Why does a sports celebrity not have to face the charges that he cheated for his 7 medals?

The USADA stripped him of his titles and banned him for life.

It hasn’t been proven, and he has not failed a drug test. Just a vindictive little man at the USADA pursuing a retired athlete.

USADA does not run the Tour de France, the International Cycling Union (UCI) has jurisdiction. The UCI has not stripped him off his titles.

Who has proven that he cheated? This relates to my earlier question. All it takes is for someone to suggest wrongdoing. Even if they’re wrong, and proven wrong later, all people remember is the allegation, and they believe that he did something wrong.

@Trillian, a lot of people are so ready to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, that if you want to ruin somebody, often all you have to do is blow a little smoke.

I’m not taking a position on Lance Armstrong. I’m just saying that yours is a fair question and that reputations are a really fragile thing, easily ruined and sometimes impossible to mend. Unfortunately that does not deter people from raising serious questions that can destroy someone.

I am sorry, I was under the impression that the USADA didn’t have the authority to make anyone ‘face charges’. They are, in fact, a non-governmental agency. They did strip him of his accomplishments in their own record books. Fortunately for him, they aren’t the only people handing out medals and taking them away in this sport.

In my mind, Armstrong was a great cyclist who did an awful lot for the the sport in the US. This is true whether he doped or not. I don’t blame him for ignoring USADA. He did what he did, and now he’s onto another phase of his life. Although I gather this means he can’t compete in triathlons in the US. That sucks.

I would imagine he is tired of fighting. He has passed hundreds of drug tests, but as @zenvelo said, someone has it in for him so he is forced to go through the accusations and his defense over and over again. I don’t blame him at all and I choose to believe that he is clean. I think he is an inspiration to so many. This is a real witch hunt.

@flo Lance Armstrong hasn’t been found guilty. At this point, it is only an accusation by a group that is not the decision-maker. Unless proven guilty, there is no penalty, other than a tarnished reputation from the armchair judge and jury that have no proof.

What I heard in a very brief segment of a radio interview was that supposedly (allegedly) he got blood transfusions with the doped up blood, and something about they didn’t test for that at the time. I only listened to about two minutes of this interview, and I’m not defending the accusers nor am I defending Armstrong in this post, so it’s not an argument, just stating what I heard about how they “caught” him.

From my understanding, during the decade that Armstrong raced, and for many of the proceeding years, doping was endemic. So the fact of the matter is, Lance was racing against fierce competition most of which were doping themselves and he beat the competition 7 consecutive years in a row. Also, he isn’t famous just because he won 7 Tour De France’s, but because he did that and beat cancer. I would wager a bet that most people couldn’t name just 1 other winner in the past Tour de France events – Hell, I bet they couldn’t even name another famed cycling race. Lance made cycling popular and made a name for himself. People didn’t tune in to watch the Tour de France, they tuned in the watch Lance Armstrong. He then used his fame and fortune to raise over 470 million dollars for cancer research. Lance was the main target for this doping witch hunt. Medals or no, he has done far more good for the community than his accusers. He will not lose any respect from me.

That being said, I don’t think he needs to give back his money because it wasn’t prize money—He made that money by becoming a role model for those who were/are suffering from cancer. He became a celebrity basically and fortune and fame followed. He is a beacon of hope for cancer victims and survivors to help them realize that cancer isn’t the end but simply an obstacle. So I hope now that he isn’t in and out of court battles with these charges, he can finally vest himself back into raising money for cancer again by competing in local events and getting sponsors to help contribute to the battle against cancer.

@RandomMrAdam I doubt that the USADA would go after Mr. Armstrong if they didn’t have reason to question it. How does it benefit their organization if they know that he is not guilty? Let them conduct their investigation. Apparently, that is part of their job.

@Pied_Pfeffer I am not saying he didn’t dope. In fact, I would not be surprised if he did. Armstrong gave up the fight, which tells me that not everyone knows the full story, but if he thought at any point that he could win because he didn’t dope then he wouldn’t have given up. All I am saying is The guy is retired, they stripped him of his medals, what else do they want? Their job is to cut down the drug use of professional and Olympic athletes in the United States and I don’t think pursuing this any further is going to help them further accomplish that goal. I think at this point, the USADA has proven that it can take down even the most famous of cyclists even after he passed multiple drug tests so lets leave it at that and hope it sends a message to other athletes out there who think they can dope and keep their medals.

