Hacker News Reader

Comment by cratermoon | Hacker News Reader

Further, why do we continue to accept the fiction that rules and laws apply to the elite as for the masses? Even the not-so-elite, the Stanford swimmer who brutally raped and assaulted Chanel Miller, though convicted, was given light sentence because of his "bright future", according to the judge.

View on HN

Brock Turner wasn't elite in any sense besides his acceptance into Stanford, which had been revoked. His father was an electrical engineer and his mom was a nurse.

Also, the judge who made the ruling was fired.

GP referred to "not-so-elite." In this case, the small bit of "eliteness" would be white, male, athlete (All-American), upper middle class, accepted into a good college.

And that's probably enough to justify saying he has a "bright future," in this country and day and age.

That's white, male, athlete, upper middle class, accepted into a good college, living in America.

From a global perspective, the eliteness is far more than a "small bit".

Sure, but in this case we're comparing the treatment (by courts, etc) of the elite vs non-elite in America.

There are peculiarities of eliteness in America that matter here. Because Americans maintain the fiction of a classless society and don't have the legal framework of a caste system, what counts as elite in America affects how the world views American elites, and how Americans view elites in other cultures. We don't for example, care how many cows in a bride's dowry.

The number of cows in a bride’s dowry is just a straightforward proxy for wealth, and that’s pretty universal.

Sure, in some cultures they use the number of cows as the reference point, in others they use the jewelry worn or the car driven by the individual. I know that some people compete in who can afford to spend the most money on their wedding too.

All of these are literally just another way of quantifying wealth through displays of it (regardless of whether it is real wealth or they just decided to spend all their savings on a $100k wedding). And I dont see how this is somehow unique to the US at all.

Can you imagine a judge in the US letting someone convicted of sexual assault off with a light sentence because he has a lot of cows? The point is that the elitism is not just relative to other Americans, but to the rest of the world.

> Because Americans maintain the fiction of a classless society

There is nobody in the US that believes US society is classless. Talk about fictions.

Everyone knows upper class, middle class, lower class segmentation. So how is it you reconcile your premise of Americans not thinking there are classes when everyone in the country defines themselves by such structures? Americans are taught the class structures all throughout school. Americans are informed about the class structures 24/7 by popular media and news, from the NYTimes to CNBC and everything inbetween.

The hyper rich and the poor have been an always part of US society. There are no exceptions in terms of grasping the distinction, nobody fails to get it. The US has had hyper rich and poor since its founding and everyone here has always been aware of the divisions. It's in our history books, it's in our earliest literature. It's omnipresent as a thing.

Before there was the industrial wealthy and working poor, there were the land barons and British lords, farmers, agrarian workers and the slaves that were brought to the US by the conquering European empires. The class systems here quite pre-date the country, so yes, Americans are fully aware of it all. It has never not been part of US society.

The fiction is that there's class mobility. That's part of why others commenting here have tilted towards minimizing the eliteness of a criminal convicted of sexual assault: they want to think that his "hard work" landed him where he is and that they, too, might accomplish as much once they grasp their own bootstraps.

> All-American swimmer

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/03/3...

Athletics are another sense in which he was elite.

Seriously, top athletes live on another planet in University. I remember working at the UT-Austin textbook store in my 20s and while everyone else had to find what they needed on their own, the football team had special permits they could bring you to not only get their books for free but you had to go get them for them

> wasn't elite in any sense besides his acceptance into Stanford

Pardon my rudeness, but if that's the only thing someone sees as elite, I'd suggest that the person's own elite status is just a notch below them.

> Also, the judge who made the ruling was fired.

Just as a matter of terminology, I think one doesn't usually speak of judges being fired. He lost his seat in a recall election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Persky#Repercussions_to_...

My understanding is that he also had a history of giving light sentences, not just to upper middle class defendants, and that his banishment has gone well beyond losing his job.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/09/11/recalled-ju...

> Also, the judge who made the ruling was fired.

(By recall election right?)

Yes, he was recalled. It's unlikely that if he'd been an appointed-for-life judge that the legislature would have removed him.

A white male All-American athlete attending arguably America's most prestigious university isn't elite?

He is far from the only case of the rich getting differential treatment under the law. These stories are really a dime a dozen. How about this case of a rich boy from the affluent suburbs of LA (palos verdes estates, where Trump's golf course is), decides its cool to become a gang banger, gets involved with a murder, and is acquitted.

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/07/23/cameron-terrell-a...

The existence of a remedy isn't a good excuse for avoidable injuries. The resolutions you allude to in that case took place after the public became incensed at the delicate treatment handed out to a guy who was literally caught in the act of humping a passed out woman behind a dumpster.

This isn't just an issue with the elites, though. Locally I've noticed that when you look into the perpetrators of a lot of violent crime, they often have a string of prior cases where they were let off with almost no punishment (pleading down to a lesser crime, given probation that's not followed up on, suspended sentences, etc.). Then you have other cases where someone has done something relatively minor (or doesn't seem to have done anything at all), and the book gets thrown at them.

