This is my “various and sundry” page for 2026, October–. It was preceded by 2026 (2).
For more information on the purpose of these pages, reading order, update policy, notes on terminology, etc., see the category description.
The Trump 47 era has seen controversy around whether e.g. ICE agents should be allowed to wear face masks, work in plainclothes, or otherwise hide their identities or status. The immediate trigger for this text is a court objecting to a California law (the “No Vigilantes Act”) to prevent this, based on a matter of jurisdiction, viz. that the states cannot dictate rules for the federation—not the underlying issues. These, however, can be quite interesting:
I stress that I do not object to the court’s approach. On the contrary, courts should deal with what the law is, not what the law should be, and questions like the below might very well have been out of scope for the courts, even had issues like jurisdiction not taken precedence.
As for the specifics of the ruling, I have not looked into them, as they are largely beside the point, but I do have the impression, from a vague report, that it is something in the extended injunction family, not a final ruling.
The name, “No Vigilantes Act”, goes back to an ostensible attempt to prevent civilians from impersonating federal officers. Whether this is the true reason or just an excuse to interfere with e.g. ICE, I leave unstated; however, this does point to a further issue with anonymous law enforcement, that I had not hitherto considered—the greater risk that others successfully pretend to be law enforcement. (More generally, the below makes not the slightest claim of completeness.)
On the one hand, there are instances when it might be a pragmatic necessity to have anonymous law enforcement, e.g. as with ICE, because the agents at hand or, worse, their families, might be exposed to far-Left violence and other repercussions even when off duty. Without some anonymity, we have issues like a potentially unconscionable private situation for the agents, the risk that too few will take the job (this, of course, is a part of the idea for some far-Left activists), and similar—but if the government forgoes law enforcement for such reasons, it will handle criminals a victory on a silver platter and create further incentives to e.g. threaten law enforcers with private repercussions.
On the other, I have long-standing concerns about accountability and Rechtsstaatlichkeit, e.g. in that a law enforcer who abuses his position for his personal benefit, shows grave incompetence, performs acts not within the scope of his duties, or similar, might escape legitimate legal complaints through anonymity. This, especially, at times and in places where there is a corruption problem, or just a problem with an internal “us vs. them” culture, giving reason to suspect that a complaint about e.g. a police officer directed at his employing department will be pointless because the department will “have his back”. This while a complaint to a supervisory agency, a lawsuit, or similar, is far more likely to be given serious treatment and (even assuming serious treatment) proceed successfully when clearly identifying the wrong-doer (as opposed to e.g. noting that some unidentified member of the XPD used excessive violence at some time between 22:30 and 23:00 somewhere along Y street and then took off).
Likewise, there can be problems like “regular” law enforcement gone wrong, with no or little recourse for the citizens involved. For instance, I was once myself the victim of a late-night, warrantless, and unwarranted search of my apartment. My attempts to file a complaint were met with a complete lack of cooperation and a clear attitude that I had no right to complain, up to and including a refusal to name whoever had signed off on this atrocity and upon whose lies the atrocity had been instigated. This despite the near absurdity of the lies (that I would keep a woman captive in my small apartment in the middle of the city—not the cellar of a house deep in the countryside) and that the wrongness of the complaint could easily have been established simply by observing the apartment through the many windows.
Here, absent problems like e.g. the risk of violence from far-Left extremists, a sound policy might involve a duty to provide a full listing of anyone participating in the search, anyone involved in the decision making, etc.—the more so for a warrantless search. (And, certainly, warrantless searches of apartments must be limited to truly extreme circumstances, which by no stretch of the imagination were present in my case, even my complete innocence aside.)
Off topic, it might also make sense to have some sort of internal registry for decision makers, where signing off on a spurious search gives a black mark and can affect e.g. later promotion chances or be cause for a firing if too frequent. (However, to be carefully weighed against a risk that someone fails to permit a search, in order to reduce the risk of such a black mark, even when permitting the search would have been the correct decision “on the merits”.)
Likewise, if law enforcement becomes the tool of ideology pushers, say, to silence or intimidate dissenters, much could be gained by preventing anonymity. (Here I speak of somewhat private initiatives, e.g. if several far-Leftists work in a police department and abuse their positions. More official cases, including when there are laws in force that stifle “unapproved” speech, might make anonymity beside the point, as with e.g. some 2020s German and U.K. situations.)
Etc.
I also note e.g. the increasing German trend for civil servants to hide under vague and generic last names, with neither a first name, nor a sex-differentiating “Herr”/“Frau” (“Mr.”, “Mrs.”, etc.), and certainly no identifying employment number or similar. The citizen might then face a letter with an obscure case number and a signature equivalent of “Smith” or “Jones”. (And I would be unsurprised to see even the last name disappear in the foreseeable future, in favor of a mere mention of e.g. a department, if in doubt to protect those named “Murgatroyd” from too close scrutiny and accountability.)
In a bigger picture, there is a common and very problematic attitude that those in government employ should be drones without own accountability, and that being in government employ should protect from any individual consequences from wrongdoing. Here, the exact opposite take is needed—that individual government employees be made personally responsible for their actions to a higher degree than private employees exactly because they are government employees and exercise government power. This, in particular, in that they must not just blindly follow instructions from above but only act when they are personally convinced, to some conscionable degree, that the instructions are compatible with applicable law and legal precedent. This, especially, when they make decisions about the weal and woe of citizens, e.g. by approving or rejecting applications. (At least German agencies of various kinds often seem to take an attitude that internal decisions and regulations trump the law and/or that the agency is the supreme interpreter of the law.)
Other cases of problematic anonymity include undercover operations and various types of entrapment that raise very considerable ethical issues, as with e.g. a Donnie Brasco situation. Entrapment in an online context is particularly dangerous, e.g. in that many of the cases of alleged sexual predators might go back to the police luring non-predators into shady waters by some cat-fishing method. For lack of information on such cat-fishing and whatnot, I can only speculate (and I make no claims around frequency). However, at an absolute minimum, there is a clear risk that such actions are taken, which can then lead to someone perfectly respectable and non-predatory being befriended by, say, an apparent girl of fifteen on her initiative, and increasingly being brought from the beaten path by her—until it turns out that the “girl” actually was police officer. In a next step, it is by no means inconceivable that even harmless flirting is misrepresented as “grooming” or similar—and even when the alleged predator had no intentions of ever meeting the girl in real life.
While I tend to find flirting boring and pointless, even with real-life women, many other men do not, and I could easily see how some other middle-aged man would enjoy an online flirt with a girl of fifteen, if in doubt through being flattered and himself feeling younger, and still never having any intention of moving beyond flirting. Further, I would see nothing ethically wrong with this, if both parties were willing participants. (But not necessarily for an even younger girl. I will not attempt to draw a specific line, the more so as the exact contents of the flirt might be relevant, but at some point a “too young” will apply.)
Also note both the more general idea of cat-fishing and an older entry on fake-age reversals on social media, which shows yet other problems with allegations around sexual predators, which can, then, include an adult man flirting with a girl of fifteen in the belief that she is much older, and only learning the opposite once he is already invested.