My opinion of him is that he is a great athlete (doper or not) and if he doped, then he deserves to be made an example of, but I think that example has been made now.

Edit: I thought the investigation was over? I know Lance knows all the evidence they have – so he should know whether or not he can win the case they have against him. By him conceding the argument tells the USADA that he doped and doesn’t want to fight the argument anymore denying that fact.

You could dope me to the eyebrows and I wouldn’t be able to compete in any sport. I’m opposed to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but we can’t forget that it still takes an athlete of championship caliber to perform at that level, with drugs or without.

If Armstrong’s titles pass to someone else, they’d better be damn sure the next in line is clean as a new-minted penny. I can see this business dragging on for decades

I can’t blame the guy for saying “That’s enough. I’m not spending the rest of my life in this fight.”

Forgrt Lance, in general, you can’t do a lot for a cause unless you cheat?

If were an impressionable person reading this thread, (a teen dealing with peer pressure of any kind) the message I’m getting is:“If your peers are doing drugs, then it is excusable for you to do it too, just as long as you do charity work for a cause make a lot of money for it , and make a name for yourself.”

^^ People will believe what they choose to believe and use just about anything as an excuse to justify doing what they were going to do anyway.

@flo It should be noted that the term ‘drug’ is very imprecise. This is a fact that the government seizes upon to justify an ever increasing scope of regulation and the media exploits to drive mass hysteria. That is to say, I do not think steroids belong in the same category as as other ‘drugs’.

@flo, I don’t see that message here at all. I don’t see any advocacy of drug use or succumbing to peer pressure. What I see is people bringing out various facts and various issues of doubt instead of leaping to a kneejerk conclusion.

In a fiction workshop once, I heard the speaker pose a hypothetical courtroom drama and then ask the audience what they thought about the guilt or innocence of the accused. One woman stated unequivocally that the (fictitious) accused positively had to be guilty. The speaker, who I thought had given a nicely cloudy summation, looked a bit surprised at her certainty and asked her how she knew that from the stated facts of the case. She said (as if speaking rationally to an idiot), “Because he was on trial. They don’t accuse a person in court unless he’s guilty.” This was in the U.S. about 4 years ago.

This gives you Lance’s answer. I want to believe he is clean so I do, and so far No One has proved otherwise. He is a hero to me.

@rooeytoo Thanks for that link. Well said Lance.

First off, the OP is about why are only the medals that are taken away since if you come 1st you win the gold medal plus the prize money? Is it because they are half sure? Whether he is really clean and it is a witchunt or not is an entirely different story.

And it says in my OP “if”. _ “I mean why does Armstrong not have to give back all the money he made if he cheated?” @Jeruba (re. ”leaping to a kneejerk conclusion.”)

Cheating is cheating. Taking something that rightfully belongs to someone else, by using a perfomance enhancing substance, is hugely bad, whether you call the substance a “drug” or not it doesn’t minimize it. And by the way it is called “Perfomance Enhancing Drug”, there is it in the name, I didn’t make it up @ninja_man

If you are a professor and your student (let’s say an adult student) hacked into the computers to give herself an A, you wouldn’t say okay you raised money for a cause, so go ahead keep on cheating, are you?

@flo, I didn’t accuse you of leaping to a kneejerk conclusion. I said I thought people were raising facts and questions instead of doing that. To me that seems like a reasonable response from people who are taking your question seriously. So I didn’t see why you were chiding people for answering what you asked.

@Jeruba sorry. about the ”leaping to a kneejerk conclusion” part. To be continued, I have to go…

I really don’t want to get into a what is cheating conversation here. I have read a lot about it in the past, but I forget much of it. I remember one story about sleeping in low oxygen tents vs training high in the mountains vs doing something chemically to get your blood to hold onto more oxygen. Which of those are legal? Which of those are ok with you? What is the difference in work that the athlete has to do in order to get the same results?

There are issues having to do with the dangers that drugs impose on an athlete. Then again, there are also dangers from regular training. Why is it ok to risk one but not the other? Both can kill you.

I don’t think drug use necessarily should be called cheating. So cheating is not always cheating. Cheating depends on the kind of knife you split hairs with. That’s often ridiculous. Things are not at all black and white, but when you say cheating is cheating, you are acting as if that’s all you need to know. The world isn’t so simple, in my opinion.

