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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a full pardon for U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted last year of murder in the shooting death of Garrett Foster, a USAF veteran and BLM protestor. Foster had attended a downtown Austin protest armed with an AK-pattern rifle, and joined his fellow protestors in illegally barricading the street. Perry's car was halted by the barricade, Foster approached the driver's side door, rifle in hand, and Perry shot him four times from a range of roughly 18 inches, fatally wounding him. Police reported that Foster's rifle was recovered with an empty chamber and the safety on.
Perry claimed that the shooting was self defense, that the protestors swarmed his vehicle, and that Foster advanced on him and pointed his rifle at him, presenting an immediate lethal threat. Foster's fellow protestors claimed that Foster did not point his rifle at Perry, and that the shooting was unprovoked. They pointed to posts made by Perry on social media, expressing hostility toward BLM protestors and discussing armed self-defense against them, and claimed that Perry intentionally crashed into the crowd of protestors to provoke an incident. For his part, Foster was interviewed just prior to the shooting, and likewise expressed hostility toward those opposed to the BLM cause and at least some desire to "use" his rifle.
This incident was one of a number of claimed self-defense shootings that occurred during the BLM riots, and we've previously discussed the clear tribal split in how that worked out for them, despite, in most cases, clear-cut video evidence for or against their claims. The case against Perry was actually better than most of the Reds, in that the video available was far less clear about what actually happened. As with the other Red cases, the state came down like a ton of bricks. An Austin jury found Perry guilty of murder, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
Unlike the other cases, this one happened in Texas, and before the trial had completed, support for Perry was strong and growing. That support resulted in Governor Abbott referring Perry's case to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. A year later, the board returned a unanimous recommendation for a pardon to be granted. Abbott has now granted that pardon, and Perry is a free man, with his full civil rights restored to him. He has spent a little more than a year in prison, and his military career has been destroyed, but he is no longer in jail and no longer a felon.
So, now what?
It seems to me that there's a lot of fruitful avenues of discussion here. Was the shooting legitimate self-defense? To what degree did the protestors' tactics of illegally barricading streets, widespread throughout the Floyd riots and a recurring prelude to tragedy, bear responsibility for the outcome? How should we interpret Perry's comments prior to the shooting, or Foster's for that matter?
Two points seem most salient to me.
First, this case is a good demonstration of how the Culture War only rewards escalation, and degrades all pretensions to impartiality. I do not believe that anyone, on either side, is actually looking at this case in isolation and attempting to apply the rules as written as straightforwardly as possible. For both Blues and Reds, narrative trumps any set of particular facts. No significant portion of Blues are ever going to accept Reds killing Blues as legitimate, no matter what the facts are. Whatever portion of Reds might be willing to agree that Reds killing Blues in self-defense might have been illegitimate appears to be trending downward.
Second, this does not seem to be an example of the process working as intended. If the goal of our justice system is to settle such issues, it seems to have failed here. Red Tribe did not accept Perry's conviction as legitimate, and Blue Tribe has not accepted his pardon as legitimate. From a rules-based perspective, the pardon and the conviction are equally valid, but the results in terms of perceived legitimacy are indistinguishable from "who, whom". As I've pointed out many times before, rules-based systems require trust that the rules are fair to operate. That trust is evidently gone.
This is what we refer to in the business as a "bad sign".
If you think the pardon is wrong based on the facts of the case, I would like you to argue for this directly. I changed part of my post since based on the specifics of the case you might be might be motivated by the facts of the case leading you to be skeptical of the pardon.
I don't think the goal of the justice system should be to get different political tribes to agree. And if that is the goal, then it might require censorship, blacklisting, ideological selection. It should be ideally for cases to be decided based on their merits. By prioritizing agreement, wouldn't this encourage appeasement, realistically in favor of the blue tribe, even where it would result in people being unfairly prosecuted or not punished when they should? Including people getting punished more severely than they ought to, when there might be facts in the case that could be used to not throw the book at them. Take for example the Rittenhouse case which shouldn't been brought to trial, or the Floyd case.
Additionally, I don't buy that non appeasing the blue tribe, counts as escalation. There are going to be cases where there are two sides fighting and one is clearly in the right, as was the case in the Rittenhouse case. If the merits are there it is better but even in more contentious cases, there is value in pushing the system from being too biased in a left wing direction. If a pardon shouldn't been given it should be based on the merits of the case and not due to caring too much about not offending the blue tribe. If the system is in fact biased in the left wing direction due to the influence of the blue tribe, then the red tribe exercising pardons is not necessarily bringing escalation, but pushing the system in a healthier state. But I do find this particular case to be tricky, but I have also read some news articles that mentioned that he slowed down, instead of rushing the protestors. Most paints an ugly picture but it is mostly left leaning media that paint it.
