LiberalRetvrn
they don't understand the things i say on twitter.
User ID: 1892
LiberalRetvrn
1d ago
I really don't get the purpose of using a single "Culture War" thread for everything. Why not just let people make their own top-level posts? Most of the topics in this thread aren't even about the culture war, they're about politics.
LiberalRetvrn
1d ago
I do have principles, but I don't think it's possible to judge civil disobedience acts in a vacuum. Disobeying an unjust law is good, disobeying a just law makes you a nuissance to society. I have principles about freedom, individual rights, and liberalism, not about what tactics are justifiable to achieve those things.
LiberalRetvrn
1d ago
Another consistent view is that Ashley Babbit deserved it because she was protesting for a bad cause (overturning an election) whereas Renee did not because she was protesting for a good cause (stopping the feds from kidnapping us).
The real crime of january 6th was that they used up one of our most potent civil disobedience options on something so meaningless.
LiberalRetvrn
2d ago
I believe taxation is theft. The government should be funded through donations, and people should be free to earmark their donations for whatever purpose they see fit.
LiberalRetvrn
2d ago
How? I absolutely view ICE as Trump's personal paramilitary force, similar to the sturmabteilung. Or at least, I think he hopes that's what they will evolve into. Deporting illegals is a great pretext for creating all the systems they will need to start targeting political dissidents and Trump's enemies. And the angrier the ICE agents are, the more ruthless they'll become. He needs a police force he knows is loyal, who will act without question when he needs them to establish martial law.
LiberalRetvrn
2d ago
it takes a lot of white female privilege to drive a car at a cop
And yet despite being 70% of the population, white people run over very few cops.
It occurs to me that yours is the first "white privilege" complaint I've heard about this incident. If this had happened in 2015, there would almost instantly be thinkpieces about how we're focusing on a white woman being killed by police when thousands of unarmed black people are gunned down every year. To me this is more evidence that peak wokeness has long since passed. Occupy Wallstreet was the last liberal or populist movement that wasn't subverted by identity politics. Maybe this will be the first of the new post-wokeness era.
LiberalRetvrn
2d ago
I don't sympathize with the ICE employee because he is being paid to deal with whatever stress this job causes him. If he can't handle it without taking out his feelings on innocent people, he should just quit. It's a pointless job anyway, so nothing would be lost. I also can't imagine stepping in front of a running car, and my first instinct if said car were approaching me would be to jump out of the way, not draw my ccw. His actions make me think he actually wasn't in fear for his life, because shooting the driver didn't change anything about the momentum of the car.
LiberalRetvrn
2d ago
I've never claimed that she made a smart self-preserving decision by participating in civil disobedience against ICE. That's what makes her a hero in my opinion, she sacrificed herself (possibly unintentionally) to resist federal overreach and the police state. And I want her killer to be punished.
LiberalRetvrn
2d ago
There is neither panic nor fear, just smugness and derision.
Right, and then the other ICE employee started charging at her, and she feared for her life. I would be scared too if some guy dressed like a muslim terrorist started trying to drag me out of my car. For all she knew, these were just a group of Trump supporters pretending to be ICE.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
Normal police officers don't cover their faces, usually drive marked vehicles, have body cameras rather than filming with their personal cell phones, and will identify their name and badge number when asked. If a police officer were out of uniform and driving an unmarked vehicle, there would have to be much more tolerance for suspects supposedly "resisting arrest," because people wouldn't feel comfortable surrendering to some guy.
The mission of an ICE employee is also very different from a beat cop. ICE is trying to deport as many illegals as they can. Every person an ICE employee encounters is either an illegal alien who needs to be deported, or some busybody getting in the way of them deporting more illegals. Beat cops don't start their interactions with citizens under the assumption that they're interacting with a salvadorian cartel hitman. Policing is very different from protecting the country from external threats.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
Well obviously some situations would require lethal force. All I said originally is that the standards should be higher for professionals than for random people minding their own business. I don't like the idea that police can provoke a somewhat violent response from a suspect and then use that as justification to use deadly force.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
No, I'm judging purely based on the video. I saw nothing in the video that made it clear the ICE employees were putting her under arrest. I don't see how someone can be "resisting arrest" unless they're aware they are being arrested. All I saw was a guy in a mask jumping out of an unmarked vehicle and running toward her, yelling "get out of the fucking car". In that situation it seems reasonable to fear for one's life. Why does the ICE employee have the right to self-defense but an American citizen on a public street doesn't have the right to flee?