@wundayatta Yes nothing is cheating. I understand now.

If Lance Armstrong did dope, or cheat in any other way, then what’s it to you, @flo? Let’s say for the sake of argument that he doped. If he had not doped, I am willing to bet that the person who would have won those races would have been some other person who did dope. Cycling is full of dopers. To retroactively start making examples out of people almost seems juvenile. He trained extremely hard, some would argue harder than anyone else in the competition so I think he deserved to win. Even if he doped, it doesn’t mean he didn’t work his ass off to win that competition. If doping is what made him win, then why did he beat hundreds of other dopers 7 years in a row? What is your disdain for this man? Hundreds of other athletes cheat and yet they don’t do anything for others. If not for Lance Armstrong, you would never have seen so many people wear those yellow wristbands and give so much to cancer research. This man is not only an excellent athlete, but a great humanitarian and you would have him stripped of any money he earned by training for years to win? You act as if he did nothing whatsoever to win these medals, and simply just doped and won off of dope alone. Punishment has came down—and it was a lifetime ban and medals stripped. To take away his money after he has raised so much for others would seem petty and wrong.

@flo Oh that is a pretty childish comment. But if you can’t have a serious discussion, then by all means, say something silly. My hat’s off to you. Enjoy.

If Lance won clean, imagine how he must feel that most people are assuming he did, instead of believing what he is saying, which is that he did not cheat.

My posts are clear ’‘if…’’. what is with just taking away the medals? What is the logic behind it? Bringing up the cancer, ...assumptions that he did, ...and that the others probably did too…. . are just distractions.

This OP is not different from this OP.
http://www.fluther.com/149172/can-you-pinpoint-the-proof-of-the-following-story/

I’ll go back to what @wundayatta was saying (or at least what I translated from his post) which is not all cases are black and white. Sure, if he doped then there should be punishment. I think the punishment is what we disagree on.

You ask why he shouldn’t have to give back his money “if…” he cheated. I think like many situations, punishment cannot be static and should vary based on the situation. If everything was black and white, then murder would be murder and there would be no argument for self defense, involuntary manslaughter, etc. So using similar concepts with Lance Armstrong; “If…” he did cheat (to compete with a league of dopers) and the cheating resulted in Lance eventually becoming a 7-time consecutive winner of the Tour de France, which then resulted in his skyrocketing popularity, which contributed to the great things he was able to do for Cancer research by founding LIVESTRONG. Without those wins and his rise to stardom, he would have likely never founded LIVESTRONG and done so much for society.

Sure, the cancer thing is a distraction, but I believe it is a necessary distraction because it shows us that sure he won quite a bit of prize money, but in turn, he raised SO much more for a greater cause. According to this article, it sounds like they took his prize money anyway. I don’t necessarily condone looking the other way when punishment is handed down, but I do think all things should be considered, especially with what Lance was able to do with fame and fortune of winning 7 consecutive Tour de France’s.

I think if they had definitive proof they wouldn’t be doing this dance, they would bring it out and show it to everyone. I usually believe in the where there is smoke there is fire but in this case I just don’t get it. SHOW THE PROOF and then there will be no question.

But yes Mr. @RandomMrAdam I too think he has done amazing things with his fame and fortune, to benefit so many.

I also heard speculation that if he were indeed guilty, they would have to go down to the guy who placed eighth to get the first prize because the 6 guys after him did indeed test positive. What a crazy world we live in????

@rooeytoo – Yeah, it wasn’t until I started looking into this Lance Armstrong thing that I realized how much of an epidemic doping is in cycling. That’s why I think they are wasting their time witch hunting Lance Armstrong. He does make himself a pretty obvious target though.

From the article above in @RandomMrAdam‘s post:

“And in so much as he still confesses innocence, despite the confounding evidence to the contrary, I want to believe him.” What confounding evidence is it referring to?

Speaking out against doping. is one way of doing “SO much for a greater cause” as opposed to almost encouraging it. And anyone can do it too.

@flo – The confounding evidence they speak of is the evidence that the USADA shared with Lance Armstrong. Lance realizes what evidence they have against him and he has decided not to pursue the fight. Likely, its confessing guilt, but maybe and less likely it is that he is tired of fighting this never-ending attack against him.

