up the wall, especially when he was being really aggressive on this blog, which I think corresponded time-wise to when he was having marriage trouble (understandable, sometimes we all end up letting our frustrations bleed through).
But he’s a member of my broader community since he’s a personal friend of amp’s (they went to college together) and amp is my best friend. Also, driving me up the wall or not, he’s someone I’ve talked to for years and therefore feel like I know, at least a bit. When someone you know is in pain or trouble, it makes sense to help out a little, and the amount I’d likely send would be no skin off my nose as it were, and the time it takes to write a letter even less. I want Robert to be well.
I do donate throug modest needs which is awesome socks and I’ve spent a lot more money there than I’d be likely to send to robert. But hey, I’ve been in dark places and it means a lot when someone reaches out to you, even when it’s someone you’ve had a contentious relationship with. Like, hey, we don’t agree on anything, and You’ve driven me up this wall so many times it has skid marks, but you’re a human being I know and I’m thinking of you and I don’t want you to be in pain, physically or emotionally.
The commentariat here these days is pretty small and I think we all know each other. I’ve been grumping at Robert for probably 8 years now. We even sometimes have joked and gotten along.
If you go to jail, I’ll send you a few bucks, I promise. ;) (I don’t think you would. But then, I would never ever in a million years have thought Robert would rob a bank. I mean, what? I don’t think I’ll ever get over that sense of wtf.)
The situation is different, of course, very different, but when my grandfather, who I will always be furious with for his psychological abuse of my mother, was weak and dying, all he wanted was for someone to hold his hand and make him feel like he wasn’t alone. And I felt stabbed for him then, and the pain he was in, and the pain I suspect he’d been in his whole life, which led him to abuse my mother. I am furious with him even dead, but the thought of him dying with tears on his face, as he did, makes me terribly sad, and I wish I could have relieved his loneliness and pain. A few dollars, a letter, oR in his case, a hand in his weak and clammy grip–these tiny things I can do. I wish I could do them for everyone, but there was a concrete act, tiny in the magnitude of his life, but visible and personal, to him and to me.
Thanks, Amp!
gin-and-whiskey: I’m not sure why this is difficult to understand.
1) Your post is kind of a false dilemma; it is entirely possible for people who are helping Robert (whether that’s in the form of money or just good wishes) to also be helping out others too.
I guess you could argue that it’s a zero-sum game and that giving Robert $5 means another $5 that isn’t going to, say, Doctors Without Borders. But isn’t that true of any charity or help? If I spend an hour running to the drugstore to get medicine for an incapacitated friend, that’s an hour I didn’t spend at a soup kitchen or doing pro bono work.
2) Most people tend to lend aid when aid is needed. Robert didn’t mention or require help before that anyone knew of, as far as I’m aware; I don’t send a friend a few bucks to help with bills when they’re flush, but I would if they were having trouble making rent.
3) I find it a little weird to hear a defense attorney suggest that only ‘good’ (i.e. factually innocent and wrongfully incarcerated) prisoners deserve any support or good wishes; rehabilitation is still a thing, right?
On supporting prisoners generally, here’s a good place to direct one’s efforts:
https://aprisonbookproject.wordpress.com/
@gin-and-whiskey:
I am as random as random comes. I first started following this blog probably 6 0r 7 years ago after getting here through some internet trail. I stayed because the of insightful comments and the general community of smart discussions. Even though I’ve never met any of you in real life, I have received value from your commentary here. So, thanks everyone!
It might seem like I am helping a random stranger whose real name I just learned, but to me, it is giving back to someone who is intelligent and witty and has a lot more potential than just being in jail. I am a firm believer that everyone can go down the wrong path, and it is not judgment, but compassion that brings us back to the light.
It is a zero-sum game, at least for me, at least w/r/t folks like Robert. I keep a “benchmark” charity in my head (generally speaking, the local food bank is the benchmark) and when I consider giving I evaluate “if I’m going to give $__, should I give it to the benchmark or to the person who is asking?” I often give it to the benchmark instead.
In fact, this year I started telling all the local charity callers “I only have so much I can afford to give. The food bank is my benchmark. I’ll consider it if you explain why I should give money to you instead of the food bank.” Perhaps to nobody’s surprise, they don’t usually end up with the money: the best that they do is to say “well, just give me $20 on top of what you give to the food bank” to which I reply “OK, why should I give you that $20 instead of giving an extra $20 to the food bank?”