To prevent such scenarios, great restrictions on law enforcers acting anonymously might well be warranted, e.g. in that a police officer on the street, even if on duty, should have no powers beyond a regular civilian unless in uniform, e.g. in that one on the Internet must clearly identify himself as such (unless acting as a private citizen in his own time) and is forbidden from doing anything more than passively observing others in e.g. an online forum/chat/whatnot unless he has so identified himself. (Where I leave a great many details open, e.g. what constitutes a sufficient uniform, beyond noting that a badge hidden under civilian clothing does not suffice, what form of identification is considered sufficient on the Internet, and what other cases of problematic anonymity might need restrictions.)
While the above has primarily dealt with individuals, there are also matters like what agency is involved. For reasons of time, space, and motivation, I will not dwell on such matters, but I do note that a suppression of what agency is involved with what actions can have even worse consequences from e.g. a Rechtsstaatlichkeit perspective. Consider e.g. if someone is arrested by “an agency or agencies unknown” and his family has no idea where to go in order to visit him or post bail, whom to name as the imprisoner in a “habeas corpus” filing, whatnot. For that matter, it might not even be known to the family that he has been arrested, as opposed to having been kidnapped by civilian criminals, having had an accident (maybe, being unconscious in a hospital or dead in a morgue), or having run off with “the other woman”.
And with such differentiations, we also see the need to turn objections towards the right target, notwithstanding the above remarks on personal accountability and the weakness of the “I was only obeying orders!” defense.
The right target might well be a low-level police officer (or, similarly, a low-level DMV/IRS/whatnot employee), but it might also be e.g. the precinct or department at hand, and it might not be the police at all but the law-makers who passed a certain law—or some other entity altogether. Looking specifically at the ICE, the main beef of the protesters should be with the law, and they should attempt to change the law through democratic means, not harass ICE agents.
Unsurprisingly, the same Left that once applauded various legal interventions against e.g. Trump and his allies is now having a fit over such interventions against Ilhan Omar—despite a very high likelihood that Omar is a worthier and more legitimate target, that she is in the cross-hairs not for e.g. having the wrong opinions, being a political obstacle, or similar, but for actual legal wrongdoing.
An interesting question, with the mid-terms in the very near future, is how these interventions will affect public opinion. While this is yet to see, I do fear that it will be for the worse, because of the Leftist propaganda machine and media control, how the events can be pushed in support of the typical “Orange Man Bad” narrative, etc.
While I have only had the most casual look at German reporting on the issue (and none at the Swedish), I note a repeated asymmetry in reporting, in that Omar was described as just “Democrat”, where a label like “far Left” would have been warranted, while Charlie Kirk was, incorrectly, labeled as “far Right”. (In respective approximate German equivalents.) Note e.g. some similar comments on a Jesse Jackson vs. Charlie Kirk contrast from February (in both cases, the use of Kirk as an example is for a combination of illustrative value and actual own memory—not because Kirk would be unique in being misrepresented in the German press). There was also explicit mention of her being Somali in a manner that potentially could have hinted that, or been misconstrued as, “Trump is against her because she is Somali!” (instead of for the genuine suspicions of misdeeds that exist and her extreme political positions—that, of course, went unmentioned).
I have repeatedly written about issues with e.g. accusations against the dead and (overlapping) the investigation into the murder of Olof Palme, as well as various rape cases (e.g. with some below entries on the Cornell case and pages linked from there).
Two recent encounters show the scope of the problem and make a strong case for radically different approaches by e.g. prosecutors, law enforcers, journalist, politicians, and various commentators:
Firstly, a 1960 (!) murder casee might have found a resolution: DNA and a fingerprint have, after half an eternity, been tied to a new suspect.
There remains at least three problems, however: The suspect is dead and has no chance to mount a defense, even the grave complications around the time passed aside. The suspect has not been convicted in a court of law, by a jury of his peers, etc. There is a fair chance that the DNA and fingerprint evidence still allows for reasonable doubt.
The last, at least based on the superficial source. It is conceivable that unstated details change this; however, I note that the proof for “had contact with” falls well short of “murdered” and that even clear-seeming pointers can be misleading. For want of details, I cannot be more specific, but a scenario like the suspect stumbling onto a recently dead victim, touching something (fingerprint), sneezing (DNA), and then running away in a moment of collapsing judgment, is conceivable—the more so, as the suspect, at the time, was a green police officer who (a) might have approached the body out of professional duty, (b) lost his composure through inexperience with corpses, violent murders, or similar. (And, (c), might have been very unwilling to admit to this later, be it out of fear that he would become a suspect, that he would be fired, or that he would be viewed as a weakling by his seniors.)
I stress, however, that I do not claim that this is so (nor that the suspect would be innocent)—I merely point to a great need to tread carefully.
Nevertheless, the suspect is identified by name (I do not follow this example), and the police is quoted as saying “[redacted] should never have worn the CPD star, and it is devastating to accept that he was never identified and held accountable while he was alive”—bypassing anything even resembling due process and court proceedings. Also note how such a claim about someone living, yet unconvicted, could have brought on a major defamation suit.
Secondly, more on the Cornell casee, including that Cornell has now banned fraternity parties in a blanket manner, thereby intruding into the private lives of many who have no connection to the case at hand, and in a manner that is inexcusable with regard to self-determination and whatnot. To this, note that even the accused in the main case have not, at this time, been found guilty of any sexual crime, and that there is no guarantee that they will be. (Indeed, based on what I have seen so far, the allegations seem quite shaky. However, as a counterpoint, note that the use of illegal drugs and/or drugs illegal at the age of the involved seems undisputed for some individuals—including the accuser.)
Concerning the university, some doubt must remain as to what is rooted in a presumption of guilt and what in e.g. publicity work, but it is also quoted as speaking of “better support for survivors”, which points towards a presumption of guilt on at least two counts. Firstly, if we do not presume guilt, there is no particular reason to provide better support relative before the case broke. (Arguably, not even if the accused are guilty, because the occurrence of one genuine rape, or other crime, does not tells us anything about other cases, and because Cornell should focus on matters of education and leave such affairs to the law, to social workers, to psychologists, or whatever might apply to the case, and aspect of the case, at hand—such insight, however, is not necessarily to be expected from a modern U.S. college.) Secondly, an inexcusable and usually ideologically loaded abuse of the word “survivor”, which should by any serious user be restricted to two meanings, namely someone who has survived a genuinely life-threatening issue (e.g. “Titanic survivor”, “cancer survivor”) resp. someone who survives someone dead (e.g. “surviving spouse”, “surviving children”; and even here I have grown a little sceptical over time). The misappropriation of this expression for e.g. rape and abuse victims is inexcusable, trivializing, and misleading, and falls into “should be taken out and hung // for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue” territory. This the more so, when the alleged abuse is yet unproven, was invented (which it often is; contrary to Feminist propaganda) or comparatively trivial (also often the case). Depending on the exact situation, either “victim” or “alleged victim” should be used (or a formulation equivalent to these).
