Hacker News Reader

Comment by jker | Hacker News Reader

The problem is, plenty of other people agree with you, except they consider you to be in that 0.25%.

Of course. I think the real measure of who that 0.25% is though, are the ones where if someone McElroyed you, an entire town of 40 people would stay silent about it.

In the south it used to be an entire town of hundreds would show up for a lynching and take pictures and a picnic below the tree.

Emmett Till’s river site memorial plaque had to be replaced by a bulletproof 500lbs one to slow down its vandalism. In 2019. Before that it had to be replaced 3 times, once because it was removed and tosse in the river, and the other 2 times due to damage from being shot at. It had been first erected in 2008.

Jury nullification is very much a two-edged blade, it’s been used against the Fugitive Slaves Act (this sort of acts was a big reason why the south decided to secede) and it’s been used, a lot, to protect racist murderers.

It's really worth noting how much the nature of law in the US changed after the Civil War. So much so that you can think of post-1868 US as a fundamentally different country, legally, than pre-1868. The big change is that the Civil War demonstrated the shortcomings of state-level interpretation of law, and with the 14th Amendment, a wide swath of such interpretation was barred.

And, indeed, plenty of people think the old way was better. Why they think the old way was better is always worth observing with a critical eye.

These United States vs The United States

Reply on news.ycombinator.com