So if I spend my life being a right bastard, like 50 straight years of kicking dogs, stealing from old ladies, being a slum lord and extorting people, breaking people’s legs in mafia style protection rackets, dumping toxic industrial byproducts into rivers, and using my wealth and power to keep and enforce “sundown laws”, but then in my 60s open an animal shelter, fund bingo nights and retirement centers, set up community reinvestment grants, sponsor efforts to get the wetlands to get cleaned up as a Superfund site, and get diversity and equality training implemented for the police department, would I then be considered to be a good person because my attitude shifted? The thousands of people I hurt and potentially indirectly killed over those 50 years don’t count against the good I am now doing?
Even simpler, if I steal and destroy your car, causing you to lose your job because you don’t have transportation which then causes you to lose your home, should I then be praised for giving you a nicer brand new car a year later?
Sticking to politics in case that’s the only place this kind of behavior gets a pass, what if someone didn’t cheer for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but instead had sponsored bills undoing limitations or bans on gay conversion therapy. Does later supporting a bill making conversion therapy illegal undo the suicides and trauma they inflicted because their apparent attitude has changed? Are they now equal to the person who spent their entire career pushing for gay rights, because this person supported strengthening of domestic partnership laws instead of marriage equality 20-30 years ago? They both support gay rights now, so is saying that the first person is doing the bare minimum and shouldn’t really be called an ally “moving the finish line”?
So if I spend my life being a right bastard, like 50 straight years of kicking dogs, stealing from old ladies, being a slum lord and extorting people, breaking people’s legs in mafia style protection rackets, dumping toxic industrial byproducts into rivers, and using my wealth and power to keep and enforce “sundown laws”, but then in my 60s open an animal shelter, fund bingo nights and retirement centers, set up community reinvestment grants, sponsor efforts to get the wetlands to get cleaned up as a Superfund site, and get diversity and equality training implemented for the police department, would I then be considered to be a good person because my attitude shifted? The thousands of people I hurt and potentially indirectly killed over those 50 years don’t count against the good I am now doing?
Even simpler, if I steal and destroy your car, causing you to lose your job because you don’t have transportation which then causes you to lose your home, should I then be praised for giving you a nicer brand new car a year later?
Sticking to politics in case that’s the only place this kind of behavior gets a pass, what if someone didn’t cheer for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but instead had sponsored bills undoing limitations or bans on gay conversion therapy. Does later supporting a bill making conversion therapy illegal undo the suicides and trauma they inflicted because their apparent attitude has changed? Are they now equal to the person who spent their entire career pushing for gay rights, because this person supported strengthening of domestic partnership laws instead of marriage equality 20-30 years ago? They both support gay rights now, so is saying that the first person is doing the bare minimum and shouldn’t really be called an ally “moving the finish line”?