FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
IIRC, the Bundy standoff had no disagreement over the facts for the standoff itself, and the subsequent killing of one of the participants resulted in the FBI shooters being caught tampering with evidence. None of this changed the tribal split.
Rittenhouse was filmed from multiple angles, and the film was available more or less immediately. Evidence abounded that he had acted within the law, evidence of him committing a crime did not exist. In the subsequent trial, every significant additional piece of evidence broke in his favor. None of this, nor even his acquittal, changed the tribal split.
My assessment is that the BLM riots and Jan 6th followed similar patterns. Both are much larger scale and far more complex, but the pattern of the evidence consistently breaking one way seems to me to hold in both.
We are past the point where evidence is dispositive. People want results, not process. It's not even really a mystery why: people on both sides perceive government as ineffectual at securing their values, and perceive those values under existential threat from their tribal opposites. Under such conditions, the natural consequence is a loss of faith in institutions and burgeoning extremism in pursuit of a solution to the perceived crisis.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3d ago
Not that amazing. We have numerous previous incidents demonstrating the American public's total incapacity for achieving consensus over tribally-charged law enforcement incidents. For at least one side, and perhaps both, it is "who, whom" all the way down. This has obviously not gotten better since the Bundy standoff, BLM riots, rittenhouse and Jan 6th. It is pretty obviously not going to get better in the foreseeable future.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5d ago
Tom Clancy was one of my favorite authors growing up; I read all his stuff up through Rainbow Six, and I'd say it definitely shaped my worldview, first in a "this is how the world is" way as a kid and teenager, and then contrasting the backlash as reality intruded as an adult. Favorite books were Without Remorse, Clear and Present Danger, and the Sum of All Fears. Even looking back without rereading them, there's a ton of passages that look very, very different from an adult perspective than as a naive kid, and I've often thought you could use his books as a pretty good example of why the political world he portrayed has collapsed so badly since.
You have a long, long history of describing yourself as:
- Severely disabled and destitute, with a dysfunctional family and no significant social ties.
- Terminally depressed, with little to nothing to live for and zero hope that things will improve.
- Incredibly frustrated that people you consider on your side are not committing acts of lawless violence and terrorism against people you regard as on the other side.
- Possessed of a profound, murderous hatred of your tribal opposites as a class, to the point of routinely mocking your allies for not murdering them already.
I personally have argued to you that it is in fact exceedingly obvious that individuals possessed of even minimal competence and resources can inflict such absurdly disproportionate harm to society that the culture war is a significant threat to our society's continued function. When I declined to provide you for specific details of how to do so, you spent some effort to call me out as a liar.
My assessment is that you resent what peace we currently enjoy and wish for nothing more than to see that peace drowned in blood. I think anyone who answers the questions you ask here is a fool.
No, he could not, and you suggesting this demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of both the mechanics and the legalities of employing firearms in self-defense.
"Shooting to wound" or "shooting to disable" is not a technique law enforcement officers are taught, because it is, to a first approximation, not a real thing. Self-defense shooting training universally focuses on firing center of mass and as rapidly as possible, because this is by far the best, safest and most effective way to shoot in a self-defense scenario. The next-best target is the head. Limbs move around a lot more than bodies and heads, hitting them is not "non-lethal" by any reasonable definition due to the arteries involved, and missed shots can easily continue on to strike bystanders behind the target.
"Firing to intimidate", "warning shots" and so on are, to my knowledge, flatly illegal in all jurisdictions. Firearms are lethal weapons, and to legitimately discharge a firearm in self-defense requires you to believe you are beyond the point of warnings. Law Enforcement Officers give warnings by shouting them, not by discharging firearms.
In this specific case, the officer firing through the windshield was presented with a target consisting of the driver's upper torso and head, at close range and on minimal timing. The doctrine-correct response is to aim for center-of-mass or the head.
If you want fewer things like this to happen in the future, the obvious way would be for Blue Tribe to stop demonizing legitimate law enforcement and those conducting it, for Blue Tribers to stop attempting to disrupt legitimate law-enforcement operations, for Blue Tribe to create general knowledge that attempting to interfere in legitimate law enforcement operations by driving an SUV into the middle of them is not a good idea, and finally for Blue Tribe to internalize that if you are being ordered out of your car by officers of the law approaching on foot, the proper response is not to put your vehicle in drive and attempt to drive away.
It is obvious that Blues here and in the public at large desperately want this to be Law Enforcement's fault, but in fact the officers made zero observable mistakes, and the "protester" did everything wrong. She participated in a mob attempting to disrupt law enforcement. She blocked the road with her vehicle. She refused to comply with lawful orders. She attempted to drive away, struck an officer in the process, and in the process of this was shot dead. Every one of those actions was a profoundly stupid choice. Make enough stupid choices in sequence, and it is easy to get dead. The solution is not to provide additional protections to people making stupid choices, it is to teach people not to make stupid choices.
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