Stolen Blackness

The New Neo Posted on by

The pretense of blackness seems to be a form of “stolen valor” for white women, who get to feel heroic while claiming victim status. There have been several cases outed and/or confessing recently, the latest being here.

It’s really not parallel to the older phenomenon of black people “passing” for white. They did it for obvious reasons, back in the day when being black really was to be oppressed. The people who did it were ordinarily of mixed race but with so much white genetic contribution that they simply didn’t look black although their family and cultural heritage was.

In contrast, the white women (and it’s mostly women) who these days are donning a black identity – a sort of new-age blackface, without the makeup but maybe with a hair perm – are utterly white. The woman pictured at the link is so white I’m not sure how she could ever have claimed blackness, but I suppose it’s something you don’t challenge in polite society.

Not that our present-day society is polite.

There are several advantages to the charade, I suppose. One is that it might make it possible to be the recipient of affirmative action in various spheres. Another is the ability to hitch one’s wagon to a cause perceived as noble. Still another is to claim victimhood while getting such benefits.

The latest women to be exposed in this way has the following story:

Satchuel Cole (they/them), born Jennifer Lynn Benton, is a prominent & highly respected BLM activist in Indiana.

As best I can determine – and I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time figuring this one out – this is a biological woman now identifying as gender binary, as well as a white woman previously identifying as black who became prominent in the BLM movement. That’s interesting to me because (1) BLM itself is based on lies about the deaths of people such as Michael Brown (2) according to the left, male or female sex is unmoored from biology and not binary, but race is tied to biology and is binary. That last statement is a case of things being backwards, because in fact it is sex that is binary nearly 100% of the time, and it is biological race that is often unclear because many white people have some black DNA and the vast majority of American black people have a significant amount of white DNA. Race is determined mostly by cultural heritage (at least one black parent) and phenotype. Today’s society (fortunately) has not devised a percentage of black DNA that would give a person the right to claim blackness (or as Satchuel Cole née Jennifer Benton put it in her confession, the right “to take up space as a Black person”).

Have you ever noticed how much jargon leftists use? They rarely speak in plain English, and that is no accident. Jargon is used for obfuscation, for propaganda, to give a semblance of erudition to those who are not learned, and in order to show membership in the wokeness club.

This woman has a Fifties obsession

The New Neo Posted on by

But it’s lighthearted and fun. And boy, does she look good. She also managed to find the perfect husband. He tolerates it and even cooperates, although he doesn’t seem to participate in terms of his own garb.

I recognize every item in her house.

In addition, not all that long ago I lived in a house in which the kitchen remained unchanged since 1953, although (unlike her kitchen) the appliances were newer. The kitchen had been top-of-the-line in 1953 and it was still fabulous. The drawers slid perfectly, and it had features that were unusual in 1953, such as lower cabinet shelves that slid all the way out on smooth rollers so you didn’t have to engage in gymnastics to get something from them.

And the entire kitchen, walls and ceiling, was lined with large slabs of green Vitrolite (scroll down for color “Jade”). It looked like Oz, the Emerald City.

Romney, Murkowski, and Collins: what about those RINOs in 2020?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Newmanian” writes:

Senators Murkowski, Collins, and Romney have imposed their low-mid level Conservatism on the party for years. It used to be their party. It has not been that Country Club party for years now. Republicans may lose the Senate this time around, and with this Supreme Court vote, it is more likely to happen. But honestly- the removal of Sens. Murkowski, Collins, and Romney is something that needs to be done. Murkowski has been a vote against what is needed for too long. Collins has had to do her dance for decades, and Romney? Well, Romney was never worth a nickel. He seems to play to an audience that no one else sees.

But the three are very different and in states that are different as well. And their histories of being primaried from the right are different, too. It’s not one size fits all.

Romney’s state of Utah is very Republican, and Romney probably is no longer popular there. I believe he could easily be replaced by a more conservative Republican, but there’s one catch: he was elected in 2018 and isn’t up for re-election till 2024. The GOP might be stuck with him till then.

