From: Chris Russo (extropy@russo.org)
Date: Wed Feb 07 2001 - 07:09:46 MST
At 10:31 +0000 2/7/01, Charlie Stross wrote:
>For what? This implies there's something seriously fucked with your
>legal system. About the worst damage that can be done by a cream
>pie is the cost of a new set of clothing, plus a public apology for
>the indignity.
The fines should really hurt, and if the group has a lot of money, I
guess it takes a large fine to make them hurt. The same legal
principle is applied against big businesses all the time. There's no
excuse in our society to let pie terrorist groups perpetuate assaults
upon people whom they don't like.
>I *do* approve.
Oh, so you're now defining the level of assault that's okay? I think
that maybe after they catch some of these pie throwers that it's okay
for the body guards to take the jackass to some back room and beat
him to a bloody pulp. Yay, isn't dispensing assault fun?
>The application of the cream pie is a _symbolic_ assassination, not a real
>one, and as such it can be seen as a way of defusing socially dangerous
>tensions (and notifying the recipient that some people disapprove of
>them most strongly) in a non-dangerous manner.
Defusing? Utter nonsense. Open discourse and reasoned behavior are
ways of defusing "socially dangerous tensions" (however you define
that for pieing Bill Gates in an airport (wasn't it in an airport?)).
Throwing a pie is no better than slapping a person. How can you
construe such actions of attack as "defusing"? They're clearly
intended to strike out physically, which only leads to escalations -
and with a pie, there's the added insult of having a damned pie
hanging off your face.
>Replacing real assassinations with symbolic ones is, if you ask me,
>a big improvement: the victim and the onlookers get the message, but
>nobody gets hurt. If every homicidal loon on the planet put down
>their guns and bombs and picked up a pie dish full of shaving cream,
>the world would be a much safer, not to say stickier (and arguably
>funnier), place.
Sure, if every homicidal loon substituted pies for their weapons, I'd
be with you. That would represent a reversing trend of violence in
the world. However, the little groups doing these pieings weren't
assassins anyway. They were just doing standard protest stuff
before, but now you're saying it's okay for them to attack people
physically in order for them to express their viewpoint.
I'm telling you: the loons are keeping their guns.
Regards,
Chris Russo
--
"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought
or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet
hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance
which does harm."
-- Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, VI, 21
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