In abstract, we want rule of law. In person, we want mob justice.

A harsh but not inexplicable position. From Columbia mattress rape case is not justice — it’s shaming without proof by Naomi Schaefer Riley. In the context of the dismissal of the Patterson gang-rape charges, the collapse of the Dunham story, the implosion of the UVA gang-rape fabrication and the undermining of the Columbia Performance Art Mattress accusations, Riley states:

But, really, the problem is this: It’s considered offensive to even ask a single question of a woman who says she has been sexually assaulted. Because rape is not a crime like armed robbery or murder anymore. Rape is a political statement by the patriarchy trying to silence women. It doesn’t matter what actually happened. What matters is what you think happened after you’ve taken enough women’s-studies courses.

That’s why Lena Dunham got away with publishing a book accusing an easily identifiable student on campus of rape without any fact checkers or lawyers flagging the passage. It’s why no one at Rolling Stone demanded the reporter verify the accuser’s story. And it’s why the word of a girl with a mattress strapped to her back is treated like the Holy Bible.

Feminists complain that by putting assault victims through this barrage of questions we are shaming them. As Sulkowicz told the news site Mic: “It’s an awful feeling where this reporter is digging through my personal life. At this point, I didn’t realize that she’s extremely anti-feminist and would do this in order to shame me.”

But shame is exactly what these accusers are hoping to bring on their alleged attackers. By refusing to report these matters to the police instead of the campus Keystone Kops and The New York Times, they are supposedly saving themselves from the pain of a trial, but really what they are doing is saving themselves from having to answer any questions and destroying men’s lives with lies and innuendo.

I see a connection between this article and this weekend's This American Life, Cops See It Differently, Part One.

In that broadcast there is an illuminating episode where the American Life team follows the cops to a 911 shots fired call. They arrive and find a couple claiming that a woman, whom they had requested move her parked car so that they could get their car out of the parking space, pointed a gun at them and fired it. There are no shell casings or other evidence of a fired gun. The police track down the accused woman who is cooperative and invites them to search her apartment, claiming that she did not fire a gun and that in fact she doesn't have a gun. The show is focusing on the difficult position of police departments, which tend to be majority white, when interacting in neighborhoods that are majority black, particularly when those neighborhoods generate the bulk of the emergency 911 calls.

In this instance, both the alleged victims and the alleged perpetrator are black. All are emotional and adamant that they are telling the truth. The police have to quickly adjudicate with conflicting testimony and limited evidence, what actually happened. In the meantime both parties are wanting the other party to be disbelieved and punished and are faulting the police for not taking their word that events unfolded as they have represented. No matter how polite and solicitous the police might be, nor how diligent, by being initially neutral they are going to make one party (the party telling the truth) angry.

In the event, within an hour, the police discover a recently fired long barrel pistol hidden in the accused woman's laundry hamper and are able to file charges. The accusing couple, glad that their allegation has been acted on, are still irritated at how long it took and why they weren't believed immediately.

The thought that connects both articles is that we all instinctively want mob justice and while we may be strategically committed to the concept of rule of law, when we are personally engaged (by personal impact or through ideology), we essentially want mob justice. We want the power of the state to do our bidding and immediately find the other guilty and to punish them immediately. Disbelieving us is an insult and troubling. But the state is not omnipotent and often cannot tell immediately where might lie the truth.

These examples illustrate that this is neither a gender issue or a race issue (though episodically those might indeed be occasional factors). This is a process issue that is irreconcilable.

Of course the judicial system, constituted of fallible humans, is itself in turn fallible and always subject to both tactical and strategic actions to improve it. Fundamentally though, there are two positions that cannot be reconciled. You cannot be for the rule of law and due process rights and at the same time seek to preclude the other party (whether the accuser or the accused) from bearing a burden in the process. The accuser has to step forward and make and support the accusation and the accused, despite being innocent till proven guilty, sensibly ought to assist in making the case demonstrating their innocence.

Those that want to make an end run from accusation to guilt without any intermediate process or burden, are essentially calling for the abandonment of rule of law and due process. They are advocating mob justice and anarchy, rule of the most powerful. That is not explicitly what they seek, but as Gramscian propagators, that is their revealed preference. They will only see that they are seeking justice. They will refuse to see their actions as undermining justice.