Speaking out against something can be influential, sure. But wouldn’t you agree that raising hundreds of millions of dollars is a bit more of a statement? Anyway, if Lance did dope to win, then he wouldn’t have won any of those races clean against a league of dopers. At that point, who is going to listen to some cyclist speaking out against doping who hasn’t won anything.

I understand the morality of it, but obviously we don’t live in a moral world. Like @rooeytoo said, if they had disqualified 1st place for doping, they would likely have to disqualify the next 6 runners up for the same charge because it is such an epidemic.

I do think they should clean up the sport, but in my opinion, if Lance doped, it was simply to compete with a league of other dopers. It’s not fair, but it’s the truth. The USADA is going the wrong way about cleaning up the league. They should start going after those who are still racing, and not some retired cyclist. It almost seems like it’s a publicity move, more for public image than actual authority – a way to make themselves more known. And if that’s the case, I think it’s a dick move to go after a “hero” among cancer survivors.

@flo I’m not going to out right reject the possibility that Armstrong is in fact guilty of doping, and it wouldn’t shock me if that is proven irrefutably true sometime in the future. But right now, it sounds shady as heck.

The guy passed over 200 doping tests, and he’s never failed even one. The entire case against him comes from the testimony of former team mates, whom were all themselves found guilty of doping by the committee. It sounds an awful lot like a HUAC witch hunt to me….

“Your failure to defend yourself against the 12th round of litigation against you is clear admission of guilt!”

Sounds like some serious BS to me.

@flo When you use the term “cheating” what do you mean? Following the specific rules, or following a higher, more ethical standard regarding enhancement?

I am not an Armstrong apologist, and I am not endorsing the use of artificial substances. But the rule is: Pass the Drug Test.

And Lance Armstrong followed that rule as closely as possible.

Yes, back when there was not test for EPO, it is likely that Armstrong used EPO, because retests years later on his “B” samples indicated he had. But Armstrong never failed a hematocrit test!

Hematocrit tests were developed not to ban EPO but because improper use could jeopardize one’s life. Too much and it makes the blood sluggish when at rest. Armstrong passed everyone of those.

So, because Armstrong passed the prevailing Rule at the time, USADA went after him with hearsay and innuendo, evidentiary standards that would not meet criminal standards in the U.S.

Everyone missed it somehow, but I already answered by Permalink my post re. the professor… (By the way let me add to the scenario: Lets say:

-most of them cheated, (copy andd pased from the internet) the student gave herself an A+ gave the other students below A

-one of the students who didn’t cheat is your child

-whoever comes 1st is going to get scholarships and a ton of other things, will be set for life let’s say)

It is “not black and white” if the cheater child is yours, and it is black and white if your child is one of the ones who didn’t cheat.

The whole thing is, nobody proved he has cheated. He passed all the tests.

The whole thing is I am addressing the ” but even if he cheated, he raised money… ” part of the defence.

@flo – I guess I figure I will worry about that AFTER they proved he actually cheated, I am a one step at a time sort of person!

@rooeytoo but I’m referring to the concept in general, the scenario about the student…Go ahead address it, pretend this is pre-Lance.

Defense

@Trillian Oh please don’t stop there!

The student premise is faulty because you have the student giving the grades.

In the bicycle races, everyone is based on the same criteria by an independent judge. The two criteria: what place did you come in?, and did you pass the drug test? Lance often came in first, and he passed the tests.

So how did he have an advantage?

You are absolutely right the additional detail is faulty, @zenvelo.

It still doesn’t change that there is no need to bring up the fact that he raised $$ for cancer.

It is as if you’re advocating doing good, to use it to get out trouble/ minimize the damage if we find ourselvesin trouble.

@Trillian and @ninja_man My spelling errors don’t help make your case look any better, but it does make you look like you’re using them as distractions.

@zenvelo ”Yes, back when there was not test for EPO, it is likely that Armstrong used EPO, because retests years later on his “B” samples indicated he had.” That is all. If there is one competetor (no matter how far behind him) who didn’t use any substance and never did any charity work he shoud have the medals and the rest of it.

I don’t have a “case”. You’re the one going on and on and on. You are not in possession of all the facts. Obviously. And your imperfect grasp of the language does, in fact, diminish any credibility you may have. You’re just proving my point. You choose to believe the worst about this man despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. And you’re backpedaling on top of it. “If, if. I said if!”
Educate yourself. Stick to the facts.
I’m out.