True. Though it doesn’t really apply for “friends.” I’d do whatever I felt like for my friends.
I’m not a defense attorney. But in any case, what I think personally and what I think we should put into law (or let the government do) are two wildly different things.
Legally, Robert should get a fair trial and a decent defense, and should have just conditions as he serves time. Whether or not I liked him, I’d fight for that right.
Morally/personally, Robert got a relatively short sentence for a felony crime, which is probably because he’s a white 45 year old. He doesn’t (at least to me) seem especially repentant about it (he seems very repentant about being in jail, of course, though that’s not the same thing.) I don’t see this really about rehabilitation (which I think is good) as it is about “making Robert’s stay better.” As social goals go, that seems pretty low on the priority list. In fact I’ll go a bit further: If anything, having his stay improved relative to other inmates because he is lucky/privileged enough to be friends with a bunch of comparatively rich/educated random Internet folks who, shortly after his conviction, started grouping together to make his life better and send him money seems unfair, at least to me. Part of that is surely judgmental (I would feel differently if he had cancer) for reasons I can’t easily explain.
Out of curiosity, is this how you respond to everything?
At the moment I’m imagining any interaction with you more or less goes along these lines:
– “Do you want fries with that?”
– “What I want personally and what I think we should put into law are two wildly different things”
– “Um, ok sir, I’ll take that as a yes, then?”
– “I don’t think the government should be allowed to take anything as a ‘yes'”
Because unless I’m seriously missing something here, no one has argued that sending Robert money should be put into law…
Eytan, I think that the bit you’re quoting was from a bit of a digression; G&W, if I understood correctly, was contrasting the strong legal defense he thinks Robert and others accused of committing felonies are legally entitled to in court – what he thinks “should be put into law” – with what he thinks of direct, personal help offered to Robert (“what I think personally”) outside of the court system. G&W wasn’t, in my reading, implying that anyone had argued that sending Robert money should be put into law.
God, no, of course I don’t think this has anything to do with law, as Amp correctly surmised. Also, I was responding directly to Mythago’s quote, which referenced my lawyerness.
Amp, G&W – I know, I know. But on the same coin, Mythago wasn’t suggesting that G&W being a lawyer meant that he would think there should be a law-based solution. She was implying that because (as she mistakenly thought) G&W was a defense lawyer, she expected him to show more empathy or at least sympathy.
I in fact want it put into law that I will have fries with that.
G & W, I think you might want to file this one under “utilitarianism is not a perfect tool” and move on.
Otherwise you end up asking silly questions like, “How can you give your children Christmas presents when there are child soldiers in Rwanda?!?” Like … that should not actually be confusing to anyone.
There are always worse things happening somewhere, and even if you studiously try to allocate 100% of your resources so as to do the most good you possibly can in all circumstances without exception (which is probably impossible), there will always be someone with a slightly different metric who will wander by to explain that you’ve done the moral calculus wrong.
There’s also a thing here where the cult of personal purity makes it not okay to ‘help some’ unless you’re ‘helping totally with perfect self-sacrifice.’ This is silly because telling people that their charity and empathy are dumb and wrong does not (shockingly) increase the total charity and empathy in the world. It leads to hurt feelings and moral paralysis.
And charity isn’t about the recipient passing a test of personal purity to qualify for it either – or it shouldn’t be, anyway. In my understanding that’s what makes it charity.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s fine for people to decide to help someone that they feel a little connection to over the teeming hordes they don’t. Probably it’s good if that’s not all they do. Addressing the teeming hordes is good too, but still.
We all feel a little connection to Robert. After all, he’s been incredibly and dramatically wrong at us for 10+ years. It’s not confusing at all that some people here would choose to give him a hand.
—Myca
g&w, in addition to what Myca said, your arguments don’t make a lot of sense, possibly because you’re not actually clear what you’re trying to say. We should give support to the most deserving and least privileged…unless they have cancer…or unless they’re our friends, then all bets are off. Wait, what?
(And, as Myca notes, it’s silly. Shame on g&w for giving to a food bank in a privileged First World nation with a safety net when he could be giving money to keep starving infants in war-torn developing regions from dying of malaria or river blindness, amirite?)
