StableOutshoot
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User ID: 2253
StableOutshoot
11hr ago
I think the hard part will be finding the artist willing to do it. Sounds like a job for (ugh) AI.
StableOutshoot
12hr ago
So after a year in which there have been 66 vehicle ramming attacks against ICE agents, you don't think it's reasonable to believe that the hostile activist who has been following you around all morning and is now parked sideways across the street in front of you, is more likely than not to be intending to use their vehicle to disrupt your convoy?
Exactly what is it reasonable to believe about the intentions of the hostile activist who has been following you around all morning and has now parked her car sideways across the street in front of you?
Let me lay it out more clearly.
You are an ICE agent. You are in a city whose governor and mayor have stirred up resentment against your lawful activities, in which activists have been organizing to oppose you.
A woman and her wife have been following you all morning, antagonizing you as you go about your work.
Later, as you drive down a street, you come across these women, with their car parked sideways across the street. You recognize them as people you have been having hostile interactions with all morning.
There have been 66 vehicle ramming attacks against ice agents in the past year.
Given the facts above, what is it reasonable for you to believe in this moment?
I do not believe it is possible for someone whose brain has not been swiss-cheesed by ideological capture to answer "actually I think it's most likely that she has totally legal reasons to be doing that which have nothing to do with me." If that's your answer you are an NPC, you have no theory of mind or independent opinions of your own.
Sounds like you agree then that she was not barricading the road, merely that she could decide to barricade the road.
A person manning a barricade can decide to allow passage through the barricade without it ceasing to be a barricade. Please do not argue semantics.
The idea that the police force that is currently being protested by the person who has parked her car across the road, in the context of a nationwide spree of activists using their cars to disrupt ICE operations, can reasonably expect that she intends to behave cooperatively as they pass, is absurd. They absolutely should not expect that she intends to cooperate in their passage.
left-wing protestors are not generally violent agitators just waiting for an opportunity to murder federal officials.
True, but they do have the explicitly stated goal of obstructing and interfering with law enforcement operations. There have been numerous car ramming attacks by left wing activists all over the country. It's pretty reasonable to treat the left wing activist sitting in her car sideways in the road in front of you as very likely intending to add to that number.
Even if they decide against all reasonable evidence that they can't just drive by safely, there are many options that do not involve immediately saying "get out of the fucking car" and then trying to tear the door open.
Police are under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to be nice to lawbreakers. Being treated unkindly by the police is a completely predictable consequence of breaking the law, and if you want them to treat you kindly you can simply not do that.
StableOutshoot
13hr ago
But then you're arguing the politics surrounding the events, not whether there was actually a difference in how the state responded to someone acting against it.
From what I have read and heard, "Because what the J6ers were doing is bad" is the overt, explicit justification among the left for the way they have been treated. It really is just political for them, and not based in any respect for principles.
StableOutshoot
13hr ago
Renee Good had been, I don't know, a Christian at an abortion protest or something?
Not OP, but I'm trying to think of what would actually be an analogous situation for Renee Bad[1] at an abortion clinic protest. There's not a lot of overtly disruptive things she could do in front of an abortion clinic that wouldn't be straightforward grounds for arrest, and I think the overall right generally has enough respect for the law and property rights to understand that even if they don't like that abortion is legal, that it's a matter for the legislators and the courts, not for Renee Bad to roll up and do a direct action.
[1] As in, the mirror universe right wing version of Renee Good. This is a pun and I don't intend it to imply that it's evil to be right wing. I think it's quite okay to be right wing. It's just a pun please don't hurt me.
StableOutshoot
14hr ago
I think if 1/6 had been a left-wing riot, the response to this would be "breaking a window shouldn't be a death sentence!" and the left would memorialize the incident as "Ashli Babbitt - murdered by the government over a broken window," and would totally ignore every single other piece of important context around the incident. We are seeing this phenomenon happen right now with the ICE shooting in Minneapolis.
I say this not to suggest that Babbitt was a bad shoot, but to point out that the facts of the case simply don't matter all that much as far as politics are concerned. Folks have no problem lying to themselves and everyone else in order to create a good martyr as necessary to their cause.
StableOutshoot
14hr ago
Factors at play:
- The blues burned up a lot of political capital, literally, in 2020, so normies are simply less inclined to side with them
- Summer 2020 can be blamed to a large extent on cabin fever, and the fact that viral content on social media, controlled fairly overtly at the time by the blue tribe, pretty much constituted our shared reality. People in 2026 have lives outside of their screens in a way that people in summer 2020 didn't, X is now controlled by the red tribe, blue alternatives to X have nearly no mainstream penetration (i.e. are pretty much just blue siloes), and most people under 40 have quit Facebook.
