Media Bias

To prove we're better than Rush, we'll shit on him in death. Definitely no irony there. But I'm glad so many of you are out there living that perfect life. Please shoot me some pointers.

To prove we're better than Rush, we'll shit on him in death. Definitely no irony there. But I'm glad so many of you are out there living that perfect life. Please shoot me some pointers.

I'm gonna steal this analogy from Reddit because the latter's rebuttal kinda sums up my position better than I can.


I'm a psychotherapist and have been one for 31 years and a lot of my career was spent in the prison system.

I worked with a serial killer in PA and he was one of the last people to be executed in that state. I didn't really do much with him because he was in a Plexiglas cell and in the fetal position on his bed, all of the time. He was in what's called a catatonic state meaning his body is frozen from the bizarre mental and physical things happening.

One day, officers came and took him away to another prison to be injected with drugs and killed.

I thought that was extremely gross as he was obviously a severely mentally ill person who never had much of a chance in life to begin with. He did murder women in a horrible way but it was all strange and stupid with no point to it.

All of that led to me leaving the prison system.

Meanwhile, many people thought him laying in his cell, which smelled like someone took a shit on the worst type of cheese, was funny/interesting and killing him was a good idea. I looked at it like the state murdered him and I was part of it.

The point is that if you hate "evil" people to the point where you enjoy seeing them suffer, are glad they're dead, you have become evil.

In popular culture, this is a HUGE message in Star Wars. If you want to kill evil people and hate them, you will turn to the dark side.

In Lord of the Rings, Frodo says to Gandalf, why not just kill Gollum? Gandalf replies that you never know the value of someone and you can't assume that their dying is a good thing. Of course, Gollum turns out to be the most important person.

We should always look for the good in "evil" people and also try to understand what they think they are doing and why what they did was good in their eyes. If not, you are just supporting the "us vs them" attitude that creates extreme thinking and evil behaviors.


Response:


I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the above post was probably inspired by a certain recent death which a lot of people are celebrating.

And I'd like to spend a moment to highlight some of the ways in which that may differ from this post.

The person in question did not spend his last days in a prison, in a catatonic state, or really in any significant suffering. The person in question was never incarcerated - in fact, he recently was awarded the highest government honor available to US citizens. He was a famous, wealthy, popular individual for his entire life. He legitimately helped shape the direction of the nation, in a way very few people throughout history have ever been able to.

And you know what?

He did that by being as hateful and nasty and dishonest as he possibly could. His words and actions hurt countless people, and he never saw any retribution or consequence for it, unless you want to call it a consequence that he spent a substantial amount of his career denying the link between smoking and lung cancer and eventually died of lung cancer.

So I flat-out reject this statement:

The point is that if you hate "evil" people to the point where you enjoy seeing them suffer, are glad they're dead, you have become evil.

I am not exactly glad that this person is dead. But I am extremely glad that they are no longer in a position where they can hurt anyone. And when it comes to the people he actively hurt, I'm not going to judge. I think it's a shame that what it took to stop him from being an evil piece of shit was death, but if that's what it took, well, good riddance, and frankly it'd be nice if it didn't take so long next time.

In popular culture, this is a HUGE message in Star Wars. If you want to kill evil people and hate them, you will turn to the dark side.

Counterpoint: jewish resistance fighers in World War II. Pretty sure most of them hated Hitler and wanted to kill him. Pretty sure this didn't make them evil people, or "turn to the dark side". It was just the best available option out of a lot of really shitty options.


Now you can call Rush an influential conservative who changed the game, because there's no doubt he was. But he also said a ton of hateful shit and built a career out of it. So yeah, no sympathy from me for him passing.

I'm gonna steal this analogy from Reddit because the latter's rebuttal kinda sums up my position better than I can.

Response:

Now you can call Rush an influential conservative who changed the game, because there's no doubt he was. But he also said a ton of hateful shit and built a career out of it. So yeah, no sympathy from me for him passing.

No sympathy is a big difference between the vitriol so far. I think in death, the golden rule is a good rule. If you don't have anything nice to say, not saying anything at all is OK. Not talking about you or anyone specifically, just in general.

Interesting that some people think death absolves you from all criticism. Rush built an empire on being a shitty person and shitting on others at every turn. He dies and all of a sudden it's hands off, don't say anything bad about him? Yeah fuck that.

Interesting that some people think death absolves you from all criticism. Rush built an empire on being a shitty person and shitting on others at every turn. He dies and all of a sudden it's hands off, don't say anything bad about him? Yeah fuck that.

Not like Rush is a major talking point here. Seems like people are using his death as a reason to shit on him.

Interesting, that shitting on someone who just died, isn't ironic. But I guess as long as you self-assign yourself as better than the person you're criticizing, it's OK.

The bar isn't that high to be a better person than Rush let's be honest

The bar isn't that high to be a better person than Rush let's be honest

We should all shoot for a higher standard way above the bar. And we all have our own sins. Judging people that just died isn't the way to go imo.

Seems like he's being judged in death the same as he was in life.

Seems like he's being judged in death the same as he was in life.

I don't listen to talk radio for anything, so maybe I just haven't noticed. But I don't recall much if any conversations about Rush. Then he dies and out come the comments. It's a free country, so say whatever you guys want, I just think that shitting on someone right after they die is not a good look, if not outright hypocritical.

, I just think that shitting on someone right after they die is not a good look, if not outright hypocritical.

No , people are talking about him the same as when he was alive . You find this to be hypocritical of what exactly?