I just want to see JH looked at the same way people tend to look at the majority of cases similar to this we see where a child's mom's boyfriend (or husband) abuses and kills the mom's child. I rarely see anyone defend women who look the other way while their child gets abused or killed by their significant other. I look at this case the same way, but the genders are different from the majority of cases we see. This time it's a woman who abused and killed her boyfriend's child. JH does not get sympathy from me because he was trying to provide for his family. Plenty of women are the breadwinners in their families as well. It doesn't make it okay to leave one's child in the care of an abuser.
I don't believe in expecting people to feel a certain way and complaining if you don't see enough anger from them against a certain person or situation.
I've seen people in here saying their partners abused their children and they didn't know about it. I see the world in shades of grey. When they tell their stories on here people say "oh you poor thing, that's terrible". But how does that fit with the black/white, 1/0 attitude that *has* to be applied or else. I find that a bit of emotional blackmail. I find it a sad thing in human nature that we judge people by whether they hate enough and that sometimes people are disgusted with anyone who does express a little empathy for at least part of a situation. I find it a bit too close to the attitude of "I don't care how x crime happened, just hang 'em". I want to learn how these things happen. I want to learn how someone could fight through being gaslit (if that happened here) to see reality, and feel empowered to do something about it.
I have a tendency to over-sympathize with people and it might take me a while to figure out they don't have the feelings I think they must be feeling. On the other hand I try to step back emotionally in these cases and try to observe, learn, try to come up with ideas. Even if my heart goes out to a parent whose child is missing or deceased I struggle with saying that and tend to go straight over it to examining the details of the case. It's not because I'm hard-hearted; the people who know me better think I'm way too sensitive. Seeing things in shades of grey, tending to over-empathize, being more about the structure of human nature and actions, I have empathy for JH's situation, but that doesn't mean I excuse him of every mistake he's made. I also want people to be attacked for things that are factual, and I see people misinterpret something or make what appears to be a slightly faulty claim on here and bash him for that, and I'm not complaining because I understand that the anger people feel toward him is coming from a caring place, and people are angry at the situation, and he did fail his children. But what if he was gaslit? For me that's a grey area where I feel uncomfortable judging someone harshly when I haven't walked in their shoes.
JH is being accused here of not wanting Lucas found or for EG to admit to what she'd done. And he's being judged and attacked on that basis. If the basis is fair and accurate I think that's fair. I don't know that the basis is fair or accurate, so I'm not going to join in with that bashing. He seemed very upset that he was struggling to get a PI in, because he said he wanted his son found. I think someone on here might have been onto something when they said he was unfair in what he said about no one looking for Lucas and that might have been because he'd been convinced that Lucas wasn't lying in a ditch in the Wichita area. Yet JH did also say thanks to searchers at one of the vigils. He also tried to clarify his comments about no one doing anything, which made me think the original words were spoken more in despair. None of us can make a perfect statement that we don't later wish we'd said a different way or added in different things, it's a lot easier to attack someone for not saying the exact words we wanted/expected them to say. So JH goes back to work, maybe thinking it will be weeks or months before Lucas is found. If he was jobless or lost his job through taking time off for this he'd be attacked for that too. Jamie is suffering the same thing, she's being attacked for everything she says and does and for everything she doesn't say or do. I know Jamie is in a different position than JH, because she didn't have the power to kick EG out of that house, and JH did. We all saw the things people said about Jamie for the interview she did on the couch with JH, and I think the same thing is happening with JH. People attack based on their assumptions about a person.
I am sad because someone said something that made me feel they hated me because I wasn't hating on JH enough, and it was someone for whom I have so much respect. I had to try and tell myself that it doesn't matter how that person (or anyone else here) feels about me, because we can still work together in these threads regardless, and that is what really matters.
I have never been one to follow the crowd in hating people or falling out with someone because someone else wants me to. I play Devil's Advocate a lot and get judged for the things I put forward as food for thought or what if. I like seeing people do that on this forum! I might not agree with what they say but I respect that they had the balls to say it even though it went against the crowd assumption.
I don't want to be hated as a JH supporter or lumped into a category like that, because I don't feel inside that that's what I am, I just dislike bashing people based on miscomprehension of something and I have all these grey areas where I will play Devil's Advocate, and I often just want to wait to get more information. We all have different levels where we feel we have enough information to draw firm conclusions...look at Global Warming, some people feel they have enough information/evidence *now* some people are just as certain that they don't have enough. That's what it is to be on a globe of human beings, there are certain averages, and sometimes there are multiple averages like in this case where there is an average of people who are firmly in the EG dunnit camp but another average of people who are in the "Err, maybe it was JO or maybe the three of them were in it together" camp and then there are outliers who think the PI found Lucas so fast because it was he who dunnit. (I kid you not).
Can't we just apply the "scroll on" thing if someone says they do or they don't have sympathy for JH? Please? If you don't want to go that way, fine, but I don't agree with it. The main thing here is LUCAS not how we each feel about JH.