- The canonization of floyd came from a video that omitted the context of his resisting arrest and the drugs he swallowed at the beginning of his police encounter, and focused only on the use of force against him. For the events of the ICE shooting, the context is a lot more apparent and makes it much more clear that she largely brought her death upon herself. It's a lot harder for someone with no particular dog in the fight to look at the video and think it's an unreasonable use of force, than the original video of floyd that led one to believe that the police officer was choking him to death for no reason.
StableOutshoot
14hr ago
I feel like Jan 6 was a cargo cult of the 2020 summer of love. It felt to me like a bunch of people spent summer 2020 watching leftists burn shit down with few-to-no legal or political consequences, and all attempts to stop them turning into political victories, and those people thought "hey I can do that too" without realizing that those outcomes did not come from the burning shit down, they came from the political infrastructure that the blues have spent a century constructing or institutionally capturing. It takes a lot of effort and solidarity to turn intentionally criminal and anti-social behavior into political victories, that the reds simply have not done.
I don't think the hearts of the reds are truly in it for the defense of Babbitt. At the very least, they are less successful at convincing me that they are deluded about the situation, as the blues are about their own various martyrs. It comes across as a cargo cult to me, trying to copy the blue's performative outrage over the consequences of their own actions, but without understanding the true underlying demonstration of solidarity that is the actual point of it. The blues understand and perform actual solidarity in ways that the reds don't, and part of that is by saying "we will defend literally anything you do in service of the cause, and do our best to ensure that you face the minimum possible consequences for doing it, and that anyone who interferes with you faces the maximum possible consequences, and all of the above are regardless of what laws, rules, or social customs you violate while doing so." This is basically a fundamentally left wing form of operating that the right cannot copy without not being the right anymore.
The attempts at outrage over Babbitt, at the end of the day, come across to me just as a plea: "Look, we all know that if capitol police had shot an unarmed woman at, say, the Kavanaugh protests, you guys would have gone apeshit," to which the response is "yes, thank you for noticing."
StableOutshoot
15hr ago
I also have a hard time believing that the complaining about the consequences is a genuine act of surprise. It comes across as performative, mostly likely because it literally is a performance, for the phone in your hand or the people reading your comments. It's an act that allows them to tell each other stories about how their cause is so righteous that the evil enemies want to attack them for being a part of it.
The people who do these things are creatures of Conflict Theory, and their thoughts cannot be explained in the language of Mistake Theory that is mandatory in The Motte. They have no particular adherence to principles or truth, these are restrictions that Mistake Theorists adopt, which Conflict Theorists have no particular use for because they tend to prevent you from doing whatever is necessary to win. The principle at work is "the Other Team did a Bad Thing to Our Team, which makes Other Team Bad and Our Team Good, which therefore justifies everything that Our Team will now do in response, which will not be Bad because Our Team are the ones doing it to the Bad Other Team."
The goal this entire time has been to engineer conditions in which it would be inevitable that Other Team would eventually do something Bad to Our Team. That's the point of blue tribe politicians urging their own constituents to resist, and activist organizations encouraging disruptions of ICE operations. Any idiot can see that what happened in Minneapolis is the inevitable result of everyone, everywhere, actively agitating to make the environment around ICE operations as chaotic and hostile as possible. And any idiot can see that all it would have taken to prevent it would be simply not committing to making the environment around ICE operations as chaotic and hostile as possible. But that would mean losing, and we can't have that!
I simply can't get worked up about this situation to the extent that everybody else wants me to. I can't be outraged or saddened at something that everyone clearly wanted to happen. All I can really do is cling to my commitment to principles, truth, and the rule of law.
StableOutshoot
16hr ago
I think some conservatives are sort of coming around to the idea that the unconditional solidarity on the left is a serious strength, and so they need to adopt something like that too in order to keep up. But it's difficult to maintain the same energy because it conflicts so deeply with what conservatism fundamentally is, so the hagiography of Babbitt just comes across as a cargo cult of the left's more successful hagiographies of their own martyrs. It doesn't really work without the True Belief that Your Side is so morally righteous that it is exempt from the law.
StableOutshoot
16hr ago
Yes, and people could also choose not to drive around in masks, tactical gear, and unmarked cars to intimidate people in a city that the president perceives as inhabited by his enemies.
