and no, the right does not do it. You conflate the private and public thing when it convenes you.
Fox News didn’t come up with enactments of the lynching of Obama, or of Clinton even.
What we all pulled on Clinton was rough, but dimensions removed from what’s being unleashed on Trump.
Trumps approval rating hit 50%, which is a cosmic achievement considering the billions spent each week on multifaceted slander.
How many violently inclined leftists would there be?
Prismatic estimated the percentage of ''evil people" on 20- percent, so splitting that left/right for convenience that would mean 10 percent of the politically motivated population could be
completely fucked up anarchists and getting away with it - it will not get much worse than that, probably, because there is counterweight.
Europe has no such balance, the anticipation of binary polarization has never been used before the US came to be in that form.
Carleas, what I said was that the right wouldn’t stoop to copying the enactment currently going on under the guise of “art” merely to mock it and match that level of depravity. I never said there weren’t crazy people on the right who make threats.
You’re using straw men. My comment in no way implied or meant that there are no crazy right winger people making their threats. But the scope is entirely different. You’re deliberately ignoring the meaning here, which is what leftists do when they get caught in their hypocrisy, they get hyper-particular and hide in details to avoid broader meanings.
You won’t see me defending the retard who hung the Obama doll, yet I see you defending the Trump enactments. So again, I’m the only consistent one of the two of us.
Lol. Trump hate is almost an economy on its own. But I’m quite sure his approvals have been well over 50% this entire time. Remember it was pollsters who were claiming Shill was infinitely ahead the whole time, right up to when she got crushed.
That isn’t my argument. Let me put it another way:
Do you think that the members of the cast or crew, or the director or producer of this play intends to assassinate Donald Trump, and means to communicate their intent to assassinate Donald Trump through the production of this play? Is that the most reasonable interpretation? What are the odds in your mind that any member of this play’s production will take any additional step in furtherance of a plan to assassinate Donald Trump?
I think the odds are roughly zero, and I think you do too. We know that because we know the full circumstances of this depiction of the assassination of Donald Trump, and those circumstances strongly suggest that the intent is not to communicate an intention to assassinate the president. There is no threat, that’s not the intent and it’s not the natural interpretation of the depiction, and anyone who looks at the situation with a modicum of dispassion sees that immediately.
I can think of situations where it would be and situations where it wouldn’t be. Can you not? It’s seems pretty easy to create a situation that looks like that where no one intends to follow through with what they’re simulating nor intends to communicate an intention to do so.
This is not a tenable position, unless you interpret “it” to be a very narrow fact pattern more or less exclusive to the circumstances you want to display rage about (which is what it looks like Void_X is doing).
I don’t think my interpretation was unreasonable, but I’m happy to acknowledge that I misinterpreted your statement.
In that case, where all you want to claim is that the right isn’t going to organizing a staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with an Obama look-alike in the role of Caesar as a way of retaliating against this staging of Julius Caesar with a Trump look-alike in the role of Caesar – if that’s your claim, I don’t disagree.
The producers and actors of the play are indeed calling for the assassination of the president. There is no other reason why they would choose to figure him as Cesar. Would YOU act out the killing of the president, I mean you personally? No? Why not? Because you know what it would imply for you to do it.
They play into the same open hostility and threat that caused CNN to put crosshairs on the White House window, and so many others to actually call for the death of the president.
The entire meaning of the Shakespearean play is voided by making Cesar into our president, it doesn’t even make sense. So why would a professional acting studio do it? Certainly not out of artistic purity or accuracy and veneration of Shakespeare.
No serious person can see this as anything but feeding the radical anarchist leftist hostility that, as Madonna said, wants to blow up the White House, or at least wants to see it blown up. The actors and those involved in the production may not personally want to kill the president but they certainly want someone else to do it, otherwise there is no way they could in good conscience participate in this – again, would you? Didn’t you know people at these plays are cheering when “Trump” is murdered and there is “kill Trump” music playing in the background?
The fact you still pretend this has nothing to do with open hostility and advocating assassination is utterly beyond me. No one would have tolerated this being done to any other president and you know it.
You don’t have to personally threaten the life of the president to have it be a crime, you can simply call for someone else to do it, incite the act, and that is also a crime, just as it is a crime to incite others to commit crimes. This isn’t considered protected speech.
I agree with Void wholeheartedly. The play should be shut down and all the participants put into a holding tank for 48 hours to rethink their intentions.
The left is inferior to the right in regards to common sense.
Only when the words are likely to incite imminent lawless action, and they are intended to do so.
