What do you do if you are accused of sexual misconduct and believe yourself to be innocent?That's quite a "team" you belong to, chief. The NYT hunted him down for an interview.
If you’re Brett Kavanaugh, you go nuclear. But if you’re a progressive man who sees himself as a feminist ally, the politically acceptable strategy is to keep quiet and lay low. If you do anything at all, put out a statement saying you support the #MeToo movement, that it’s an overdue and necessary corrective, and that you are taking some time for self-reflection. Spend some months ordering takeout and avoiding parties where everyone is whispering about what they think you did....
Of the dozens of men accused of sexual misconduct this year, many proclaim their innocence. But Mr. Elliott is the first from the list who is known to have sued. Some apologized. Some denied and carried on. Others were subject to internal investigations and kept their jobs. Some were fired. A few recently wrote widely panned articles about how the accusations ruined their lives. (Mr. Elliott checked this box with an essay in Quillette last month.)
Five of the men on the Media Men list on Thursday spoke to The Cut on the condition of anonymity to condemn Mr. Elliott’s lawsuit. What’s fascinating is that even as they expressed anger toward Mr. Elliott, most insisted that they, too, are not guilty of what they are accused of. But the collective sense is that Mr. Elliott should do what they’re doing: “taking one for the team,” as one of them put it.
When I interviewed him this week, he seemed energetic. He’s moved from Los Angeles to New Orleans. He’s sober.Yeah, well, I hate to break it to you but it's the right that is likely to ask for evidence before they convict you. If you're guilty -- if, say like Al Franken, there's photographs showing you doing what you are accused of doing -- the right will happily burn you for this stuff. But they will want to see some evidence before they do.
“I really feel like I’m happy for the first time since this started,” he said. “I have a politics. I know who my friends are.”
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What are those politics? “I still think of myself as a liberal,” he said. “But the left moved away from liberalism and I hadn’t realized that yet. If you are a liberal, by definition, you believe that it’s better to let a certain amount of guilty people go free than to jail one innocent man. That’s almost the definition of liberalism. These people on the left aren’t liberals at all, actually. What I’ve come to realize is how close they are to the people on the right.”
The NYT has been a reliably bad guide during this moment. They recently published a piece by someone describing herself as a philosopher who calls this a clash of "epistemic" worlds. In one world, accusers are believed; in the other world, she asserts, the desire is to maintain structures of power.
That isn't what epistemology is about. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, including theories about what constitutes knowledge. The Aristotelian conception of knowledge, which has been the standard for most of Western civilization's history,* is that knowledge is "justified true belief." When we hear people saying that they "believe the women," (or "believe survivors," when whether or not they survived anything is sometimes just what is needing to be proven), we should hear people proclaiming that they are ready to proceed to punishment without the bother of first obtaining knowledge that there was a crime. Belief is only one of the three conditions for knowledge. It is proper to ask also after truth and justification.
By all means we should take plausible claims seriously. That said, it isn't sound to ask people to 'take one for the team' when they are innocent. This really isn't about 'knowing who your friends are,' it's about knowing per se. Whatever you believe, ask about how that belief is justified and whether or not it is justified in the right way. Care about whether or not your beliefs are true. This is basic stuff, and as always, it's when you go wrong about the basics that you go really wrong.
* The 20th century brought some doubt on whether the JTB standard was complete. A few, including Timothy Williamson, have proposed abandoning it for alternative approaches. See the link for a full discussion.
4 comments:
In what way did Brett Kavanaugh "go nuclear?" It is a mark of narcissism to think that any criticism or pushback is an assault.
Take one for the team. I think as Christians we might take one for the team, the "team" being the Body of Christ, or even the reputation of the Body of Christ to the outside world. If I were accused by a woman in my church I would be unlikely to respond legally right off the bat. Circumstances might vary widely, and my possible responses vary with them. I can see going to law. I can see taking no action. It depends.
Downstream effects are always part of the decision. Criminals tend to keep doing what they get away with, and this applies to both sexual assault and false report. If we let someone go without consequence, are we not endangering someone else down the line, whether that is a woman who might be assaulted or a man who might be accused?
Sign up for Frank Bruni? No. NO!
Heh. No, don’t subject yourself to that.
Criminals tend to keep doing what they get away with....
Indeed. "Go where the money is. Go there often."
If we let someone go without consequence, are we not endangering someone else down the line....
It's not just assault on women--or on men for the crime of being innocent of the woman's accusation. It's the stuff of kidnapping and of aiding and abetting the kidnappers by rewarding them with ransom. It's the stuff of any unanswered behavior, especially bad behavior.
This is the great danger of the Left and of its Progressive-Democratic Party: What do you do if you are accused of sexual misconduct and believe yourself to be innocent?
You're not innocent if you've been accused by one of the Left. Their Truth fits entirely within the JTB standard. It's Justified because they ascribe to it, it's True because they say it is, it's their Belief. Josef K was assaulted by a Progressive-Democrat.
Eric Hines
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