On another note, there is an element of current year fanaticism, where a greater part of the establishment sided with BLM or hardline covid enforcement. BLM became less popular as did COVID punishments. Hence, we have been seeing people punished on covid getting also pardons, or not prosecuted now. I am not sure how much of a backlash this will cause now.
You have fundamentally misunderstood my post. I am not claiming that "both sides are unreasonable partisans, and they just need to be reasonable". I am claiming that our current system makes unreasonable partisanship the only viable policy option, and pointing out that anyone who expects anything other than an escalation spiral is lying to themselves. I am attempting to argue this from the outside view, ignoring any question of which side is right and which wrong, simply looking at the incentives. I obviously have my own opinion of who is right and who is wrong, and I've argued that further down in the thread. I am making this argument because it is common for moderates here to argue that the Culture War isn't that big a deal, that it's blown out of proportion, and that our existing systems are basically fine and simply need routine maintenance for everything to work out fine. I believe that such moderate arguments are dead wrong to the point of being actively dangerous, and I am attempting to communicate the basis for that conclusion across the tribal divide.
I have my own position, based on my own values and my own best interpretation of the facts. What I'm trying to show is that the larger pattern is obvious regardless of particular values or understandings of the facts: regardless of whether you side with Foster, Perry, neither or both, the situation is obviously unsustainable for our existing system. Rule of law requires common trust in the law and its application, and it, together with the rest of our sociopolitical systems, exist to constrain the scope and scale of civil conflict. These limiting systems have evidently failed, and those that remain are observably blowing out as the culture-war blast front washes over them in sequence.
As I see it, our current choice is between a near-total collapse in federal authority and semi-peaceful balkanization on the one hand, and large-scale fratricide on the other, with the latter being significantly more likely given our current social trajectory. I've been arguing this for a long time, this is just the latest data to illustrate the point.
I don't. I not only support the pardon, but would be furious with any other outcome. I believe Perry's conviction was part of a pattern of nakedly-illegitimate prosecutions of armed self defense by Reds, while murder and attempted murder by Blues was treated with kid gloves. I've argued as much many times before.
The only point of the justice system is to get the population in general to agree. If it can't do that, it serves no purpose and will not survive. The whole point of the system is to constrain conflict, to get people to accept outcomes they don't like and maybe even hate, outcomes they consider deeply unjust, because it's still the lesser evil. If people stop considering the system to be a lesser evil, they will simply tear it down.
Yes, obviously. Homogenous values are the result of these tools, and sufficient homogeneity for a sufficient amount of time makes it easy to fool ourselves into believing that the tools are unnecessary. We dispense with them, and as a result values drift apart until the homogeneity is lost, and then the need for them becomes obvious.
Coexistence, cooperation and mutual tolerance require coherent values, and cannot function in their absence. Values-coherence must be actively maintained, or it decays.
I'll just quote myself here:
There is no reason I can see for Reds to not take the above stance. It is the objectively correct stance to take, given the realities of our situation. It is also true that this stance will not result in things trundling along as they have previously, with everything basically being fine. It is likely to lead to a fight, and that is again acceptable given the alternative of endless abuse without recourse. Those who value the current system and wish to see it perpetuated, though, should be warned that it is very clearly collapsing before our eyes, for reasons well outside the control of any individual actor.
As I am using the term here, "Escalation" doesn't mean "bad thing", it means applying additional force to the system in the hopes of changing the outcome. The system can only survive so much force, and past that threshold it fails completely. This threshold has no connection to morality and justice; being right doesn't grant the system additional load capacity. Embracing and facilitating mob violence was an escalation. confronting that mob violence with legal self-defense was an escalation. prosecuting the defenders and protecting the attackers was an escalation. Pardoning the defenders is an escalation. All of these escalations have been employed because people decided that escalating was preferable to accepting a loss. This last escalation will be no different: Blues will not accept it, and will look for an escalation of their own to top it. At some point down the line, the escalation for one side or the other will be unsurvivable to the system as a whole, and it will fail. Again, people counting on the system's survival should be made aware of this.
I edited my post because arguing about the possibility that one side can be correct and how the pardon might provide justice didn't sit as right with me the more I thought about it, and wanted to remove some pro perry sentiments which in second thought don't fully reflect my views when thinking over the case more. But my view about bothsidesism being convenient and wrong remains. It is just that I don't want on this specific case to take position for the pardon. If it was the Floyd case I would support pardon on the merits of the case.
In general, I just don't think it is healthy to treat the culture war conflict as something where it is both sides equally to blame, and respect that the disagreement between tribes is more important than the merits of the case, and cases in general. We should talk about the facts and then argue whether one, or both tribes are wrong.
There is an implication in your post where moves that offend one side, but could actually be potentially promoting justice are a bad thing.
