Give me that old-time retribution
Sublimation: a feature or a bug? One has to wonder with the obsessive attention Americans pay to the sex others are having, to gender nonconformity, and especially to extrajudicial punishment.
Brandon Garrett and Gregory Mitchell ponder findings that suggest Americans’ adherence to Sir William Blackstone’s principle that it is “better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer” is slipping. If their faith in due process was ever there.
Researchers asked if at trial it was worse if an innocent was convicted, a guilty person went free, or if both were equally bad. (Slate):
Most respondents answered that the errors were equally bad. Our first results showing widespread rejection of the Blackstone ratio were so surprising and potentially disruptive that we tested their robustness multiple times, using a series of large samples drawn from the entire U.S. population and multiple measurement methods.
Across multiple national surveys sampling more than 12,000 people, we have found that a majority of Americans, more than 60 percent, consider false acquittals and false convictions to be equally bad outcomes. Most people are not Blackstonians. They are unwilling to err on the side of letting the guilty go free to avoid convicting the innocent. Indeed, a sizeable minority viewed false acquittals as worse than false convictions; this group is willing to convict multiple innocent persons to avoid letting one guilty person go free. You would not want those people on your jury if you were charged with a crime.
Democrats? Republicans? It did not matter. “Convicting the wrong person is not just a fairness concern but also a public safety concern,” the pair write. “When an innocent person languishes in prison, a guilty person goes free.”
So what? Give me that old-time retribution, you know?
The findings suggest to me an inability of more Americans to ever see themselves as unfairly charged or guilty of anything. “Stand your ground” has been codified across the country, as Digby noted on Monday: “Self-defense has been redefined to mean you can kill if you simply feel threatened. There’s no responsibility to retreat and there doesn’t have to be an actual threat. Kill first and ask questions later.”
Conservatism, especially these days, is an ideology of perpetual innocence.
Michelle Goldberg examines the ReAwaken America Tour, the “Christian nationalist roadshow co-founded by the former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.” The issue for Republicans in 2024 “isn’t whether the next Republican presidential candidate is going to be a Christian nationalist,” but “what sort of Christian nationalism will prevail: the elite, doctrinaire variety of candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, or the violently messianic version embodied by Flynn and Trump.”
Goldberg writes:
If DeSantis treats Christianity as a moral code he’d like to impose on the rest of us, Trump treats it as an elevated status that should come with special perks. That’s how he can slam DeSantis for being “sanctimonious” even as he wraps his own campaign in biblical raiment. If a Republican wins in 2024, the victor will preside over a Christian nationalist administration. The question is whether that person will champion an orthodoxy or a cult.
But Christian nationalism is more like the old Reese’s commercial about peanut butter and chocolate. You got nationalism in my Christianity, etc. Happy accident?
People with a taste for punishment are like Alex of A Clockwork Orange, mimicking godliness while fantasizing about whipping Jesus up the hill. Or about gunning down (or choking to death) perceived evil doers before they’ve done anything evil. Making white people uncomfortable is enough to merit death these days. They cannot imagine themselves wrongly accused or killed.
Give them access to power and they’ll find out soon enough once they’ve run out of the obvious heretics to punish.