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
Well I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he didn't think she was a threat, it's even worse that his first reaction was to start blasting.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
could you tell us if it contradicted any of your prior take on the situation?
I didn't realize that things were so calm before the second ICE employee charged in yelling obscenities at the woman. I'm now shifting some of the blame over to him. I had assumed based on the way he approached that the situation was already tense.
I'm also surprised that the guy who shot her was filming with his cell phone rather than having an official body camera. Unless he did also have a body camera, and was just filming to be petty because the citizens were filming him. Which would be very unprofessional.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
She wasn't panicked until the other ICE employee wearing a balaclava charged in yelling "get out of the fucking car".
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
why do you believe the government when it says "do not resist when police arrest you, if it's all a big mistake you will be released within a couple days at the most?"
I don't believe them by default, they earn that trust through transparency and independent oversight. And of course, there is always the threat of consequences if government becomes too authoritarian. ICE employees don't behave anything like normal police officers, and they haven't done anything to earn our trust. I know several of my local sheriffs by name, one of them even lives down the street. ICE agents are faceless and unaccountable, and they seem to report directly to the serial liar and criminal currently running the government. We have no obligation to "obey" them just because some federal law saws so.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
A cop... can't do that?
Ideally yes, I would expect the cop to put in more effort to defend himself non-lethally. Cops are supposed to be professionals at this, so I expect more from them than a random person walking down the street. That's what we're paying them for.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
This footage shows even more clearly to me that the ICE employee was at least negligent. Why was he filming with his cell phone if he felt she was an imminent threat? Why was he wandering around to the front of the car? Everyone seemed fairly calm until the other ICE employee starts yelling "get out of the fucking car" and charging up to the drivers' side door. I didn't hear the phrase "you're under arrest" anywhere in the video.
If ICE employees want to be treated like cops, maybe they should act more like cops. Wear proper body cameras instead of using a cell phone, have their faces visible, and identify their name and badge number when asked. Then maybe people would feel that it's safe to surrender when "arrested" by them.
LiberalRetvrn
3d ago
Tucker Carlson claimed Trump captured Maduro for the explicit purpose of legalizing gay marriage in Venezuela (???).
It sounds less ridiculous in the video. Probably Trump wasn't thinking about gay marriage specifically, but this operation has probably been planned before Trump took office. Ousting a conservative communist authoritarian is a big win for liberalism.
It's interesting to watch Tucker Carlson's evolution into a Strasserite conservative leftist. But I think for most of the general public, the reaction to Maduro's capture was similar to when we got Bin Laden. It was a brief moment when neoconservatives and neoliberals could put aside our differences to celebrate a great big American victory against the commies.
It is unambiguous given the videos that she did try to hit the officer
Well I saw the video and it looks obvious to me that she was trying to escape and drive around the ICE employees. I don't know why we would jump to the conclusion that a suburban, educated white woman would suddenly try to murder someone for no reason. Other people can interpret the subtle movements of the car's wheels differently, but it's far from "unambiguous".
nyTimes put out am [absurd] “forensic analysis” and determined she was trying to escape, which will never be questioned by the blue tribe ever
I don't need a NY Times analysis to know she was trying to escape, I can just watch the video and apply basic common sense and pattern recognition. Not everything is a media narrative, sometimes people just disagree about what happened.
LiberalRetvrn
4d ago
How are they "slave laborers"? They can leave or quit their jobs any time they want.
LiberalRetvrn
4d ago
misinformation
I really dislike this word. The government doesn't get to decide what is true and what is false. They may claim that everyone in ICE custody is accounted for, but I have no reason to believe them. Donald Trump is a serial liar, and so is everyone working for him.
LiberalRetvrn
4d ago
Should the Bostonians have considered not throwing snowballs at the redcoats? Probably, but I would still cheer them on if I were there in person. The world sometimes need excessively brave and stupid people.
LiberalRetvrn
4d ago
I don't see why it matters that this person was supposedly a "police officer." I disagree with calling ICE employees police officers, but even if he was, that doesn't give him special privileges. If you surround someone's car aggressively, it's understandable for them to react in a self-preserving manner. Even if the arrest is justified, no human can be blamed for not wanting to be detained. Almost every video I've seen of someone being arrested, they resist at least a little bit at first. Nobody likes to be in captivity.
Is OP's combination of beliefs any weirder than the mainstream US political parties? It sounds like he's a religious conservative who also is skeptical of big government and the police state.
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