This idea itself encourages bad behavior, when we ought to be promoting the merits of the case. Additionally, if the pardon was correct, then it would not be an escalation, even if the blue tribe was offended. Appeasement of the blue tribe, on the basis that however they react it is important for them to trust the system, gives them no incentive to argue over principle, when they can get their way through outrage. But I modified some of this because this case is one that they might have a point in thinking him guilty.
I asked you about what you think about the facts of the case because it is directly related about whether one can argue that the pardon could be an escalation. I actually don't think it is much of an escalation, even if Perry deserved harsher punishment than a year, when considering how biased the system has been by the blue tribe. When it comes to whether this encourages, or discourages further escalation, it probably doesn't. The reason is that much of blue tribe excesses aren't stochaistic, but the result of too much appeasement and too many cases of getting away with it, and also related to symbols such as pro BLM, or anti BLM. Some of it relates to current year obsessions that tend to remain as sentiments but become weaker, and replaced by new current year obsessions. BLM being something not as popular today than in the past.
Fundamentally, this idea of appeasement being the road to peace, doesn't work, and the system in various western countries has escalated in authoritarian far left directions due to the right wing failing to constrain the use of power by the left. And even sided with it/acted like it. There is this understanding that the value of democracy is about allowing counterweight to too much influence to one side, and yet there is a sentiment in favor of an impotent right and impotent identity groups of the right, that interprets any moves for them and their rights as inherently dangerous and extreme. This is even more absurd in nation states. But it isn't the case even in multiethnic countries. This sentiment is dangerous and ensures that you are going to get increasing double standards and abuse of regulations, laws.
Good compromise and mutual respect require the right to actually show up.
There is no objective definition of "Justice", such that we can measure it with a ruler or weigh it with a scale. I believe that Justice is both real and fundamental, but I have no way of making you or anyone else agree with my understanding of Justice other than persuasion or force. Persuasion pretty clearly doesn't work at this point, and we are devolving toward less and less veiled dependence on force.
Do you believe that such arguments are generally productive? Do they tend to lead to consensus across tribal divides, even here? My observation is that the most "productive" outcome is the sort of Blue-Wins-By-Default both-sides-isms that you seem to be complaining about. For me, long-term, good-faith attempts to bridge the divide have resulted in deep cynicism and considerable radicalization. I think it's pretty clear that the tribal gap is currently unbridgeable, and rapidly getting worse. That's why I've written the OP the way I have; because the amoral, outside view of is and not ought is the only avenue for productive conversation across the divide that I can see.
See the edits above, as well as my arguments in the rest of the thread.
It doesn't matter if you think it's an escalation, any more than it matters if Blues think barricading roads, attacking motorists, and facilitating and protecting those who do is an escalation. Your assessment of their actions is what matters, because it determines how you'll react. Their assessment of your actions matters, because it determines how they'll react. There is no way I can see to get either side to accept that the other side's last action was legitimate, or that their own actions were illegitimate. The result is obviously going to be escalating tit-for-tat until the system runs out of capacity.
I never claimed it did. In fact, it not working in either direction is my entire premise. Blues will not accept the pardon any more than Reds accepted the conviction, any more than blues accepted the shooting, any more than Reds accepted the rioting, any more than blues accepted the justice system's delivered outcomes. For the purposes of this analysis, it doesn't matter which side is right. Neither side is going to back down. The conflict is self-sustaining and will likely continue to expand until things break which we cannot fix or even patch.
Good compromise and mutual respect do not seem to me to be options on the table. If you see evidence of them, I'd be interested to see it.
You don't have an outside view but a biased view is the point. This idea of neutrality is a false one when it comes to any and all of the rationalistic and adjacent space. They have a side, and they take it and it is a sneaky way to suppress and sometimes censor opposing views. And how can neutrality exist if "red tribers" take a neutral position, in a conflict where it would be correct for them to take their own side? Would the result be neutral? You might not be a rationalist but have been infected by a part of their way of thinking that is especially harmful in your case because rationalists as leftists who want a left wing status quo, are being strategic at promoting their perspective as an outside, neutral one as a way of imposing their preferences. As someone who seems to be pro red tribe in other contexts, this framing of both sides escalating isn't helpful to the red tribe, in the way the rationalists way of framing things is helpful for their side, which isn't mistake theorists outside the culture war conflict.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the dynamics of what is happening. The right is full of strategically inept and people who betray their own side while the left are unreasonably extreme because that is their nature in part due to becoming more like this as the right has behaved in an inept and treasonous manner and let extremists take over and collaborated with the left. While extremism has been covered by terms like moderation and hysterias against the far right. Part of the problem is both right wingers being against right wingers, and other right wingers failing to be sufficiently for their side. So the right divided, and the left more united, has resulted in such ends. Part of this division of the right is because of excess fear of the right and its current and future actions, by the right.
