VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
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User ID: 64
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2m ago
That's fair. I was thinking more when the case originally blew up in the media and the facts that came out at trial (the injury details) weren't as clear.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4hr ago
IMO neither "Stand Your Ground" nor "Duty to Retreat" neatly solve all cases. I don't think there's a general solution to what I'd call the Thunderdome Problem ("two men enter, one man leaves") regarding how the justice system should, absent other evidence, a dead body and the survivor's claim of having been attacked. I, at least, don't think the criminal justice system either categorically believing, or disbelieving the survivor's claim counts is sufficiently fair.
It may be the case that Thunderdome cases are sufficiently infrequent to not matter generally, but some of our more scissor-y examples of claimed self-defense violence (Zimmerman, perhaps most notably) do seem to fit with that pattern. It seems plausible to me that people are applying their personal biases toward the general case to sufficiently fuzzy specific cases.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
28d ago
These statements aren't strictly contradictory, although both are probably stronger claims than I would make. One lesson I've only recently begun to understand about WWII is that, at the scale of warfare required, seizing territory and, by extension, it's populace, gives fodder for larger armies.
This doesn't come up for discussion of American (or even Commonwealth, really) involvement in the war because the Western Allies weren't conscripting from recently-annexed territory, but the German army was much larger for having conscripted Czech and Austrian soldiers. It's not inconceivable that the same units currently armed by the West could be, after a surrender, rearmed by the Russians and marched west.
The only reason I don't find that situation hugely likely is that I'm pretty sure that most anyone can see that, in the case of a true hot war in Europe that NATO was involved in, the result would be a pretty decisive curb stomping on the scale of Desert Storm. Which is, to my mind, a huge argument for maintaining that technical and armament superiority, and also for Europe to step up their commitment to those alliances.
Ah. I would personally agree they're at least different enough to warrant a separate discussion. I was just surprised (and wrong) that a sitting justice today would use that as a hypothetical. Makes more sense now.
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