Files From Duke Rape Case Give Details But No Answers: Fill & Download for Free

I believe that the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh are fabricated, because of my personal experience and extensive research that I've done.I was very upset after watching the hearing, and I wrote an open letter to Kamala Harris, a Senator from California where I live. I wanted to send this letter to members of the Senate and the Senate Judiciary Committee, but I didn’t know how to contact them. If you have a Republican Senator, please feel free to copy my letter and send it to them along with the information below that confirms my opinion that Christine Blasey Ford is likely making up at least a part of her story.Please note that the name I use on Quora is not my real name. I am scared to sign my name because of the current political climate in the country and here in California.This is an open letter to Kamala Harris, United States Senator from CaliforniaDear Ms. Harris,I voted for Democrats in every election since I became a naturalized citizen in January of 2000. Both my husband and I voted for you as well. I am non-religious, pro-choice, always have been pro-gay-marriage, and very conscious about the environment, clean water and air. My family and I live in San Francisco, California.I am devastated by what the Democrats did to derail the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. I will never vote for Democrats again in my life or until the current Democratic representatives are replaced. My extended family always votes for Democrats as well. I'll try to convince them to do otherwise.To accuse someone of deviant sexual crimes without any proof, to assume them guilty before any investigation, to drag their name through the mud and change their life forever -- this is so low and unethical that I could never imagine it could happen in the US government."By any means necessary" was the way it was done in the countries we consider dictatorships, such as the former Soviet Union under Stalin. Political opponents were accused of crimes that to anyone with common sense would sound ridiculous. The obviously fabricated crimes were used to execute or incarcerate people who were in the way of the political agenda of the Communist Party.You are an educated person, and I am sure you know how the polygraph test works. As well as Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi. If you don't, google it. Talk to the CIA or an FBI professional about it. Even to me, not an expert, it's obvious that the polygraph test that Christine Blasey Ford took was invalid. A friendly polygraph examiner paid by her lawyer, and she was in a state of emotional distress coming to take it right after her grandmother's funeral. In addition, she corrected her polygraph statement twice while answering questions under penalty of perjury.The only reason her lawyers wanted her to take the polygraph test is that the politicians and the media would present "she passed the lie detector test" to the American people who don't pay much attention to how the test works.Christine Blasey Ford's story is not credible by itself even without ever considering Kavanaugh's character or other alleged witness's denials. Her letter to Dianne Feinstein is incredibly vague, and her story changed a few times between that letter, the Washington Post interview, and the polygraph statement that she asserted was true.When I first read the Washington Post article about her coming forward with an accusation, I told my husband that I was skeptical. About thirty years ago, I escaped an attempted rape situation myself. I have very specific and detailed memories not only of the immediate event, but of about an hour before and a few hours after the event occurred. The only things I don't remember are the face and the name of the guy who did it.I know why I was there, where it was, what I was wearing exactly, the weather, the time of day, the dialog and all the utterances and I can testify to what happened at any time without any preparation.In all, I had two serious sexual assaults in my life, the first one at 12 years old. The third one was not so serious. I also experienced sexual harassment at work and got fired, for which I took my employer to court. I had to give my deposition sitting across the table from my employer, and I was pretty young and vulnerable back then. I was cross-examined by the employer's lawyer and I didn't have any preparation leading to the deposition. They ended up settling the case for a small amount really fast. I also went to appeals court in San Francisco to testify against my employer because they cancelled my last paycheck. I had to talk in front of the judge and I didn't even speak much English at the time.I am saying all of that because I want you to know that I feel what happened with Judge Kavanaugh made a mockery of the actual victims of real crimes. I believe that the #MeToo movement will be infinitely damaged as a result of this whole debacle.You have to learn to differentiate between the cases of real and imaginary accounts of crimes. With all this talk about "fake news", this story sets a terrible precedent as the media picks up whatever story, no matter how unbelievable or absurd, and presents it as gospel.In addition to sexual assaults and the stress of immigration, I experienced the deaths of people I loved that affected me much deeper than any sexual assault ever could. For every event of deep emotional distress in my life, I have very detailed memories of not only the event, but the days and even months surrounding it. Both my husband and I remember where we were on September 11, 2001.The more I learned about the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh that kept coming up, one less believable than the other, the more I was confident that these stories weren't real. I am a stay-home mom, and I watch TV in the kitchen while cooking, doing dishes, etc. I watched the news coverage about the protests against Kavanaugh and in support of Christine Blasey Ford. I did a lot of online research about sexual crimes and their reporting, and also about memory. My research only confirmed my initial impression of the Blasey's story being false. I am not sure if something similar to the story she told happened to her in her life, but her being 100% positive on the identities of the perpetrators and fuzzy on other details is completely unbelievable.Even if you found Christine Blasey's story somewhat plausible, the other stories of women coming forward should have raised a red flag. The New Yorker report said that Deborah Ramirez at first "was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough" to come forward. Memory doesn't get better with time! You either remember something or not. If you have to spend six days and many phone calls trying to get confirmation, your memory is not good enough to be positive about any event, especially if it happened thirty-five years ago, even if you weren't drunk at the time.When Julie Swetnick came forward with the story of wild parties where girls were drugged and gang raped, the news and media presented it without any attempt to analyze it or think about it critically. It's one thing to imagine high school students getting drunk, and completely different to believe that criminal activity involving tens or hundreds of young people would go unnoticed for years. Julie Swetnick would have been 18-20 years old, a legal adult. According to her, she attended more than ten such parties where Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, both 15-17 at the time, were the ring leaders. So that she watched all the minor girls getting drugged and raped without going to police, and also returned back to the parties even after being gang-raped herself?Not