Lol wut. Victor, if a chef texted his friend “I spit on some food last night” and it got leaked would you go to his restaurant anymore? Of course people should be fired for personal texts if those texts show that they can’t be trusted to do their jobs.
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An obvious and good point. Normalizing employers and the government policing what people say will mostly result in people being fired for doing things like criticizing their company, organizing workers, or political activity counter to the interest of the people in power. Most of the time no one will be admitting that’s the reason though. Someone will just get fired for poor performance or being 5 minutes late. And then, if people are serious when they claim to be worried about the fascist tendencies of the Trump admin, they should certainly be concerned about people getting fired or worse for criticizing the government. It’s definitely best if the power to punish people for speech is extremely limited.
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In real life the vast majority of people who would be fired if it were common for employers to monitor texts and were then free to fire them for the content would be things like restaurants firing chefs for saying there are too many rats in the kitchen or Amazon warehouse workers fired for saying Amazon sucks.
Not that that judge should be resigning or that the chef in your story shouldn’t be fired, but this is something people should be wary of.
The judge is a particularly bad example. Not fired and most likely an elected official.
If it’s not possible to separate a racist judge from ones like these then I might agree you just have to let this one go, and you guys know the US context way better than me obv. I’d definitely argue an environment where it is possible to separate them is better, however.
I don’t think we will disagree on this case because it’s an elected official and she’s resigning and is not fired and I don’t know how the texts came to light, but I wouldn’t be shocked if you and I have some disagreements on things like this generally. For one thing I disagree with most people about things like this generally, and for another you are British.
I would definitely fire a judge for this sort of blatant racism!
I would too, but that’s not really what Victor was talking about. He was just trying to warn that people should be wary I think.
Sorry, that was a poor joke about your “anti-British” words.
Dang. Missed that.
It’s a judge, it doesn’t matter if he or she is elected. Exhibiting these kinds of racist views, whether public or private, automatically disqualifies them, imo. I would hope everyone agrees.
It’s a good reason for judges to be elected. Judges should be recallable.
In theory that sounds good, but in practice I don’t think it’s a good idea. In places where they have retention elections, it just politicizes the position, which I think is a worse outcome.
Judges here have retention elections. My brother is a judge. He was appointed at first and is now elected (though so far he hasn’t had an opponent). He has no party affiliation and neither do any of the other judges that I’ve ever seen. And at his level (superior court judge), pretty much no one knows anything about his politics and incumbents almost always win unless they do something like racist texts that make the news.
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For those who want to learn about the politics of retention elections, look up Rose Bird.
Judges should not have to bow or pander to popular will. They should only be accountable to the law and the constitution.
Being recallable by elections sounds nice in theory until a judge has to appease a racist electorate, for example in the Jim Crow south.
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Or until they have to appease a racist government, like in Nazi Germany. If you have a racist public, you will have a racist government. And you’ll have racist laws and racist constitutions. The noble leaders or lawyers or judges or laws or oracles or w/e are a myth.
The judiciary in Nazi Germany wasn’t independent. Quite obviously there weren’t any recall elections either. Nothing of this matters in an authoritarian state. We‘re talking about (somewhat) democratic systems here.
Another example is that you don‘t want local judges in Utah to bend the laws to appease polygamists.
I was attempting to devil’s advocate a scenario where a judge could be competent while using that kind of language but it’s just implausible.
Also assuming the hard R was used.
ETA: tired and baked. They were texts but I still heard her voice when I read it.
I want everyone everywhere to bend laws towards things I want and away from things I don’t, but I don’t always get my way. Some laws are good and some suck. I don’t think they’re better than people on average. I do not respect the law at all.
I guess this is the thread where we put really stupid things happening in America, although I think we need to note that this probably has little if anything to do with Trump’s America and everything to do with rape culture. But what in the actual fuck???