How did Romney win the Utah seat? It was actually a close campaign against his GOP challenger for the nomination (see this and this). But once he won the GOP nomination his victory was practically assured. The degree of his opposition to Trump was known (at least to a certain extent), but I doubt very much that the people of Utah guessed what he had planned in terms of opposition to the entire conservative agenda in the Senate. I think any primary against him by even a moderately strong GOP candidate in 2024 could go well, but I don’t think there’s much to be done till then.

Lisa Murkowski is also in a red state, but nevertheless Alaska is not as strongly Republican as Utah (few states are). She is the daughter of a former GOP leader of Alaska who appointed her when he left his Senate seat to become governor, and at the time she was more conservative than now. Nevertheless she was primaried by a Tea Party candidate in 2010 and lost the GOP nomination. But you may recall that she led a write-in campaign and won, which was surprising.

After that, Murkowski turned more liberal. And yet in 2016 she won the primary again against challengers from the right. I’m not sure why she won, but my guess is that her challengers just weren’t strong candidates. She won the election despite not being particularly popular:

Murkowski was re-elected with 44.4% of the vote, becoming the first person in history to win three elections to the U.S. Senate with pluralities but not majorities, having taken 48.6% in 2004 and 39.5% in 2010. Miller’s 29.2% finish was the best ever for a Libertarian candidate in a U.S. Senate election in terms of vote percentage.

Murkowski is not up for re-election till 2022. Again, it seems the GOP is stuck with her, and yet it also seems as though a more reliably conservative candidate could win in Alaska. However, it’s not as though Murkowski hasn’t been primaried from the right before; she has, and in 2010 that primarying was successful and yet she managed to work around it even though she never got a majority of the vote.

Collins of Maine is in an entirely different position. Firstly, she is up for re-election this year. Secondly, she is in a purple state that trends blue. So I have long felt that Collins is the only type of Republican that could win a Senate election there. If she were not running I believe a Democrat would win the seat, unlike in Utah and Alaska. There was a Republican attempt to primary her this year, but it failed. Collins used to be very popular in Maine but her decision to stand behind Kavanaugh has lost her some support among moderates.

Collins faces a very difficult dilemma concerning voting for a Ginsburg replacement, but she is in trouble anyway either way she goes with this. Polls showed her significantly behind her Democratic challenger even before Ginsburg’s death, but are the polls correct? If Collins fails to vote to confirm, she probably loses because some conservatives in Maine will almost certainly turn against her. If she votes to confirm, many more moderates may abandon her and she will lose for that reason. But my guess is she’s toast either way, and that she actually stands a better chance of winning if she votes to confirm. Then again, I’m not a political strategist.

And of course, if Trump does win a second term but the GOP loses the Senate, that would be the end of approval for any of Trump’s judicial appointments.

The death of Ginsburg: chaos

The New Neo Posted on by

My first reaction to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a groan, “Oh, no!” Without even thinking it through, I felt that it would almost certainly increase the chaos in an already chaotic election situation. I still feel that way, and I don’t see that as good.

I’m not going to take a lot of time right now discussing all the possibilities and suggestions and analyses and predictions. That’s been done – for example here, here, here, and here.

As time goes on, the picture may shape up more clearly. Right now, there’s a lot of static.

How did this professor get to hoping that Trump supporters die before the election?

The New Neo Posted on by

Unsurprising, really, considering the current political climate:

Jennifer Mosher, a biology professor at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, has been placed on administrative leave after appearing to suggest that she hopes Trump supporters contract coronavirus and “die before the election.”

“Yesterday he held one inside. Nobody wore a mask,” Mosher says in a clip that surfaced on social media. Mosher appears to be referring to President Donald Trump’s recent campaign rally. “And I’ve become the type of person where I hope they all get it and die.”

“You can’t argue with them, you can’t talk sense into them,” she explained. “I said to somebody yesterday, I hope they all die before the election. That’s the only saving hope I have right now. Definitely bootlickers.”…

Mosher then said she would “stop talking about politics,” acknowledging that “I really should not be talking politics.”