This is a long and roundabout way of saying "enforce immigration law," which is not only legal, but is literally the thing that the current president promised to do before he was elected in a landslide. If it's your honest belief that the government has no business enforcing its own laws immediately following an election in which the populace voted overwhelmingly for the government to do more enforcement of those very laws, I'm really not sure what you think the point of democracy is.
she tries to wave the ICE truck by
She is not a police officer and has no authority to direct traffic, and the convoy has no obligation to trust that she will allow them all to pass without, for example, obstructing just the back half of the convoy to split the convoy in half. If you do not understand why giving a hostile bystander the opportunity to split your convoy in half is bad tactics, you do not have sufficient insight to converse meaningfully on this issue.
StableOutshoot
18hr ago
the rise of a political Somali elite such as AOC.
Correction: Ilhan Omar, not AOC. Both members of "the squad," so forgivable to mix up.
StableOutshoot
18hr ago
Well, striking the officer with the vehicle is an assault with a deadly weapon, which is a felony, but I am not lawyer enough to know if you can charge the wife in this situation. She does shout "drive!", which is not protected speech because it is an "incitement of imminent lawless action," but I'm not sure what actual law you would charge them under. Conspiracy? My knowledge of the law is mostly limited to what laws I might expect to involve me in some way (mostly self defense), so criminal conspiracies are a lot more of a grey area.
StableOutshoot
1d ago
I mean, surely a decent 'compromise' would be "ICE refers warrants and arrest duties to Minnesota authorities, who bring in the suspects as peacefully as they can, and turns them over to ICE for actual deportation."
State and local law enforcement do not have the jurisdiction to enforce federal law, and many blue jurisdictions have explicit "sanctuary" laws expressly forbidding state and local law enforcement from providing any assistance whatsoever in the enforcement of immigration law. Even apart from this, the odds of Tim Walz lifting a finger to cooperate with the Trump administration are approximately the same as the odds of the Vikings winning the Superbowl this year.
The other complication is that feds can get away with ignoring local political sentiments in ways that local police cannot, because local policing depends a lot more on maintaining a relationship with the community being policed.
If the actual goal is to simply not allow the enforcement of immigration law, that gives up the game, don't it?
That is the actual, explicit goal.
StableOutshoot
1d ago
Well, police officers do genuinely have more lattitude in the use of force than the rest of us, for the good reason that they are police officers and we are not. For example, in many jurisdictions there is a duty to retreat from a violent confrontation if you can safely do so. A police officer does not have a duty to retreat, because if they did, you could evade arrest by just becoming violent. Someone who is not a police officer must be a "reluctant participant" in order for their use of force to be legal. Police are not required to be reluctant participants - they can initiate force to secure compliance.
But you are right that generally, there really aren't any situations where police get to use lethal force where the rest of us couldn't if we found ourselves in the same situations.
StableOutshoot
1d ago
I think this was an insanely stressful situation, and [the driver] is completely blameless for the actions she took in this video.
If being confronted by a police officer stresses you out that badly then you probably shouldn't make it your hobby to go out and antagonize cops. This is a decision that was entirely under her control before she deliberately created a situation where she would inevitably end up confronted by a police officer. You can just not do that!
Yelling "drive, drive" is clearly bad in retrospect, but I understand where she's coming from. Still, not an appropriate reaction, and she certainly deserves some of the immediate blame for how this situation ended up.
While the wife is clearly an accomplice, the only extent to which I would find her responsible is the extent to which she participated in the decision for the two of them to go out and antagonize cops despite being clearly unprepared for the full implications of doing so. I don't think this is criminal. I don't think she bears any real responsibility for the stepping on the gas. A driver is responsible for the trajectory of their vehicle, nobody else.
If he hasn't asked her to get out of the car none of this has happened (why and under what authority is he asking this? As far as I can tell he has not seen or heard her do literally anything at this point,
She was barricading the road with her car, and had apparently been antagonizing them all day. Barricading the road was the last straw. ICE can arrest people for crimes, such as obstruction, committed against them.
StableOutshoot
1d ago
One of my group chats speculated about this. She is clearly participating in the crime of obstructing police, but I'm not enough of a lawyer to know if the felony murder rule can be applied. Obstruction is a misdemeanor, and it is the felony murder rule after all. (I am also not enough of a lawyer to know if that's what the word "felony" in "felony murder" refers to)
What I can say is that it is an extremely safe bet that if she gets charged it won't be by the state of Minnesota.