As to Robert specifically, I guess I’m seeing different posts than you are, including Robert’s comments about how support from the outside is encouraging to him in working to better himself, and his awareness the impact of his selfish actions had on an innocent person. Is he privileged? Well, duh, this is America and he’s white. It would suck a lot more if he were not and had no outside support. That seems to me to be an indictment of the carceral state specifically and privilege generally.
Re the defense attorney comment, that was me being sloppy; I meant civil defense-side, not criminal defense. You sure do not sound like a plaintiff lawyer. ;)
BTW, G&W, I think it would be interesting to get Robert’s perspective on this (and I’m pretty sure he won’t be hurt or hold what you’ve said against you – one thing I like about Robert is that he doesn’t seem to hold grudges at all). I’m also curious to know if Robert’s perspective on your question has changed since he went to prison, or he thinks he would have had the same answer a year ago. Do you mind if I send this thread to Robert?
I sent him money because:
– Life in prison is appalling, even more so now that prisons are for-profit so many places, and I just can’t tolerate the thought of people living those conditions* without support.**
– Even if Robert gets more support because of his privilege, perhaps he can trade some of the material goods it affords him to other prisoners, who will then have some of their needs met.
– And he’s already said that he used some of it to be able to afford a gift for his daughter. A major factor in successful reintegration to life outside of prison is relationships with family and community members. The process of sending prisoners far away from family disrupts those relationships, and increases the risk of re-offenses, and I hate it. Supporting one person in staying connected is a small thing I can do.
– I have been amused by Robert’s posts here, and appreciative of the way he continues to have conversations with people whom he wildly disagrees with.
– I have also not been religious in a very long time, and I get quite tired of the Christian Right trying to make out as if they have a corner on morality and ethics. I really appreciate those atheists & agnostics who have formed groups to perform charitable works, and although I don’t have time and energy to join them, I do whatever charitable giving I can. I did always like the bit where Jesus encouraged kindness to “the least of these” and associated with criminals and “fallen women” and so forth – that’s something I can get behind. I give to “worthy” causes but also try to make sure I find ways to offer help to people who aren’t so “worthy,” because what was that verse? “Judge not”? (It’s also good for me to remember to think compassionate thoughts about people I don’t entirely agree with.)
– I am also very aware of the research that has found that personal association with people of [insert despised type here] is the most effective way of reducing personal prejudice toward that type of person. The more gay people you know, the less you’re likely to have prejudiced views of them and be in favor of limiting their civil rights.*** Well, Robert has some terrible (I think) prejudices about lefties and progressives and etc., so darn it, I’m in favor of giving him some personal reasons to re-consider. Change happens on many levels – individual, social, institutional – and little changes have big ripples. You never know. “Kill ’em with kindness” might work on a personal level.
So there you are.
*I blame watching “Orange is the New Black” and “Oz” among other things. When I watched the first season of “Oz,” I started getting nightmares because a close friend of mine had done time, and I couldn’t stand worrying about whether he’d experienced that kind of dehumanization. I had to quit watching it.
** I hate that JPay is a for-profit system that takes systematic advantage of mostly poor people.
http://time.com/3446372/criminal-justice-prisoners-profit/
http://www.occupy.com/article/jpay-scam-prison-bankers-cash-captive-customers
But they’re the only game in town. Best I can do is try to elect officials interested in prison reform. Hurray California Prop 47!
*** A notable exception: Women. People with women in their lives and families will say and vote for the most appalling things!
Money or not, I encourage people to write him anyways. Prison is boring, and our letters keep him from having nothing else on his mind than “damn, I wish my cellmate had heard of robert heinlein. ..”
Amp,
As for sending it to Robert: it wouldn’t be my inclination to do so (whatever you think of my ethics, “sending less-than-friendly letters to prisoners” is not within my boundary of acceptable behavior in normal circumstances.) Although I don’t have a high opinion of Robert*, I wouldn’t choose to So if you’re asking “do I want you to send it?” the answer is “no.” If you’re asking “can I send it?” the answer is “of course, you can do whatever you want.”
*Having chewed on this I think I can say it succinctly: We all can probably agree that Robert’s earlier status was “a friendly guy, who was entertaining to interact with on the Internet, and who appeared to be pretty moral and normal.”