I would have to agree with @Trillian—This is an athlete who passed the regulated drug test required to compete in the event. The general rule is, pass the drug test. He didn’t try to mask the test; the test simply didn’t detect EPO.

The duty of the USADA is to prevent current Olympic and Professional athletes from using performance enhancing drugs in events. Since Lance is no longer competing in these events, why are they chasing this thing? What is their vendetta against this particular “cheater”. The USADA is spinning cycles and wasting too much time and resources fighting a battle against an athlete who isn’t even racing anymore. They should be focusing on the professional athletes still active.

I don’t know what you have against Lance Armstrong, @flo but clearly no matter what anyone here says, you aren’t changing your mind. Would you not agree that Lance was the strongest competitor in the events he raced? I would wager a bet that he would still beat the 7th place finisher doping or not. But we cannot prove that. The USADA stripping his medals and winnings will not strip the memory that people have of him winning those events. It doesn’t prove that he isn’t a better athlete. All this proves is that the USADA has a stick up their ass to get a retired athlete no matter how much money they waste on court battles and testing. The entire ordeal is quite annoying.

To use your analogy from earlier, lets say an entire class cheated on an essay except for a few. The top student, lets say, gets a full ride scholarship to college of their choice. Let’s say the winner of this essay went on to college and graduated with honors and eventually went on to start a foundation raising millions of dollars for, lets say, Cancer research. But years later, the teacher notices that the student who won that essay cheated! OH NO! So they take away that person’s scholarship, even though they graduated with honors, and now the student has to pay the school every penny it would have costed for a degree… Does that sound like a better scenario for you? Even after the great things that person did by cheating? You might think so…but I don’t.

Do you feel better now that you are demonizing an athlete who simply competed with the rest of the competition? And yes, I throw in the accomplishments he has achieved, not because they are distractions, but simply because I want to remind you that you are attacking someone who has done so much more than any other cyclist will probably ever do. And yet you condone these attacks from the USADA even after the guy retired and passed every single drug test while he was an active athlete.

It is as if you’re advocating doing good, just to get out of trouble/to minimize damage in the future. I hope that is better English.

@Trillian
1)People who don’t have an impeccable language skills can’t think straight?
2) “If” was in the OP, and pointing that out has nothing to do with “Backpedalling”.

@zenvelo ”after the great things that person did by cheating?” Is that glamorizing cheating? It is as if you’re saying to students you’re giving a speech to:
“See by cheating you could do great things, without cheating, i.e without taking what belongs to someone else, notice there is nothing about the student who was deprived of the scholarship in your post) not so much”.... That is making excuses for people who might have cheated and leading people to do the wrong thing in the future.

If anyone accuses anyone else of anything, all the authorities need to ask is, “Did the accused raise money for cancer research, (or anything else worthwhile)?” And if the accused and the victim both did raise money, which one of them raised more? Whoever raised more wins? Noone needs this time wasting justice system, these lawyers saying “Relevance, your honor”, or that “everyone is equal under the law” business, I guess.

In America, and also in other countries (notably China), people cheat all the time. The ethos is that people do the minimum to earn the maximum gain. Many universities fully expect this. Instead of having honor systems, they resort to professors proctoring exams.

When you decide to enforce a system, you take the onus for honor off of the individual and put it on the system. It may be counterintuitive, but when you expect people to behave honorably, they do. When you tell them you will watch them, they feel free to do what they want when they think you aren’t watching.

Most people in our society believe the measure of a person is what they do. What they give to the society. If you can get away with it, and do good, you are supported. It’s the Robin Hood myth. If you do good, then you are forgiven your sins.

SO cheating is not cheating if you redeem yourself. That is, in my opinion, for better or for worse, how things operate in many countries in the world. No one has time for morality. They only have time for results.

Lance Armstrong delivered a lot. He delivered a lot, and he also passed every test in the enforcement system. It was only his buddies ratting him out that caused the problem. And we all know that humans can lie. There are lots of reasons to lie. So what do we believe? The scientific tests that rely on objective data, or the lying humans who have their own personal agendas?