I'd say the American justice system is capricious more than anything. Plea bargains - which is extremely common in America but extremely rare to non-existent in most countries - also play a big roll. The guilty can reduce their sentence, while the innocent are threatened with years in prison unless they forfeit their right to defend themselves.

> a string of prior cases where they were let off with almost no punishment

Ever tried to get a job with a string of convictions? The criminal justice system in the US doesn't need to imprison a person for them to be punished.

He was given a light sentence, but its worth noting that the judge was following the recommendation of the probation department. This wasn't a judge going rogue on his own.

1: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/02/us/brock-turner-release-j...

Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good outrage.

as the principal adjudicator, the judge can't be absolved of his responsibility by pointing to advisories. that the probationers were biased in their recommendation doesn't absolve him of his own biased judgment, and whether he's actually biased or not is a matter of the totality of his judicial record, not just this case.

But it is illegal for the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges and to beg in the streets.

The law, in its infinite wisdom, decrees it so.

And this is why I believe law should be truly blind. Any details such as race, gender, sex, education, political leaning in cases should be hidden and only public prosecution and defenders be allowed. We could easily handle whole process via text.

"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France

replying to cratermoon as a English born nearly retired child of a now almost entirely American family, whose parents totalled 100 years of life and was taught to program and think by my uncle who would be 121 years old if alive and who worked intimately with with the American war command, I have no answer to your question other than that is the defining of the American Way to believe that the rules apply for all of us equally. The definition of 20th century British nature is to be the inbred product of generations of ancestors who never doubted the rules for the privileged are not even comparable to those for the populace.

I am too old for reconsidering the possibilities of a investment linked naturalisation process, but the development in American political culture since 2016 has convinced me that I would be committed to doing everything possible to reverse recent real and far more damaging perceived decay of moral and judicial common citizenry in the USA. The rest of the world doesn't know how terrible this is for everyone.

Is there anyone walking around that actually believes that rules and laws apply to the elite?

Some seem to think that the reason this is excused is because (in the US at least) every poor schmuck seem to think they they will be rich and powerful someday and get to partake. I've never found that very credible, but smarter people than me seem to think so.

Depends on the rules and laws. The system tends to be very good at punishing rich people that swindle money from other rich people.

In other words, when the elite are impacted the full force of law will be brought to bear on the perpetrator of the injustice. This used to be called aristocracy. We've spent the past 250 years pretending it doesn't exist here in the States.

I find it funny how we use phrases like "Russian oligarchs" all the time without batting an eye, but we never use them when referring to the Bushes or the Clintons in the US.

There's a minor genre of imagining US journalism standards for world reporting applied to reporting on the US: https://slate.com/tag/if-it-happened-there

LOL. It's telling that even in these satires they don't quite get the tone right - it still has a tinge of US- centrism in there

The power resides in generational wealth not some commoners who got lucky. These people don't need to hold elected office because they can buy whatever they want, including manipulating government in their favor.

Nobility is specifically included from Forbes wealthiest list. They really don't want to draw attention.

*excluded

The Clintons and Bushes are not really oligarchs. They represent a monarchy maybe of inherited wealth and status.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerburg are better examples of oligarchs because they managed to create their own wealth and with that obtained political clout.

> they managed to create their own wealth

Haha, there's that fiction. See how deeply it pervades all thinking about power and success in the US?

I take that politicians are more of useful tools. Not the people who have any real power or wealth.

> The system tends to be very good at punishing rich people that swindle money from other rich people.

… Eventually? I'm surely not the only one who thinks of Madoff first, and he got away with it for almost a decade after suspicions were first reported.

Ah, but Madoff was also making money for other rich people, so the system took some time to decide what to do.

Madoff got 150 years once he was convicted, though you are correct, I probably should have stated that the system is very good at punishing rich people that are CAUGHT swindling other rich people.

It's a convenient fiction the rich/elite propagate through funding stupid plot lines in books/TV/movies while hiding that the elite get off scott-free and later expunge the records.

Convenient because it allows the state to continue to pass more and more draconian laws that prevent any change to the status quo in which the rich get richer and poor are further dehumanized.

I often debate this with HNers, so yes, there are quite a few that believe the world is perfectly fair, more so in “democratic” countries.

Yeah I wonder why this is. Perhaps misplaced idealism of human nature and authority. The Judge, CEO, or the Journalist despite their lofty titles are human too and can be influenced by others. They also are not immune to their own personal desires and biases as well.

A simpler explanation would be that it's just the way it works in every human society ever.

Maybe we could consider it an easier explanation rather than a simple one. It seems like splitting hairs but its important

The rule of law however has been continuously pursued across centuries and different societies in an attempt to subvert this 'default' operating mechanism.

I would argue the nature bit is where you favor yourself. Its hard to find people who will disfavor themselves in the name of egalitarianism.

The rest is the result of resources/funds being concentrated in the hands of people who also end up with power due to said resources/funds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com