I'm assuming you're simply ignorant of the details, rather than actually as stupid as that comment sounds.
I'm assuming your brain is the size of a dehydrated Lima bean. I'm also assuming that you channel your impotent rage at your stunted mental abilities into senseless vitriol on the internet and that's what led you to make that incredibly angry and unjustifiably stupid post over a video game.
Or, you could just be a desperately lonely asshole who thinks that if he's a big enough dick to other people they'll notice and acknowledge him. In which case I guess you win. Sort of.
Frankly, I'm completely burned out on WoW. Since October '06 I've paid a total of 13 months, so I probably played about 12, and I got one character to 80, no raiding. Ever. And since I was a Warlock, my entire existance in PvP basically boiled down to blowing up a whole bunch of Ally as destro until someone noticed I was tearing huge holes in the group, at which point I became a sitting duck for whichever OP melee class decided it was time for me to die. Booooring.
However, I do enjoy the events Blizzard adds to the game now and then, so I'm kind of interested in going back for one more month before Cataclysm actually is released. I'll take part in the pre-release event, then just cancel when the game launches.
And, I'm sorry... but D3 and SC2? Same game as the ones I already own from the series, it looks to me.
WoW is pretty much dead as a game... I played through Ulduar...
And so did ten million other nerds with nothing better to do with their time, and ten million nerds will do it again with Cataclysm, which is exactly why it's not dead and exactly why Cataclysm will continue to suck the cash out of people's pockets for another year or two.
Even if you believe in a creator granting it, and you believe that this creator will punish people who deny such rights, it's still not a part of the universe's rules. Since religion is an entirely human construct, and the rules that go with religion are relevant only to humanity, all consequences of the acknowledgment of free speech are strictly contained within the bounds of human experience.
In other words, the rules of the universe shape the universe's behavior and evolution. Human free speech existing or not has nothing to do with how the universe functions, so it's not a rule of the universe. Gravity will continue to function the same either way, as will light, thermodynamics, etc.
It's an entirely human concept, and some people believe that, like free speech, people have a right to live and that in a just society we should be using our resources to uphold that right just as we expend resources upholding our right to free speech. It's an arguable point, but I don't think it's arguable that either of those things exists as an inherent rule of nature.
I think suppressing political expression is not cool
I agree. I think the image itself and its supposed "message" is stupid, but I still think the image takedown was unjustified and that it should be put back up. I also think, however, the idea that this was done for political reasons, as a number of people are trying to argue, rather than as a "Cover Your Ass" sort of thing over a potential copyright fight, is absurd.
but I'm trying to figure out where people feel they should be privileged to the best medical care in the world without having to pay for it or provide back to society an equal or greater benefit.
Why do you feel entitled to freedom of speech? There is no such thing, inherently. There is no universal rule that you must be allowed to speak freely. If that right is taken from you and you're silenced, the universe will simply continue on as if nothing happened, save for the immediate differences it makes in your tiny little insignificant piece of this planet.
Some of us simply believe that in an affluent and supposedly just society we should view the situation as a moral prerogative. If you disagree, that's fine, but, frankly, it's a pretty crummy way to view the people around you. I tend to view human life as a little more valuable than that. Honestly, I've seriously tried to get my wife to leave this country because of people like you, though. What sense is there in living in a "society" that views its citizens with such incredible contempt that you would even think to say something so ridiculously callous and selfish? We might as well just revert to animalistic anarchy and let the strong cull the weak. A situation, I might add, you likely wouldn't survive (nor I).
I would not ask a stranger to pay for my life. It's just not right. I would gladly accept death.
I'm going to go ahead and say the odds are pretty well-stacked against that being true. I'm sure there are a very few people like that around, but if I had to bet and you really went to your deathbed, I'd go ahead and lay down a pretty heft sum that you're full of crap with that statement.
Too many people are in "Me" mode.
Like the people who value green paper in their wallet over an actual human's life?
If you'd bother to RTActualFA you'd have noticed that he was, in fact, contacted by Flickr which is one of the provisions of the DMCA: that the operator notify the "infringer" of the takedown. For all you know, that contact was a DMCA notice. If you'd bothered to read the rest of this thread, you'd also know that DMCA angle is speculation on the motivation based on Flickr's statement of copyright concerns. The difference between my speculation and yours is that mine is much more likely to be accurate.
