Index

When is Stupidity a Crime?

How many people have to die?

We have laws against directly killing people. If you use a gun, a knife or a baseball bat to kill someone, you have committed a crime. The only question is what level of crime. The principle of harm here is plain. “My right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins.” Swinging it too far and killing or hurting someone is a crime.

Unfortunately, telling lies that kill people is not a crime, even though those lies kill. The lunatics that scream about requiring vaccines are lying out their asses, and when they are allowed to have their way, people die. People are still dying of COVID, and a very high percentage of those are people who simply were too stupid to get vaccinated. They in turn infect others, and some of those die. Nobody telling the anti-vaxxer lies is ever charged with a crime, even though they are directly and obviously responsible for deaths. How many people would be stupid enough to not get vaccinated without the lies filling their ears is the only question. Usually the answer is “not many” - the anti-vaxxer liars are murderers, but we can’t charge them with anything. They call it free speech.

The orange anus lied and told people that he won an election. He encouraged his followers to fight for him. Some did, and January 6 happened. Police were injured and died. The people who physically inflicted the violence have been charged in droves, but (at least so far) the one who incited them has not. The one who bore responsibility for the whole thing is still out and walking around free, and trying to be President again even though he never really was anything like a president for the four years he held the title. He lied about that, too, and caused hundreds of thousands to die of COVID because he wasn’t doing the job.

Putin lies every day, just like the orange toddler. He has finally been charged with a crime, but will very likely never face charges because he is above the law, just as the orangutan thinks he is. Both sets of lies are repeated by fright-wing idiots every day, including on self-proclaimed “news” cable channels that never have real news. The people that believe this shit are quite obviously complete idiots. Not surprisingly, this group also contains most if not all of the anti-vaxxer twits. Again, the lies are not crimes, although the deaths in Ukraine from Putin’s killers are very real.

When do the lies become crimes? Spreading lies like the anti-vaxxers do is clearly causing deaths, but they are never held responsible. What is coming out in some fake-news-channel lawsuits, the liars themselves don’t always believe their own lies, but the lies pay their bills. The Tucker Carlsons of this world are well paid. Oil and Tobacco company lawyers and hired “experts” lie constantly and loudly about the effects of their products, but the only people paying for their crimes are the victims. Global warming is already killing thousands when you add up all of the deaths from weather events that were far stronger than they would have been without global warming, but the oil companies and their hired experts will never see the inside of a courtroom, only the inside of a bank. Various tobacco-caused cancers have killed millions, but those liars are still grinning all the way to the deposit window.

“Free Speech” is ingrained in our society, and the founding fathers enshrined it for good and sufficient reasons. The real problems come when people believe the lies. We have little we can do to the liars, but almost nothing we can do about the stupid people that believe them. The liars first destroyed the credibility of those that told the truth, at least in the minds of those stupid enough to believe them. The problem is that the liars also make their useful idiots believe that they weren’t responsible for their own stupidity. This is another lie, but one very deeply buried in that most vicious of lies, religion. That is another lie with a huge following.

How do we draw the line and make the liars responsible for their lies?