Chattooga
9d ago
Look I don’t know what to say. By now I’ve seen a dozen slow-motion versions of these clips. He was not materially struck.
Chattooga
9d ago
Unfortunately this is where we get to both repeat different versions of the narrative at each other, even in the face of multiple video angles.
She reversed initially, basically doing a shallow 3-point turn, as he was crossing in front of the car. It seems almost certain to me that she was not trying to run over the agent, she likely didn’t know he was there. Not only that, but the agent was out of the way, or trivially able to move out of the way. (He was not significantly struck by the vehicle, although the exact mechanics are messy because he stumbles a bit on the side.) Why pull a gun there?
To say she “waits until a guy is right in front of her, then hits the gas” is to imply she was actively trying to kill him, instead of being careless. It’s also just not accurate!
Ah yes, you can see the woman has pure motives, she was just trying to leave, I can tell my a frame by frame analysis of her tire movements. But ICE agent, he reached for his gun while he was a foot in front of accelerated into him, that's suspicious!"
I think there’s an extremely strong case that it was clear she was not attempting to kill the agent, and that he would have known that, and that his reaction was comically incompetent. I would speculate he was frustrated, aggressive, and panicked, and turned what was at worst reckless endangerment into an execution.
Chattooga
9d ago
She literally hit him with her car. It's on video. You can just watch it. There's three different angles in the top post. He's folded over on the hood. I never cease to be amazed at the willingness of people to refuse to believe their own eyes.
In none of the videos do I see the officer folder over the hood, or even significantly struck.
Chattooga
9d ago
I think your analysis of the mechanics is fair, but doesn’t solve the issue.
The driver seems to be trying to leave, not run down an officer. He’s crossing in front of the car and nearly out of the way, and yet as soon as the car shifts to forward he has his gun out and is shooting.
If a car begins accelerating towards you and your split second reaction is to go for your gun, I’m questioning your motives. The fact that a car is dangerous isn’t relevant, because it’s not clear he was fearing for his life!
Suppose for a minute an officer is directing traffic. He looks over, and sees a driver, texting, heading in his direction. To shoot in that scenario, instead of moving out of the way, would be deranged. The only reason it’s being defended here, as I see it, is because the driver is disobeying ICE orders.
Chattooga
10d ago
Are you making a legal point or a philosophical one? Police are not allowed to shoot at a fleeing suspect. (Barring extreme circumstances, I assume.)
Chattooga
10d ago
Watching these it’s pretty hard to convince me that the officer was shooting in self defense. The second video is behind a login wall, but if it’s the same one I found by googling, you can see the officer who is crossing in front of the car begin reaching for his gun while the vehicle is reversing. If he truely fear for his life, he could have just moved. By the time he was firing, he was clearly not in front of the vehicle.
It’s also kind of unfathomable to me that an officer begins firing at a moving vehicle in a residential neighborhood with bystanders on the sidewalk. This was not a life or death scenario, and he took less than a second to start firing.
State enforcement of laws is violence, but that violence has to be mediated by circumstance. This reads to me like a frustrated officer having a ‘FAFO’ moment, which is not what I want in law enforcement. You cannot start shooting because you’re mad.
Chattooga
7mo ago
Are there any countries comparable to the US that have fallen into civil war? I’m thinking about how incredibly interconnected all our systems are, it seems like trying to cut those apart would lead to collapse almost immediately.
People like to laugh about how ‘the right has so many more guns than the left,’ or that ‘the left controls the military and would easily beat the hillbillies’. But I’m just trying to figure out how the power grid, oil pipelines, trucking, hospitals, cell/satellite service and all the other million little things that go into keeping the country running could handle any kind of sudden partitioning.
My assumption would be that whoever controls the federal government controls the nation, and any state/region that tried to secede would lose instantly. So something like a coup could happen, but things would have to get a lot worse before you would actually have regional factions.
