I would have expected that behavior to make them seem guilty enough to warrant holding them until their stories are thoroughly examined.
Or to put it another way, it was a different, simpler time.
After learning of this, I now value Pablo Picasso (the person) somewhat differently. He was ~26 in 1907. Not a kid.
This probably explains why e.g. I had never heard of this before: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/pablo-picasso-brooklyn-museum-ga...
Planning to do something bad and not following through is not the same thing as doing the bad thing.
(What mixture of it was conscience, and what mixture was fear of getting caught?)
In the end, we'll never know why they didn't dump the suitcase in the river.
> > (What mixture of it was conscience, and what mixture was fear of getting caught?)
As posited above: because of conscience?
Because of fear of getting caught dropping a suitcase?
And, of course, I suggest one go to more primary sources. The only one we really have is Fernande Olivier, who said (translation):
> After a hastily swallowed dinner and a long evening’s wait, they set out on foot around midnight with the suitcase; at two in the morning they were back, worn out and still carrying the suitcase with the statues inside.
> They had wandered the streets never finding the right moment, never daring to get rid of the suitcase. They thought they were being followed and conjured up in imagination a thou sand possibilities. . . . Although I shared their fears, I had been watching them rather closely that night. I am sure that perhaps involuntarily they had been play-acting a little: to such a point that, while waiting for “the moment of the crime,” although neither of them knew how, they had pretended to play cards—doubtless in imitation of certain bandits they had read about. In the end Apollinaire spent the night at Picasso’s and went the next morn ing to Paris-Journal, where he turned in the undesirable statues under a pledge of secrecy.
I read in all of these sources a lot of ambiguity about why they didn't. You find certainty, perhaps-- I don't.
I don’t think that’s the case, at least for me.
It is more that they even thought this is an okay thing to do makes them moraly suspect in my eyes. Doesn’t matter if they went through with it or not. Doesn’t matter why they haven’t gone through with it either.
They should have told the person offering to steal a statue that he shouldn’t. And when he shows up with a statue they should have told him that he should bring it back or they are calling the police. And when he brought the second statue they should have called the police instead of paying for it. And then every single day the statue was on his mantle piece he should have returned it safely. Same as when things got too hot for them. Instead they decided to destroy them.
These are all facts which put them in rather bad light. By that point they were already miles deep into bad decisions. And, none of them even asked “what if we just leave this suitcase with a sign which says ‘to the police’?” But somehow i should care weather they didn’t go through with destroying the statues out of cowardice or consciousness? Even if it is consciousness it is too little too late for me.
Maybe you don't seriously consider doing really bad things, and even take steps playing with the idea of doing them. I definitely have, especially when I was younger.
> They should have told the person offering to steal a statue that he shouldn’t. And when he shows up with a statue they should have told him that he should bring it back or they are calling the police. And when he brought the second statue they should have called the police instead of paying for it. And then every single day the statue was on his mantle piece he should have returned it safely.
Sure, stealing things is bad.
> And, none of them even asked “what if we just leave this suitcase with a sign which says ‘to the police’?”
Actually, they handed them to the police through a newspaper. That's what they actually did! So clearly they asked it at some point ;)
There was a lot more there just "considering". If they just had a night chatting about the state of museum security that would have been "consider doing really bad things" and "take steps playing with the idea of doing them".
He wrote a poem about the experience of being jailed:
https://allpoetry.com/poem/14329550---La-Sant--by-Guillaume-...
I think “La Santé” was the name of the prison. The English translation of the title loses this double meaning.
La Fontaine, I think, was the title of Marcel Duchamp's urinal installation; I suspect it might be a common euphemism?
Today's standards are indeed different: if rich or famous enough, you can commit dozens of felonies, receive no prison time or other actual punishment, and be sworn in as president!
The rulers of yesteryear are surely grateful that, in time, even the worst sins get washed away.
"Politicians used to be honorable" must be as commonly said across generations as "kids these days are just so disrespectful".
Lying under oath was also what got Bill Clinton impeached, and that too is "just words".