When I heard that he had robbed a bank, I revised my earlier opinion of him based on that new data. So for me, he’s now a “bank robber who was entertaining to interact with on the Internet, but who I apparently misjudged regarding morality and normality.” For others, it seems like he is now characterized as “a friendly guy, who was entertaining to interact with on the Internet, and who apparently acted out of character in robbing a bank.” Those different perspectives probably drive the different reactions.
For me, it’s more that I don’t think of Robert as, “a bank robber,” so much as I think of him as, “a friend of a friend whose life got kind of fucked up and who made some bad decisions and is suffering the consequences.” I think that he must have been very desperate and very scared in order to do what he did, and I think it’s sad whenever anyone gets to that point.
As someone who has been desperate and scared in my life, I feel compassion and empathy for him. There’s a whole infrastructure in place to judge and punish him, and it doesn’t need my help.
—Myca
I don’t comment here much; mostly just read. Robert doesn’t know me so a letter from me wouldn’t mean much.
Myca is on the right track here I think. Think about the worst thing you’ve ever done…..just think. Whether or not you got caught. ( You probably didn’t.). Would you want to be defined by that? (“An adulterer who…” A drunk driver who…” “A thief who…”). Aren’t you so much more than that?
I don’t know Robert but I’m willing to bet that he cannot fairly be summed up as “a bank robber.”
I’ve been thinking: “A guy who, in depression, got addicted to meth and did stupid shit.” It seems to be similar to what Amp thinks (if I’m wrong, please correct me, of course), and Amp’s known him personally for years.
Yeah, much the same here. As much as I find many of his views abhorrent, I don’t think he’s an awful person. So. A letter soon and then money when I’ve got it to give. He may be an online/virtual friend who I wouldn’t recognize on the street, but he’s still a friend and, being human, I try to help out my friends when they really need help.
What I would want and what would be fair are two very different things. And w/r/t fairness, a lot of it depends on how different my behavior was from the norm. Most drunk divers never get caught; many people are drunk drivers; therefore there is minimal opprobrium for driving drunk. Same with adultery and theft. And so on.
I have never done anything like that, I am proud to say. Not even close. Nor would I. (I can’t shake the feeling that some folks would like Robert less and would argue for his side less if he were a racist antifeminist than if he was a meth-addicted bank robber. That seems… strange.)
When someone does something as far outside the norm as bank robbery, then for a reasonable length of time (which IMO certainly includes the first few months that they are actually serving in jail) it is OK to base opinions on that as a primary source, absent some other compelling thing.
Right now, the term which best describes him–and which makes him most different from almost everyone else in the entire country, and which makes him most different from almost everyone else in the prison system–is that he’s a bank robber. Addict? Sure; but most of them aren’t bank robbers. Depressed? Sure; ditto. And so on. Bank robbery is his defining characteristic, especially during his jail term.
Eventually that will be history. As his crime ages out people will care less; it will happen naturally. Eventually he’ll just be “on probation” like so many others, and people won’t always care why. Eventually he’ll just be “someone who can’t own a firearm.” And so on. If he wants to make it happen faster then he can try to do so. If he doesn’t care to try then he’ll be stuck with what people think about him, until things age out on their own. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect it from others in the first few months of conviction.
Though of course there will always be some people who don’t care that he’s a bank robber, in which case it’s sort of moot. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that: if you were imprisoned for criticizing the government, say, I wouldn’t really care.
I dare say that if we added up all his time on earth, Rob has spent 99.99999999999999% of his moments not robbing banks. Therefore…
Therefore he is best defined as a bank robber, he is nothing but a bank robber, that’s all he ever is or ever will be.
My question is, how did Rob’s parents KNOW to name him “Rob?” Were there hints even in the womb?
* * *
I think that everyone is a mix of things and characteristics. No one I know is a saint. Robert is a bank robber, which – for all his pain and mitigating circumstances – nonetheless shows a character flaw. Well, you know, fuck it. He’s my friend. It’s my job, within some limits, to overlook his character flaws, as I trust he overlooks mine.
I’d also like to believe that, in a pinch, folks in the “Alas” community would help me in some ways, as they (and I) have tried to help Rob. So there is some degree of mutuality here.