Chattooga
7mo ago
Suffering would be defined as a specific process in the brain, so plants for example don’t suffer. It is a sort of extremist veganism where you posit that, on average, (animal) life is a net negative in terms of suffering, therefore the moral position is to prevent/end it. A biosphere-wide euthanasia
Chattooga
11mo ago
I take this point, and it’s certainly true that this kind of decisive action can be gummed up, but I’m not sure it applies here. It seems like the administration has free rein on program approval, they don’t have to negotiate with anybody.
To extend your metaphor, it’s like if the doctor, instead of establishing a strict calorie limit and diet plan, simply said ‘Stop eating!’. You don’t have to be that harsh, you can take a second to come up with a plan that makes sense to you, and enforce it with an iron hand.
Chattooga
11mo ago
What previous attempts you referring to?
Also, what am I supposed to be peddling? I never said you shouldn’t look into it.
Chattooga
11mo ago
Well if I’m not given specific examples I can’t exactly respond in specifics. But it does seem like the first time in my lifetime that government ‘efficiency’ is actually top of the president goals, so I do think it has real focus and drive unlike, say, a house report or something.
Chattooga
11mo ago
Aren’t USAID programs and their funding all a part of the public record? The websites not working, but I believe you could previously just search stuff up.
Chattooga
11mo ago
If previous attempts failed, I assume it’s because they lacked a real focus and drive. What you highlight, I’m guessing b/c the link is broken, is more about a process change. Embarrassing to fail at fixing it for so long, but that’s at least a difficult problem. You’re making repairs to a moving vehicle.
In comparison, choosing which USAID programs are worthwhile and which aren’t should be fairly simple, at least at a surface level, and there currently an enormous push to make cuts and authority to do it. If it’s easy for them to shut down the whole thing, why wouldn’t it be similarly simple to cut off only parts of it?
Start by cutting and popularizing the obvious cases, I’m sure there’s easy instances where even the average Kamala voter would agree that it’s wasteful. Then get into the more ideological stuff. Continue extending as ideology and politics permit, until you’re left with useful programs. You could do this in a month or two, and I think it would actually change minds about the situation.
Thats what efficiency means to me, and the fact that the administration isn’t doing that leads me to that that either they aren’t very component or they really don’t care and just want to burn it all down.
Chattooga
11mo ago
‘Removing the room for argument’
That’s already been done. I don’t know all the details, but Trump seems to have direct authority over USAID. In theory, he/DOGE could take even a cursory look at what programs they fund and make some decisions from a rational basis. But it doesn’t seem like they have a real methodology, it’s just ‘XYZ is corrupted by the woke left, burn it all down’.
I’m fine with making things more efficient, when it comes to aid programs, grants, and regulations, I want people to be arguing over the merits. What I don’t want is for it to be all-or-nothing situation. It doesn’t have to be that way, it would be better if it wasn’t, and I simply don’t agree with your framing.
Chattooga
11mo ago
Are there any previous examples? Trump has a pretty wide open range of options, and I don’t see why there is a rush on it.
Unless the point someone is making is that absolutely zero dollars should be spent in foreign aid, I feel like it would be useful to come up with an objective approach and do at least a basic combing through.
Chattooga
11mo ago
My point was that you should have a sense of perspective, and not frame things like you're leading the frontline into battle. I don't see how I'm guilty of that.
Chattooga
11mo ago
I see this somewhat regularly and I really dislike this style of comment, written like a Roman general giving a speech to the senate.
On a surface level, get a grip! You aren’t fighting a war. Most anybody here engages with politics to is to squabble on the internet and maybe vote.
On a deeper level, I think it really reflects a polarized view. The battle-lines are drawn, and you’re rallying for a cause. But in reality these issues are often not as polarized in the public as you might think. There is room between ‘change nothing’ and ‘blow it all up’.