to mention the Politico article and other news sources that found many serious issues with Julie Swetnick's personal history and credibility. I am sure much information will come out in the near future that will be embarrassing to her lawyer and the media that believed her story.Then came the anonymous allegations in the envelope without the return address, and they were promptly reported in the media as well.I came to this country as a refugee twenty-five years ago. I was so proud and happy to become a US citizen. I still remember that day and the citizenship ceremony in San Jose, CA in January of 2000.Our country is becoming a scary place where people can be ostracized and harassed because of their political beliefs. "People believe what they want to believe", according to psychology studies I read. If they believe something strongly enough, such as there is a "rape culture" among certain people, they would believe the most absurd fabricated story without questioning.As party leaders and educated intelligent people, it's your responsibility to lead and not to follow the media frenzy. Even if following that frenzy benefits you politically. Unfortunately, people have short memory and forget too fast about past examples when a rush to judgement led to disastrous results. Remember the Duke Lacrosse case, The Rolling Stone magazine "Rape on Campus" article, and also the recent Sherita Dixon-Cole case that was completely ignored by the media because it doesn't suit their political agenda. If you forgot or haven't heard about these cases, look them up. It will be a good educational experience. And there are many many more such cases.I found information in this study relevant and interesting: "Filing false vice reports: Distinguishing true from false allegations of rape". It's on the Science Direct website.Due to the current political climate in our country I am scared to sign my name under this letter. Also there is some private information above that I don't want some of my friends and family to know. Therefore, I will remain an anonymous stay-home mom who is socially liberal and always voted Democrat in the past, but never again unless things change.Thank you for reading, I was compelled to express my thoughts after watching the Blasey / Kavanaugh hearing all day.P.S. Some highlights from the "Filing false vice reports: Distinguishing true from false allegations of rape" study:"A common strategy of liars is to keep the story simple and without details (Masip and Herrero, 2013, Strömwall et al., 2006). Since false complainants are liars, false complainants will probably adopt the same strategy and construct a concise general story.""The researchers found that allegations that were maintained as true contained significantly more utterances by the offender than withdrawn as false allegations did. Thus false complainants seem to have adopted the strategy of liars and reported a simple story with an almost mute fabricated rapist.""A woman filing a false allegation will for instance not report kissing, since kissing is not cognitively related to the offence of rape while kissing is a behaviour that is central to the offence of rape, as is exhibited by almost all rapists.""A false complainant constructs a story that is stereotypical because it is based on false beliefs of how the offence rape would unfold. Based on the theory one would expect more rape stereotypes in false allegations of rape than in true allegations of rape.""On the one hand, false complainants will resemble liars and will therefore construct a concise story with little details. A detailed story of rape will be reported by true victims. On the other hand, we expect that false complainants will construct a story based on their own sexual experiences and beliefs about rape.""The stories of likely true victims always included the events after the rape, 100%, while a minority of the stories of false complainants included the events after the rape, 17% (26, ‘Victim telling events post-rape’; see Table 2)."... Likely true stories of rape included a lot of verbal interaction""Likely true rapists kissed the victim (32, ‘Kissing afterwards’; 30, ‘Kissing body’; 35, ‘French kissing’; see Table 2).Foreplay was included in the majority of the stories of likely true victims, 70%, while a minority of false complainants, 14%, included foreplay in their story (33, ‘Foreplay’).""... The fourth characteristic of false allegations is that false complainants are filling in gaps when asked directly.""False complainants described the nose of the fabricated offender more often than victims described the nose of the rapist. That is in line with the research on offender descriptions, wherevictims of any type of violent crime hardly ever come up with detailed offender descriptions (Van Koppen, 1997).""Thus overall, false complainants describe their fabricated perpetrator more detailed than likely true victims describe their rapist.""The most salient characteristic of true rapes that is lacking in fabricated stories of rape is a wide array of pseudo-intimate behaviours and interactions. A lot of true rapists try to mimic consensual sex and exhibit behaviours that are not commonly associated by false complainants with the offence of rape. In studies it is consistently found that a large proportion of rapists exhibited pseudo-intimate behaviours and interactions (Kocsis et al., 2002)."P.P.S. Please read the article "What Fueled the Child Sex Abuse Scandal That Never Was?" on the Daily Beast website. Here are some excerpts:"A wave of scandals about brutal child sex abuse in the 1980s caused widespread panic. But many of the stories, pursued with zeal through the courts, were false and extremely destructive.""When cases went to court, the judicial system’s “innocent until proven guilty” model was seemingly inverted: as Beck puts it, “the pursuit of justice demanded the suspension of disbelief.”""In the court of public opinion, the only just verdict was a guilty one.""The number of convictions that came out of these cases, almost all of which were eventually overturned, shows how easily we can deceive ourselves and others—how the pursuit of justice results in gross injustice—when “the truth” is preconceived.""There were also people like Ellen Bass, a poet turned activist, who piggybacked on abuse rhetoric at the tail end of the ’80s hysteria, spinning off the 1988 bestselling self-help book, The Courage to Heal.""The self-help element was grounded in the idea of healing through recovered memory, which therapists capitalized on in the mid-’90s.""Beck notes how the book recast victims as survivors and “made victimization into an identity with its own kind of bleak attractiveness ... the testimony of some survivors suggested that much of what made the process appealing were the crises themselves.”""But recovered memory therapy had its own traps, and many argued that the women who sought it out were not healing as much as they were simply being taken for a ride.""Beck doesn’t suggest that the rhetoric in The Courage to Heal is echoed in some of the rhetoric surrounding sexual abuse today. Perhaps he did not want to be wade into that fraught feminist debate.""But the desperation to protect children at all costs in the ’80s is not unlike the desperation to protect women on college campuses today amidst what many have declared an epidemic of campus rape.""We Believe the Children should serve to remind us of the dangers of the “we must believe the victim” mindset in the case of any criminal offense. A faith-based pursuit of justice can lead to a miscarriage of justice."EDIT: I was wondering if it’s just me, but I find the Christine Blasey Ford’s story somewhat stereotypical, which is one of the indicators that it might be a false allegation according