As (I think) Mandolin said, there’s plenty of structures set up to judge Rob. I’m happily not part of those structures; it’s not my job.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:35-40
gin, do whatever you want, I won’t give you one of my patented water boarding baptisms to compel you. But try to bitch about others doing it a little less. Your bitching is just going to make it funnier when you go to jail in two years for vehicular manslaughter when you run over a bum in an intersection.
“Never say, ‘he is a thief.’ But, rather, ‘he stole,’ for otherwise you condemn his whole life.” Dorotheus of Gaza a/k/a Abba Dorotheus (505-565), Eastern Christian abbot. More generally, we can avoid this problem entirely if we can refrain from relying on the verb “to be.”
He’s a masturbator?
Did you perhaps mean that to read, “Nobody really I know is a saint?”
You’re welcome. And God bless.
More seriously, I struggle with this. I might say that condemning Bob is not my business. Then again, the ghost of Marley might respond “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business…!”
When there was an allegation that the Duke Lacrosse team had engaged in a sexual assault, Amp did regard it has his job to judge, and to express that judgment broadly. Putting aside the issue of proof, I sense Amp regarded it as a social duty to convey outrage as a means of influencing behavior – the behavior of the accuser (who would predictably come under pressure to withdraw the accusation), of potential assailants, of other women who might fear being victimized or fear bring a complaint.
So, why express judgment then, but not now? Sure, Amp identifies with Rob in a way he did not identify with the Duke Lacrosse team. But I also sense that Amp engages in a kind of compensation for social norms he disapproves of. He believes that society insufficiently supports people who complain of sexual assault, so he voices his support for the accuser. I suspect Amp thinks society adequately condemns bank robbery, so he feels content to sit this one out.
In addition, while the informal sanction of condemnation performs a useful social function, so does forgiveness and compassion. Marley’s ghost also mentioned that charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence are all our business. So perhaps Amp agrees with condemning bank robbery in general, but asks us to understand that he is uniquely positioned to play a different social role in this situation. Which is fine — but perhaps we should extend a similar understanding to people who publicly express support for their friends (say, Duke Lacrosse players) when they are publicly condemned.
In short, I suspect Amp does regard himself as part of the structures of judgment. He chooses to participate in those structures, or not, depending on his values and circumstances.
Why does it seem strange that we might judge someone more harshly for their considered opinions than for their (criminal) errors in judgment? I’d say that the first is a better representation of who the person ‘is’ than the second.
And look, you probably agree. Who do you judge more harshly: David Duke or Jean Valjean?
And sure, Robert is no Jean Valjean, but if we’ve agreed on the principle that personal prejudice can be ‘worse’ or more worthy of harsh judgment than criminal activity, then “we have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price.”
—Myca
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thegodarticle/2014/11/the-jesus-parable-the-gop-loves-but-should-actually-hate/
Sort of a weird coincidence. I came across this blog post about the same verse I quoted earlier about an hour later. Weird enough I had to share!
David Duke, of course, since Jean Valjean was pretty much the archetypical “victim of society with noble goals” and since Duke has had ample opportunity and exposure and training with which he could reconsider (and/or reject) his views.
I concede that point, doubly so for the brilliant quote. There’s no way to argue whether it is in fact that way without more knowledge, though.
In all fairness, I had originally only asked about other people’s opinions, and was not originally planning on posting my own. Nor did I plan to put this in a thread dedicated to Robert; in fact I had posted it elsewhere. The fact that this discussion turned into something else is at least partly due to Amp’s request to move it here.
“Were folks personal friends with Robert before he ended up in prison?”
The term “friends” – and how a friendship is made and maintained – has changed quite a bit from the time I first started using the term, (mumblty) years before a few guys in a DoD research project decided to figure out a way to interlink computers remote from each other in a path-independent way. If you asked me “Do you know Rob?” I’d say “yes”. I can’t say we are close personal friends, but in a way I know him better that some people I’m related to by blood. The context is much different from other people I know in the flesh, but quite similar to people with whom I’ve only shared electrons.
“Or are the letters/donations/thoughts things which are because he ended up in prison?”
I did not perceive a need to send him anything before he landed in prison. He is not the first person I’ve known that ended up in prison. And I was moved by that, and by this, which I hear read once every 3 years: