Hacker News Reader

Comment by hendersoon | Hacker News Reader

I find it very sad that the bulk of comments on this matter are about Manning being trans rather than the injustice of jailing a kid for 30 years for blowing the whistle on war crimes.

View on HN

There's a lot of virtue signalling going on here and it definitely detracts from the important topics that you point out.

> virtue signalling

"Saying you love or hate something to show off what a virtuous person you are, instead of actually trying to fix the problem."

Funny enough, the phrase "virtue signaling" itself acts as "virtue signaling", as at this point it is used almost exclusively by members of online communities who are opposed to political correctness and are often outwardly intolerant of transpeople. I don't mean to imply anything about the GP, just to observe a particular irony around that phrase.

The irony was not lost on me, but I think it's an interesting term to describe the way in which people communicate with each other. Some memes need to piggy-back on the traits of other memes in order to propagate, and "virtue signaling" is one of those. My usage of it is predominately to encourage more thoughtful reflection on what people actually say and not make snap judgements or stereotypes about another's positions.

You know, I've heard the same thing said of phrases like SJW, but it seems to me that both "virtue signaling" and "SJW" are useful phrases that describe real phenomena.

> Opposed to political correctness and intolerant of transpeople.

Wow, stereotype those who disagree with you much?

This.

I donated to the defence fund when she was Bradley and I'm not sorry I did it. Secret courts and whatnot have no place in America. At all. Ever.

I don't think Manning should spend 30 years in jail, but she wasn't convicted for whistleblowing.

She was acquitted for leaking the few files related to war crimes; she was convicted of leaking 750000 unrelated documents.

Uh yeah. The charge is whatever will stick. Military courts will never uphold the law as written if they feel the need to punish a soldier for being non-soldierly. (The judge, Col. Denise Lind, intentionally came to an illegal ruling to punish someone she didn't like. She's a traitor.)

The law is very clear that it's your duty to stop illegal actions, not merely report them and carry on. Chelsea tried just reporting the problems but that didn't do anything and she was given direct orders to continue the illegal activities. The guilty party (us, our government) doesn't really have a leg to stand on when complaining about the measures she was forced to take.

Imagine a convicted kiddy fiddler complaining that their legal business files got examined in court with their illegal files. Nobody would case, It's the price of crime...

She was acquitted of leaking the Collateral Murder video in 2009, but only because she plead _guilty_ to leaking it later. That was simply a matter of timing, the government got one charge wrong.

She was also acquitted of "aiding the enemy", which was an extraordinary overreaching charge from the government.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com