to the "Filing false vice reports: Distinguishing true from false allegations of rape" study.Also, the Ford story is similar to the account of the article in the Rolling Stones magazine “Rape on Campus”. The story was proven to be false and completely fabricated. It said that a girl was led into a dark room, thrown on the table, and raped by multiple assailants. When she tried to scream, someone put a hand over her face. The story was published in 2014.How the Retracted Rolling Stone Article 'A Rape on Campus' Came to Print“During the party, the article says, Drew invites Jackie upstairs into a pitch-black room. After she enters, she screams when she realizes they are not alone and a body barrels into her, tripping her backward into a low glass coffee table, and the glass shatters. She tries to scream, but a hand covers her face.”I read many comments from people like me who said they remember all the details of their assaults clearly even after many years. I am not sure of exact timing of my assault, but I know where it was and why I was there. I also remember what happened for the rest of that day.If you ask people you know and trust about their very stressful or fearful experience, what details do they remember? Do they remember where it happened? Do they remember where they were on September 11, 2001?

To forgive this kind of debt, then act as if you’ve done something great, kind, and just, is like ripping off the band-aid on a still hemorrhaging wound and declare your patient healed.The problems with higher education are many-fold and killing the one thing that is actually forcing the necessary changes is probably a bad idea.First, college is becoming the only ticket to the American dream. As recently highlighted in a speech by Senator Hawley, families with a four year degree now control three quarters of American wealth. This is a 50% increase from just 1989.[1] This is unjust. It clearly says that for the small business owner, the type of individual who just sees a problem and solves it in his community for some profit, a class of individuals who have traditionally been the backbone of the American economy, those doors are now closed to prosperity. Now, for you to prosper you must:1) Go to college2) Get the right degree3) Get a good job with a big companyThis path is safe, but unsustainable. It is also antithetical to American history, where the greatest gains were made by people who broke out to solve problems with nothing but the clothes on their backs and an idea, be that a new way to drill for oil or that this town really needs a grocery story.But then, the college loan happened. You see, at the point in your life when you are most likely to take risks, America’s Millennial generation are saddled with tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand dollars or more in student loan debt. They must get a good job to pay off those loans. However, thanks to other forces working against them, the degrees themselves are respected less than ever before by managers who rightly understand they don’t have the skills that business needs.This is a disaster. Traditionally, we’ve always relied upon the creativity of strong entrepreneurs, not mega billionaires mind you, but the kind of millionaires you see at church on Sunday none the wiser of their success, to help solve the problems in our community. Whether they run the local meat packing plant, are the thrifty plumber, or the woman who turned her side hustle of selling art that transformed into a t-shirt printing business that now hires six local employees, these people traditionally kept America alive through the adaptability and seeking small prosperity where needs could be found. Not to fault any of the large companies, but we weren’t built to service oligarchs like the controllers of Coke, Disney, and Amazon. The modern education system we currently have only caters to these companies and other major blue chips like them, but robs America of the true genius of the people who get a college degree.Next, who is actually affected by these college loans? It isn’t who you think.For perspective, in 2008, the crisis for students holding massive debt on their degrees crashed headlong into a collapsed jobs market, suddenly made people realize how worthless their degrees were. While student debt and the increase in tuition had been steadily increasing for decades, it was only then that people started to treat the situation as a crisis. Economists would be quick to point out that much of this would be explained by simple inflation, what happens when tons of free money is pumped into systems where customers have little incentive to check the price before buying. College loans are part of that metric, but so are the grants offered to poorer students as a ticket to their great fortune.Most people imagine a college graduate and think of some poor person who has had to overcome a life of poverty just to be straddled with debt slavery. Yes, the debt crisis is real, but the victims aren’t quite who you think. Thanks to many needs based grant programs, which reward huge amounts of money on the basis of parental income and with no consideration of merit or how prepared the student is for college, ungodly amounts of money have flowed into the American education system from American tax payers. Grants like the Pell Grant are so lucrative that colleges do whatever it takes to get a person who is financially qualified to get the grant, regardless of whether they are equipped for college or not. The grant is paid into their tuition, helping many to not need to take out expensive loans. It helps ensure that they can go to college, sure, but at what cost?In 2008, the point where the student debt crisis became a real subject of concern for many Americans, the amount available for Federal student grants was allocated at $13,989,305,000. By 2011 it had ballooned to $35,772,935,000, leveling off to today where the expenditures are around $28 billion.[2]Note that while millions railed against exploitative rising tuition rates ever since, they have still continued to go up as the money given via federal government programs increased. For perspective on the significance of these grants to the higher education industry, a back of the napkin estimation of total tuition for all colleges to be around $393.5 billion in 2013[3], meaning that this one grant alone made up somewhere in the neighborhood of 8% of all student tuition. Calculating, however, for just public university tuition of $205.4 billion, the amount paid by Federal grant money comes closer to 15% of student tuition paid to those universities.Note, that’s every year that the US Federal government pays to college students from lower-income families.Because of the way the grants are paid out, however, the grants are actually hurting not only the people who receive the grant, but everyone else, as well. I want to be clear, when the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 were passed, Pell Grants seemed like a great idea to allow students who traditionally didn’t have access to college to get it. Since then, however, seeing the lucrative opportunities for wealth generation at taxpayer expense, schools have been steadily redesigning themselves to take advantage of grants such as these. How? For many, it meant lowering the threshold of entry to millions of students not ready for college, or where the academic rigor required was more than their talents would allow. Everyone should be legally allowed to go college, but not everyone should be admitted because not everyone can pass. But then the next phase in this evolution takes place. The bar is lowered for these students in several ways. First, the actual coursework and load is made easier, such as padding degrees with useless