Perpetually Oblivious, Passionately Living

Lurker exclusive. Im not stuck with Tumblr, Tumblr is stuck with me. Forever.

[thelawfulchaotic]

hi!! sorry if you've been asked this question before, but as someone who wants to be a lawyer, how do you deal with defending people that morally you really don't agree with? thanks!

I get a lot of versions of this question, and I answer it seriously every time, because it’s both important and not important at all. Anyone who asks respectfully gets my whole ass answer.

It’s just not really about that. My job isn’t about defending the idea of hurting someone else. It’s about stopping the state from inflicting further hurt, torture, pain. It’s about pushing back for some fairness against a monumentally stacked system. And it’s about stuff that’s normal human stuff that counts as crime for some reason.

Yeah, it’s hard to do a sex abuse case. Sometimes the images stick around and it bothers me. But honestly? Mostly those cases have real plausible theories of innocence or they’re cases that I will lose because the evidence is there, and the question is not whether the perpetrator will go to jail but how long.

Those cases are so rare, though. I get so much pointless bullshit. Felony of a teen taking mom’s car without permission. Two kids that try to break into a car and get so scared by the alarm that they run away. Trespassing on dad’s house because his new girlfriend wants you to stop coming around. It’s just human stuff, and the violence of the state is not necessary or helpful.

I also reject the idea of punishment completely. The state has a responsibility to stop people from hurting other people again. But inflicting pain doesn’t do it, we know this by now. So I argue for mercy and for real solutions to real problems. I’m here to build a future, not get caught up with doing violence to someone because of the past.

So yeah, sometimes it’s hard, but mostly my conscience is dead clear: I’m not responsible for the crime. The damage has been done. I want to start the healing process, and I want it for everyone involved. When that’s not possible, I just want to tell the authorities they don’t get to just Do What They Want.

The more I do this job, the more I am a genuine pacifist who is against violence in all forms, and actually I don’t see a contradiction between that and what I do for a living. State violence is a pervasive evil that tears apart families, communities, and countries, and it’s far more damaging and awful than any individual crime. The average prosecutor has more blood on their hands than a serial killer, but it’s invisible: people who died in jail, who froze to death on the street, who were shot in a drug deal. Their violence begets violence.

When I get blood on my hands, it’s because I put my hands over the wounds and try to stop the flow. I’m okay with it.

Also: people don’t ask doctors how they can stand to treat bad people. Why ask me?

[bemusedlybespectacled]

#i find people have such an inherent misunderstanding of the roles of defense attorneys (understandably but still)#in that most people i talk to seem to be envisioning me personally defending the right of people to commit crimes or that like. Crime Is#Good Actually#‘yeah this person did X but they should never face any consequences ever please and thank you judge’#(and people think this would WORK??? a different tangent on a lack of legal education and cop shows being awful etc)#meanwhile i am simply protecting people’s rights. yes even those people’s#idk i could write my own post but op Gets It and also a prosecutor just filed the DUMBEST motion ive ever seen and i need to respond to that#instead lmao (via @anixit26)

The number of people who respond to my post about how even the guiltiest person in the world deserves rights with "but not [crime I think makes you undeserving of rights]!" is truly insane. People really truly think that being accused of a crime makes you irredeemably evil and protecting the rights of those accused means you are also evil.

[othert]

The “criminal justice reform” movement is in danger. Efforts to change the punishment bureaucracy are at risk of being co-opted

[catchymemes]

[teaboot]

"she thinks this is bonding behavior" my friend this has BECOME your bonding behaviour

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

I just love the super realistic historical shows where they show how filthy and disease ridden the era is by having every nameless peasant look like they rolled in mud right before filming while every noble has three layers of painstaking makeup on to create the illusion that they’re just naturally flawless. Sure we know what it was really like, but clearly only the filthy poors ever had to deal with that kind of thing while the elites of society have always been pictures of beauty and health. No one ever used urine in beauty treatments or got the pox or had a particularly unflattering jaw from years of inbreeding cause everyone would rather fuck their cousins than anyone even slightly below their “station”. Because hey, being realistic is great, praise us for our gritty realism in showing how disgusting the poor are- I mean were, but it’s just too much to ask our viewers to consider them actual people. That’s why we focus on nobles, who definitely all fit into modern beauty standards at all times and in all places.

[integritea]

Meanwhile LOTR allows everyone who has been wandering around in the wild for weeks or months to look like it.

[sailermoon]

having unwashed hair will have you believing shit like i can’t be saved

[toskarinfr]

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

starting a compilation

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

[stuckinapril]

when James Baldwin said I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive

[stuckinapril]

when James Baldwin said to be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Me, passing a car covered in horny thirst-trap anime girl stickers: while I personally find this to be cringe, given the national push for censorship, I must concede that this is technically Praxis.

[longsightmyth]

I bring a real 'actually people who are pregnant do deserve some special consideration because they are effectively at least temporarily disabled if not permanently after some complications' vibe to the party that a lot of people don't seem to like

[puppygirllaika]

at some point in your life you are going to do or say something racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted. Your goal is not perfection, your goal is to be the kind of person that the people you've hurt feel safe being honest with when that happens.

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[tieflingkisser]

[lesbianslimefriend]

here's where to find it on windows 10

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[salamandorange]

The most PATHETIC lil baby sounds...

[whitebear-ofthe-watertribe]

I love when little creatures who are entirely loved and well cared for have the BIGGEST baby reactions to normal things. Like yes sweet pea, you DO have the hardest life of anyone ever, for sure, and you’re SO BRAVE about this minor inconvenience of *checks notes* having some water touch you

[cephalon-sancti]

There is nothing sadder and more pathetic than a baby marine mammal having to get into the water. They are suffering the most out of any baby animal ever. How dare they be introduced to their natural environment.

[nullpointr]

this pride month remember to love and appreciate aromanticism, aromantic people, aromantic love, aromantic relationships. this pride month get more aromantic

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[rvllybllply2014]

I need to know his obsession with taking things and making the exact same thing out of the first thing