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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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If you haven't turned at least a few members around in that time, then you're probably wrong, and unless you're a total moron, you'll probably come around yourself.

Well, give me some credit here, surely arguing with the Motte's finest all these years counts for something that would help me turn people to my side?

the system is willing to keep you there a lot longer than you think they will.

So I get that I might have shit to do, and might be worried about losing my job or something, but when we're talking about something like the Penny case, I don't know if I could sleep at night if I had the power to let him off the hook, but caved in because I really had to run some chores.

For example, in this case I might ask "In the past several years there has been a lot of discussion about how people are increasingly feeling unsafe on public transit. What do you think about that?"

Would some bland answer like "If people feel this way, maybe the city could hire more cops or something, but I dunno, I'm not an expert" immediately flag me in a case like this? I guess I'd be a bit more careful expressing pro-cop sentiment in something like the Chauvin trial.

Most people will speak freely about controversial subjects during voir dire. Most people will offer opinions that have the potential to get them booted. You don't know what my trial strategy is or what evidence is going to be presented. You haven't read all of the other jury questionnaires. You don't know where I'm going with my questions.

None of this is relevant. The game I'm playing is "hide my power level" not "ensure I will be selected for the jury". I'm mostly trying to look normal, not read your mind. The latter sounds like an easy way to play myself like in that Princess Bride "only a great fool would reach for what he was given" skit.

If I'm the prosecutor on this case, I'm not trying to get a bunch of woke-ass do-gooders on the jury,

Exactly, which is why I said won't go gung-ho in either direction.