courses that the students don’t want and which don’t help them in their careers, but which are hard to fail. Often these courses are saturated in ideological bias, reflecting the culture of the professors. Second, the actual coursework is made easier so that fewer students drop out. When the schools adapted to being an institution whose job was to cash checks from the federal government, rather than relying on the tuition of scholarships and the donations of highly performing graduates, then they lost the value of the degree.There is a reason that the special forces like the SEALs and Delta have the reputation of never losing. Pictured below is part of Navy SEAL swim training, also called “drown-proofing”. Candidates must swim while bound in loose restraints they could easily break free from, even by accident. If they break the restraints during their swim, they fail the event. Only a small percentage of humanity could even attempt this training, so it serves as one of the many filters to gain entry into the SEALs.Simply put, not everyone can be a SEAL. Exclusivity based on excellence ensures the value of understood worth to the individual for being a member of a particular culture. College used to be this same sort of filter — an institution where, if someone had graduated from a four year degree program, it was understood that they were some of the most intellectually capable people in the nation. Colleges and Universities no longer have the reputation of reliably creating scholarly graduates. Instead, college is treated more as a place to make connections than as a challenging rite of passage for America’s educated class.Note, this isn’t all colleges. In the US, we have the strange reputation of having a whole generation holding near worthless degrees, while also having the best colleges in the world. That’s because we have a multitude of colleges, but what I tell young people is that really there are only about a hundred that matter. At any given time, if you go to one of these schools, the degree you earn will be respected anywhere you go. Rather than looking for a job, top firms will have recruiters at the colleges looking for you. They don’t go to just any college, but only the best. For kids with particular careers in mind, I give slightly different advice. I say that then there are only about ten. They need to know those 10 colleges and do whatever it takes to get into all of them. For example, my home-state of Oklahoma has the Oklahoma State University, which has some of the world’s best Agriculture and Petrochemical programs in the world. I tell kids that if they want to work in ag or the oil industry, those schools will have it made. But OSU isn’t one of the greatest Universities in general. They are a long way from competing with a Harvard or Yale. That being the case, a person who wants to be in those industries may actually be better off at OSU than those premiere colleges.This matters because thanks to many of the income seeking behaviors of colleges, most colleges not either the Top 100 or the Top 10 for a particular filed are simply getting worse. While this hurts those seeking grants, those hurt most of all aren’t the people who receive the Pell Grant, but those just wealthy enough not to have it as a right, such as most Middle Class children. They have the hardship of getting a degree, but being forced to pay the whole way for it. When they graduate, however, they discover that, because they went to one of thousands of nameless colleges, the degree they earned isn’t respected by hiring managers.The idea that go to college is a path to security has been shattered through government subsidization of needs based income grants offered by the tens of billions.Next we need to talk about where the money is going.The New York Times made it very clear by detailing how some schools were buying off their students in a never ending fit to fill seats, prioritizing luxuries for students over student education.When Louisiana State University surveyed students in 2009 to find out what they most wanted in their new recreation complex, one feature beat out even massage therapy: a lazy river. [4]And while Louisiana boasts its lazy river, students pictured below watched “Jaws” at a “dive-in movie” at Missouri State’s aquatic center.Party pools and other such extravagant luxuries are becoming the norm across colleges in the United States, primarily among the lesser renown universities. Rather than trying to bring in students on the promise of high earnings after college, the experience of college is what is sold, even though no one in history has had this experience when they went to institutions of higher learning. No, but that isn’t stopping universities like UCF from building a “Recovery Cove” because a lazy river is what is necessary to deal with “anxiety of student life”.While railing against an ever increasing bureaucracy is normally an austerity driven conservative talking point, left leaning news has noted the explosive growth of the “student life” facilitation. For example, the UK’s Guardian reported a 33% increase in the number of managers in higher education from 2005 to 2010[5], Huffington Post noted a “problematic boom” in higher ed administrators [6], and Bloomberg reported that, “For every $1 spent on instruction, $1.82 is spent on non-instructional things such as 'academic support, student services, institutional support, public service' and a catch-all category called 'other,'” according to the National Center for Education Statistics.[7]The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures.In all, from 1987 until 2011-12—the most recent academic year for which comparable figures are available—universities and colleges collectively added 517,636 administrators and professional employees…— Huffington PostI just have to comment on this for a second and be straight with readers. I paid for college with the GI Bill. I had to literally be shot at to pay for college. After four years in the Marines and two trips to Iraq, where I was leading teams of Marines by the age of 22, starting college was perhaps the easiest exercise I was ever forced to endure. That was hard. That there exists a movement to give students such overwhelming “therapy” options like a lazy river due to the “stress” of college both disgusts me and makes me lose respect for an entire generation.Yet, this movement continues, where students are treated like fragile snowflakes always on the cusp of annihilation, and one more program, facility, or luxury is what they need to survive this cruel, cruel world… that only seems to exist on the campus itself. This is part of how simply filling seats at colleges is bloating the college bureaucracy. To accommodate the “needs” of more students and give them the “best experience” possible, not only are millions being spent on expensive recreational centers like those above, but also in providing services never before offered as a means to entice students who don’t know better. To keep this growing infrastructure in place, colleges have also grown the number of managers and administration over the school, with far less going to actually improving academic facilities than “student life”.This focus on “student life” has caused other problems with education, first by providing so much that students are coddled and feel entitled to be taken care of at any expense, never understanding that college isn’t actually a place to have an amazing time, but to learn and be challenged as preparation for life. It’s like a four year trip to Disney World with sex, booze, and no rules, while also with free private counselling for an ever growing list of disorders and sources of victimization — which never includes the consequences of all sex and booze.This phenomenon reached a peak where students offended by the nature of their classwork could and often did rise up against their professors for saying things that “triggered” the students. “Triggered” by the way, is a term that has been popularized since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It relates to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, where someone who experiences an actual event that placed them in severe trauma (such as nearly being killed in a car accident or surviving a roadside bomb) will experience symptoms of a panic attack around otherwise mundane occurrences which were related to their experience. An example would be a dog barking before a bomb going off, then the brain writes in that dogs barking are related to bombs, so hearing a dog “triggers” someone with PTSD. It’s actually the brain of a trauma patient working too well, being hyper sensitive to perceived threat to try to keep them safe. That actual information about the disease was so miss-communicated in the early days after the wars began, where anything surrounding PTSD and veterans simply looks like men in uniform being sad.Real PTSD is nothing at all like that. It’s just a simple picture to illicit sympathy without understanding. So-called “Social Justice Warriors” on college campuses, however, have stolen the language of the disease to support that their feelings of victimization upon dealing with uncomfortable subjects or people whom they disagree. For them, being “triggered” simply means being forced to deal with ideas and feelings that are unpleasant, conflict with their preconceived notions of the world, or make them feel conflicted or even convicted by their failure to measure up to their own supposed moral standards. That’s exactly what college is meant to do, to give people a better understanding of the world and give them the right mindset to deal with that in a way that benefits everyone. Now, however, we have a spoiled and tyrannical student body, bolstered by an army of ideologically minded administrators that can both be used to attack not just the curriculum, but visiting speakers, and even each other.What I mean by the last part is a phenomenon that is entirely owed to the growing power of the campus administration. As the administrations grew, so did their biases. This I outlined in much greater detail in another answer, but let it serve to say that the overwhelming bias in many of these institutions is enough to dangerously use their power to irreparably hurt their own student’s lives. Such is the power to enact sweeping punishments on students based on pure accusation with no basis in reality, but deeply rooted in political or ideological agendas. Few better examples exist than the “college rape epidemic” which resulted in many students being wrongly “convicted” in kangaroo courts of college tribunals.Perhaps this was because enough people read The Atlantic, which chose last week to run a three-part series by Emily Yoffe on the sexual-assault policies in question. The series demonstrated exhaustively what anyone paying close attention already knew: The legal and administrative response to campus rape over the past five years has been a kind of judicial and bureaucratic madness, a cautionary tale about how swiftly moral outrage and political pressure can lead to kangaroo courts and star chambers, in which bias and bad science create an unshakable presumption of guilt for the accused. [8]Most famous of these was the case of the Duke Lacrosse team scandal beginning in 2006. It was one of the earliest cases where an accusation without proof (and later proved false) smeared the reputation of students with the wrong identity by campus mobs. In spite of the boys’ vindication, the Duke case seemed to inspire copy cat accusations across a campus culture obsessed with “rape-culture”.This ruined the lives of many innocent young men and happened at the behest of mobs of virtue signaling students led by their ideologically minded professors. It was made possible, however, through a bloated campus administration system with the power to kick students based on the “optics” of the case, as deemed by the university’s legal, HR, and marketing teams.So yeah, that’s kind of a problem.Next, we need to talk about the loans themselves. Did you know that college loan debt is one of the only kinds of personal debt that can’t be removed via bankruptcy?That’s insane. I understand why, but it’s still insane.College kids are generally in an age of life where they are not particularly adept at making extremely responsible life decisions. Taking out these kinds of loans is, by nature, a very risky endeavor for a lending institution, traditionally speaking. Frankly, I think that few of us suffer from the delusion that there weren’t many young graduates who abused bankruptcy to get a free education, filing bankruptcy after an expensive education process. One might look to doctors, who would be greatly benefited from such a shystie move. If I was making doctor pay, I would be happy to live in a nice apartment for seven years after graduation, as I save up for an amazing home, free from the burdens of debt the rest of my fellow graduates must endure. Why start life off $200,000 grand in the hole with interest? There is a very good reason that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act extended to education loans — people exist who abuse the system.Lending also isn’t a right you are owed. With government based loans, such as those provided either directly through the Department of Education, or indirectly through companies like Sallie Mae, the idolized notion is that paying back your loan frees up money for the next person. Forgiving that doesn’t just mean the money goes away. It creates a liability for the taxpayers who did pay for the education in the first place, and who may have zero interest in creating another young holder of a Gender Studies degree with no functional utility to the nation. At the very least, ensuring that the student is forced to pay, ensures that the taxpayer isn’t left footing the bill for degrees that frankly, aren’t an investment into our collective future. However, a more honest look is to look at these loans as business. For private lending, giving money must come with interest to pay for the lending institution’s own overhead, as well as grow to service others. People who default on their loans spell disaster for lending institutions, making it so that no one has access to them when the bank itself goes under. This is particularly true, when they default en masse. This is what happened in 2008 beginning with real estate, but these institutions are free to grant these loans to anyone when they know that the person is on the ropes to pay it off.Look, I’ve tried to be fair to both sides. It seems pretty clear that a few people abused the system and ruined it for everyone, but it also seems clear this idea to prevent bankruptcy is simply erecting a dam which is getting ready to burst.Bankruptcy must be an option to escape this debt, at least, for future students. For lending institutions who made deals with the understanding that bankruptcy wasn’t an option, then they should be protected. If you agreed to it, then that debt is yours, but in the future, people who take out student loans should maintain the right to bankruptcy.What does that do for lending institutions?It forces them to treat students who petition for such loans to compete for them again, and more importantly, it forces the banks to really look at who they are saddling with this kind of debt.“Oh, you’re the valedictorian of a class of 350 kids, was active in STEM advanced courses, competed and won in local robot races, and want to study Robotics and Engineering at a reputable university? You bet we’ll loan you the money, Miss Surething.”vs.