Lewis2
20hr ago
Many Roman Catholic high schools were almost exclusively staffed by priests back in the day, so for the age range in which most of the abuse occurred, their level of access was identical. It was also common for priests to help run orphanages, institutions for troubled youth, boarding schools, youth camps, etc., giving those priests 24/7 access to kids. Most priests also have regular contact with child and teen altar servers still to this day, and it used to be unremarkable for priests to go on unsupervised trips and retreats with select male altar servers in order to help groom them for the priesthood. There were also plenty of cases of priests unofficially adopting youth from unstable homes—in some cases legitimately and in others just to abuse them. All that to say, while any individual priest might not have had as much access to kids as teachers do, there were plenty of cases where they had as much access or more.
Lewis2
1d ago
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d be more sympathetic to the cops in this case if they hadn’t disabled his security cameras, called him a “sex addict” on record, and violated departmental procedures to (charitably) miscount or (uncharitably) steal $400 from him. All that took place long before he made those videos, and they were all choices that a different set of officers might not have made. Note that Afroman only went after the officers who were involved in those actions, not all of the officers who were involved in the raid.
Lewis2
2d ago
I’ve read that the cop in question has a mixed-race teenage daughter, even though he and his wife have been married for almost 30 years. He also testified that he’s known Afroman’s wife for years, so the families have definitely interacted in the past.
Lewis2
2d ago
Dirlewanger’s men were if anything more creative in their abuses, though I won’t describe them here. Himmler knew what they were up to, saying, “The tone in the regiment is, I may say, in many cases a medieval one with cudgels and such things.” Despite this, he told Dirlewanger, “I am very satisfied with your actions, as I recently told you personally.”
After Dirlewanger was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest honor in the German military during WWII, he gloated to a friend,
you know as well as I do that I received this high award for the soldierly achievements of my regiment, among other things. With this, the last unwelcome voices from "higher places" about my unit should have faded away! My men have achieved superhuman things in this fight to the death and destruction and have earned themselves a place in the honor book of the German soldier by their sweat, blood, and heroic sacrificial commitment!
Among those “unwelcome voices” was that of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the head of the SS in Poland, who threatened to arrest the entire regiment if they were not removed from his territory. Eventually even Himmler became alarmed at the grotesque behavior of the regiment, but only because he was concerned that they would eventually begin to attack fellow German soldiers and the Nazi leadership.
What’s particularly bizarre about the group is that Hitler seems to have initially ordered its creation as a punishment for the men involved—originally mostly poachers, whom the animal-loving Hitler hated. Instead, he gave a group of the most depraved sexual perverts, sadists, and psychopaths five years to enjoy satisfying their demonic urges to their hearts’ content.
Lewis2
3d ago
I don’t think Nazis had a lot of sexual abuses.
The national leaders seem to have been personally virtuous in this regard, but they were also willing to tolerate and promote men like Oskar Dirlewanger, who was notorious for his many atrocities, including raping, mutilating, and murdering scores of women and children.
Lewis2
9d ago
I’d say that Newton invented calculus and discovered the laws of gravity, but I really view both actions as synonymous. On reflection, I’d say there’s an element of invention in both cases, but that both should really be described more as discoveries.
Lewis2
11d ago
Because for hundreds of years, different nations had their own native pronunciations of Latin. This style survives in English in legal Latin (“de jure,” “bona fide,” “prima facie,” etc.), in the pronunciation of Latin loanwords (agenda, species, index, camera, “et cetera,” etc.), and in common names and titles (Caesar, Cicero, Julius, Tacitus, etc.).
Besides, if you want an artificial, unified pronunciation, why pick Italian, rather than just using the reconstructed classical pronunciation?
Lewis2
11d ago
Or we just stick with the traditional English pronunciation and be done with it. It is kind of strange that the 19th century trend of pronouncing Latin as Italian still has such wide-spread acceptance today.
Lewis2
11d ago
she values her time and sanity at zero
You may be surprised at the number of people to whom that applies. If you ever get the chance, ask a civil lawyer to describe some of the most trivial lawsuits he’s been involved with.