Like I said, enjoy your crazy conspiracy theory. Since that's all you have, I'm not going to keep wasting time arguing with you anymore than I would a birther, flat-earther, or moon landing hoax nut. The unfortunate part of this behavior, though, is that someday somebody like you really will be unfairly targeted for your political beliefs in a situation like this, and nobody's going to believe you because you and the entire right in this country are just absolutely hellbent on treating the Boy Who Cried Wolf like an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.
The facts are that one image with two potentially infringing elements which was broadcast all over the world and used to create an image that become internationally notorious via major media outlets was removed from a site that continues to host thousands if not tens of thousands of anti-Obama anti-democrat images.
There is no conspiracy, no political hit job going on here. Somebody got a takedown notice or got too touchy over the possibility of getting one and removed a piece of parody work they shouldn't have. Same thing that's happened hundreds, if not thousands of times before on all sorts of different media-rich websites like Flickr, DeviantArt, and Youtube which allow users to upload content. Even Slashdot has fallen victim to DMCA claims and removed user posts as a result.
You go ahead and run with this crazy "Flickr is a bunch of lefties" conspiracy theory though. Let me know how it works out for you. Maybe you can get some birthers or some screaming town hall rioters to join you on this.
It's not improbable at all, especially if he lived in a rural area. You can't be denied care for an emergency condition in an ER, but if you're in the ER, it's an emergency. If it's an emergency brought on by a chronic, untreated ailment, odds are you're in pretty bad shape and at a much greater risk of death than if you'd been treated for the underlying cause earlier on. As an example, if you show up in the ER with an undiagnosed malignant tumor in its last stages, you can still be saved, but your odds of being saved are extremely decreased by that point.
Furthermore, many rural areas in the U.S. do not have ready access to the most modern treatment options available. If I go fifteen miles north, as the crow flies, over the mountains I can see out my front window, those people have horrible treatment options. They are, basically, limited to less than half a dozen family doctors and a small free clinic that is not capable even of treating a broken bone. The quickest access they have to modern medicine in an emergency is a 40 minute helicopter flight to the nearest university medical center.
Our doctors, hospitals, specialists, and medicines are, by and large, incredible in the U.S. Our access to them, however, is pretty sorely lacking for a great number of people.
I don't know that he's telling the truth, and I don't know that his brother/friend (sorry, I forgot the relationship) did everything he could have, but, based on the rural area I grew up and still visit sometimes, I could absolutely see how it happens.
Nobody's saying that Time definitely issued a DMCA takedown request, it's just one possibility regarding the claim of copyright concerns Flickr issued. Another possibility is that the owner of the Ledger/Joker image issued a request, and a third possibility is that Flickr simply got antsy about the Joker image and the Time image and pre-emptively removed it as a TOS violation. These are the three most likely explanations assuming Flickr is telling the truth.
More remotely, it's possible that Flickr is lying and initiated the takedown as a partisan attack on the free speech of the individual who created the image. Of course, this happily ignores the thousands of original and derivative anti-Obama and anti-Democrat works that can readily be discovered on Flickr with these common anti-Obama/Democrat searches:
nobama, impeach, obama socialist, anti-democrat
I'll ask you the same thing I asked the other guy I'm arguing with. Are you honestly trying to tell me that you can't see how one image duplicated hundreds of thousands of times, repeatedly displayed in major international media outlets, linked to from all over the web, and used to vandalize hundreds of public spaces over a period of two weeks might - just might - draw a bit more attention to itself from a jittery media host than the typical Flickr image that will never be seen but by a few random internet users who happen to use the site? Are you really trying to argue that an image with international major media exposure and notoriety is on par with some random "Bushitler" nonsense that only a dozen internet users will ever see? Is that really your argument here?
Riddle me this, Batman. If this is all about hating on Obama detractors and right-wingers, why is Flickr still hosting thousands of anti-Obama and anti-Democrat images that can easily be found with these simple search terms:
In fact, there are a bunch of derivative works of the Obama joker image in those results. You know what the main difference between those and the one that gotten taken down is? The one that gotten taken down was being plastered all over causways, bridge abuttments, national TV and the internet, and those weren't.
Maybe, just maybe you can set aside all the insanely irrational conspiracy theories for one moment and think about why an image that's been duplicated hundreds of thousands of times and gained international notoriety might attract a little more negative attention from a copyright holder than a bunch of images that never left a site that only a subset of internet users ever visit.
I don't know why the right thinks that being perpetually offended and outraged at things that don't exist is a good way to go about rebuilding its influence in America, and, frankly, at this point, I don't even care anymore.