Unless Trump is sitting in the crowd, it almost certainly fails the imminence prong. And it isn’t at all clear that the play as staged is intended to encourage assassination; as I understand it, the play is a tragedy, Caesar is portrayed as a good and noble politician, his assassination is the result of deceit, and nothing but misery comes from it. That’s a lot to suggest that the message is anti-assassination, and plenty to conclude that the message is at best ambiguous, undermining the requirement of both intent and likelihood.
There’s really no question as to whether this is protected speech under current precedent, but if you know of any serious First Amendment scholar who thinks otherwise I’d be interested to see their analysis.
You forget that the audience cheers his death, and that there is “kill Trump” music playing. You’re wanting to see this as some noble social criticism and warning against violence when it is anything but.
If you think popular culture and media is anything but openly hostile to Trump, and that this context doesn’t factor into the decision to figure Trump in the play, then you’re being very naive.
The left has a reputation for simply reversing truth.
If someone beheads the president on stage, that means they are really calling for an end to violence, and to R E S T E C P .
If they want to put a mother in the white house, that means they want to put a pedophile in the white house.
If they want to liberate people, they kill their leaders and send in beheading squads.
Its just the left. Its just a bit peculiar.
I don’t think that the audience’s reaction is relevant to the 1st amendment analysis. It could be used as evidence of intent and likelihood, but if a crowd misinterpreted a scene that is intended to condemn assassination as instead encouraging it, that would not turn the scene into an incitement.
And I don’t know what “‘kill Trump’ music” is, but it’s still not sufficient to demonstrate intent. Like the depiction of a killing itself, the music can be part of a work that ultimately condemns assassination.
I’m wanting to explain why this is constitutionally protected speech. One reason is that the intent of those responsible for the production does not seem to be to encourage assassination, and part of the reason it doesn’t seem that way is because the message of the play is anti-assassination.
To give similar example, if I say “don’t kill Trump”, it’s clear that my intention is not to encourage assassination, even though it’s literally true that I said “kill Trump”. The scene should be interpreted in the context of the play and as communicating the broader message of the play. In a sense, the play can be interpreted as saying, “Only tragedy will follow from killing Trump”; so there’s a literal depiction of “killing Trump”, but the rest of the play communicates that it is a bad idea and leads to tragedy.
If the message of the play is, “Don’t assassinate politicians even if you think it’s for the good of the country” (which from what I understand is a plausible interpretation of the play), then having a thoroughly despised modern politician play the role of Caesar is a useful way to make the point. In other words, the context of a strongly anti-Trump popular culture can support the use of Trump in an anti-assassination play.
I’m sorry but the only person who seems to be misinterpreting the scene is you.
Yes, it comes from the fact that emotional thinking has a very short attention span and a very limited window of possible processing power. And when they do try to include some reasoning into their emotional thinking they end up using reasoning for only one reason: to validate what they already emotionally “think”.
Thus their form of reasoning and proper cognitive thought is actually little more than an attack on reasoning and proper cognition itself. Look at the French intellectuals for example, who are probably almost single-handedly responsible for this mess Europe is in today.
The word “if” in that sentence means it’s an assertion of a conditional, not an assertion that the antecedent is true. Easy enough mistake to make; I hear some people just read to validate what they already emotionally “think”, so maybe that’s what happened.
I’m not making that claim. You really are working hard to deliberately obscure things here. It’s quite sickening to see your mental gymnastics at work, actually.
The “IF” in your sentence doesn’t give you the excuse to weasel out of your main point. First you make a point about how it doesn’t matter how the crowd reacts, or that they are simply mistaken, and then when I point out that it does matter and they aren’t mistaken you counter with “well I was just saying if that is the case, not that it actually is the case.”
I’m saying it is the case that they are in tune with the meaning of the figuring of Trump as Cesar. Go on YouTube and watch for yourself. At first you state the argument that this isn’t the case, and now you state that you never explicitly said it was the case. “If” the audience misunderstands the meaning of the scene is irrelevant since, in fact, they are not misunderstanding it at all and the scene is designed precisely to invoke this understanding in them, which you would admit if you weren’t trying to deliberately ignore the entire context surrounding the performance and it’s choice to figure Trump like that. Which is also demonstrated by your claim that they are merely trying to make the play relevant to modern times… oh really? Why not simply leave it at business suits then rather than insert a real person as Trump into it? Why did they change a line of the Shakespeare to deliberately indicate it is Trump they are taking about? Do you even know what you’re arguing here? It doesn’t seem like it, because you keep contradicting yourself at every turn.
