Law Widow

just imagine lawyers (◕‿◕✿)

lawyers filing paperwork

lawyers eatinga potato

lawyers and accountants being cute and snuggly babies (otp alert)

lawyers doing a jumping jack

lawyers washing hands after using the TOILET

LIGHTING OF THE BEACONS + LOCATIONS

The earliest known piece of detective fiction in which the butler, in fact, did it? Published in 1930.

The earliest known article calling out “the butler did it” as an egregious cliché in detective fiction? Published in 1928.

Updated version of the timeline from u/Sharoza on Reddit after Episode 7x08 ‘’Anaconda’’ (https://www.reddit.com/r/The100/comments/hobw1f/spoilers_s7_updated_timeline_after_7x08_anaconda/)

After the United States entered World War II at the end of 1941 and Germany subsequently declared war upon it, Great Britain recommended several steps the United States should take in order to safeguard their ships from Nazi u-boats. Recommendations included sailing ships in convoy (preferably with escort, but records proved ships in convoy without escort were still safer than ships sailing alone), if a ship had to sail on its own, it should avoid known navigation routes and markers, and towns and cities along the East Coast should adhere to strict blackouts at night. These recommendations came from the previous two years of experience in which u-boats absolutely ran wild in the North Atlantic and North Sea, obliterating British shipping. This period of time was referred to by Nazi u-boat captains as “The First Happy Time”. 

Despite British warnings, the United States was slow to follow them and impose restrictions. Ships continued to sail along marked navigation routes and run standard navigation lights at night. Boardwalk communities along the coast were only requested they turn off their lights at night and the cities weren’t even asked that because they didn’t want to offend the tourism, recreation, and business sectors. 

Blacking out coastal communities would have made it infinitely harder for Nazi submarines to find and sink targets. A ship running with no lights is still visible against the backdrop of a lit city.

Conversely, a dark ship running against a dark coast is virtually invisible.

But because citizens living on the coast refused to adhere to wartime suggestions for amenity reasons, merchant ships sailing up and down the East Coast became sitting ducks of u-boats. The US government did not begin strictly enforcing blackouts until roughly August 1942. By then, the Nazis had been given 8 months to run rampant along American shores. This time period was referred to by u-boat captains as “The Second Happy Time” or “American Shooting Season”. 

By August, Nazi u-boats had sunk 609 merchant vessels, totaling 3.1 million tons and costing thousands of lives, mostly of merchant mariners performing their essential jobs. 

By comparison, only 22 u-boats were sunk.

So I just saw someone wondering how liberals can cut ties with conservative friends and family members over immigration policies when most Americans (including most conservatives) support immigration reform.

I’m going to talk about what I call the Shirley Exception

The Shirley Exception is a bit of mental sleight of hand that allows people to support a policy the profess to disagree with. It’s called the Shirley Exception because… well, I mean, *surely* there must be exceptions, right?

Let’s imagine that in response to suspicions about overboard use of service animal rules, a city somewhere decides to just swing the pendulum 100% in the other direction. Restaurants, public accommodations, etc., no longer have to recognize any service animals.

And in the aftermath of the change, existing rules about where animals may and may not go apply full force.

A lot of people would back the change because Obviously Some People Take Advantage. (Positing that someone, somewhere is taking advantage is a great way to get the masses on your side in our politics, sadly.)

Now if you point out the existence of a blind person or an epileptic person who has a service dog for everyday navigation of life or for life-saving purposes, the Good People who just don’t want anyone to take advantage will tell you:

“No one’s talking about legitimate cases.”

And if you point out that the rule that they’re backing would affect what they call “legitimate cases”, the response will be:

“But surely there will be an exception.”

If you back up an anti-abortion activist to the point where they actually have to grapple with a case where the parent would 100% die delivering a 100% non-viable fetus, you’ll get the same answers: “No one is talking about those cases.” And “But surely there will be exceptions.”

All of those studies of people in Trump Country USA who were shocked, shocked, that the kind man next door who is a good father and a great neighbor and a real part of the community was dragged away by ICE?

They all thought that surely he’d be an exception.

If you point out that the laws/policies they’re talking about *don’t* offer such exceptions in writing. “… well, then you’re back to the Surely People Will Take Advantage.

See, the people who are sure that Surely There Will Be Exceptions are very comfortable with the idea of justice being decided on a case-by-case basis. They’ve always had teachers, bodes, bureaucrats, even traffic cops giving them some slack for reasons of compassion and logic.

I mean, if Officer Smalltown von Cul-De-Sac could give them a warning when they were caught with recreational amounts of pot as kids because it was harmless and they Had Futures, then Surely there must be similar exceptions for everyone?

That post about how “I never thought the leopards would eat my face, sobbed woman who voted for Face-Eating Leopards Party” is very true, and it goes farther than personal immunity to a very generalized and broad Just World Fallacy.

Surely, they think, surely the leopards will know to only eat the *right* faces, the faces that need eating, and leave alone all the faces that don’t deserve that.

But if we try to lay out rules to protect faces from being eaten by leopards, people will take advantage. Best to keep it simple and count on decency and reason to rule the day.

So moderate conservatives, what we might call “everyday conservatives”, the ones who don’t wear MAGA hats or tea party costumes and think that Mr. Trump fella should maybe stay off of Twitter, they will vote for candidates and policies that they don’t actually agree with…

…because in their minds the exact law being prescribed is just a tool in the chest, an option on the table, which they expect to be wielded fairly and judiciously. Surely no one would do anything so unreasonable as actually enforcing is as written! Not when that would be bad!

And then they are confused, shocked, and even insulted when people hold them accountable for their support of the monstrous policy.

“I didn’t vote for leopards to eat *your* face! I just thought we needed some face-eating leopards generally. Surely you can’t blame me for that!”

The old “Defense of Marriage” laws are another textbook example of this.

Many of them included language that expressly forbade giving similar benefits (like hospital visitation) to same-sex relationships.

Yet the people who voted for them, in many cases, wanted it to be known that No One Is Talking About Stopping You From Visiting Your Loved One In The Hospital. And Surely There Will Be An Exception.

The Shirley Exception is how people who are only mundanely monstrous, moderately monstrous, wind up supporting policies that are completely monstrous.

And when they do, they always want credit for their good intentions towards those they see as deserving, not the outcomes.

I’m describing a phenomenon here and I don’t have a solution to its existence. While convincing people that laws that don’t specify exceptions functionally *don’t have them* might work sometimes on (ironically) a case-by-case basis, what is really needed is a broader shift.

People need to get used to thinking about the harm policies will do as a real part of the policy, not a hypothetical that Reasonable People of Good Will Can Surely Work Around.