I hope you aren't inferring that the image was perfectly legit speech until it started being used as speech. I also hop you are not attempting to claim that the free speech was only valid until a cause you either support or do not support takes a hold of it.
Then your hope is well-founded. I don't think the image should have been removed, and I think the justification given was flimsy. I waded into this disaster in response to the people who were whining that it was some democratic/liberal conspiracy to silence Obama opponents (despite the plethora of both derivative and original anti-Obama/anti-democrat works readily available on the site).
I'm not arguing that Flickr was right to take it down, I'm just arguing that there's no reason to believe they're lying about their motivation for taking it down and even less reason to believe it's some crazy conspiracy to silence right-wing opinion on the site.
As to the thread above regarding anti-Bush images on Flickr: I didn't say I didn't see any, I said I didn't see many. There may have been more in the past when Bush was president, I don't know. It would make sense seeing as how people were probably more interested in parodying and scorning him when he was president than they are now that he's a private citizen.
I flipped through several pages of results and it appears only one of those parodies is hosted on flickr, and even then it wasn't the actual parody, but a photograph of a parody painting someone did. We're not interested in "Time parodies", we're interested in "Time parodies hosted on Flickr that haven't been removed".
I searched Flickr for "Time parody". There are several, but the majority of results seem to be unrelated to the text of the search or are actually Time-relevant non-parodies, several of the results appeared in response to this "scandal", and most of the remaining parodies were silly things like people's dogs shopped onto fake Time covers.
There's just no evidence there was any political motivation here. None. There are plenty of anti-democrat and anti-Obama images on Flickr. A bunch of people are running around playing the crybaby victim card over this because they think bawling about non-existent oppression is going to score them political points. I disagree with the image's removal, but the people making this out to be some politically motivated hit job on this kid are being ridiculous.
I just flipped through the first 15 pages of images and didn't see any that appeared to be derivatives of copyrighted works. Perhaps you could help me out by indicating where in that enormous mess of search results I can find an example of what you're looking at.
And, as an aside, the vast majority of images weren't critical of Bush at all... they were just pictures of him at various functions or pictures of an aircraft carrier. I even flipped through some of the groups, like "anti-bush league", and found mostly anti-Obama and anti-Democrat images....
It's not a parallel case at all. They didn't shop him to insult him or make a political point or accusation, as is the case here, they shopped him to have goofy visuals to go with their "love him/hate him" juxtaposition.
No, it doesn't. Since DMCA passed Slashdot has hosted links to dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of all sorts of media-rich websites behaving in exactly this same, cowardly way. Youtube pulls parody videos and songs all the time because they're afraid of the potential liabilities. So, given the history of these online media cmopanies, which is more likely? That somebody's abusing DMCA and copyright laws or Flickr is being cowardly about them, or that this is some conspiracy to thwart "right-leaning" (from a left-winger...) free speech?
There's still tons of GWB photos out there that make this Joker image look rather tame.
That doesn't matter. Flickr claims they took it down because they believe it was a copyright violation, not because it's offensive. The standard, then, is not "how nasty are the remaining Bush images", it's "how many of the remaining Bush images appear to violate copyright law".
Furthermore, the image seems to have sat their quite happily until a bunch of teabaggers took it and started vandalizing public property with it, shoving it into the media spotlight.
Flickr says they took it down over copyright concerns. Are you:
a) Calling them liars b) Someone who didn't bother to RTFA c) Trying to play the victim card and cry about oppression that doesn't appear to actually exist
He doesn't sound insane to me at all. Arapaio sounds like a violent thug whose behavior has been legitimized by a badge, an officially issued gun, and a bunch of ignorant, hick voters who think his treacherous outlaw image is a "cool" Hollywood-style way of dealing with "criminals". He seems a violent bully hopped on power, totally lacking any empathy or decency. I don't think he's marauding against crime, I think he's just marauding in general, and he's going to keep marauding until someone stops him. Either he's going to be murdered by one of the numerous enemies he's made in his violent crusade against justice, or he's going to finally kick down the wrong door, trigger a shootout between him and a law-abiding citizen (or, as is more his M.O., an otherwise non-violent offender that he sends a veritable army after), and either get killed in the process or kill the innocent victim, and finally get what's coming to him from the courts.