“Oh, you graduated 400th in a class of 350? Well golly, that’s impressive in its own way. And you’re interested in studying Performing Arts degree because learning to dance has always been one of your life goals. Neat. And a minor in Communist Theory? Well, good for you, Comrade, but have you heard of GoFundMe?”When you place the risk on banks and other lenders, you ensure that only those loans which have a high likelihood of being repaid are awarded. This opens many doors, but just as important, closes the door to many paths of suffering. Will this reduce the amount of funds currently being given out to pay for expensive degrees? Yes, it absolutely will, but like any good economist will tell you, that will also reverse the trend in increasing student tuition everywhere. At the same time, colleges will again have the reputation of only churning quality students pulling quality degrees and really question the need of a lazy river for therapy purposes. We’re seeing the paths of suffering taking place right now, where people who took on expensive loans to pay for degrees that are worthless from colleges no one respects are overcome by debt they can’t pay. Most of those kids should have never received their loans in the first place.But what do we need to solve this problem? It isn’t to forgive the debt. That’s the opposite of what we need.The explosive rise in student tuition is explained very simply by the runaway effects of cheap money at the onset being funneled into schools where people stopped questioning how much it was going to cost. Whether it was owed to Pell Grants or to student loans, inflation in education has created a system where the costs of admittance are higher than the reward for many, if not most degrees. But at least they can contemplate this unpleasant reality as they float down the lazy river at the rec center.Forgiving this debt, and the many bad decisions that went into it, will only ensure that the same bad decisions continue. Not just that, but seeing others get bailed out is the first step on believing that you have a right to something, and when you believe that a luxury college student life experience is your right and that the consequences will certainly be forgiven, you really don’t make wise decisions. Forgiving the debt will only contribute to the growth of tuition more as people take on wilder loans and campuses respond by increasing tuition to match.Lastly, forgiving this debt is repulsively unjust.If literally everyone who went to college had this same shared experience with these loans, then it would make sense that something would need to be done about it. But everyone doesn’t have this experience. For example, me. I paid for college with the Montgomery Post 9/11 GI Bill. It paid my whole way through. To earn that degree, I had to first give four years of my life in service to the country, with the understanding that I may get shot at (which I was) and may even die having never felt a shred of that benefit. When people talk about forgiving their debts, I ask why? Why is it justice for millions such as myself to earn their education, and to take that seriously, when others get to expect it be given to them as a right after they picked degrees they would never be able to use?Where’s the justice in that?Others, such as my wife, worked their way through college. We worked together to pay her debt so that we wouldn’t be saddled with expensive loans as our marriage kicked off. What about the millions of people who both work and go to school, just so that they don’t sell off their future for decades? Where is the justice for them when kids floating down the lazy river get a bail out?Or how about that family that, whether they like it or not, are going to be paying the taxes one way or another for this “forgiveness”? Now they, no matter their income level, are going to be splitting the bill to cover some $1.3 trillion in bad student loan debt? That money could have gone to providing infrastructure, better schooling, or could have simply not been taken away from them. That way, they could do what they wanted to, or needed to, with it. Instead, the taxpayer must give from their family to pay for the lifestyle of people who aren’t their kids. It’s only a little bit when you split it across all Americans. Yes, but it’s something that the people who ultimately paid for it don’t get anything back from. There is a word for people who are forced to give money and receive nothing in return for it — robbery. Forgiving this debt, at least as it has been done in the past, is robbing from American tax payers.No, the cold hard honest truth is that there needs to be pain. This is what is needed, what wise cultures do… they allow themselves to feel pain that they deserve — the kind of pain that echoes.The students who took on bad debt to pay for bad degrees need to feel pain. throughout generations. I don’t want them to suffer more than anyone else out of spite, but they need to be a lesson to their younger siblings and to their children of the extreme importance of picking the right college, the right degree, and in only the most extreme of situations… the right student loan, or maybe even question going to college at all and exploring other options.The colleges also need to feel pain. The policies that caused this inflationary wave of energy need to be cut off. Those colleges that built their campuses around providing luxuries unnecessary for student learning and achievement need to suffer for exploiting their students. Future students need to see the presence of a lazy river as a sure sign that this college is only out to milk them for decades of labor and avoid that institution like the plague. Colleges need to stop with the nonsense bloating of their administration and the unnecessary and expensive luxuries being doled out to ensnare kids into joining — particularly the poorest among them paying for college via tax payer funded grants.There also needs to be pain on the lending institutions who, for years, have been handing out loans irresponsibly to people who couldn’t afford them because their degrees didn’t match the current needs of the nation… or anyone. Sometimes this is the government, sometimes the colleges themselves, and sometimes private lending institutions. Perhaps all three need to hurt. Because lenders were backed by laws built with reasonable intentions in mind, it was presumed that the lenders didn’t need to do the necessary thing for their customers of not providing a loan they know can’t be paid off. Instead, they didn’t even ask this question, just fulfilling the wishes of anyone who filled out the necessary paperwork. Now tens of thousands of kids are suffering because people who had all the tools to predict this outcome had no incentive to simply say, “no.”Pain. That’s what’s needed for the future. To reform the practices that led to colleges getting out of control, there needs to be real pain that people feel in such a way that changes to the systemic processes are demanded. A quick fix won’t do it. It will just transfer the pain to people who are the last to deserve it, while signalling to everyone else that they are now free to engage in even more financially devastating behavior because literally no one is being held accountable.But pain, and fear of pain, will lead to better decisions. Fear of pain will be what forces future students to make better choices. Fear of pain will be what forces lenders to lend to more reliable students. Fear of pain is what will force colleges to lower tuition rates.Pain — pain and fear. That’s what we as a nation need to suffer because of the failure we’ve dug ourselves into it, and dealing with that pain and suffering like adults is our one and only opportunity to learn from the experience and not pass on more suffering to future generations.Relaxed. Researched. Respectful. - War ElephantFootnotes[1] Senator Josh Hawley’s Speech at the 6th Annual American Principles Project Gala[2] Funding Status -- Federal Pell Grant Program[3] Richardson Kilis's answer to What is the total amount spent per year on university tuition in the United States?[4] Making a Splash on Campus [5] The irresistible rise of academic bureaucracy[6] 'It's A Lie. It's A Lie. It's A Lie'[7] As Tuition Increases, So Do College Bureaucracies[8] Opinion | Liberalism and the Campus Rape Tribunals