Chattooga
11mo ago
I think one part of the split between us is that I don’t view ‘the left’ and ‘the right’ as united and mono-focused as you seem to. I know this isn’t a deep observation, but both are vague conceptions that consist of a spectrum from mostly normal people sliding into fringe radicals. The vast majority of Biden supporters did not riot in 2020, nor did the majority of Trump supporters break into the capital. But both will hem-and-haw about how bad their respective actions were.
I’ve happily conceded that there is left wing bias against calling out themselves, and I think that there’s an equivalent bias on the right. It’s a general human instinct to protect the in-group. I don’t see this systematic pattern ‘for decades’ of the left doing things equivalent to J6, nor this grand narrative of it being a propaganda tactic. If you disagree then please show me. I realize you think it’s obvious and want to sneer at me, but understand I’m trying hard not to do the same.
I think we were past the point where we agree it's way beyond "screaming" or "voicing" - and yet we're back there. How comes?
That’s a direct reference to an instance in the article you shared where protestors occupied a state capital and were chanting/screaming.
Michael Byrd murdering Ashley Babbitt […] Just imagine the protests if a white cop shot an unarmed black woman, during a BLM protest
If she was shot on the lawn outside the capital for yelling at a cop or something, this would be a fair comparison. But Babbitt was climbing through a broken window into a secure area with armed guards on the other side. I’m honestly curious what you think the correct course of action was there. Let her climb through and start scuffling with her and others who also come through? Fall back further?
This also highlights something I’ve been trying to say- I feel like you are making some comparison and saying “See? They’re the same” without showing that there share some unique commonalities. I think you have generally pointed at left wing violence at protests, but I’ve tried to differentiate that from J6 by pointing to the specifics of the goal, scale, and significance.
Chattooga
11mo ago
The left routinely blocks and disrupts events where the speakers they do not approve appear, they disrupted democratic processes numerous times, they performed "direct actions" as "retaliation" for political actions many times, etc.
And people argue about it endlessly. It doesn’t go unexamined, and I think we’re well past the ‘de-platforming’ era. It’s not that these things don’t happen or are justified, it’s that you can’t say “The left does xyz and nobody says anything about it!” Because they do! And they should!
And you can certainly argue that violence at protests is under prosecuted or underreported. But that doesn’t mean that J6 is irrelevant. Either we have consistent standards for this kind of thing or it’s just partisan.
The leftist politicians routinely gain from the policies that result from the pressure they apply on the political processes.
Do you consider J6 to be ‘applying pressure to the political process’? In an earlier comment you compared it to leftist protests “done for explicit purposes of influencing the policies“ Now in a technical sense sure, overturning an election in favor of the loser is influencing policy, but surely you would agree that it’s different than a crowd screaming in a state capital about a bill being passed.
you see any disruption from the right with a microscope and the mass violence from the left leaves you legally blind.
I have repeatedly centered on one event, J6, as being a very significant and damaging moment that should not be dismissed. Trump’s pardoning of the people who perpetrated it in his name only adds to the distrust it sows. I maintain that there is no comparable event from the left.
I have acknowledged that left wing riots, particularly 2020, have gone under-condemned, although I do think they fall short of ‘mass violence’.
The federalist article provides a list of some government buildings being occupied, including people yelling the senate gallery while Pence bangs his gavel(?) and asked for them to be removed. (I’ll remind you that on J6 we had staffers piling up furniture to barricade senate doors.)
Yes, these are bad, yes, left wing protests get violent. But that doesn’t mean that J6 is just retribution and can be ignored. The difference in scale is immense! Breaking into the Interior Department over the need to declare a ‘climate emergency’ is not the same as trying to overturn an election.
———
The story of Joe Biden sneaking into the senate in 1963 is a particularly infuriating inclusion in the article since it’s is plainly not leftist assault on democracy and is only included as a braindead ‘gotcha’. This doesn’t really detract from your point but it made me mad.
Chattooga
11mo ago
How much contempt must you have for your opponents to throw them a lie right in the face in full knowledge that both sides know it's a lie?