…The university posted a separate statement on its website, acknowledging that the “overtly political” incident occurred “in a recent virtual classroom session.” The school said it is conducting an investigation and that there will be “no further comment” at this time.

Several things struck me as especially interesting about this exchange. The first is that Mosher is apparently a tenured professor rather than some temporary hire, and yet (or maybe therefore?) she felt emboldened to utter such thoughts in the course of her job and in front of students. Talk about living in a bubble, or thinking you do!

The second is that perhaps the virtual quality of the exchange encouraged her to feel as though she was almost alone and thinking to herself.

The third is that Mosher is a biology professor, and the spark for her wishing death on Trump supporters had to do with COVID and the idea that there should be no inside get-togethers of large groups. A perceived violation by Trump supporters of this edict from on high (a governor? biologists? epidemiologists?) sparked not just rage but murderous rage in Mosher. Her leftism combined with her stature as an “expert” seems to have led to a desire for the death of the Unbelievers. However, I can almost guarantee that, if such an indoor group meeting had been held by – just to take one example – Black Lives Matter, Mosher would not be wishing death on the group. Au contraire.

The fourth is Mosher’s claim that “You can’t argue with them, you can’t talk sense into them” – “them” being Trump supporters, I’m going to assume. To go from there to “I hope they die” is quite a leap. I wonder what experience Mosher has had of arguing or “trying to talk sense” into a Trump supporter (on the subject of COVID or anything else). Screaming at them? Coming from an I-know-it-all-you-stupid-peasant” place of expertise? I doubt she engaged in reasoned debate and respectful listening.

The fifth is Mosher’s statement that Trump supporters’ death is her “only saving hope.” I find that curious. Does she mean that she doesn’t think they can be defeated at the ballot box? Does she mean that her very existence is threatened by their existence?

The six and seventh are linked, and to me they are the most interesting of all. Number six is that Mosher says “I’ve become the type of person where I hope they all get it and die.” That indicates that her conversion to wishing death on opponents is fairly recent, and that she’s not exactly proud of it and didn’t used to be that “type of person.” She doesn’t explain when she made the transition, but my guess is that it might have been Election Night 2016, or some time between then and now. Maybe it was even the COVID isolation that set her off.

And that leads us to number seven: “I really should not be talking politics.” That seems to indicate Mosher’s awareness that she had spoken Her Truth and that it might get her into trouble. In other words, she realized that she had outed herself as having become the “type of person” who wishes political opponents to die, and that perhaps there might be some negative consequences for her.

What those consequences might be is unclear, because at the moment the university authorities are looking into it. I will be surprised if she get fired, but I think she has shown herself incapable of dealing with students of differing opinions, or of curbing her impulsivity, and has expressed a degree of murderous hatred towards such students that is unacceptable in a professor.

I’ll close with a comment made by “Nancy B”. She was not writing in regard to Mosher, but it’s very relevant nonetheless:

Saw this the other day with someone who trotted out a lamentation she’d doubtless heard on tv about how awful it was that schools were opening. Was she relieved when I told her kids and their relatively young teachers are at little risk from Covid? Or rebut me that they were so? Did an informed discussion of risk and reward follow? No, I had shown I was a bad, unenlightened one of “them” endangering the world with my selfish, stupid, republicanism.

And the left has been tailoring their messages to stoke this, to delegitimize any dissenting opinions and license the non-personing of those that hold them. And they are getting almost to Rwanda level of rhetoric with that.

If Mosher has become the “type of person” who is at the “Rwanda level of rhetoric,” the MSM and the Democratic Party bear some of the responsibility, although Mosher herself bears the ultimate responsibility.

[NOTE: A look at other happenings at colleges. It’s not a pretty sight.]

[ADDENDUM: Deadly ricin sent to President Trump.]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

The New Neo Posted on by

RIP.

Whatever will happen as a result of this seems loaded with turmoil and strife and rage and uncertainty – as if we didn’t have enough of those things already.

UPDATE 10:50:

Seen in a comment at Ace’s: “Seriously though, this is peak 2020. This is 2020 saying, ‘f*** you, have some more.'”