Lewis2
12d ago
My understanding is that the sum he returned pretty much paid her legal fees, and that was it. Her family was pissed that she settled for basically nothing, but she felt she “just had to move on.”
Lewis2
12d ago
An acquaintance of mine was bilked out of a five-figure some by a shady contractor a few years ago. After fighting with him in court for two years, she finally agreed to settle. He returned a tenth of what he stole, and in exchange, he demanded that she change her one-star Google review to a five-star. I mentioned this story to a friend of mine who works in a related field, and he said he’s seen that same scenario play out several times before. There’s unfortunately just not much anyone can do to prevent such behavior.
Lewis2
13d ago
“Peaked in high school” is definitely a real thing, though as others have mentioned, it’s probably more common in small towns and in sports-focused subcultures. A related type that doesn’t get quite as much focus is the “unpopular in high school and trying desperately to make up for it as an adult.” You’ll find a disproportionate number working as high school teachers, coaches (though they’re usually more the “peaked in high school” type), summer camp directors, youth directors, these people, etc.
Lewis2
17d ago
The bribes wouldn’t—couldn’t—be high enough. Too many Americans would expect $1,000,000 checks from each billionaire. They’d all be slaughtered due to the population’s innumeracy.
Lewis2
28d ago
If you’re interested in Pratchett, you should read something older. Monstrous Regiment was written only a few years before his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and several years after his writing started to show signs of his mental decline (e.g., reduced vocabulary). Also, I haven’t read all of his books, but of those I have read, Monstrous Regiment was my least favorite.
Lewis2
1mo ago
The easy answer there is that the maxxing-type men want sex not as an end in itself, but as a means to gain approval from other men.
It seems to me that the easy answer is that men want to be in a relationship with someone whom they love and who loves them in return, someone who makes them both feel like a better person and want to be a better person. Yeah, sex is great and fun outside of that, but if given the choice between a woman who actively wants to be with you and a prostitute who will only stick around as long as you pay her, most men will prefer the former. Basically, the easy answer is that men are generally romantic.
Lewis2
1mo ago
I think they’re considered old-fashioned these days, but I still like McIntoshes.
Lewis2
1mo ago
In my opinion, the old dramas from the 1950s and 60s did the best job of balancing historically accurate settings with modern expectations.
Lewis2
1mo ago
And when you see your friends who do have kids young just disappear and drop out of their social life, it makes the whole prospect seem terrible
This goes both ways, though. If you’re in a high-fertility (sub-) culture, the young families start having their own separate social lives centered around the children, while the few single adults just sort of disappear and drift away.
Lewis2
1mo ago
That already happens in some (usually crass) all-male circles when ugly women are mentioned.
Lewis2
1mo ago
If you genuinely think your preferred policies are bad, maybe you should start supporting policies you think are good, rather than spouting off like a melodramatic teenage Goth or Robert Oppenheimer.
Lewis2
1mo ago
I would put the desire by the right to not take off mask as: 50% legitimate fear of leftist target 50% yes we are the bad guys and don’t want to our faces.
Highly improbable, even at first glance. Essentially no one sees himself as the bad guy, let alone a full 25% of the population.
Lewis2
1mo ago
Many of them certainly expelled the bankers and seized the loans. I think that counts as a cheat.
Lewis2
1mo ago
You clearly haven’t seen his sexy photoshoot from 1983.
(The photos weren’t published in Teen Beat as the article claims, but they are genuine.)
I think the problem there is that you’re looking at the number of priests who worked closely with children in the early 2000s when the scandal broke, but you should be looking at the numbers in the 1960s and 70s when the abuses were most common. Many people don’t realize this, but the number of cases began dropping significantly already by 1985, even though it took another two decades for the coverups to become common knowledge. It was far more common for priests to work full-time outside the parish (as teachers, principals, missionaries, directors of orphanages and charities, etc.) back then, as the church wasn’t suffering from any sort of priest shortage in those days.
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