Joe Arpaio typifies the unqualified thug lawman who thinks his job is to brutalize the public rather than protect it, and I can't wait for the day that his disgusting behavior finally catches up with him.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm assuming your brain is the size of a dehydrated Lima bean. I'm also assuming that you channel your impotent rage at your stunted mental abilities into senseless vitriol on the internet and that's what led you to make that incredibly angry and unjustifiably stupid post over a video game.
Or, you could just be a desperately lonely asshole who thinks that if he's a big enough dick to other people they'll notice and acknowledge him. In which case I guess you win. Sort of.
Frankly, I'm completely burned out on WoW. Since October '06 I've paid a total of 13 months, so I probably played about 12, and I got one character to 80, no raiding. Ever. And since I was a Warlock, my entire existance in PvP basically boiled down to blowing up a whole bunch of Ally as destro until someone noticed I was tearing huge holes in the group, at which point I became a sitting duck for whichever OP melee class decided it was time for me to die. Booooring.
However, I do enjoy the events Blizzard adds to the game now and then, so I'm kind of interested in going back for one more month before Cataclysm actually is released. I'll take part in the pre-release event, then just cancel when the game launches.
And, I'm sorry... but D3 and SC2? Same game as the ones I already own from the series, it looks to me.
And so did ten million other nerds with nothing better to do with their time, and ten million nerds will do it again with Cataclysm, which is exactly why it's not dead and exactly why Cataclysm will continue to suck the cash out of people's pockets for another year or two.
Absolutely. It's really just a matter of picking a set of starting assumptions that everybody is comfortable with.
Even if you believe in a creator granting it, and you believe that this creator will punish people who deny such rights, it's still not a part of the universe's rules. Since religion is an entirely human construct, and the rules that go with religion are relevant only to humanity, all consequences of the acknowledgment of free speech are strictly contained within the bounds of human experience.
In other words, the rules of the universe shape the universe's behavior and evolution. Human free speech existing or not has nothing to do with how the universe functions, so it's not a rule of the universe. Gravity will continue to function the same either way, as will light, thermodynamics, etc.
It's an entirely human concept, and some people believe that, like free speech, people have a right to live and that in a just society we should be using our resources to uphold that right just as we expend resources upholding our right to free speech. It's an arguable point, but I don't think it's arguable that either of those things exists as an inherent rule of nature.
I agree. I think the image itself and its supposed "message" is stupid, but I still think the image takedown was unjustified and that it should be put back up. I also think, however, the idea that this was done for political reasons, as a number of people are trying to argue, rather than as a "Cover Your Ass" sort of thing over a potential copyright fight, is absurd.
Why do you feel entitled to freedom of speech? There is no such thing, inherently. There is no universal rule that you must be allowed to speak freely. If that right is taken from you and you're silenced, the universe will simply continue on as if nothing happened, save for the immediate differences it makes in your tiny little insignificant piece of this planet.
Some of us simply believe that in an affluent and supposedly just society we should view the situation as a moral prerogative. If you disagree, that's fine, but, frankly, it's a pretty crummy way to view the people around you. I tend to view human life as a little more valuable than that. Honestly, I've seriously tried to get my wife to leave this country because of people like you, though. What sense is there in living in a "society" that views its citizens with such incredible contempt that you would even think to say something so ridiculously callous and selfish? We might as well just revert to animalistic anarchy and let the strong cull the weak. A situation, I might add, you likely wouldn't survive (nor I).
I'm going to go ahead and say the odds are pretty well-stacked against that being true. I'm sure there are a very few people like that around, but if I had to bet and you really went to your deathbed, I'd go ahead and lay down a pretty heft sum that you're full of crap with that statement.
Like the people who value green paper in their wallet over an actual human's life?
If you'd bother to RTActualFA you'd have noticed that he was, in fact, contacted by Flickr which is one of the provisions of the DMCA: that the operator notify the "infringer" of the takedown. For all you know, that contact was a DMCA notice. If you'd bothered to read the rest of this thread, you'd also know that DMCA angle is speculation on the motivation based on Flickr's statement of copyright concerns. The difference between my speculation and yours is that mine is much more likely to be accurate.
Like I said, enjoy your crazy conspiracy theory. Since that's all you have, I'm not going to keep wasting time arguing with you anymore than I would a birther, flat-earther, or moon landing hoax nut. The unfortunate part of this behavior, though, is that someday somebody like you really will be unfairly targeted for your political beliefs in a situation like this, and nobody's going to believe you because you and the entire right in this country are just absolutely hellbent on treating the Boy Who Cried Wolf like an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.
