There is no acceptable reason to "check on" him for it. It is political criticism written in an attention gathering way is all. Odds are that a standard critical message would never gain the mind's attention, so people have to get creative.
Also, for better or worse, the "check" these days allegedly happens more commonly by hacking into the person's devices to monitor them for a while.
People are consistently surprised when the government doesn't operate exactly according to the letter of the law. There are ample opportunities to learn this before you get to this point. Jaywalking may be illegal but people do it right in front of a cop and get away with it. Likewise plenty of things that are perfectly legal attract law enforcement attention. If you asked 100 people on the street if that letter constitutes a threat, I believe that 5-10% would say yes, so sending something like that is definitely asking for trouble. And yes, I'm victim-blaming, because the victim is partially to blame.
> If you asked 100 people on the street if that letter constitutes a threat, I believe that 5-10% would say yes, so sending something like that is definitely asking for trouble
Something is "asking for trouble" if a tiny minority think it is? I think not. That would be extreme minority rule, not democracy.
If you ask 100 reasonable people if that letter constitutes a threat, and 90-95% say "no", then the remaining 5-10% should accept that their opinions are unreasonable, and defer to reasonable people, and drop the matter.
You made the general claim. I'm pointing out that the general claim when applied to a different minority population suddenly does not sound as reasonable, and could easily cause distress and discussions of persecution and discrimination.
Pivoting to wanting to exceptionally examine an exact opinion for this particular minority is simply Special Pleading. The point stands that, no, people should not be expected to shut up and "defer to reasonable people" just because their opinions and interests are in the minority.
Only if you want to make a coherent point. It sounded like you wanted to come up with a counterexample, but stopped halfway through finding one, and thus stopped halfway through making your point, hence my asking.
Given that you instead wrote 3 paragraphs about why you shouldn't explain what you're talking about, I don't think even you can think of a counterexample, so I don't see this conversation going anywhere productive with regards to your point.
> I'm pointing out that the general claim when applied to a different minority population suddenly does not sound as reasonable
Hard to "point out" something that isn't true. It could sound reasonable, it could sound unreasonable. You haven't explained what you're actually talking about here, so impossible to judge so far.
Feel free to contribute a nonzero amount of evidence towards your case here, and try to convince folks you're right. Remember, the topic is not people, but opinions of the form 'doing X is asking for trouble, and should be interpreted as a threat'.
On the other hand, if you want to come up with bigger and better reasons why you shouldn't explain what you're even talking about: I'll pass, and my point stands even stronger than ever.
I see what you're doing and it's brilliant. 99% of people probably understand tpoacher's point perfectly, but you're pretending not to in order to be the 1%, and daring him to counteract his own point by ignoring you. Bravo.
I think the reason folks don't get his point, is because he thinks the discussion is about people, rather than ideas.
So it makes sense that his point makes no sense – it has nothing to do with the idea "doing X is asking for trouble and should be interpreted as a threat" for any value of X, unless you think there's a value of X which all black people believe and 0 non-black people believe, which I imagine is pretty basic racism.
Minorities often seek to engage in witch hunts. Opinions should never matter when it comes to law enforcement. The facts and logic should. The fact is that even if a minority assert the email to be a threat, upon probing there is no way they can explain why or how it is threat.
An objective analysis should be sought. You can read one by cgpt in its shared conversation ID 6a46a4f2-82fc-83ea-89bf-de6e6108070c which clearly determines it is not a threat.
Some minorities sometimes seek to engage in witch hunts. Many others either don't care to waste energy on such pettiness, or simply have better things to do with their time. To be fair, there's a lot of messed up "Karen-types" among the non-minority groups that engage in witch hunting of various kinds as well, so... Yeah. Some humans are just messed up I guess...
That may be so, but it's unlikely that a jury would find him guilty. Moreover, those 5-10% would probably not be able to narrow or support their allegation if probed.
You know that. I know that. But that sort of identify and harass anyone who is a thorn in your side or otherwise noteworthy for a bad reason workflow is absolutely the status quo in government from the highest and mightiest federal agencies down to your local permitting office. These people are living in a filter bubble running organizations staffed by people from the same filter bubble. They don't understand what they're doing is even wrong.
Also, for better or worse, the "check" these days allegedly happens more commonly by hacking into the person's devices to monitor them for a while.