You might want to look at its history in each category first. It's not the confederate flag first and foremost! Here is the CSA flag the confederates settled on after their flag was mistaken as a flag of surrender a few times and also after it caused confusion on the battlefield dozens of times.This was called the bloodstained banner and had a nod to the “Army of Northern Virginia's” flag, Lee's Army. The former had a smaller x motif in a sea of white, thus being confused as a surrender banner, and the first had three stripes of white and red and a circlet of stars on a small blue square in the top left hand corner which is why it led to confederate troops “retreating” or “regrouping” only to find themselves surrounded by Union soldiers. So this was settled on in 1863. Not only that, the blue was more vibrant but smaller as confederates had become enormously petty and felt personally offended by anything “Yankee Blue” to include their own officer's west point uniforms that were closer to Blue Grey than Yankee Blue. (This is documented in official CSA proceedings under Jefferson Davis's not legitimate government. It's a little sad this was a huge concern that was prioritized over the embarrassing and even deadly mistakes other flags had led real human beings to. It's a very bad legacy).The modern confederate flag didn't exist EXCEPT as a battle flag during troop maneuvers on any battlefield Lee was a part of because his Army was there. Now, that might seem like a boost to the minds that like “rebellion” or “hate the feds” as Lee is often a hero to that kind of person. It's not that person's fault for not knowing Lee is partially responsible for the ultimate failure of the CSA as he wanted glory and to invade more than he wanted to defend the South. All the world's leading tacticians and generals and even the young generals in the Union who would eventually lead the US to victory said the war was impossible if the South used terrain to defend territory and prolonged the war enough for foreign aide. Lee ruined that with flashy, expensive, deadly, and disastrous invasions into the North that couldn't achieve a single strategic victory. So Lee isn't a role model. That said, a 150 year campaign to make Lee seem like a hero has led to outright lies being printed en masse, politicians outlawing curriculum or even reading if they can't control the propaganda, and a well-funded surge of lies and myths spread by the Daughters of the Confederacy. So it's not malevolent that a fooled person might still be fooled. The malevolence is the fault of the propagandists not the layperson.This is the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia. It never flew over the entire confederate army.This one was being repaired before the end of the war, which must have come first. Contrary to popular belief, no one but the military was flying this flag. It wasn't over lawns or hanging from porches or bucka wagons. Women wore florets or broaches that looked nearly IDENTICAL to those worn by women in the North. This wasn't a “symbol of resistance” by ANY stretch of the imagination. So we have VERY few surviving flags available.The flag you know today wasn't actually a commonly used symbol until 1980 after the popularity of the Dukes of Hazzard show spread. It popped up momentarily before the show. During the Civil Rights struggles of the late 1950s and into the 1960s. But it NEVER was the most popular symbol during that time. The “Bloodstained Banner” (the first image I showed you) showed up with angry white counter protesters as much as the not yet elongated Army of N-Va. battle flag. What you fly now is purely repurposed for racism and shows up ONLY after white supremacy loses a battle. More of those flags were flown after Obama won office than any flag flown over a battle in entire Civil War or were taken to protests in the 20th century. Today, it's a symbol of hate, racism, and a desperate declaration that the south should be only for whites…unless it's labor because that's for minorities and whites are too good to work. It means nothing more and nothing less now.This is the flag you are talking about today. Here's another fun fact…it's called the “Dixie Flag” and represents an idea more akin to the song than a place or group. This flag never flew over a battle in the Civil War. It never flew over the Antebellum South and was never once flown by a man who still owned slaves. Rather, it was flown by a man infuriated he had to engage in labor so he killed people he thought should still be slaves. Until Obama was elected and the use of the flag exploded, it was flown by a political entity who wanted Blacks to belong to them or disappear. Before that, only murderers, rapists and criminals flew the flag often while draped in robes we recognize as a terrorist uniform today.Now to the “feeling oppressed by the federal government” its an odd choice to make when it comes to this flag. Since its a modern flag, it doesn't have anything to do with that war and was never flown by those “feeling oppressed” by their government…it's addressing its anger over equality in the current era…an equality the state's tried to use federal government to crush. If we go to the first flag, it was flown by oppressors; not the oppressed. Several Articles of Secession (notices and legal documents printed in newspapers and saved in state charters) mentioned they were seceeding for slavery alone and they knew they were being hurt because the federal government refused to force free states to either legalize slavery or pay fines to southern states and allow them to bring their slaves if they bought property or would stay there. (This was likely referencing a New York Case where a “southern gentleman” was denied use of his slaves to take over a hotel and it's kitchen while he was there. That hotel's refusal to fire white and black staff for one slave owner's whim ignited a fury in the south that lasted years). The confederacy that flew that first banner I showed you (1863-onwards) was furious the federal government didn't have MORE power and was livid free states were allowed to exist when they had held the White House and Congress for most of the nation's existence. The “oppressed by government” narrative came later. At the time, their letters and articles and speeches reflected they were angry at little people and culture itself for judging them. Up until the Republican sweep of government, southern politicians were FAMOUS for challenging citizens they'd never met to a duel because a Whig or new republican senator dared to mention something one of his constituents brought before him. Representative could be placed in the ridiculous position of filing a letter for the record but refusing to surrender it to a Southern representative screaming about a duel because he thought he had to protect the constituent who'd written the letter complaining of tariff debates. The southerners wanted to kill a citizen they'd never met over “southern pride and dignity.” They were not saying they were oppressed. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Before and long into the Civil War, the South claimed not getting its way was a slippery slope to oppression. But they never said they were beleaguered or taken advantage of.One more proof of this, when Great Britain wanted to step in and favor the South, they asked the CSA to guarantee they would punish those defying maritime slave trade bans. Southern delegates responded with their plans to take over Cuba and reopen the slave trade until all nations recognized their superiority. In the name of accuracy, this was after several defeats and loads of frustration and political finger wagging. It was NOT blessed by Jefferson Davis who was actually livid with the rapid decay of his plans, and most of the Generals thought it was insane. My point remains that these are NOT the demands of an “oppressed” people.The only oppressed Southerners were slaves. The only people “oppressed” by the symbol of a flag only pulled out to support forced sterilization, rape, forced labor, segregation and Jim Crow, are Black Americans (although there is one incident in the 1920s I think where a Greek immigrant community was slaughtered and driven from the area while a similar banner was carried but I can't remember the details and need to look it up). Black Americans have TOLD YOU how they view this flag. As they are the only ones oppressed by those who carry this banner, theirs is the opinion you should care about. This flag you want to fly to protest government oppression is new. It's forebears were flown over Tulsa…over Selma…and over ignominious slaughter, murder, and villainy. It is a shame-stained banner. It shames me because I pass for white. I'm Irish and Korean but people think I'm white and more than one white supremacist has seen my offspring and has tried to make me someone who will help them “make superior white babies” only to devolve into rage when I refuse them and tell them, “Oh yeah…I'm not Russian, I'm Korean you idiot.” So because I look white, I am ashamed that impotent and illiterate men can wave this banner in a shared psychosis tantrum and display our genetic inferiority to the world. I am furious that white supremacists have “flag waving” as their only talent while immigrant and Black men are workers, experts, athletes, warriors and have led our nation to victory time and time again. I am ashamed that someone might assume my principled and strong boy is “another weakling white guy” because so many white men throw tantrums that expose their impotence that others can't be blamed for thinking something is wrong with all of them.And finally, I hate that flag. I'm a war veteran and wore that “Yankee Blue” with immense pride. I hate the Taliban, ISIS, Nazis, and confederates equally. Evil dared to stand against us and I am proud and maliciously gleeful we humiliated and ground them to dust. I'm furious we haven't done better with the Taliban and ISIS and I was wondering why our momentum has slowed despite overwhelming victories and won battles. Then I came home. Lo and behold, conservative ideals had infected by own country. Dylan Roof was so identical to Taliban tactics, he could have been hired by Saudi princes funding Al Qaeda! I searched deeper and found the KKK was trying to cripple America long before some Taliban freak was getting right wing fanatic princes to fund terror cells. When I was a kid, I just thought they were hillbilly rednecks that were supposed to die of meth overdose because my grandpa was a right wing nut and even he met the KKK recruitment trucks out on our dirt road with a shotgun and the men of our family and told “the white trash” to “leave and don't come back unless you wanna go home filled with holes.” I didn't know they had funding from men who live the same lives as Saudi princes (incest, pedophilia, and sadism included) right here in America. I didn't know the right wing is the Taliban right here in my home country. I do now. The rot is conservative faith and belief. It is the evil of all nations, all people's, and all cultures. It must be yanked from the garden like we tackle weeds. It is vile and may not exist!Think of the garden as earth, the plants and flowers and vegetables as people, and the weeds as these vicious and animalistic ideals. Tear them out and burn them. Save the people and kill these ideals. Conservatism MUST die to save humanity. Worry less about flags and find a toolkit and earn some callouses. The hoe is our principles. The blisters and blood is our dedication. The shovel and rake are our words and actions. The weeds have just met their demise. Root them up and watch the yield your garden will give you! I know why you want a flag. I wore one on my shoulder. It's transposed to signify that we are always moving forward and will die before we retreat. I am proud of that flag. I'm thankful it was a glimmer of hope when I was raped by my own comrades. It has done it's duty. There is a greater authority I hold now as a woman and mother than I ever held in that uniform and when I had the MP brassard (our badge). That authority is life giver. I am a mother. My womb holds sway upon this earth. My children's safety is a higher priority than male pride or feelings. My children and their lives outweigh possessions. I heal and feed and clothe and nurture others and not just my children. I make the clay we live on as fertile as my womb has proven to be. We women have achieved the only godhood we have proof of. We make life from muscle tissue or dirt. That flag I once wore on my shoulder was a sign…I used my authority to stitch it to a quilt I made for my son. It's a Civil War quilt called “Stars over Mitford” and I'm sewing his father's deployment flag into it as well. I want my son to know that symbols do have power and we used ours to hold our nation together and to stand against the darkness in human hearts. We dared to bleed for this symbol. But as his mother, I want to show him my will. I have repurposed this symbol. It serves me. I weave men's symbols to service truths rather than ideals. His warmth and safety belittles men's speeches and warmongering and oppression. He wants a summer quilt that recreated the underground railroad symbols “hung out to dry” as women helped run a subversive escape route right under men's noses. I want him to know power does come from the gods…and humans are the only ones we've found for both good and evil. I do not stitch and sew battle flags for men, I rob armies and institutions of their symbols and bend them to my will to accomplish the opposite of their dictatorial aims. Perhaps I'm telling you to stitch a quilt, I would recommend it as it can teach you your own power and ability. That said, reject symbols for their hold on you unless you can represent that symbol as something that is good. The symbol you are wondering about has nothing to recommend it and a rap sheet several miles long. Reject it. Gather your own and know YOUR power. The banner you like represents loss, weakness, defeat, hate, impotence, embarrassment, pettiness, illiteracy, stupidity, poverty, and fury. It's a poor choice in a world filled with symbols that could spread your message easier.**Note** this answer ended up being so long, I will not be editing it in the future. So here's a warning in advance. I will delete ALL pro-confederacy rants. ALL. I am a U.S. Army veteran. I adore Grant and respect Sherman. I do not tolerate traitors. Don't hurl “libtard” or “so much for the tolerant left” at me. I am NOT the tolerant left. I am the warrior, can smack a fool down in a second, armed and can use it better than you - look here's my range card showing my skill, made children, do more in a day than 100 men do in a year, mama, progressive liberal. Don't try me. If you need to baste in lies, write your own answer or find a Civil War thread. Don't challenge me here. This is my domain and I will exert my will upon it.