Adult Children of Privileged People
Harley Quinn gets spoken of as the abused girlfriend of the Joker. One actress decided she was willing to play the character only after learning about Stockholm Syndrome to try to make sense of the whole thing.
Probably in part because the character doesn't really read like an abused girlfriend who is her boyfriend's prisoner.
I certainly don't agree with that view of the character. I have my own interpretation of Harley Quinn which is based on conversations with my son.
He and I talked somewhat extensively about his opinions of the character and I looked up citations to verify his claims and that's the second or third iteration of my attempts to write about my view of the character.
The gist of what my son said to me is "That's a NO from me, Harley Quinn is not the Joker's abused girlfriend. He behaves like a beleaguered boyfriend who is afraid of her and her hyenas and puts up with her anyway AND it looks exactly like the relationship you and dad had."
I was the enthusiastic girlfriend planning a wedding and buying my future ex sharpening stones as a Christmas present to better arm my bodyguard and covering it up with ditz behavior that I'm just a supportive girlfriend and it's one of his quirky interests.
Reality: I was one of the top three students of our graduating high school class and got interpreted by some people as a ditz with silly hobbies like astrology. The Math for hand casting horoscopes was something I could do because I had more college-level math in high school than most non-STEM bachelor's degree holding people have taken.
IF you have a person in your court trying to claim they are the victim and incapable of controlling themselves and cannot be held responsible for their actions because Daddy is wealthy and powerful and ... (molesting them or forcing them to participate in their criminal activities or whatever) "So they can't help it" and they are over the age of say, twenty, I call BS.
If Daddy is truly extremely extremely wealthy and awful and she married a "Columbian drug lord"[1] or similar to get away from daddy and she is willing to commit whatever crimes she needs to commit for hubby to keep daddy at bay, I might try to understand where she's coming from and see if she can be helped to escape Daddy.
But I would want substantial evidence she's making a good faith effort to put her life of crime behind her because otherwise the way to bet is it's an excuse. And if you buy this one, she's got dozens more "oceanfront property in Arizona" style tall tales where that came from.
If he or she is a legally competent, legal adult, then this nonsense where we have absolutely ENDLESS compassion for career criminals "because MY DADDY is the problem, waaaah" is called aiding and abetting.
The COURTS already HAVE reasonable standards where if you are eighteen or nineteen and do something dumb but not too serious, a judge can say "Boy, you weren't raised right. Let's give you a slap on the wrist and don't ever do this again. Get your act together. If it happens again, you're doing time."
Current practices boil down to all of society enthusiastically agreeing wealthy, privileged people are not required to EVER grow up.
If they want to CLAIM they CANNOT HELP it, cool.
1. Commit them to an insane asylum until they are capable of taking responsibility for their actions and controlling themselves.
2. Assign someone to act as conservator to run their estate like Britney Spears had. If they are not legally competent, they are NOT legally ENTITLED to things like corporate power and voting rights on controlling stock in a public company.
There are existing rules about that and, for example, when Jeff Bezos got divorced and gave Mackenzie Scott billions of dollars worth of Amazon stock in the divorce settlement, those stocks were stripped of voting rights. He retained the voting rights.
So Mackenzie Scott only got money and not controlling interest and decision-making power in the divorce.
When the COURTS buy this GARBAGE -- that I KNOW you don't accept from poor kids of color who grew up in the ghetto -- that a rich kid whose daddy is ethically challenged cannot possibly be expected to BEHAVE themselves, you are agreeing to and creating a society with the following policies:
1. Rich criminals can manufacture all the untouchable accomplices they WANT. Just bring the kids into the family business and the courts will never meaningfully hold them accountable for their crimes.
Elon Musk has FOURTEEN children and probably isn't done. That's potentially fourteen untouchable accomplices if you want to agree to this ridiculous social contract.[2]
At the same time, Elon Musk's eldest child, Vivian Wilson, had a falling out with her daddy which proves this is an excuse. Elon Musk was the world's richest man and his eldest daughter had a falling out with him and walked away. So it CAN be done no matter WHO your daddy is.
2. Over-privileged rich brats can COUNT on a world kissing their butts and not really holding them accountable, which becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. You get more of that when you let all the rich brats know "The rules are fundamentally different for the rich kids and all reason goes out the window when they behave badly and furthermore only chumps have ethics."
3. Toxic horrendous classism is our religion. Possibly in the NAME of Christianity, a religion probably inspired by a grassroots movement leader advocating for RIGHTS for poor people in a corrupt system where wealthy people want to insist they are incapable of having ethics BECAUSE they were born into privilege.
That's backwards.
If you are poor and uneducated and all your time is spent trying to scrape by and you have no means to pursue therapy, read books, get any kind of education etc. and you remain a prisoner of stupid ideas learned in childhood, and you are committing crimes and end up in legal trouble over it, MAYBE you can be educated and reformed.
People born into wealthy families shouldn't lack basic essentials necessary to learn how to comport themselves as an adult member of society.
Wealthy people who attended expensive private schools etc. who RAMPANTLY misbehave are in one of two categories:
1. They are using their educational advantage to PLAN their crimes and con people.
2. OR they got a sheepskin as a credential that's NOT worth the paper it's printed on because Daddy donated enough money to buy the school a new wing or something.
If rich people are too stupid to WANT their children ACTUALLY educated and WANT their kids to have valuable knowledge and skills and instead just want to BRIBE private schools and private colleges into rubber stamping credentials so incompetent privileged brats get well-paid jobs they aren't actually qualified for, cool. Whatevs.
The REST of society should STILL say "That's a NO from me."
If well-paid jobs are NOT given to qualified people, this is a Lion King scenario where everything goes to ruin.
This is an HG Wells The Time Machine scenario where future generations of the current upper classes are the sheeple being bred to feed the descendants of the working class servants.
That book is the oldest known version of the meme "eat the rich" that I'm personally aware of. Most people seem oblivious to the ugly social commentary of that cool time travel story.
Is that really the possibly not-too-distant future you WANT to possibly live to see yourself or leave behind for your children or grandchildren?
Footnote
[1] I am extremely skeptical that the mythical drug lords and drug cartels operate the way fictional stories portray them. I've read one or more articles that analyzed available records and plausibly suggested that this is largely government propaganda.
Ask yourself this: Where do those memes come from? Did a professional journalist trained in citing their sources etc. look in the yellow pages under "Columbian drug lord," call up a dozen people and do interviews?
Or do people writing cool movies make up nonsense and drug dealers go "HA! I love it! Let the public BELIEVE that because it makes my life easier if their heads are filled with ridiculous nonsense."?
[2] And then where does it end? Are their spouses and their children "grandfathered in" and untouchable accomplices who "can't help it"?
The family that preys together, stays together?