The facts are that one image with two potentially infringing elements which was broadcast all over the world and used to create an image that become internationally notorious via major media outlets was removed from a site that continues to host thousands if not tens of thousands of anti-Obama anti-democrat images.
There is no conspiracy, no political hit job going on here. Somebody got a takedown notice or got too touchy over the possibility of getting one and removed a piece of parody work they shouldn't have. Same thing that's happened hundreds, if not thousands of times before on all sorts of different media-rich websites like Flickr, DeviantArt, and Youtube which allow users to upload content. Even Slashdot has fallen victim to DMCA claims and removed user posts as a result.
You go ahead and run with this crazy "Flickr is a bunch of lefties" conspiracy theory though. Let me know how it works out for you. Maybe you can get some birthers or some screaming town hall rioters to join you on this.
It's not improbable at all, especially if he lived in a rural area. You can't be denied care for an emergency condition in an ER, but if you're in the ER, it's an emergency. If it's an emergency brought on by a chronic, untreated ailment, odds are you're in pretty bad shape and at a much greater risk of death than if you'd been treated for the underlying cause earlier on. As an example, if you show up in the ER with an undiagnosed malignant tumor in its last stages, you can still be saved, but your odds of being saved are extremely decreased by that point.
Furthermore, many rural areas in the U.S. do not have ready access to the most modern treatment options available. If I go fifteen miles north, as the crow flies, over the mountains I can see out my front window, those people have horrible treatment options. They are, basically, limited to less than half a dozen family doctors and a small free clinic that is not capable even of treating a broken bone. The quickest access they have to modern medicine in an emergency is a 40 minute helicopter flight to the nearest university medical center.
Our doctors, hospitals, specialists, and medicines are, by and large, incredible in the U.S. Our access to them, however, is pretty sorely lacking for a great number of people.
I don't know that he's telling the truth, and I don't know that his brother/friend (sorry, I forgot the relationship) did everything he could have, but, based on the rural area I grew up and still visit sometimes, I could absolutely see how it happens.
Nobody's saying that Time definitely issued a DMCA takedown request, it's just one possibility regarding the claim of copyright concerns Flickr issued. Another possibility is that the owner of the Ledger/Joker image issued a request, and a third possibility is that Flickr simply got antsy about the Joker image and the Time image and pre-emptively removed it as a TOS violation. These are the three most likely explanations assuming Flickr is telling the truth.
More remotely, it's possible that Flickr is lying and initiated the takedown as a partisan attack on the free speech of the individual who created the image. Of course, this happily ignores the thousands of original and derivative anti-Obama and anti-Democrat works that can readily be discovered on Flickr with these common anti-Obama/Democrat searches:
nobama, impeach, obama socialist, anti-democrat
I'll ask you the same thing I asked the other guy I'm arguing with. Are you honestly trying to tell me that you can't see how one image duplicated hundreds of thousands of times, repeatedly displayed in major international media outlets, linked to from all over the web, and used to vandalize hundreds of public spaces over a period of two weeks might - just might - draw a bit more attention to itself from a jittery media host than the typical Flickr image that will never be seen but by a few random internet users who happen to use the site? Are you really trying to argue that an image with international major media exposure and notoriety is on par with some random "Bushitler" nonsense that only a dozen internet users will ever see? Is that really your argument here?
Riddle me this, Batman. If this is all about hating on Obama detractors and right-wingers, why is Flickr still hosting thousands of anti-Obama and anti-Democrat images that can easily be found with these simple search terms:
nobama
obama socialist
anti-democrat
impeach Obama
In fact, there are a bunch of derivative works of the Obama joker image in those results. You know what the main difference between those and the one that gotten taken down is? The one that gotten taken down was being plastered all over causways, bridge abuttments, national TV and the internet, and those weren't.
Maybe, just maybe you can set aside all the insanely irrational conspiracy theories for one moment and think about why an image that's been duplicated hundreds of thousands of times and gained international notoriety might attract a little more negative attention from a copyright holder than a bunch of images that never left a site that only a subset of internet users ever visit.
I don't know why the right thinks that being perpetually offended and outraged at things that don't exist is a good way to go about rebuilding its influence in America, and, frankly, at this point, I don't even care anymore.
Then your hope is well-founded. I don't think the image should have been removed, and I think the justification given was flimsy. I waded into this disaster in response to the people who were whining that it was some democratic/liberal conspiracy to silence Obama opponents (despite the plethora of both derivative and original anti-Obama/anti-democrat works readily available on the site).
