A couple of white teenagers got a long, long profile in the Washington Post, which is part of the problem. What did they do to deserve all this attention? They pulled a “prank”, charging into their high school the night before graduation, and spray-painting swastikas and racist slurs on the sidewalks and buildings.

They went on a real spree. There’s anti-semitic, racist, and homophobic crap diligently sprayed everywhere, along with an occasional penis. They worked hard to splatter toxic crap everywhere, all with the intent to shock the families that would be visiting for the graduation ceremony. They thought this would be funny, a good joke, something that would be getting them attention, anonymously, they expected.

Unfortunately for them, security cameras recorded the whole ugly game, and worse, their cell phones automatically connected to the campus network, so authorities had their full identity the next day. It was a stupid act sabotaged by their own foolish ignorance, and the four kids were arrested and tried. That’s where it gets really noxious.

They pleaded innocent of a hate crime and racism. Their parents were in total denial that their good little boy was a poisonous bigot.

His understanding of the KKK was limited, too, he said. “Some people think it’s just a word, or a symbol or three letters put together. . . . But they were lynching people, hurting people for no good reason.”

Now, he said, he knows. But he still doesn’t believe his actions that night make him a bigot.

“I spray paint one racist thing and, suddenly, I become a racist? Just because I did it doesn’t mean I hate Jews, gay people or black people.”

He was standing before the judge, pleading guilty to a hate crime, but he would not admit that he harbored any hate.

All around him, the adults agreed.

“He will forever be known as the racist kid at Glenelg, but that’s not who Seth is,” his father said in court that day.

“I told him that his act was racist, but don’t let it define him as a racist. He can and I pray that he will go on and do better,” Maxwell Ware, the African American pastor he met with, wrote in a letter supporting him.

“He is not a racist . . . he has a good heart,” his attorney told the judge.

It’s such a tired wheeze, there’s even a joke about it. Yes, you spray one racist thing, and you’re a racist. You’ve been a racist all along. It means you trivialize hatred of Jews, gay people, and black people. This is not a hard concept to grasp. These kids are still in denial.

They got a slap on the wrist. They’re “good kids”, don’t you know. Their mothers cried when they got handed weekends in jail and probation and community service.

Six weeks later, Seth backed his car out of his parents’ driveway, headed to his final weekend in jail.

Good behavior during his weekends locked up meant he had to serve only two-thirds of them.

The following weekend, Tyler Curtiss, who had painted two swastikas, would finish his weekends, five in all.

Matt Lipp, whose graffiti attacked Jewish, black and gay people, would serve 11 of the 16 he was sentenced to. He has filed an appeal, still arguing that his First Amendment rights had been violated.

Josh Shaffer, who targeted the principal, was sentenced to the most jail time: 18 weekends. He would serve 12.

All four will be eligible to get the hate crimes expunged from their record when their probation is finished.

Right. The first amendment gives everyone carte blanche to scrawl crude hatred on public property. If you’re white, being racist means you might have some weekends spoiled, but don’t worry, your history will be expunged from their record.

Except that now Seth Taylor, Tyler Curtiss, Joshua Shaffer and Matthew Lipp have their names prominently mentioned in a high-profile article in the Washington Post. Good luck getting that monkey off your back, boys!

The system in the USA has led to deep systemic flaws in all kinds of important institutions. One of the arguments Lawrence Krauss used to try to dissuade me from criticizing Jeffrey Epstein was that he gives so much money to so many scientific enterprises. He’s a friend of science! He donated to Krauss’s Origins Project at ASU. He was dropping millions of dollars on various universities. Look at Harvard, they were happy to take cash from a child rapist.

My university is a small liberal arts college, not well known at all, so I don’t think anyone as perverted as Epstein has donated to us, but I have to be honest. We’re always cash-strapped, so if Epstein had called up and said he wants to give us a million dollars, our administration might well have leapt at it. It’s hard to blame the recipients of corruption when our country is trying so hard to make our educational institutions so desperate (not Harvard, though — Harvard never has any excuse, other than that they’re greedy and grasping for more).

Read this long thread from Nathan Oseroff-Spicer to see how deep the rot has gone.

Lawrence Krauss, Steven Pinker and Jeffrey Epstein have an odd relationship that provides insight into the relationship between the institutions of science, the movement of capital, the profit motive and science funding.

Long thread incoming. pic.twitter.com/4EHhVKBhCW

— Nathan Oseroff-Spicer (@nathanoseroff) April 10, 2019

He highlights two big names, Lawrence Krauss and Steven Pinker. They are not accused of participating in any of Epstein’s sex crimes. Instead, what you see is an unhealthy respect for the wealthy, which motivates them to actively defend a child rapist, or in more generous circumstances, to kindly turn a blind eye to his activities. They are part of the silencing machine of rape culture. Epstein, and many others, are exploiting the system to rape and abuse, but even larger numbers of well-connected people are conspiring to keep it quiet. They wouldn’t even think of raping a child, but hey, that guy who would — he’s bringing megabucks to our research program. Let’s keep his activities out of the public eye, let’s minimize the complaints of his victims, let’s accuse anyone who criticizes rapists of inciting a “moral panic”. As Rebecca Solnit writes:

Monsters rule over us, on behalf of monsters. Now, when I think about what happened with Strauss-Kahn, who was subsequently accused of sexual assault by several other women, and with cases like his, it’s the secondary characters who seem to matter most. These men could not do what they did without a culture—lawyers, journalists, judges, friends—that protected them, valued them, devalued their victims and survivors. They do not act alone, and their might is nothing more or less than the way a system rewards and protects them, which is another definition of rape culture. That is, their impunity is not inherent; it’s something the society grants them and can take away.

You want a particularly vivid example? Just look at Alexander Acosta, the attorney who negotiated that absurdly evil sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein in Florida. He arranged a slap-on-the-wrist prison deal for Epstein — he was free to go about his business, but just had to report in to the prison at night for 13 months — and as a reward, Acosta was promoted to US labor secretary. Now in his elevated position, he’s using his power to cut the budget of the agency responsible for combating child sex trafficking by 80%. Solnit was understating the problem.

Our country is run by a wealthy sex predator who elevates amoral people who have defended other wealthy sex predators to positions where they can protect more sex predators. Meanwhile, academics at wealthy institutions tut-tut those who point out the obvious conflict here as part of “a growing sexual-assault bureaucracy” that “maintains a vested interest in fueling the panic”. We’re being impressively gaslit by these apologists for rape culture.

There’s very little penalty for actively working to maintain rape culture. I learn from Rebecca Watson that Krauss is being rewarded with cruise to Cambodia and Vietnam, with his good buddy Richard Dawkins, funded by the Origins Project — you know, the foundation that used to be funded in part by Jeffrey Epstein. You too can join this luxurious 8-day / 7-night riverboat cruise with Krauss and Dawkins for the low, low price of $10,000.

Krauss is still the president of the board of directors of the Origins Project Foundation — his dismissal from his position at ASU doesn’t affect that in the slightest. Take a look at all the well-known people serving on that board. Some of them I’ve met and engaged with in the context of the atheist movement, and there they are, willingly serving a known sexual harasser and creep. I can sympathize with wanting to support a good cause, but they’re doing it by enabling a bad man. That’s how rape culture thrives.

I’m glad to be out of it. Especially since Rebecca is going to launch all those moral cowards into the sun.