I choose not to rely on either. I choose to think that the rules are wrong. That cheating is not cheating. There is no level playing field. I think that an athletic feat is a feat even if the person used medicine to help in the training. Even if they took additional risks to become better. That makes them crazy, in my book. A fanatic. But I’m not going to worry about cheating because that is a systemic problem, and the system encourages cheating. Why? I don’t know. Yes I do know. They want to be seen to be going after cheaters when in fact they don’t really care. If they really cared, they’d put the athletes on the honor system. But there is no honor in this system, and where there is no honor there can be no cheating.

So Lance did great things. He did them despite the dishonorable system and sets of rules he played under. He did a very good job. To see a system without honor trying to tear down someone like Lance is like watching a deaf man walking down a railroad track. They are killing themselves but they don’t know it.

@wundayatta We can only hope you right, and the blowback from this will reveal the flaws inherent to the system.

@flo You just attributed a number of statements and suppositions to me that I never made. I have not expressed any opinion on Armstrong’s charitable work because it is not relevant to the discussion.

You keep saying he cheated – I tell you he followed all the rules, and therefore did NOT cheat! It has nothing to do with his cancer work, that is not considered at all!

USADA broke its own rules, paid off informants with money and exemption from any tests if they would testify against Armstrong.

@flo I would ask why you don’t look at the evidence, but are willing to listen to USADA’s witch hunt charges???

@zenvelo I apologize. That’s terrible of me. I meant to address @RandomMrAdam.

@flo – you quote “That is making excuses for people who might have cheated and leading people to do the wrong thing in the future.” Are you implying that the people who didn’t cheat before would cheat later in the future to compete with cheaters? Do you think maybe that’s what’s going on with the Tour de Fance and ALL OTHER CYCLING EVENTS? Right there you prove the point that even the most honest people are driven to cheating at times, so why put the spotlight on 1 guy and paint him as THE cheater.

And also, I wasn’t glamorizing cheating. But you must live in a fantasy land if you think that ANYONE who is successful these days, whether it be business, education, etc. hasn’t cheated at some point in their life. Can you honestly say that you never cheated? I would never condone cheating, but rather let people assess the situation they are in and compete to the competition level. You also said something like “taking something that doesn’t belong to you”—what exactly are you referring to? Are you referring that Lance stole the race? That’s laughable. If he doped, he wasn’t the only one. He won those medals and they don’t belong to anyone else.

If you think that Lance Armstrong should be the face of Cheating then there is something extremely wrong with you. The world is literally full of cheaters. And here you stand trying to give this great man some fresh sh*t after everything he has done for millions of people. Did he hurt those other cyclists? No. Did other cyclists know that cycling was full of dopers? Yes. Unless they have been living under a rock and have never looked up the history of this event. So who did Lance Armstrong hurt when he won? Did he hurt the 2nd – 7th place finishers who doped? No. They cheated too. What does the USADA gain from branding this man as a cheater? Tell me. Will this stop other dopers? Hell no. Is it distracting them from pursuing active athletes doping? Probably.

The sport needs to be cleaned up, I would agree. But instead of drawing a line in the sand and saying This is where we start clean, test more thoroughly and start to clean this sport up that we know is corrupt , the USADA started to try and change the past. YOU CANT CHANGE THE PAST.

If the USADA thinks they can clean up the doping epidemic in cycling then I say good luck to them, because they will need it! This has been an issue for over 100 years and wasting their time with Lance Armstrong isn’t the right way to go about it.

“All you kids/adults alike: don’t cheat, ever, even if everyone else is. And the chances that every single competetor is cheating is highly unlikely if not nil. Losing clean is better than winning not clean, because you can live with yourself.”

..“And whatever you do do not listen/read all these stories about big name athletes, witch hunt…..That is a big waste of time.

….“And:
-Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking you are obligated to continue competing if you find others are cheating. You can live happily and make a living without competing.
-Obviously, people do a lot of good/charity without becoming famous.
-Don’t devalue charitable work by associating it with cheaters and alleged cheaters.
-Don’t recklessly taint other competetors no matter how desperate you feel to “defend”/defend cheaters/alleged cheaters.”
-If you want to call anyone a hero call the health care providers that, not so much the victims of cancer etc.
Hopefully you’re smart enough not be fooled by people who make statements like: “If cheating is cheating then murder would be murder , there would be no self- defense etc. .... “because it is obvious to anyone over 7 years old that in self-defense murder you have no choice.”

…Self corerection re. last statement: ”...self defense, homicide…”