I dislike language like this because you’re needlessly raising the stakes. This is an Internet forum, we’re just talking. My point isn’t that all other protests are peaceful and the leftist are angels. Please step out of the bad faith arguing loop where you assume I’m trying to lie to you.
I’m trying to say that J6 was unlike other protests because of the nature of its goal and the scale. They didn’t want to affect the democratic process, they wanted to control it. Again I want to stress: Say what you will about left leaders handwringing or outright supporting riots (as you should), but none of those people stood to benefit directly from the rioting. Trump directly stood to gain from J6. And again, we’re talking about a mob breaking into the capitol building while Congress was in session. It’s never happened before!
I just don’t see your view that ‘the left’ is regularly using political violence and getting no pushback on it. The BLM protests were mostly half-heartedly condemned and under-punished, but they did hurt public opinions of democrats and especially far left figures. It was not forgotten.
Chattooga
11mo ago
My point is obviously not that “it’s okay for my side to do anything but your side can’t do anything”. I get that you’re frustrated by a double standard but don’t project that onto me.
My point is that widespread generic protests cannot be equivocated to this specific event. It’s unlike anything in recent election history.
J6 was clearly not peaceful, and its goals were not, like almost all major protests in the last century, to influence politics through voicing discontent. It was to upend an election, and for some, to kill specific members of Congress.
Now, of course it was an uncoordinated mess, but it’s incredibly embarrassing, and yes, is bad for cohesion. Especially after Trump pardons all the people involved. Say what you will about left leaders handwringing or outright supporting riots (as you should), but none of those people stood to benefit from the rioting.
Honestly I think it’s fair to still be angry about the lack of response in 2020. What I can’t stand is the complete denial of J6 as a significant and unique event.
Chattooga
11mo ago
I understand that you think 2020 had a vast under response. Broadly I agree that there should have been less hand-wringing and more condemnation. But I don’t think that describing politics as Blue Tribe and Red Tribe actually justifies tribal argument. Many ‘blue tribe’ people I know were also outraged at the rioting and destruction.
You describe J6 like it was an overeager group of tourists ducking under a velvet rope. I can’t really figure out what to say to that. Generally I try to respond as genuinely good faith as I can, but this seems like a major break to me.
Members of J6, broadly:
Fought with police instructing them to disperse
Tore down crowd barriers
Broke and climbed in windows
Opened doors to let in others
Went through desks and offices of capital building members
Pressed further into the building, including secured areas.
Babbitt climbed through a broke window directly adjacent to a guard with a drawn weapon.
All of this in one of the most importantly political buildings in the country, second only to the White House. While Congress was in session. With the express intent of stopping the proceedings and in some cases calls for the execution of its members.
What about the situation am I missing that leads you to dismiss it? I don’t think this is comparable to previous protests since to my knowledge no previous protest has led to the occupation of the capital building.
Chattooga
11mo ago
Calling it ‘criminal trespassing’ feels bad faith. Sure, it’s technically true, but it downplays the obvious severity of the situation.
I want to treat people like adults and say that if you are climbing through a broken window into the Capitol of the United States with the express intent of halting proceedings, you are taking on the consequences of that action.
Was all of the sentencing fair relative to 2020? Maybe not, but this was an enormous national and international embarrassment, and I’m not too worried about the government being too harsh on the category of “people who break into the capitol to stop an election”.
Chattooga
11mo ago
What is the worst crime that a J6th rioter committed?
Broke into the capitol building in order to overturn an election? I feel like people really undersell how crazy it is that we had an angry mob break into Congress. For national respect and social cohesion that’s so much worse than burning down a police station.
Oh I have no doubt he was afraid, I don’t think he was maliciously trying to manufacture an excuse to kill somebody. I think he was panicked and angry, and instead of taking the reasonable option of making sure he was clear, he immediately went for his gun.
I could speculate further on his personality or mental state, but the point is it was an unreasonable and dangerous escalation.
It’s also worth pointing out the car was coming out of reversing and turning. She wasn’t bearing down head-on to run him over.
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