Of course the Supreme Court case is there, it would be very weird if it wasn't. But it's phrased in a very specific and neutral way, as if he was fighting an odd bit of tax legislation, when the reality was he used prisoners as literal cotton picking slaves, personally oversaw brutal violence, and deprived 16,000 prisoners of due process.
I mean, come on! He literally used violence to force prisoners to lie under oath to attack an attorney! He operated a system where prisoners were forced to mutilate themselves in order to survive.
From the article:
One former prisoner named Clyde Sewell told a graphic account of an incident in which three inmates, all supposedly shot by McAdams while they were trying to escape, were laid out as examples, alive but bleeding profusely, at the entrance to the dining hall. “We had to walk through the blood to get to the dining room,” Sewell testified.
Can you imagine a hell like this? Can you imagine someone who ruled over it for over a decade and knew about every little detail and was responsible for all this horrific carnage? It's absolutely insane. These things are crimes against humanity.
Being responsible for this shouldn't mean some mild mention of "Beto was the lead defendant in 405 U.S. 319 in which the court upheld a Free Exercise claim on the basis of the allegations..." in the last paragraph of an otherwise fairly uninteresting Wikipedia article. It should mean that the person is permanently condemned for the monster they were.
That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me.
>That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me.
Most of the people writing about Beto are going to be learning about him from other people involved in the criminal justice field. They aren't going to value the word of a defense attorney and some convicts.
They also likely don't see many problems in his acts, it's not like the TDCJ or the US has ever really given a shit about prisoners rights.
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about how easy it is to learn these things now that a longform article has dug it all up and excerpted the most salacious bits for you. If you are a Wikipedian 5 or 10 years ago doing a bit of work on the article and sketching out a stub, where do you get a copy of trial testimony from Sewell, if you even know about it? You going to drive over to Texas to visit the court room and pay $0.1/page for photocopies and read a few hundred pages in case there's something useful?
Thats gp’s point though, isn’t it? For such a vast crime, its managed to get covered up to an impressive degree, even despite his death. It normally shouldn’t be that difficult to unearth such a controversial and recent event; and wikipedia, which often manages to cover events faded from the public memory, has failed to cover this, speaks to the degree at which this has been covered up.
> But it's phrased in a very specific and neutral way
Wikipedia articles should be neutral, fact based, and objective. If there is something important missing then add it neutrally with a citation.
When Wikipedia articles aren't neutral they become a failed shitstorm. For example see the article on Social Justice versus Social Justice Warrior, one of which is not neutral and locked from any edits.
I'm confused, I took a brief look at both of those articles and they don't seem like a "failed shitstorm". Sure, there are points to improve, but it doesn't seem terribly bad. Which one is supposed to be the "failed shitstorm" and why? (I've been called an SJW before, so I might have some left-leaning bias here)
But those articles are irrelevant to the discussion. I've contributed to Wikipedia for years and I've got a good idea of how to add things from a neutral and objective point of view. My point is exactly that the existing article is not objective. For example, pretend the article of the Charleston white supremacist mass murderer said the following:
"Roof was involved in the controversy of the events of June 17, 2015. After a flurry of media attention, he became the lead defendant in the trial United States v. Roof (2:15-cr-00472), which was noted for the request for a bench trial..."
The above is entirely correct, and written in a neutral, flat tone, but it completely misrepresents the situation. By noting tiny, irrelevant details like the request for a bench trial and the criminal number, the article both becomes uninteresting and hides the truth. If you read the snippet you wouldn't get the idea that he was a mass murderer.
The same thing applies to the article about George Beto. He was objectively a monster. He used prisoners as literal cotton picking slaves, he operated a system that forced prisoners to mutilate themselves, and his direct subordinates shot people for no reason and let them bleed to death in an occupied dining hall "as examples". These things are not speculation, they're not partisan comments on Twitter, they're not even reporting in a possibly-biased newspaper - they're proven facts that were litigated to the highest courts of the land! These things are not even buried in court documents from decades back, they've been reported on and published! There is no reason for them to not be on Wikipedia.
Meanwhile, his page is about as dry and non-negative as it possibly could be. It reads like intentionally obfuscated, reputation-managed doublespeak, and only makes reference to some of the things he was convicted of in vague ways. It's a tragedy.
I mean, come on! He literally used violence to force prisoners to lie under oath to attack an attorney! He operated a system where prisoners were forced to mutilate themselves in order to survive.
From the article:
One former prisoner named Clyde Sewell told a graphic account of an incident in which three inmates, all supposedly shot by McAdams while they were trying to escape, were laid out as examples, alive but bleeding profusely, at the entrance to the dining hall. “We had to walk through the blood to get to the dining room,” Sewell testified.
Can you imagine a hell like this? Can you imagine someone who ruled over it for over a decade and knew about every little detail and was responsible for all this horrific carnage? It's absolutely insane. These things are crimes against humanity.
Being responsible for this shouldn't mean some mild mention of "Beto was the lead defendant in 405 U.S. 319 in which the court upheld a Free Exercise claim on the basis of the allegations..." in the last paragraph of an otherwise fairly uninteresting Wikipedia article. It should mean that the person is permanently condemned for the monster they were.
That's what I'm complaining about: that somehow, in today's society where people seem to think you can't escape the past, true monsters do escape with their reputation unscathed. And that unsettles me.