No, it is not. This idea disregards the value of the justice system in solving in a correct (aka just) manner particular conflicts on a level beyond just how it affects broader tribal conflict.
It also forgets the point of the tribal conflict which is also about justice and makes it easier for liberals/far left to win, by not keeping them accountable by how what they support is fundamentally unjust. It also helps the left win, since by having right wingers pretend to be neutral and avoid talking about the merits, the right can be subverted by pretending that leftists are right wingers which has been the number one way the right has been destroyed. The left wing people who became part of the right and have had also identitarian sympathies in such direction, cancelled actual right wingers.
Are you willing to treat as legitimate the right wingers to your right?
Blue vs red partisanship helps the left actually because the content of the right wing establishment is sorely lacking and under threat of shifting further left if not policed. And it also breeds conformism to a very left wing status quo, and helps police outsiders who actually do have at least some reasonable ideas that are kept down because the status quo is left wing and opposes them for that reason.
Yes, it is productive because lack of substance and bothsidesism, helps the left by transforming an analysis from "left wing excesses that need to be reined in" towards one of the problem of right wing escalation, or of both sides escalating.
Why is consensus the end be it all? And why isn't it possible even if consensus doesn't exist, to push the envelope more or less in a certain direction, even before winning.
It would be aiding the left by framing right wing moves as escalation, when it might be doing the correct thing and not escalation.
In a particular case there might be a point, because talking about mutual escalation in case like Floyd or Rittenhouse, would be nonsense. Which is why I have a problem with this type of argument, because I do care in fact about justice and see how it can and will be applied in many other issues.
Left wing excesses are a problem because in a genuine way they do promote injustice. If you are unwilling to accept that there is a genuine justice infringed and take the view that we can't say and ascertain that, then you help cover for a real injustice commited.
This postmodern irrationality where we can't assign accurate values because it would be presumptuous, is itself extremely arrogant and presumptuous perspective.
An attitude that promotes blue vs red partisanry as respectable and necessary is going to maintain that divide while doing things like censoring and keeping down people like Colbert, and similiar characters would change things. Your description doesn't capture the divide accurately because the left is the aggressive side, in ways that are in principle unjust, and the right mostly with a few exceptions, fails to fundamentally oppose them. Even some of those right wingers who do oppose them on some issues might even side with them in others. This framing of escalation can and will help paint such moves as escalation.
Escalation does mean a bad thing and the right loses for various reasons but also because it uses harmful language against its own side while not policing the left's use of inappropriate language. You might want to argue that according to your view it isn't bad, but it is possible to offend another side and even fight against them by acting in a manner that isn't escalating the situation. The very language aids the leftists who want to win but present their side's victory as the neutral default against both extremes. It helps marginalize the right and promote a left or even far left uniparty in moderate clothing.
People falsely claiming to be neutrals also fail to support correct language. It seems in this case your perspective does relate to the particulars. I don't think it is part of any big escalation though when considering everything happening and also the timing. Nor do I buy that, not in this specific case but in general, that the right wing moves that counter left wing excesses count as escalation, over trying to put things in a healthier balanced equilibrium even if the left wouldn't like it. Even the left can compromise if pushed enough. And don't forget how we reached the current situation, which was through too much compromise by the right, and cancel culture against right wingers, leading the left to become more arrogant. This is still happening now. If the tittivate against this on the right does increase as there is a little trend, stop cancelling right wingers and try to constrain left wing extremists, the left will not necessarily escalate but might have to compromise. A greater share of people might become non leftists or non leftists get involved in positions of influence. When the right is exercising power, the left loses some of its influence. Some past blue tribers were less extreme and they became more extreme not because the right fought back, but because it didn't. I don't buy your nihilistic perspective.
I also don't see why the system collapses in the way you envision and not more in a South African direction where one side wins but the resulting society is increasingly shittier. Which is a high possibility if the trends continue, and the right fails to become an effective opposing force.
Anyhow, we do disagree about the possibility of compromise arising through strength, and how weakness breeds escalation and submission and then new escalation, etc. If the right was stronger the left would be less arrogant and more moderate. There would also be less leftists, and the nominally left wing party would be less left wing one. Part of the weakness relates to the right being divided due to the existence of impotent and left wing factions. And even outside people who are sufficinelty left wing to count as leftists, there is a problem of buying into harmful left wing perspectives, that make them incapable of being an effective opposition that defeats the left. This isn't to say that the right should be as purity spiraling radical as possible. Actually focusing more on the areas were you have a point, even and especially politically incorrect ones and being persistent is more valuable than losing political capital by being some kind of the boogeman far right stereotype.
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