mmcnay wrote:The utility cyclist wrote:mmcnay wrote:
The analogy was deeply flawed and offensive. Cyclists don't get their homes smashed up, or walled up in ghettoes, forced into extermination campes, or their children murdered.
Shame on you for trying to use the murder of millions of innocents to prop up your argument.
Occasionally cyclists are knocked over, often accidentally - they aren't systematically murdered, or even abused. (Your analogy falls here)
But, unlike the Aryans who abused Jews, most drivers are, or were, cyclists. (Your analogy falls here.)
And, before you start frothing and accusing me. I am a cyclist who has come across bad driving, who has had 'words' with the odd driver. I know what cyclists are up against. The odd idiot who is a bit careless and doesn't realise how dangerous his car is. It is nothing like antisemitism, or racism. Don't ever think it is.
It's offensive to you, it certainly isn't to me and clearly a few others.
But ok, shall we go with the, when women were violently raped and then blamed by police for walking down the 'wrong' streets at the 'wrong' time, wearing the 'wrong' clothing and joe public piled in with the same thinking calling out the women who were raped and saying it was Darwinism and they were just asking to be raped, shall we go with that analogy because that's rather more accurate to the helmet and hi-vis plus riding on the wrong roads situation.
It was disgusting when that occurred and it's still disgusting but still goes on, a prime case is the young lady who was gang raped and the misogynist system in the country where the sickening act occurred has blamed her and even held her in prison.
Similar to when a cyclist gets harmed, fights back and then is slammed by police with threats of public order/assault and states that they will do the cyclist if they are to also charge the criminal who attacked the vulnerable person.
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The arguments and analogies found sometimes prove to be basically sound. It's always best, in the end, to address the argument rather than the nature of the arguer - assuming the nature of the arguer doesn't reveal another motive for making a proposition other than that claimed by the arguer.
You have failed to notice, in considering the analogy under question, M's point about scale. The crimes perpetrated against jews during the holocaust were obviously far, far worse than those perpetrated against cyclists. But the crimes of the holocaust began, In Germany and elsewhere, with a less harsh persecution of the jews, who were first "merely" vilified in various mass media, treated with disrespect in the street, occasionally beaten up, discriminated against in various ways and generally made 3rd class citizens.
Currently we cyclists are often treated in that low-key-persecution way, with occasional high-persecution events in the form of motorists deliberately running into cyclists, sometimes with intent to seriously harm or kill them. These persecutions are performed "because it's a cyclist and they deserve it".
The attitude and associated persecution behaviours are getting worse. They are encouraged actively by large sections of the mass media. The authorities don't treat deliberate cyclist-harming as a serious crime except in the most extreme cases.
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The rape analogy is perhaps easier to accept as rapists always intend serious harm and the failure of the authorities to deal with it via the legal system represents a very serious reduction in the civil status of women, as well as an invitation to rapists everywhere to do their nasty thing. But the underlying attitudes and behaviours in all three kinds of crime (racism, cyclist-harming and rape) are the same. "Other" the victims. Perform a persecution. Blame the victim for inducing the persecutor to persecute.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