That said, the claim that this unduly influenced the previous election is, IMO, probably incorrect: that Trump is a philanderer was known in 2016, and his conviction for these offences was known by the 2024 election, and yet he still won.
The way I heard it, the government used a specific language for "have sexual relations with" (hereinafter HSRW):
A HSRW B if the mouth, hands, or genitals of A touch the genitals of B.
Any hackernews regular would notice that HSRW is not associative - as in it is entirely possible for A HSRW B to be true, but B HSRW A to be false; in fact this was the case for if A's mouth touches B's genitals; A HSRW B but !(B HSRW A).
You can whine and plead and ask the question 4,000 times, but at the end of the day, if one don't understand logic, you might be a Republican Senator in the 1990's.
The trial court disagreed that these statements truthfully responded to the deposition, and fined him for his misleading answer.
For instance in Russia, their Supreme Court actually threw out the first conviction of Navalny on embezzlement charges. The local case itself was a shit show, but what else would you call a conviction in a case based largely on the words of a serial liar of undoubtedly near zero character, who also had a financial and vindictive motivation to lie? And I'm not talking about Navalny's case there, but imagine I was. Your opinion should not change if you're being logically consistent.
This is the reason that these trials sent Trump's popularity surging, and very possibly being the reason he won the popular vote. It seems that not only were they shit shows, but because they are seen as being motivated by the person being charged, rather than by the acts alleged.
FWIW, this does not mean he's innocent. It just means that if he wasn't who he is, none of these cases, all launched just in time to try to interfere with the election, would have happened.
Or did you mean “one of the small ruling elite” communists?
That's absolutely not "the entire idea" of communism. There's this idea of, you know... communes.
Nazism is intrinsically violent and atrocious. Communism has been the excuse that made it possible for terrible dictators to commit mass-scale atrocities, but nothing in the writings of Marx encourages those atrocities.
The whole "communism is just as bad as nazism" is a trope that needs to die already. Stalin was bad. His entourage was bad. A group of peasants who want to collectivize their work tools are not bad, have never been, and never will be.
I do not think Marx intended to justify violent atrocities at all, but unknown to him they logically follow from his philosophy, and are essential for putting it into practice. It is the most awful philosophical trap in human history: one where people with compassion, a sense of justice, and a desire to make the world better end up sucked into a bad idea that inevitably turns out horrific.
Marx saw a really real and awful injustice in how workers were treated during the industrial revolution, but he fundamentally misdiagnosed and misunderstood the problem. People were being awful and exploiting others for their own gain under inhumane conditions, because they simply were awful people that dehumanized others and only cared about themselves- and they were in a cultural and legal framework that encouraged and allowed that sort of behavior. It had absolutely nothing to do with capitalism, owning property, or owning a business, but more to do with an ancient medieval ethics that had been around long before capitalism, suddenly being applied with more powerful tools and systems.
As an aside, I think Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality" gets directly at what the real problem is that leads to the atrocities Marx was concerned about. People that are exploiting others in that way- and the people that tolerate/allow it- aren't capitalists per say, but are lacking a sense of what Pirsig calls Quality.
Since communism side-steps the real issue, it creates a new framework where the same type of awful people have even more power to abuse, exploit, and dehumanize others - even while feeling righteous about it, rather than at least a bit guilty like one would hope they would feel.
Our actual current modern society has more correctly diagnosed and solved the problem with new ethical, cultural, and legal norms about how one can and should treat other people, and the natural environment... while still keeping it perfectly legal to start a business, own property, etc. - those are simply amoral activities that have nothing to do with the atrocities Marx was trying to prevent. Plenty of people start and run a business, e.g. with the intention of being socially and environmentally responsible, and doing something helpful and useful with their lives by employing people and solving useful problems- and succeed at it.
Whereas people who call themselves communists, without exception, go to defend one of dozens bloodiest and nastiest regimes to ever exist. If an ideology brings sociopathic butchers to power not once not twice, but every single time, it's a good time to realize there is something deeply wrong with it.