Some further allowances might be made for special cases with an obviously different intent from either of the above, and with no risk that the use is confused with a survivor of a life-threatening issue—much unlike with e.g. the Cornell case.
Here at least two possibilities occur to me, namely an obviously jokingly hyperbolic one (e.g. “survivor of the mid-terms”) and one ascribing a general character trait, e.g. in that someone who has gone through years of hardship and metaphorically (as well, of course, as literally) come out alive might be viewed as a survivor.
In both cases, I would advice against the use, however, as the joke (in the first case) is trivial and not actually funny and as the character trait (in the second case) might be better described by e.g. “hardy”, “resilient”, or some suitable longer phrasing—unless the years of hardship include an actual life-threatening issue.
Generally, there is a great problem with presumption of guilt and/or a narrative of “poor innocent college girl taken advantage of by horrible men”, including by Letitia James, including in parts of the press, and including in large groups of the public. (But here I find that the source does not cover the matter: I read several articles in a short time and failed to realize that I had not had all the contents that I wished to comment on in the one source, until the time of writing.) The issue of James, specifically, and prosecutors, in general, is very problematic and well in line with the police behavior in the first source:
A much better, more intellectually honest, more professional, etc., approach would be to avoid statements that imply guilt and/or make deeper statements about facts, let alone moral, in a manner as if the matter was not open to debate. A prosecutor should, then, never say “X murdered Y” (let alone “X is a murderous beast who viciously ended the life of poor innocent little Y”), but e.g. “I argue that X murdered Y, based on [this-and-that]”. Likewise, to call an accuser or alleged victim “victim” before this matter is proved is tendentious and often unethical.
This even in an “adversarial” system like the U.S. one. In a system like the Swedish, where the prosecution is at least nominally a neutral party, even while prosecuting, this applies doubly, which makes e.g. the Palme–Engström issue the worse (cf. above link).
To various narratives, I recall, some years back, reading one or several articles on guard–inmate relationships in a U.K. prison in the Telegraph (for the better part strongly non-Leftist, but ever-again flirting with Feminism). Here, the narrative, as absurd as it might seem, was one of powerful male inmates somehow taking advantage of powerless female guards...
Other parties may, of course, express their own genuine opinions, but should take very great care to e.g. differ between “I believe that X” and “X—period”. Those who wish to argue fairly should certainly not take sides prematurely, those who do not wish to look like idiots should not judge cases based on a trivial exposure to evidence, those who have strong ideological convictions (as with the Cornell case, many other cases alleging rape or abuse, many cases with a racial angle, etc.; and, maybe, as with the recent Lindsay Clancy case) should have the common decency to keep them out of matters like guilt and innocence until a court has had its say, and so on. Also note earlier texts on related topics, including on “In the Name of the Father” and the flawed attitudes depicted in that film (and, quite possibly, found in the real-life events upon which it is based) and on agnostic scepticism.
For my own part, I do consider it likely based on what I have read so far that the Cornell case is yet another instance of false accusations after the fact, but, importantly, I do not see this as even remotely a finished matter. I am, in particular, aware that my understanding is based on incomplete and (at best) second-hand accounts (even a newspaper briefly quoting one of the parties is a second-hand account), and that a jury verdict, if it comes to that, would be based on much more extensive exposure, analysis, testimony, whatnot.
Throwing a wider net, I do by no means deny that I sometimes make quite far-going and categorical statements, but I (a) usually have a deeper understanding of the matter at hand than I and so many others do of the Cornell case, (b) have no recollection of having done so specifically with a court case, (c) usually only skimp when it comes to unimportant aspects. (And even so, I often include various disclaimers.)
In some of my recent news readings, I have seen (a) a French far Leftie claiming that GDP would be a poor measure (with an implied or explicit “ergo, growth does not matter”), and (b) some non-Leftist commentators countering that GDP would be a good measure (with an implied or explicit “ergo, growth does too matter”).
Both sides miss the point, that growth matters very much (cf. e.g. parts of [1]) despite GDP and similar measures being disputable. (With a better overall conclusion, then, being e.g. that we should strive for growth while taking what GDP tells us about growth with a grain of salt.)
An interesting twist, however, is that one of the main reasons why such measures are poor is government activities, including through causing price inflation (unless the measure is inflation adjusted) and through blowing up the public sector, which creates a nominal increase of such measures with very little substance behind them, because most of the public sector does not create value. Indeed, both the public sector and the government activities tend to get in the way of true growth—giving further reasons to keep the Left out of power.
While the exact issues with GDP et al. are off topic, I note that they do not include merely performing pointless activity. For instance, digging a hole and then filling it up again brings nothing in terms of GDP (contrary to suggestions by the far Leftie)—but being paid by the government to do so does. More central and actual problems include e.g. that a housewife is not paid for performing work but a maid is, and that the work of the former, then, does not enter GDP while that of the latter does. Likewise, if an electrician and a plumber exchange services, GDP is left unchanged, but if they each bill each other, GDP is increased. Then there are issues like the “service economy”, problems with international comparisons (both nominal GDP and one adjusted for local purchasing power has weaknesses), etc.
(And note how the housewife and the service-exchanging handymen do not generate tax and other government income, while the maid and the billing handymen do—and what incentives this gives the government to push particular approaches, even a cosmetic effect on GDP aside.)
More generally, all too many miss the point on various economical and political questions. A notable Leftist example is (cf. parts of [1]) focusing on the borderline worthless GNI instead of social mobility and GNP, while a notable general one is to attempt to solve affordability problems by handing out money on the demand (!) side, which will bolster demand instead of supply. (The issue of service economies, cf. link, could be argued to be another example. Also note non-political writings on the idea of missing the point, e.g. [2] and texts linked from there.)
To continue the issue of sex and drugs from the previous entry, consider the following thought experiment (originally inspired by, but different from, the claimed events at Cornell):
The members of a perfectly sober mixed sex group consensually agree on a drinking/sex game based on spin the bottle: The bottle is spun like in the original version. If it lands on a member of the opposite sex, the spinner must perform some type of sexual act (e.g. something pre-defined, e.g. a request from the counterpart); if on a member of the same sex, the spinner must take a shot of hard liquor. Afterwards, the bottle is handed to the next person, who proceeds to spin, etc. Assume further that anyone has the right to walk (or drunkenly crawl...) away from the game at any time.
Now consider questions like:
At what point might this involve something classifiable as rape by a not-capable-of-meaningful-consent standard?
(Here and elsewhere with an implicit second question as to the “why”.)
Is there any reason to see the situation as different for women than for men? (If so and if related to speed of intoxication, adjust alcohol dosage to even the playing field and then revisit the question.)
Does the composition of the group in terms of number of men and women matter? (Contrast e.g. two participants with six and both with twenty; and even versions, e.g. three men and three women, with very lopsided versions, e.g. one woman/five men and one man/five women.)
If we assume a rape in the first item, at some stage, who is the rapist and who the victim in any given case?
How would the answers to various questions change if game variations are considered? (Note that the changes can apply both singly and in combinations, and that the answers for combinations need not match the answers for single changes.) Consider changes like:
The game is asymmetric for men and women, e.g. by different rules (say, that men always drink, while women spin as above, or women always drink and men spin as above).