The focus now turns to the Senate. With Scalia’s death and Obama’s nomination of Garland, the Republicans controlled the Senate and a Democrat was president. So the Republicans had every right to refuse to approve Obama’s appointment and to wait for the 2016 election results.

In addition, it’s the end of Trump’s first term and he’s running for re-election, whereas it was Obama’s last term. But even so, does anyone think for one moment that, if the Democrats had been in charge of the Senate at the time of Scalia’s death, they wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to approve not just Garland, but someone else even further to the left? Of course they would have, even if they had had only a single day in which to do it before Obama left office.

The GOP blocked Garland’s appointment because they had the power to do so. If the Democrats had been in charge they would have approved whoever Obama appointed. Simple as that. But now the Democrats are saying the Republicans should desist from approving the appointment of a president of the Republicans’ own party, because that’s supposed to be consistent with what happened with Garland? Absurd.

The situation is complicated by many other things, including the fact of RINOs in the Senate who might decide to side with Democrats. Some of those RINOs also are up for re-election this year in purple or bluish states, and might lose their seats if they vote for a Trump SCOTUS appointment and therefore the GOP might lose the Senate as a result. However, if those same people don’t vote for a Trump appointment, they are likely to be abandoned by at least some of the GOP base and they may lose their seats anyway, with a resultant loss of the Senate for the GOP.

Scylla and Charybdis.

Since the BLM autonomous zone was such a raging success in Seattle, BLM has decided to set one up in Minneapolis

The New Neo Posted on by

Are they trying to get Minnesota to flip to Trump?

Because with news like this, one wonders:

As Ace writes:

It’s almost as if this isn’t about civil rights for blacks, but about granting political power to violent, sociopathic street thugs and killers.

Much much more at the link, including this (and note the woman’s age; she’s got to be at least in her sixties – no naive youth she):

Trump tackles the anti-American anti-history anti-truth indoctrination in our schools

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, well, well.

Yesterday Trump made quite an announcement:

On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he would sign an executive order to launch a “1776 Commission” for American patriotism in education, countering the Marxist critical race theory of The New York Times‘ “1619 Project.” In his remarks, Trump tied the deadly and destructive riots that broke out across America this summer to the noxious ideology of Marxist critical race theory and championed the virtues of America’s founding in opposition to the “twisted web of lies” undermining American patriotism.

“Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country,” Trump declared.

I don’t even have to use a search engine to figure out the left’s reaction. But my own reaction is twofold. My first reaction is that I am continually astounded at the number of things Trump manages to tackle, all at once, and impressed by his willingness to take controversial stands. My second reaction is “too bad he didn’t do this four years ago, because the hour is late and getting later.” Of course, four years ago the results of the ongoing leftist miseducation of America and its youth hadn’t reached the obvious fever pitch they have today, although leftist educators had nevertheless been doing their work of indoctrinating in leftist wokeness and the “anti-racist” form of racism for many years.

Had any president mentioned it before? I don’t think so. You certainly wouldn’t expect if from Obama. And I can’t imagine Bush saying a word about it, either. Prior to that the signs were more subtle, although they were present.

I finished law school about ten years before CLS (critical legal studies) gained ascendance, so as a student I escaped the changes that it wrought. However, I noted them later on (the 80s and 90s) and followed their development with alarm. CLS was one of the seminal movements behind the entire leftist post-modernist edifice we see today, having burst forth some time ago from its seeming but illusory confinement in the universities and law schools.

As Heinrich Heine wrote: “Thought precedes action, as lightning does thunder.” Indeed.

NOTE: That quote of Heine’s is taken from a larger quote that made my blood run cold when I first read it several years ago. Keep in mind as you read this that Heine wrote it in 1834, making the following prediction about the future of Germany and the world (yes, that’s eighteen-thirty-four, not nineteen-thirty-four) [emphasis mine]:

Christianity – and that is its greatest merit – has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals…Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.

Is it useful to understand the philosophies behind “wokeness”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Thinking more about the video I posted yesterday, I noticed this comment by “John Tyler”:

No point in really in trying to understand what motivates the adherents of wokeness, Nazism, communism, ANTIFA’ism, BLM’ism, etc. , because any sentient carbon based life form realizes what their end goals are.

