Thoughts on Aziz Ansari

The problem is that it's no longer an issue of "innocence" or "guilt". Those are legal concepts that are rooted in logic; to determine innocence or guilt there must be clear rules for what is legal/illegal, and there must be evidence "beyond a shadow of a doubt" as to whether those rules were broken.

What we are seeing now is a set of "rules" that are based solely on feelings. The goalposts have moved to the idea of "emotional legislation", where the standard of whether a "crime" has been committed rests solely on the feelings and emotions of not only the "victim", but the peanut gallery as well. The problem, of course, is that emotions are fleeting, are outside the control of logic, and are subject to change over time.

It has become a nanny state where they are attempting to legislate a "right to not be made to feel bad". This is why the Ansari case is so dividing; Ansari certainly acted like a tone-deaf entitled douche, but he didn't actually break any laws. What he DID do was put the woman in an awkward situation and make her feel uncomfortable. And in our current social climate, doing so is a crime.