Other drugs are used instead of or in addition to alcohol. (Note differences in both effects of various drugs and their legal status.)
A mixed group of homosexuals reverse the rules for same and opposite sex actions. (In particular: If someone has taken a man-rapes-woman position to the first item, do we now have man-rapes-man, woman-rapes-woman, both, or neither, and how is that compatible with the man-rapes-woman take?)
Sexual acts are replaced with something else, e.g. some money wagered between spinner and counterpart on a coin flip (at what stages would wins/losses be legal?; note an example around poker losses in the previous entry) or the right to taser the counterpart (at what point does this become a crime?).
Most of the questions are intended as food for thought, especially, to give a more informed view of the first item, of the potential applicability to other cases, and of how to judge men and women in similar situations. However, to take a common-sense view of the first item, there really should be nothing classifiable as rape, because all the players are engaging consensually and (originally) with clear heads, are aware of the consequences of drinking (including the risk of severe loss of judgment or even, if the game is played for long enough, consciousness down the line, are aware that there might be sex (depending on how the bottle chooses), etc. In particular, at any given level of drunkenness, there is an implicit renewed choice between giving up the game as it stands and to proceed with a risk of further loss of mental clarity. (Note that I do not argue that it would be common sense of the players to play—that is a different matter entirely.)
However, a legalistic (let alone Feminist) interpretation in many jurisdictions would see a different result, and some laws or their interpretation might look differently in light of the above thought experiment.
In a next step, there have been a great many situations in real life (maybe including the Cornell one) that have not involved such a game but have been sufficiently similar in nature, choices, effects, whatnot, that the same common-sense view should apply.
For real-world applicability, the situations matchable will depend on the exact rules of the game, but the same idea applies after corresponding modifications. The Cornell case, e.g. might need some rule as to whether the addition of new players is possible during the game.
Note that answers to the above and other questions might change if the rules are changed (and that I make no prior statement about how they would change or not change, including in the Cornell case). Further note that rule changes need to consider the reasonable expectations from the real world in order to allow a matching (unless the corresponding real-world scenario also has some explicit rules to cover the same ground, which, I suspect, is rare).
Disclaimer: What I have read about the case has involved contradictory claims by various parties, might have been (deliberately or accidentally) distorted by journalists, and is inherently incomplete (I have e.g. not studied various legal reports or performed other truly in-depth readings). Correspondingly, I make reservations for what the underlying truth is in this specific case. Even with uncertainty present, however, there is illustrative value and a good deal of overlap with known problems from other cases.
A few remarks around the recent allegations that a co-ed has been raped by several members of a fraternity at Cornell University:
As it currently appears, we might have yet another case of a young woman consensually engaging in sexual activities and after the fact raising accusations of rape (ditto, m.m., sexual assault and other potentially relevant crimes; the “ditto” often applies below without explicit mention) for a spurious reason, here, going by mentions in some accounts, maybe that she was peeved about not being invited to a Halloween party by the fraternity that she accuses and/or that she saw her reputation ruined and wished to avoid an image as “slut”.
The cases below usually involve time frames of months. The time frame in the Cornell case is tricky, as there are at least two phases, one comparatively closely after the original events, one (the current) years after. Which of the two is more relevant will depend on the details of comparisons, the purpose of a particular evaluation, and similar.
Both these potential motivations seem to be frequent with rape accusations. To the former, in particular, I note a recurring pattern in at least college accusations (an imperfect fit for the Cornell case, but illustrating the principle) of a boy and a girl being a couple, some event of a sexual and somehow unusual nature taking place, boy and girl continuing as a couple for months, some event of another nature taking place, and the girl suddenly raising accusations of rape concerning the first (!) event. (The varying nature of events make some vagueness necessary, but the first differs from other sexual events between the two in opening the doors for rape accusations by a suitable stretching of the truth, malicious interpretation, absurd college rules, or similar, while the second can be e.g. the boy breaking up with the girl or the boy cheating on her with some other girl.)
Such situations point to a strong need for a comparatively short “statute of limitations” from the point of the event to the first raising of an accusation and/or reporting of a crime to the police or some comparable entity. (Not to be confused with a potentially much longer time limit once the accusation has been raised and/or the crime reported. As for “comparable entity”, I do not attempt a listing for fear of leaving something legitimate out or including something that might be illegitimate on deeper consideration, but I do favor a narrow interpretation and would rule out e.g. a complaint directed solely towards a college contact point of some sort in lieu of the police.)
From another angle, there might be room for a “cannot have been that bad” consideration, even should an event in the first group technically qualify as rape: Punishment for rape, treatment of rapists, etc., tend to be very harsh because rape is viewed as such a severe event and personal tragedy for the victim, with punishments well beyond a non-sexual crime of an otherwise similar nature. (Even by the book. Outside the book, we have additional issues like a disproportionate damage to the private lives of the accused, even if innocent and even before conviction if guilty, and a recurring pushing of a “guilty until proven innocent” approach, cf. below.) If we, however, have a constellation like the boy and girl above, and if we assume that the first event technically was rape, the fact that the girl stayed with the boy indefinitely after the event indicates that the “severe event and personal tragedy” claims did not apply in the case at hand, and that the case should be viewed differently than if the boy, say, had raped a random and unwilling co-ed or, of course, if the girl actually had broken up with him and gone straight to the police to file rape charges.
More likely, however, no rape took place with the first event, be it legally or in the perception of either party, the later accusations instead aiming at vengeance for the second event.
In cases of what might technically be rape, note that the circumstances around the event might make the involved parties view the event very differently than would some other parties or the same parties under different circumstances. This, especially, in jurisdictions where the legal definition of rape has been extended or distorted to include much that defies traditional use and a common-sense understanding of the term. (Note e.g. [1], [2].) Indeed, I have encountered some few cases of a woman, years after the fact, “realizing” that she had actually been raped, e.g. after being “informed” about what rape is by some Feminist propagandist—cases that point strongly to the need to tread carefully and/or to apply a “cannot have been that bad” test for plausibility of rape as a classification (as opposed to the earlier use, aiming at severity).
To “cannot have been that bad” for severity, note that (a) it is the special treatment of rape in other regards that justifies the special treatment in this regard, (b) a more general principle of actual harm being incurred, and/or a consideration of a level of harm, is not unusual in legal situations, if of a somewhat different character, making this a generalization rather than an innovation. For instance, a house burglary does not become legal if the burglars eventually leave without actually taking anything (say, because a safe defeated them), but later levels of punishment and reasonable damages in a civil suit (should they be caught) can certainly depend on whether anything was stolen and how valuable the stolen item(s) were, whether the house was damaged by the burglary, and similar. (And while many who are burgled have reported psychological issues, sometimes severe such, in the wake of the burglary, special treatment on that count is far rarer than for rape, raising further questions around when what special treatment is justified.)
As a note to Feminist readers: I reject any accusation that such a test would e.g. “trivialize rape”. If someone has that genuine belief, she has likely not understood the idea; if she raises the accusation in bad faith, she has no right to be heard.