StableOutshoot
1d ago
If I wanted to be maximally uncharitable about her motives, I would say, (I do not actually believe this) her wheels are straight at the moment she starts accelerating, but she turns to avoid the officer when she sees his gun and realizes it's a bad idea to try to run him over.
Again I don't actually believe this, but if I probably would if I was motivated to portray her as evil.
StableOutshoot
1d ago
Why was he filming with his cell phone if he felt she was an imminent threat?
This is incredibly obtuse and probably a strawman.
Nobody, anywhere, is saying he regarded her as an imminent threat at that moment, when her car was in park and she was using it as a stationary barricade. At that moment she was an obstacle, not a threat, which is why he feels safe walking around it.
And then she shifted her car into drive and drove it directly into a police officer.
Somewhere around this moment is when he started regarding her as an imminent threat, which is why this is when he pulled out his firearm, rather than earlier.
StableOutshoot
1d ago
It's not legally permissible to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon with lethal force if there is no threat to bodily harm.
Assault with a deadly weapon is by definition a threat of bodily harm! That's what the word "deadly" means!
Nor is it necessarily permissible if you provoked the situation.
Placing someone under arrest is not grounds for that person to assault a police officer, no matter how much that person feels they have been provoked, because police are legally entitled to arrest lawbreakers.
I can't run onto the tarmac of an airport and start shooting down landing aircraft with artillery because of my, at that point, reasonable fear that a plane landing on top of me is a danger to my life.
Correct, the law permits you to resist an offense that you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. Landing an aircraft is not an offense. Intentionally driving a car into a police officer is an offense.
yet chose to stand in front of a moving car.
The car did not move until he had already been in front of it for several seconds, and he was seen by the driver (thanks to new footage released today). He did not place himself in front of a moving vehicle. You are straight-up lying here.
how does that excuse firing twice after it was no longer a threat
Because he is a human being and human beings do not process information instantly. The three shots were all fired within half a second, well within the amount of time it actually takes a human being to process a change in the situation. He stopped firing when he realized the threat had passed. Courts do not require independent legal justification for multiple shots within a small amount of time for this reason, the three shots would be treated as a single event in court because to a human being, they are.
How can even the first shot be justified when he knew or should have known that the killing not have stopped the car?
Because the law says you are permitted to use lethal force to resist an offense you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. It does not say "unless a guy on the internet with the ability to watch the video in slow motion thinks it wouldn't have helped anyway." The law does not require you to spend what you reasonably believe may be your last moments on earth basing your decision to resist your death on whether it in retrospect might be futile or not. It permits you to resist by whatever means are available to you.
You have a right to kill someone if it is necessary to protect yourself
No, you a permitted to kill someone to resist an offense which you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. The wording matters quite a bit.
StableOutshoot
2d ago
Look, exactly nothing from your wall of text matters here.
It is legally permissible to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon with lethal force. That's it. It doesn't matter where he stands, or how omniscient he is, or what he coulda-woulda-shoulda done according to a monday morning quarterback on the internet with the benefit of hindsight. She drove a car into him. That is assault with a deadly weapon. He is legally entitled to respond with lethal force. Case closed.
StableOutshoot
2d ago
I mean, that's a fine thing to say from the comfort of your keyboard and the benefit of hindsight
But the fact is that you are legally entitled to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon with lethal force. You can woulda-coulda-shoulda all you want, but if you agree that he had good reason to fear for his life, then this is a legal act of self defense.
StableOutshoot
2d ago
So are you saying that if you were in the same circumstances, standing on a slippery road while a car accelerates toward you, driven by someone who is hostile toward you, you would have absolutely no fear for your safety? None at all?
I very much doubt this.
Sure, the option that I would believe in that situation would be "they are there for the purpose of committing the crime of obstructing law enforcement," and I would approach the situation with that in mind, and you admit this:
Notably, obstruction being a federal crime which, being federal law enforcement, they have the authority to make arrests for.
I really don't know how to get through to you the very simple fact that law enforcement has zero obligation to be kind to lawbreakers, and in fact, being unkind to lawbreakers is their explicit role in society, and if you do not wish law enforcement to be unkind to you, it is very easy to not commit crimes. How have you managed to reach adulthood without understanding this?
She did have an opportunity to follow orders and comply peacefully with her arrest. She used that opportunity to shift her car into drive and accelerate into a police officer. Did you watch the video?
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