No point in even trying to discuss what are the logical inconsistencies of these political socio-economic theologies because their adherents are immune to – or more likely do not care – about what non-adherents have to say, irrespective of the logical elegance of any arguments pointing out the deficiencies in their beliefs.

You cannot argue or debate a pseudo-religious belief system!!
It’s like arguing for/against the existence of God; one either believes or does not.

No, you cannot argue with such a person – if by “argue” you mean in the conventional sense of using reason and logic, those quaint (and apparently racist – who knew?) notions.

But I strongly disagree with the idea that there’s no point in really trying to understand what motivates them, “because any sentient carbon based life form realizes what their end goals are.” Perhaps my definition of “sentient” is different from Tyler’s, but I know plenty of people who appear to be quite sentient and who have no idea what the end goal is. They think the end goal is racial harmony, for example. Now, you can mock them all you want, but the vast majority of people who feel this way (“useful idiots,” as the Communists would say) have no idea whatsoever what the endpoint is. And the support of those people is vital to the activists. They count on that support and actively court it by coming up with such monikers as “Black Lives Matter,” which plays into this desire for an end to racism and suffering.

These unaware supporters include some people who place BLM signs on their porches, but an even greater number don’t go that far and yet they regularly vote for Democrats both locally and nationally, and fail to object when white-hating programs are implemented in their children’s classrooms. You can call them stupid or any other name you wish, but they are not stupid – merely idealistic, somewhat uninformed, and gullible.

I also think they are reachable, if they were to learn what underlies the goals and slogans of activists in movements such as BLM and the “anti-racism” educators. Those are discussions anyone can have with these unaware supporters. The discussions might not bear fruit, but in most cases you would not be arguing with an activist or someone who is familiar with the concepts involved. The majority are probably like those friends of mine who know only this about Antifa: that the name means “anti-fascist,” and so the group is probably fighting the good fight against hatred. The MSM endeavors to keep most people ignorant, and so it’s up to the right (and anyone else who is aware and not on board) to tell them what’s going on.

There’s another reason to try to understand, and that involves the next generation. If you are alert to the sorts of philosophies and areas of study (“critical” this and “critical” that) that are involved, you can teach your children or grandchildren what they mean and how to guard against them, so that they are forewarned and forearmed. You can also notice whether a certain school system or university is buying into this stuff, and try to bring to the public’s attention exactly what’s happening and why it’s both wrong and dangerous.

Lastly, if you ever find yourself in a confrontation with a True Believer, it can be helpful to know as much as possible about what they’re saying and what lies beneath – especially if there are onlookers who are paying attention. No, “You cannot argue or debate a pseudo-religious belief system,” as Tyler says. But you can confound them (perhaps, now and then) by (a) knowing their game and showing great awareness and knowledge of it (b) coming back at them with something unexpected in terms of argument or rejoinder (c) speaking to them in such a way that the onlookers learn something about what is going on here.

All those things seem potentially valuable to me.

[ADDENDUM: I’m surprised at the level of defeatism I see in most of the comments here, as well as the level of generalization regarding all people on the Democrat side. I’ve responded at some length in several comments, but right now I just want to highlight that the people I’m advocating talking to don’t ordinarily spend a lot of time on political topics and they are far more amenable to reasonable arguments from the other side than either activists or people who are intensely political.

Doesn’t anyone know people like the ones I’m talking about? I certainly do.

It may not be how you choose to spend your time. But I’m suggesting one-on-one exchanges with a friend or relative who fits the description I’ve given of the sort of person amenable to listening. They exist, and their numbers are not infinitesimal.

A great deal of patience is required. But if every single conservative chose even just one or two such people to talk to, I think some worthwhile change might occur. If you give up before you start and don’t even try, however, it’s less likely to occur.]

What we’re up against in today’s woke activism

The New Neo Posted on by

This is long, and I don’t usually watch long videos. Nor have I completely finished watching this one – not yet. But I’ve watched (or listened to; you can do the latter while doing some other task that doesn’t require full attention) much of it and I’m highly impressed. “Wokal Distance” manages to sum up the philosophical underpinnings of what’s going on today in a manner that’s fluent, clear, and understandable.