In a bigger picture, it might well be that something is not that bad (or even is good) because of a personal (not necessarily romantic) relationship. If so, a re-evaluation of this should only be done with very great care, should the relationship change at a later date. Examples are tricky, because what is or is not acceptable can vary very much based on the individuals at hand, the current state of the relationship, etc. (Contrast e.g. a romantic couple in the first week of dating with the same couple in the first week of marriage, or a parent–child relationship before and after the latter moves out.) However, a likely entirely clear example is a sleeping partner or a sleeping child being given a kiss on the forehead: If it is the other partner resp. a parent, very few would see it as a negative, very many as an outright positive, as a sign of affection. If it is a random stranger? Very different situation. A less clear example is borrowing a car without asking permission: Some romantic partners might see it as acceptable; others as unacceptable. However, unless the relationship is trivial, even those who see it as unacceptable are likely to be more forgiving, less inclined to see it as a crime (rather than as something rude), and much less inclined to press charges (as opposed to giving a “stern talking to”), than if the borrower was a complete stranger—and even if the stranger actually and ultimately returned the car. (And now imagine a man who is dumped and goes to the police with “Some months ago, my then-girlfriend took my car without asking. I want her prosecuted for grand theft auto!”.)
If a sexual encounter arises in conjuncture with considerable voluntary drug use by both parties, very great care must be taken with rape accusations. In particular, an argumentation in the extended family of “I only had sex because the drugs messed up my mind; ergo, I cannot be held accountable; ergo, I was raped” would work equally in both directions, and it then becomes impossible to say who raped whom or necessary to assume that both parties where raped at the same time and by each other. (Of course, many, especially among Feminists, view rape as something that only men can perform and/or only women fall victim too. This position is rationally, ethically, and legally untenable.) This, especially, in situations where sexual relations were likely a priori, and where a party that did take drugs should, by a “reasonable person” standard, have been aware that “if I take drugs now, there is a fair chance that I will end up having sex while under the influence” (with or without a rider of “and I might regret it in the morning”). Certainly, regardless of the prior likelihood of sex, anyone taking drugs must be aware that it can have effects like reducing one’s judgment, lowering one’s inhibitions, and generally risk “bad decisions”. Certainly, those who deliberately and voluntarily take specifically illegal drugs (including alcohol, if under age; including drugs that they believe should be legal) have gone out of their way to put themselves in a bad situation.
Note the very great difference to a situation where an un- or only slightly affected party surreptitiously drugs the other and then takes advantage of the situation.
Also note that such “bad decisions” are by no means limited to those of a sexual nature—and note how absurd most would consider it if someone got drunk, played poker with other drunks, lost a hundred dollars, and, the next day, raised accusations of theft (because “I would never had played poker unless I was drunk” or “had I not been drunk, I would not have lost”) or demanded his money back. (The different takes fit well in a larger pattern of female and/or Feminist attempts to remove female accountability for own actions, often in general, very often where sex is concerned. Note that larger decisions can still be relevant, e.g. in that a house purchase or a Las Vegas wedding might be annulled over drunkenness even when reasonable poker losses resp. consenting to sex might not—and the actual act of having sex is not open to annulment at all.)
To expand on the illegality of drugs: The likelihood that someone e.g. finds a gram of cocaine lying in the street, like a lost penny, and decides to sniff some out of curiosity is low. For the better part, he has gone out of his way to procure it, at cost, in the knowledge of its illegality, and most often as a repeat user. Scenarios like someone being offered to sniff a line of someone else’s cocaine (going by fiction) do happen, but give the former an additional warning sign on top of what the sniffing as such might imply, as it is clear that the latter has an involvement with illegal drugs. (Indeed, even the offer would likely be a crime in many or most jurisdictions.)
Some further differentiation might be needed depending on whether taking drugs introduced the possibility of sex or whether the alternative was “if I do not take drugs now, there is a fair chance that I will end up having sex while not under the influence”. The above arguments apply even in the first case, but attempts to avoid own accountability are even harder to justify in the second, as it is not longer a question of drug use causing sex but of drug use, more incidentally, in parallel with sex.
Such cases certainly include drug use by two parties who are in a relationship and/or have repeatedly had sex with each other in the past. However, they also certainly include the stereotypical fraternity party, in light of the reputation that such parties have. I leave unstated whether stereotype and reputation match the truth, but it is the natural perception that matters, and this allows a segue to the next item.
Many college administrators and/or Feminists seem to have a rabid hatred of fraternities and there is a fair chance that situations around fraternities are played up considerably relative an equivalent situation not involving fraternities. This the more so, if we look at poor journalism, as with several notable (non-)cases, where a fraternity was taken to the slaughterhouse over something that simply did not happen. It can also not be ruled out that someone reasons that an accusation against a fraternity will be more likely to be believed by others and, therefore, is more likely to raise a false accusation and/or to target specifically a fraternity with it.
I originally cited the Duke Lacrosse case as an example of both “simply did not happen” and “to target specifically a fraternity”—in fact, the paragraph was mostly written with that case in mind. As occurred to me during proof-reading, that case involved a lacrosse (duh) team, not a fraternity. The statements still hold (and chances are that the Duke Lacrosse case involved a similar mechanism), but I lack an immediate example of the same magnitude actually involving a fraternity.
While the point of and justification for fraternities as depicted in e.g. fiction (I have had no in-person contacts) can be disputed, the sometime attempts at eliminating fraternities seem deeply flawed and incompatible with freedom of organization. Fraternities should, of course, be kept to legal activities and a college might well be justified in intervening against e.g. parties that are so loud that they disturb the neighbors of a “frat house”, but restrictions that go beyond this are very hard to justify. (However, there is also no particularly reason why a college should encourage fraternities.)
While it is unclear what the eventual finding in the Cornell case will be, widely publicized cases of alleged rape have a long history of eventually turning out to be fake. (Note e.g. the Duke Lacrosse case; “mattress girl”; the Anna Ardin vs. Julian Assange situation, cf. [3] and others; and the Kachelmann case, the maybe single most prominent case of rape accusation in Germany.)
Unfortunately, however, the false accusations are often publicized much more widely and strongly than their later refutation, giving the public an impression that is in stark opposition to the truth. Looking at the victims of the accusations, they might go through months of hell before they are acquitted and still have a credibility issue after they are acquitted, e.g. because even objective persons can have a shimmer of doubt in their minds and such a shimmer of a doubt can make the difference in e.g. the choice between two employment candidates. Worse, there are many staunch Feminists and whatnot who push a line of “A woman would NEVER lie about rape!!!” and might, then, refuse to believe even the acquitted to be innocent. In some situations, as with employment, there might even be some who reject a candidate in the fear that others will react negatively to his presence, e.g. among co-workers or customers.
Such a shimmer of doubt (much unlike the “A woman would NEVER lie about rape!!!” attitude) is natural and, to some degree, good, because the truth always has some uncertainty. However, for the majority of the acquitted who actually are innocent, it can be both a problem and a further injustice.