I'm not arguing that Flickr was right to take it down, I'm just arguing that there's no reason to believe they're lying about their motivation for taking it down and even less reason to believe it's some crazy conspiracy to silence right-wing opinion on the site.
As to the thread above regarding anti-Bush images on Flickr: I didn't say I didn't see any, I said I didn't see many. There may have been more in the past when Bush was president, I don't know. It would make sense seeing as how people were probably more interested in parodying and scorning him when he was president than they are now that he's a private citizen.
I flipped through several pages of results and it appears only one of those parodies is hosted on flickr, and even then it wasn't the actual parody, but a photograph of a parody painting someone did. We're not interested in "Time parodies", we're interested in "Time parodies hosted on Flickr that haven't been removed".
I searched Flickr for "Time parody". There are several, but the majority of results seem to be unrelated to the text of the search or are actually Time-relevant non-parodies, several of the results appeared in response to this "scandal", and most of the remaining parodies were silly things like people's dogs shopped onto fake Time covers.
There's just no evidence there was any political motivation here. None. There are plenty of anti-democrat and anti-Obama images on Flickr. A bunch of people are running around playing the crybaby victim card over this because they think bawling about non-existent oppression is going to score them political points. I disagree with the image's removal, but the people making this out to be some politically motivated hit job on this kid are being ridiculous.
I just flipped through the first 15 pages of images and didn't see any that appeared to be derivatives of copyrighted works. Perhaps you could help me out by indicating where in that enormous mess of search results I can find an example of what you're looking at.
And, as an aside, the vast majority of images weren't critical of Bush at all... they were just pictures of him at various functions or pictures of an aircraft carrier. I even flipped through some of the groups, like "anti-bush league", and found mostly anti-Obama and anti-Democrat images....
It's not a parallel case at all. They didn't shop him to insult him or make a political point or accusation, as is the case here, they shopped him to have goofy visuals to go with their "love him/hate him" juxtaposition.
Evidence please.
Oh, the irony.
No, it doesn't. Since DMCA passed Slashdot has hosted links to dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of all sorts of media-rich websites behaving in exactly this same, cowardly way. Youtube pulls parody videos and songs all the time because they're afraid of the potential liabilities. So, given the history of these online media cmopanies, which is more likely? That somebody's abusing DMCA and copyright laws or Flickr is being cowardly about them, or that this is some conspiracy to thwart "right-leaning" (from a left-winger...) free speech?
That doesn't matter. Flickr claims they took it down because they believe it was a copyright violation, not because it's offensive. The standard, then, is not "how nasty are the remaining Bush images", it's "how many of the remaining Bush images appear to violate copyright law".
Furthermore, the image seems to have sat their quite happily until a bunch of teabaggers took it and started vandalizing public property with it, shoving it into the media spotlight.
And your evidence of this is... what?
First of all, that's not a picture of Bush as the Joker. Second of all, why in the world would anybody find that offensive?
Flickr says they took it down over copyright concerns. Are you:
a) Calling them liars
b) Someone who didn't bother to RTFA
c) Trying to play the victim card and cry about oppression that doesn't appear to actually exist
Proof? I'm finding exactly nothing of the sort, and all similar searches lead to a cartoonist's drawing published in Vanity Fair.
Or maybe jumpy business people worried they'll get in the middle of a legal mess they'd rather not get involved in.
But why stick with more obvious motivations when you can turn everything into a retarded political pissing match, right?
He doesn't sound insane to me at all. Arapaio sounds like a violent thug whose behavior has been legitimized by a badge, an officially issued gun, and a bunch of ignorant, hick voters who think his treacherous outlaw image is a "cool" Hollywood-style way of dealing with "criminals". He seems a violent bully hopped on power, totally lacking any empathy or decency. I don't think he's marauding against crime, I think he's just marauding in general, and he's going to keep marauding until someone stops him. Either he's going to be murdered by one of the numerous enemies he's made in his violent crusade against justice, or he's going to finally kick down the wrong door, trigger a shootout between him and a law-abiding citizen (or, as is more his M.O., an otherwise non-violent offender that he sends a veritable army after), and either get killed in the process or kill the innocent victim, and finally get what's coming to him from the courts.
Joe Arpaio typifies the unqualified thug lawman who thinks his job is to brutalize the public rather than protect it, and I can't wait for the day that his disgusting behavior finally catches up with him.