At around minute 42:30, he talks about methods of fighting it. But the whole thing is worth listening to:

And this is interesting as well [emphasis mine]:

Once reified, postmodern abstractions about the world are treated as though they are real things, and accorded the status of empirical truth. Contemporary social justice activism thus sees theory as reality, as though it were gravity or cell division or the atomic structure of uranium.

The correspondence theory of truth holds that objective truth exists and we can learn something about it through evidence and reason. That is, things are knowable and we gain reliable information about them when our beliefs align with reality. It’s termed “the correspondence theory of truth” because a statement is considered true when it corresponds with reality and false when it doesn’t. Reality, of course, is the thing that does not change regardless of what you believe.

While advanced civilisations going back to classical antiquity employed this reasoning in selected areas (Ancient Rome to civil engineering and law, for example, or Medieval China to public administration), it’s only since the Enlightenment that it’s been applied consistently to nearly everything, at least in developed countries. It forms the foundation of modern scientific and administrative progress and accounts in large part for the safety and material comfort we now enjoy.

Reified “Theory” is no more and no less than a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth. There are no universal truths and no objective reality, only narratives expressed in discourses and language that reflect one group’s power over another. Science has no claim on objectivity, because science itself is a cultural construct, created out of power differentials, and ordered by straight white males. There are no arguments, merely identity showdowns; the most oppressed always wins.

And, because language makes the world, attempts by scholars in other disciplines and from across the political spectrum to do what I did and falsify Theory’s empirical claims are met not with reasoned debate but an accusation that those individuals are harming the oppressed or silencing the marginalised, because all someone higher up the hierarchical food chain is supposed to do when confronted by someone lower down is listen. That’s the point of telling people to “check their privilege” before they open their mouths.

Pluckrose and Lindsay make a compelling argument that this is a religion, and not in the glib, observational sense that its adherents are taking knees, engaging in call-and-response, or washing each other’s feet. Rather, contemporary social justice asks us to believe things that aren’t proven in the same way that “Muhammad ascended to heaven from the battlements of Jerusalem on a winged horse” or “Christ rose from the dead on the third day” aren’t proven.

We live in two competing worlds. We’re not just watching two different movies (a phrase you often hear). We actually disagree about what “watching” and “two” and “different” and “movies” are.

Another way to look at it is that it’s a war between content and process. The post-modernists are about process, with content being whatever they say it is. And the process has to do with power as they see and define it, who has it and who doesn’t, and who ought to have it. They think they should have it, and then they will determine the content, which does not exist as an independent truth.

[ADDENDUM: A relevant announcement by Trump.]

About the perp in that Tulsa cop-killing

The New Neo Posted on by

Please read this on the history of David Ware, the man charged with murdering police officer Craig Johnson in Tulsa back in June. It is quite edifying.

As you read it, note that the killer probably has been an alcoholic and habitual drug user (perhaps addict, perhaps not) and in trouble since his teen years. I have no idea what interventions were tried for his substance problems, but it doesn’t seem as though they worked. Perhaps he is a sociopath.

At any rate, he made good on his earlier promise to kill Johnson. The other officer he tried to kill was only six weeks on the job, so there was no history there.

Remember the “protestors” who harrassed patrons sitting outdoors at a restaurant?

The New Neo Posted on by

They’ve been charged with an assortment of crimes such as theft, conspiracy and simple trespass, harassment, criminal mischief, and disorderly conduct.

I have no idea whether they’ll be convicted, and even if convicted whether they’ll get anything more than a weak slap on the wrist. This is in Pittsburgh, and my guess is that the only reason they are facing even the possibility of consequences is that Pittsburgh still has an actual DA rather than one who is in league with those who would do away with such antiquated penalties.

It also occurs to me that the perpetrators probably never thought they’d be charged with anything. They are so used to getting away with this sort of thing that the idea of consequences is unlikely to have even entered their heads.