Claims like “A woman would NEVER lie about rape!!!” and slogans like “Believe women!!!” are extremely problematic, and their users disqualify themselves from being taken seriously. The truth, in great contrast to Feminist propaganda, is that rape is one of the crimes with the highest rate of false accusations, be it because the alleged rape was outright invented or because a rape took place but the wrong man fingered. (Cf. e.g [4] and portions of the Kachelmann text.)
On the contrary to these claims, it is then the more important that we tread particularly carefully where rape is concerned; that we adhere strictly to “innocent until proven guilty” (not the “guilty until proven innocent”, let alone “guilty—period”, that typically goes hand in hand with the Feminist takes); and that we believe the evidence, wherever it might point, not “women”.
More generally, no one whose sole or main argument is nothing but a slogan should be taken seriously. If there are factual arguments, use those instead of the slogan; if there are not, the slogan has no justification. Indeed, paradoxically, the users of the slogan often seem to have an “understanding” limited to the slogan and the most simplistic pseudo-arguments around it, in that they heard the slogan, uncritically and without looking at arguments believed the slogan, and now, themselves, repeat the slogan to others. With tomorrow’s anniversary of October 7, the obnoxious calls of “from the river to the sea” are worthy of mention—according to reports, very many of its invokers cannot even name the river (the Jordan) and the sea (the Mediterranean), indicating their grave ignorance about the matters at hand. (And this ignorance tends to be borne out by other statements, in as far as they follow, often reaching down to outright anti-Semitism and very often merely regurgitating unsubstantiated claims and talking points of Hamas.)
An interesting potential problem is that a single well published rape accusation that does pan out might do far more to influence public perceptions around rape and credibility than one that does not pan out.
There are often reasons to suspect a political motivation beyond what follows from the above, be it with regard to rape or other alleged crimes. (Not necessarily by the accuser, although this might have been the case with e.g. “mattress girl”, but more by Leftist journalists, prosecutors, and whatnot.) In the Cornell case, notably, Letitia James has been handed investigative responsibility, despite (or, likely, because of) her known track record of politically motivated per-/prosecutions (notably, against Trump), her partisanship, and other unsuitability to handle the case at hand—and unsuitability to be an attorney general at all. (And, on top of her partisanship, etc., I am far from convinced that she has the right competence level to be entrusted even cases with no political or other partisan angle.)
The Cornell case also appears to have had prior hearings and proceedings of various types by Cornell, with a partially different outcome than the original (soon terminated) legal ones. While I have not looked into these, such proceedings elsewhere have often had elements of kangaroo courts, lacked due process, suppressed evidence to the disadvantage of the accused, denied the accused legal representation, applied “guilty until proven innocent”, or otherwise been out of line. To boot, they introduce a very considerable element of double jeopardy. A saner system would require colleges to accept the outcomes in the real justice system and to act within the limits of these outcomes.
The issue of education and Leftism has many aspects, some of which I have addressed in the past, some that I have not. (And, likely, some that I have missed in my own thought.) A very interesting unaddressed one has some overlap with the previous entry:
To what degree can early indoctrination alter who moves into what fields and/or for what reason someone moves into a certain field? In a second step, how does that affect the development of the field?
Consider Economics and say that someone is motivated to enter this field because he finds it interesting; because he wants to gain a better understanding of the economy; because he wants to help with investigating the mechanisms involved, what governmental policies can have what positive and negative effects; and similar. Such a someone has a broadly scientific mindset and is likely (assuming a sufficient ability and assuming that others do not sabotage him, cf. below) to be a contributor to the field and ultimately make the world a little bit better. Now, say that someone else is motivated by a wish to “eradicate poverty”, “create social justice”, or similar. Such an ideologically motivated mindset is inherently un- or, very often, anti-scientific, and he is correspondingly unlikely to contribute much to the development of the science. To boot, chances are that his understanding of the field will be flawed because his interpretations of history, observable developments, the arguments of others, etc., will be too clouded by his ideology. Worse, as with many of those driven by ideology (and as we can indeed see in e.g. modern academia) he might well treat those who do not agree with his takes as enemies, to be driven out of the field, to be shouted down, to be refused promotions and tenure, whatnot—often hitting exactly those with a scientific mindset.
A few remarks:
The issue of a scientific mindset is tricky, and the above is a great over-simplification. Other texts, e.g [1], have dealt with this to a somewhat higher degree.
Ditto, ideology: Ideology (and issues like preconceptions and biases) influences everyone to some degree. The idea above is not that the one would be immune to such influence and the other not, but that they would be influenced to different or very different degrees. Further, non-Leftist ideological motivation is certainly possible, but likely to be rarer, because there are few natural ideological goals outside the Left that are not reasonably compatible with a scientific mindset (at least, off the top of my head). Contrary to what some Leftist fanatic might claim, exceptionally few would e.g. have an ideological motivation to “create social injustice”, but might have one in the “make the world better through creating more growth” family. Likewise, a belief in free markets might or might not originally be driven by an ideological conviction, say, that we should all have the right to do what we like with our own property, but both theoretical considerations and, very important, practical experiences show that free markets is the best known system to achieve e.g. more growth. (Not equality of outcome, of course, for which “social justice” is often a code word, but to prefer that everyone has the same, even at the cost of everyone having less, is hardly a reasonable position—yet this is a position that many on the Left, notably in Sweden, have and to what stopping growth in order to prevent differences in outcome amounts.) In reverse, there are many who have seen the evidence favoring free markets and become believers in free markets in that manner, rather than through a prior ideological conviction. Even absent such an asymmetry, a non-Leftist ideological motivation would be less likely today, for the simple reason that the Leftist dominance has reached a critical mass that has a deterring and/or oppressive effect on non-Leftists.
Chances are that such differences in mindset also correlate with intelligence, implying that a shift from the former to the latter could reduce the competence levels in the field, in addition to the problems caused by an ideological influence.
The aforementioned goals are often impossible to achieve, require methods that do more harm than good once taken beyond some point, are negative in character, or are otherwise harmful. Cf. e.g. [2] and, more speculatively, [3].
However, a prevalence of agenda-pushing Leftist teachers, who write ideas like “eradicate poverty” and “create social justice” large, is likely to cause exactly a shift towards the latter type.
The same applies to many other fields, including teaching, it self, journalism, and law. Is someone a teacher because she (good) wants to help children learn, (neutral) likes to work with children, or (negative) wants to turn them into next-generation Leftists? Is someone a journalist to inform or to indoctrinate the people? A lawyer to earn money, keep a functioning justice system, or protect the little guy against the big guy?
Where the motivations for being a lawyer, unlike a teacher, are not ordered by nobility or, necessarily, likelihood of contributing. The last category, however, is the one most likely to result in abuse, and the more so if a lawyer eventually becomes a judge. (And note how a wish for money can keep someone in private practice or corporate law rather than on the bench.) Notably, if a bit off topic, I have often seen cases of Leftists (and sometimes non-Leftists) jumping to the conclusion that the little guy (big guy) is in the right (wrong) for no better reason than that he is the little guy (big guy), which can then result in utterly perverted legal takes.