If they wanted to merely update Shakespeare to modern times then they would adjust the backdrop and costumes accordingly, that would be sufficient. The extra step of figuring a living person personally is not only not necessary to that end but, obviously, antithetical to the stated aim to merely update Shakespeare to the modern world, since the play producers and actors are well aware what a hated and controversial figure Trump is. And I made the point that this would never have happened to any other president, a point you’ve chosen to ignore and not respond to.
And if the “if” is so relevant then I’m simply arguing again that conditional, and claiming it is the case that this is being done deliberately, it in no way invalidates any of the points Ive made. All it does if withdraw your own claim from actually claiming anything at all, which I guess is convenient since you clearly don’t want to address the actual facts here. Stop trying to use cheap sophistic tricks on me, because they don’t work and they only embarrassing you in front of everyone who reads this exchange.
My point was that the crowd reaction isn’t dispositive: if if the crowd misinterprets the intent, they may cheer and even be spurred to action without that being the intent of those who organized the production. It’s consistent for the crowd to cheer and there still to be no intent to encourage the assassination of Trump. Do you disagree with that?
Do you disagree that the message of the play ‘Julius Caesar’ is that assassination leads to tragedy? If so, do you disagree that it is reasonable to interpret the play as opposing assassination?
For me, this is not a left-right issue. This is an issue of what standards we require in order for the government to suppress or punish speech. Speech protection in the US is strong, and for a number of reasons this play doesn’t rise to the level that First Amendment precedent requires for the government to censor it or punish people for participating in it. It may be disrespectful, it may be bad art, but it is pretty clearly not incitement such that it is exempt from free speech protection.
The questions are:
- Were the actors communicating an actual intention to kill Trump? (clearly not)
- Were the actors intending to provoke someone in the audience to kill Trump immediately, and was that the likely effect of the play? (again, clearly not)
There’s no theory by which this isn’t plainly protected speech.
Yes I agree this is of course possible. But I don’t think it is the case here, for the reasons I’ve stated.
Note that my last post was written in haste and frustration, I’ll try not to get personal here. I’m choosing to be operating under the assumption you’re being honest here, as am I also. So I’ll see this as an attempt to get to truth. But I will call out if I think you’re not addressing points properly, and I hope you’ll do the same for me.
Shakespeare’s message here isn’t simply that “violence is tragic/bad”, his point here is that someone like Caesar gets overthrown with violence when they fail to count this as a possibility, that these sort of politics and coups do happen, of course. It’s historical. Obviously tragic for Caesar and for democracy (either as the murder itself or as the tyranny of Caesar) but he was tyrannical and ignorant/too dismissive of the consequences of that. I don’t see Shakespeare through a pretty little lens of making moral lessons. It’s a cautionary tale sure, that is part of it, cautionary for democracy, for leadership and for those who are led, but that’s not the point of the play. It’s a study in political and human realities and one based on history.
I disagree, again because figuring a real living person in the play isn’t necessary to update the play to modern times. The choice to kill on stage a real living person is sickening, no matter our personal politics.
And I would consider it incitement for that very reason. They could simply have portrayed a modern politician in businesswear, no need to make it personal. But making it person and with regard to the surrounding context and audience reactions it does become incitement.
I can’t say that. I would have to see them interviewed about their motives. I think at minimum the secret service should be doing that.
“Immediately” isn’t relevant. If they inspire someone to plan an attack two months down the line that is still incitement, and illegal. And again I would need to see them interviewed to know their motives.
Yes there is. The “theory” is what you haven’t addressed yet, my point that there is literally no need to figure a real living person like this. It adds nothing except feeding existing sentiments of either hate or pity against/for that person who is figured. It makes it personal against that person. Why do that, if you don’t want to make it personal like that?
Oh Carleas, you cant be serious.
When the bard wrote that play, Caesar was no longer in office. He was in fact already dead, murdered, some fifteen centuries before.
You can not be actually thinking youre making a valid argument here. I refuse to believe that you do.
Yes this is the point he isn’t addressing. But I’m choosing to believe he is trying to be honest here, so I’ll wait for him to address the point. Also important is the issue of context, and audience reaction, which he also needs to address.
If the play were performed a few times and the producers saw the cheers when “Trump” is killed, saw how it was attracting this kind of reaction in viewers and then they made the decision to stop figuring Trump personally, I would respect that. But the fact they didn’t do that shows they really do want these kind of reactions, or at least don’t mind them.