Politics – LAWYERS & LIQUOR

Guest Post: A Good Boy Speaks about the Coup

[Today we have a guest post from Buddy Goodboy from over at Sit Stay Speak, a friend and attorney, who has sent over his personal thoughts on the attempted coup yesterday, January 6, 2021. -Ed.]

Yesterday the United States of America suffered an attack on the political process unprecedented in the history of our nation. Never before have seditious elements been able to disrupt the electoral process even for the five hours the certification of the electoral college votes was delayed.

The events of yesterday’s insurrection were planned openly online, and despite law enforcement having the same access as anyone of these plans, the attack on the Capitol carried out successfully.

The point was to cause disruption, scare moderate and liberal voters and politicians, and embolden Trumpists for more terrorist action.

Extremists of various stripes, including but not limited to Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalist, race war accelerationists, and plain everyday fascists, learned that they can disrupt the democratic process and that the President will still say he loves them.

This pattern is totally foreseeable when you take into account that a neo-Nazi murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesville back in 2017, and the president said there were “very fine people on both sides.“

In the presidential debates, when directly asked to condemn white nationalism and white supremacy, Donald Trump endorsed the Proud Boys and asked them to stand by. Trump urged his supporters to watch the polls to intimidate voters. Trump condoned the murders of innocents committed by Kyle Rittenhouse. Trump encourages this kind of violent escalation, and at this point, whether he intends to do so doesn’t matter—the result is a pattern of excusing violence that encourages escalation.

We have not heard the last of violence aimed at destroying equality, progress, and democracy. We no longer have any excuse not to see Trumpism for what it is. And when we see it, unless we want more and worse attacks on our lives, freedoms, and society we must stamp out Trumpism.

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“The No-Bill Profession” – Legal Aid and Pro Bono

You know what’s nice? Knowing that the practice of law is a profession that places as its benchmark the pursuit of justice and higher school of thought. We all go into law school thinking that we’re going to change the world through our practice of the law, and some dolent professor with an Ivy League pedigree extols the virtues of the “Noble Savage” that the lawyer is supposed to be. We are told, in every class, that the law exists to bring justice and that the role of an attorney is a counselor and advocate for the cause of the downtrodden client. We are, in the words of the administrators and professors, the gatekeepers of justice, the first line of defense against tyranny, and the vindicators of the downtrodden.

And, of course, we then step out into the real world of practice and become made aware of the fact that all that esoteric bullshit and idealism doesn’t make the student loan payment of the rent. Nobody’s ringing up their landlord and saying “Hey, I stopped a family of five from being evicted today! They paid me in a big bag of pork rinds! Will you accept pork rinds in lieu of rent now?” If your landlord or utility company would ever stop laughing, what they’d choke out is “No, dipshit.” Idealism doesn’t pay any of the bills. “Good feels” doesn’t put food on the table. Advocacy won’t buy avocado toast.

For that, you need money. And to make money, you have to let go of the concept that you are anything more than a cutthroat mercenary of the legal world. Because motherfuckers may need justice, but motherfuckers gotta pay to get it. And yes, there are lawyers out there who provide representation to those people that need it without regard to their ability to pay, and they do some great goddamn work in doing so. But, and here’s the thing:

They may not be there for much longer, and society has no viable safety net ready and raring to go for those folks.

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Film Friday: A Time to Kill – Four Truths in a Lie

There’s a sort of fucked up irony in watching Kevin Spacey seek the death penalty for a man who killed the rapists of his ten year old daughter. In 1996, when Spacey was presented as the District Attorney in charge of the trial of Carl Lee Hailey, father of a minor who was brutally raped and vengeance embodied against the abusers of that child, nobody could predict that one day Spacey himself would be in the same place as the two rapists killed by Carl Lee. Well, nobody except his victims, I suppose.

But this is where we’re at for this Film Friday, examining the big screen adaptation of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, and talking about four unexpected truths regarding the justice system that a layman, or an idealistic lawyer who still thinks things are “fair,” can take away from it.

The world is one fucked up place, folks. Just really, really fucked up.

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Film Friday: Schindler’s List as an example of “Morally Right, Legally Wrong.”

Alright, so over the past few months I pretty much intentionally embroiled myself in the controversy of “go forth and punch a Nazi” with the opinion that physically assaulting someone when their actions are mere speech, and not an imminent threat of violent action, was no bueno. The most common reaction to that opinion was that statement that it was morally correct to punch a Nazi, and therefore justified, regardless of the presence or lack of an imminent threat of actual harm. In essence, the opposition to that position boiled down to “legal or illegal, it’s right to punch people who espouse such vitriolic and hateful opinions.”

I mean, I personally disagree, just because I believe violence is an appropriate response to the threat of use of actual violence, not the intangible threat of some possibility of violence in the future, and I have some issues with the position we should legitimize violence as a response to speech (when it is only speech). Rest assured, I don’t like the goddamn Nazis, I don’t like the goddamn bigots, and I’m not saying we have to discuss the validity of their positions or “hear them out.” My concerns are primarily linked to that whole “slippery slope” thing we lawyers talk about, and the belief that if we legitimize a violent reaction then we’re handing them a nail-and-barbed-wire covered bat to come back with when we speak out against them louder than they speak out against us.

Plus I think that when you punch these fuckers, all you really do is give them more goddamn attention and air time and spur a national fucking debate about “Who the real Nazi is, hmmmm?” God do I fucking hate that fucking trope.

But that’s not the conversation I want to have for this week’s Film Friday, because the majority of people with two fucking brain cells to rub together all agree on the basic premise that Nazis, white supremacists, the alt-right, cue whatever feel good nickname they’ve come up with this month, are absolutely and positively shitheads who make no valuable contribution to society, whose opinions (while constitutionally protected) have no goddamn merit, and who we definitely don’t need to treat as having legitimate speech that adds anything other than disarray to the world. The conversation I want to have this week is a little more nuanced than that, and it’s the concept that something can be legally wrong, but morally right.

And I can think of no better way to illustrate this point than to talk about Schindler’s List, a movie which embodies the principle of “Legal is not always moral, nor is illegal always immoral.”

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New Milford Hates Fetishes: Politics, Optics, and Fetishes

So I was gonna spend some time today on the whole “1L Guidance” thing again, but you know when life reaches up and smacks you around a little? That happened Friday evening as I was preparing to go out and be the Amazing Dancing Badger for a group of furries in Connecticut over the last weekend. This time, the dose of reality came in the form of a link from the super-secret LawyerSlack, a place where attorneys gather…you know, like a Bar Association meeting but with less liquor and pretentiousness. Someone posted an article about a Connecticut Councilman from the town of New Milford who “voluntarily resigned” after his participation in a certain fandom – possibly one filled with large talking animals and a love of the movie Zootopia – became even more exposed than it had been before.

And, because I’m not a goddamn fan of hypocrisy, let’s talk about this shit.

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