Likewise, chances are that someone ideologically driven is more likely to engage in judicial activism than to respect the separation of powers—unless, of course, that ideology involves doing the job correctly even in the face of personal temptation. (The judicial branch should interpret laws and leave their making to the legislative branch. Someone like Clarence Thomas might exemplify an ideology or quasi-ideology with a strong focus on doing his job, while Ketanji Brown Jackson is the antithesis of this.)
There are, of course, cases where a similar mindset can be beneficial, or where this can vary depending on details of approach. For instance, a lawyer who works pro bono and/or as a public defender, to help those who might lose their legal rights through a lack of the money to hire a legal representative, is a very different beast from one who bends the law to fit his own wishes, even should the two ultimately wish to benefit the same group(s). A physician who sets about healing and helping patients can hardly be criticized, and the opportunities to push a Leftist agenda are far smaller than for the aforementioned professions. (However, a youngster with a big goal, like curing a particular disease rather than a number of patients, might be better off taking another road than that of a physician. Notably, creating new medicines is more often a job for chemists than physicians. A legal scholar might have a bigger effect on law, as a field, than a practising lawyer does. Etc.)
To next consider the infamous “long march through the institutions” (I will use “march” below): Such examples are a good illustration of how the effects of this march can be achieved without postulating a deliberate and coordinated effort, e.g through some big far-Left conspiracy, and why the role of teacher is so critical in hindering or furthering this menace. This is particularly interesting in light of the oft repeated claims by various Leftists that the march is a myth, a conspiracy theory, or similar—the march is very, very real, even should it be in a far less coordinated and deliberated form than in its original conception, and the Leftists claims about myths and whatnot the more misleading.
To what degree there is an actual coordinated effort, conspiracy, whatnot, I leave unstated. I do note, however: (a) The defining characteristic of a conspiracy theory is that it involves a conspiracy—not that it is wrong. (b) The march qua Leftist idea is very well documented and by no means an invention by the opponents of the Left.
Throwing a wider net, there is a considerable chance that various comparatively lightweight, yet highly popular, degrees have been developed for overlapping reasons, as with e.g. the non-Ph.D. doctorates in education and criminal justice, which can serve purposes like funnelling Leftists into nominally high-level degrees and to indoctrinate the non-Leftists who chance to enter the programs over several years, to increase the chances that Leftists take on positions of influence (e.g. as school principals), to create a misleading impression of the qualification levels of various Leftists, and similar.
Note that these degree are often geared not at expertise in a field but at “leadership” in a field, e.g. as a school administrator (not as a particularly well qualified school teacher or expert on pedagogy).
A further complicating factor is the U.S. M.D. and J.D. degrees, which have arisen separately and earlier, but to some degree share similar problems and are “doctorates in name only”—not just lightweight doctorates. Virtually the same degrees used to be awarded as bachelors even in the U.S., are still so in many other countries, and degrees with the same or equivalent names but a higher academic level are present elsewhere.
Some previous writings have dealt with topics like “peaceful protests” (cf. e.g. [1]) and destructive unions (cf. e.g. [2]). Some similar issues are brought to mind, as are some issues around education, by the recent French school protests. Consider a few points, in part quoting from a recent reporte (quotes with the usual reservations about formatting, etc.):
(2026-10-07)
While I will likely (judging by the current situation) not add further entries on this topic, some remarks based on reporting since the original entry:
Firstly, the situation has gone further out of hand in the few days since the entry was written, and stands a risk of severe further worsening. One source mentioned that protesters had been encouraged to bring knives.
Secondly, there are strong further signs of agenda pushing and organization of a Leftist character.
Thirdly, some sources see the issue as more of an immigrant and/or Muslim problem than a dissatisfied student problem. (This is particularly interesting with an eye at my original remarks on “French protest mentality”, and the fact that the current protests/riots/whatnot seem to differ in both quantity and quality.)
Fourthly, it now appears that anti-Semitic groups are trying to aid and/or high-jack the protests—something the more distasteful considering the timing relative the anniversary of October 7 (i.e. today).
(Because I did not intend further entries, I have not kept references, and I do caution that I make no guarantees about the correctness of reporting, especially, as I go by English and German sources, without having investigated French sources.)
When I first encountered the French protest mentality (Swedish news in the 1980s), I saw it as nothing but childish and destructive, something like a union mentality taken a step further, or as something that I might much later have grouped together with the Leftist approach of forgoing factual arguments and reasoning in favor of loud shouting and publicity stunts. So it remained well into the new millennium.
In due time, however, I grew too tired of the typical German mentality of just passively bending over and letting the government fuck the people over, and now see a partial justification in it, and/or see it as a lesser evil than the German mentality.
With many individuals going further in their bending over and automatically seeing anyone with even a fractional justification for being an authority wielder as someone to be unconditionally obeyed, even when the person at hand should reasonably be viewed more as a servant than as a supervisor, e.g. a member of hotel staff in the hotel of employment—and, worse, many such pseudo-authorities adopt a similar attitude that they should be unquestioningly obeyed, e.g. on a “I work here and you are a mere customer; ergo, I have right to order you around” basis.
(Where I go with “servant” partly to match a below point about civil servants, partly to emphasize the distinction, which is all to easily lost with a phrasing like “service sector worker”, but with no implication that the person at hand should bow and scrape.)
Yes, there are a great many German protests, but they are most often either targeting some non-governmental seen-as-an-enemy-by-the-German-Left (e.g. global warming, “evil capitalists”, anything “Rightwing”, AfD, or, even, Donald Trump) or pushing some Leftist pet cause. In as far as these groups protest against the government, it is either because the government does not “do enough” against such an enemy or for such a pet cause, or because the government tries to move away from Leftist policies to an even slight degree. This while persistent and long-term failures go without protests, as with a malfunctioning and crippling “welfare” state, hampering of economic growth, artificially inflated energy prices, massive government bureaucracy, limitations on free speech, failures of law enforcement, etc., etc.
A great deal of harm has been done to Germany through this mentality and it has allowed the detachment of the politicians as a ruling class to take place that much faster than in many other countries, leading to a solid and complementary “We the Politicians” attitude. Ditto, m.m., civil servants. (While the English point does not translate into German, note that the name is “civil servant”—not “civil supervisor”. Also note the etymology of “minister”.)
To some degree, it would be welcome if the German’s (the German non-Left, in particular) adopted a more French attitude towards the government.
This, of course, hinges on the protests actually being directed at the government, as they were in my early encounters of French cases. More generally, that a protest is directed where it belongs, which, as with very many Leftist cases, is far from a given. (For instance, if some Leftists are dissatisfied with government policy, they should take their megaphones, drums, and whatnot, and make a scene in front of the parliamentary building where the politicians are disturbed—not on a public street where innocent citizens fall victim and the politicians, safe in that far away parliamentary building, are unaffected.)
After so long a time, I do not remember the details of these 1980s encounters, but one case might have involved dissatisfied fishermen dumping a truckload of fish exactly in front of the parliamentary building.
In the current student protests, however, we have claims like:
Violent student unrest intensified across France on Friday as riot police clashed with teenagers in several cities, roughly 400 high schools remained shuttered and authorities said some 2,000 people had been arrested since the protests began — while the government increasingly blamed the country’s hard left.
Tear gas filled streets in Strasbourg, protesters fired fireworks toward police lines in Marseille, and garbage bins were set ablaze in Rennes, while clashes also broke out in Paris, Reuters reported Friday. The latest violence marks a sharp escalation from the unrestt reported by Fox News Digital Thursday, when hundreds had been arrested as school blockades and clashes spread across the country.
Here we see exactly the type of misdirected protests that are so common with the modern Left. Indeed, they are likely, in part, better described as “riots” than “protests”, and likely riots directed, in part, at “civilian” targets. (Use of words like “likely” because I have not investigated the details, but remember the many cases of U.S. allegedly “mostly peaceful” protests that often consisted of riots, and often degenerated beyond that point and into outright looting of stores.)
The issue of school blockades is particular telling, applying the type of evil union tactics that do not just imply a refusal to work (or, here, go to school) but a deliberate, inexcusable, and grossly unethical, attempt to prevent others from doing so. Cf. [1] and [2], and note my own experiences with the same type of methods (if with less violence) during my exchange studies in Germany in the late 1990s.
Among the damages we have:
Euronews reported Friday that at least 65 school staff members, including 40 principals, have been injured since the unrest began, along with roughly 170 students. More than 100 high schools have suffered what Geffray described as “severe damage.”
As this is a point where many Leftists might take off with some narrative of vicious far-Right policemen battering poor innocent students half to death for holding a “peaceful protest”:
Who injured the students is not clear from the text, nor how badly, but it would be naive to assume that the non-protesting students would be immune to physical violence from the protesters or, as case may have it, rioters. Ditto, in reverse, that the students were necessarily injured by law enforcement. Of course, to the degree that they were injured by law enforcement, we must not forget to ask “Why?” and “Under what circumstances?”.
(In greater detail, other questions can be important, e.g. what injuries might have been entirely accidental, who injured the principals, notwithstanding that protesters are far more likely than law enforcers, and whether the odd proportions of “school staff members” to principals can have some particular implication.)
To be contrasted with:
The protests began over complaints about overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, long school days and deteriorating facilities. Students have blamed years of underinvestment for conditions inside schools, as the government unveiled its draft 2027 budget Thursday. Under the proposal, education spending would rise 1.7% to 65.53 billion euros, excluding teacher pensions — an increase below the rate of inflation, according to Reuters.
Now, how is violence against school staff going to help with teacher shortages? How is damaging school buildings going to help with deteriorating facilities? (The more so, if janitors are among the aforementioned school staff.) How is targeting schools and/or school staff compatible with dissatisfaction with government policy? For that matter, how much of the tax payers money will be used up by e.g. the need to involve the police at a large scale, and will now not be available for purposes like paying teachers and performing renovations?
In a bigger picture, the implied wished for solutions, like more money for schools, the hiring of more teachers, renovations of school buildings, etc. utterly miss the point. (While the complaint against long school days might have more value: As with money below, throwing more time at school has a long history of failure, and much of school amounts to pointless, ineffective, and/or inefficient over-education of unwilling students, even as is.)
Firstly, throwing more money at schools has a long history of failure, as can be seen so well in many U.S. cases and various Western PISA failures. For instance, I recently read an article (but did not keep a link) about a New York (?) school that spent 39 (!) thousand (!) dollars per student (!) per year (!) and still failed to provide an adequate education. For France, [3]e gives a 2024 cost per student and year of EUR 13,020 for “General / Technological Lycée” (which I take to be the most relevant category for the protests), which, in any reasonable implementation, should be more than enough. (And note that the French figure is larger relative the New York than pure numbers might make it appear, because of factors like local cost of living and purchasing power, and because the euro is slightly more valuable than the dollar.)
Both numbers exemplify something that I have said repeatedly about galloping U.S. college costs: It would be cheaper and better for a small group of students to pool their money and just hire a dedicated professor full time. (Changing professors if and when a sufficient difference in subject matter call for it.) Unfortunately, this is not an option even on paper when the costs are paid by tax-payers instead of students.
Secondly, it is based on fundamentally flawed and grossly outdated ideas of education, where schools and teachers are the source of knowledge and students are unable to learn on their own. Even options like home schooling and (cf. above side-note) the hiring of more private tutors aside, a high-school student should have a sufficient ability to learn from books (and/or other written sources) and own thinking. If he does not, this shows a failure of previous stages of education and/or inherent limits of the student at hand that make any non-trivial education pointless. To the latter note that any and all true education must come through own thinking. A teacher or a book can provide the material to (metaphorically and figuratively) digest, and to some degree “pre-chew” it, but the digestion is the job of the student and the student who does not digest the subject matter, say, in favor of blindly memorizing and regurgitating facts, has not gained an education. Such book–thought–student education does not in the slightest require the absurd figures per student and year mentioned above.
Generally, education should always be thought of as education first and schooling, if at all, only second. The cardinal error made by so many politicians, alleged educators, and, from first appearances, the current protesters, is to reverse this entirely—schooling first, education second or not at all.
Now, a (non-violent and/or government targeting) protest geared at fundamentally over-hauling the education system, especially, with an eye at education over schooling—that might be both valid and valuable.
It appears that the protests also follow a disturbing modern pattern:
But as the protests have grown more violent, the unrest has also become a major political fight.
French intelligence agencies told a government crisis meeting Thursday that the protest movement had been initiated by politicians from the hard-left France Unbowed Party, known as LFI, Reuters reported Friday.
[Considerably more on this is present in the original text. My own quoting is limited for reasons of “fair use” and to keep the length of my own text down.]
Protests are evermore organized and pushed by the Left or far Left, often while attempting to give a more “general interest” impression, and often (I speculate) for reasons that are not limited to the immediately relevant and ostensible (here, to improve schooling) purpose but go far beyond it.
What these reasons are, is hard to say in a blanket manner, but they are in the broad family of pushing society evermore Leftwards. In the case of many youth-targeting actions, like the current French protests, like “action civics”, like the ridiculously misnamed “Fridays for the Future”, a specific sub-reason is almost certainly to indoctrinate the innocent into far Leftism and turning them into activists and unthinking tools for the Left before they have a chance to grow into independent thinkers.
A particular point of interest around the use of students (including college students) for protests is that they are not just easily influenced but do not lose money from protesting during “working hours” in the way that their parents would. In fact, many might outright view protests as an excuse not to go school and participate for that reason, even when they are not “true believers”—indeed, I have seen some reports around U.S. schools and, of course, the “Fridays for the Future” nonsense, of schools or individual teachers actively encouraging participation, while “action civics” has the idea built in. (In the specific case at hand, the excuse does become paradoxical.)
The following is an automatically generated list of other pages linking to this one. These may or may not contain further content relevant to this topic.
Home
2026 Various and sundry (2)
Various and sundry
Politics
Sitemap