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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   37547 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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On Sunday I speculated that the Dems will use a George Floyd-like psychological operation to increase Democrat turnout in the election. Today, Kamala issued a statement about Sonya Massey, a black woman killed by police whose body cam footage was released recently:

Sonya Massey deserved to be safe. After she called the police for help, she was tragically killed in her own home at the hands of a responding officer sworn to protect and serve. Doug and I send strength and prayers to Sonya’s family and friends, and we join them in grieving her senseless death.

I join President Biden in commending the swift action of the State’s Attorney’s Office and in calling on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill that I coauthored in the Senate. In this moment, in honor of Sonya’s memory and the memory of so many more whose names we may never know, we must come together to achieve meaningful reforms that advance the safety of all communities.

The body cam footage shows two police officers answering a call from Massey about a prowler in her yard. Massey acts mentally unwell throughout the encounter, answers that she is on medication when asked about her mental health, and has a difficult time telling the officers what her last name is or retrieving her photo ID. The officers are somewhat friendly if impatient, but the vibe changes when Massey grabs a pot of boiling water after the officers requested she turn off the stove. The officers say they are stepping back while she grabs the boiling water (crazy people may use boiling water as a weapon, something that has lead Starbucks to ban giving patrons boiling water), and Massey says “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus”. Either because of this statement or because of a physical sign we don’t pick up on the body cam, an officer points his gun and demands that she drop the boiling water. She does not drop the boiling water but instead continues to hold on to it. Right before she is shot the body cam just barely picks up Massey throwing the boiling water toward the officers, with the water landing on the ground and steaming where it landed. I want to thank Twitter user Fartblaster4000 for turning that moment into a helpful gif.

Massey’s death is certainly not the preferred outcome of the encounter. Once the officers picked up on Massey being crazy, they should have mentally decided to leave her house if she did something like equip a plausible weapon. The three seconds that the officer gives for Massey to drop the pot of boiling water was insufficient — of course, the pot was in her hand and thrown toward the officer before the officer shot. Springfield is the third most criminal city in America, so perhaps the officers did not believe they had the resources to call mental health professionals in their place. In any case I do not think that the officers should have moved toward her but instead left the premises until they felt she did not pose a threat. Sadly, it’s not uncommon for crazy people to attack police officers with whatever is around, and it’s rational to be afraid of a crazy person who has a pot of scalding water in their hands, able to disfigure you for life.

According to a UPenn study, BLM may have been the political ingredient that shifted the election toward Joe Biden:

Mutz also notes that roughly 90% of voters reliably vote with their party, and only about 10% of voters are likely to shift their vote from one party to another. It was that group that she focused on, finding that as their awareness of discrimination against Black people rose, so too did their likelihood of voting for Biden. Interestingly, many voters who had voted for third parties in 2016 also shifted to major party candidates in 2020, and disproportionately moved toward Biden.

Concern surrounding COVID-19 caused voters on both sides of the aisle to favor their own candidate more, but it did not cause any significant vote change from Trump to Biden or vice versa. Nor, Mutz says, did factors relating to the economic effects of COVID. As levels of concern about COVID became increasingly partisan, the issue lost its ability to change vote choice so much as to reinforce it. Does that mean BLM decided the election? That question remains unanswered

If the relevant voters are swayed more by victimhood narratives than Covid, this explains why Republicans are bringing up the topic of migrant rapes. I predict we are going to see more victimhood narratives in the coming months!

Prior to reading this comment, I had assumed that the Democrats’ attempt to make hay from this incident would fail miserably, as no one on the right would defend the shooting. Absent a scissor statement situation, I figured the controversy would die a quick and easy death. Now I’m not so sure.

If the Right is smart, they’ll publicly agree that it was a bad shot regardless of their inner feelings, as that is probably the easiest way to defuse the situation. No controversy, no news; no news, no BLM reboot; no BLM reboot, no electoral benefits to the Democrats.

The initial reaction to George Floyd was universal condemnation. I watched Sean Fuckin' Hannity talk about how terrible it was and how his MMA training (lol) would never have allowed him to do that kind of blood choke for that amount of time the night it happened. This did not succeed in preventing riots. The riots preceded the right coming up with reasons that it's actually fine for cops to kneel on necks for nine minutes.

Huh, looking back through old stories and discussion boards, it appears I misremembered the timeline. For example, /r/themotte’s initial thread was pretty unanimously condemnatory. One user’s comment actually makes my original response to @coffee_enjoyer look pretty hopelessly naive (bolding added):

The George Floyd incident is notable in that it appears to be far more uncontroversial than other police-killing-black-man incidents. The use of force depicted in the video seems clearly unwarranted, and the non-controversy appears to be reflected in widespread condemnation across the political spectrum. SSC readers (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/) may recognize this as a situation where the story will not last very long in the collective consciousness because there is little controversy to fight over. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially if this particular incident is able to spur political reforms more effectively than previous ones over which there was more controversy due to lack of complete video documentation, lack of >99% proof that force was unreasonably used, etc. If that is the case, it may provide the lesson that consensus-building, rather than encouraging controversy and (sometimes seemingly intentionally) alienating others is the surer path to political reforms. I am reminded of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, where the events that seemed to have the greatest impact on public were those such as horrific lynching or police brutality against peaceful protestors which couldn’t possibly admit of any mitigating explanation and thus were not open to differential interpretation along partisan lines.

I remember it being the opposite in my spaces (admittedly very martial arts focused). Nobody could reliably recreate a strangulation from that position even if it is a highly uncomfortable position

Chapeau to you for the double check. Seriously, I appreciate the effort and lack of combativeness. The only reason I remembered it the way I do is because I was one of people that was initially on the total condemnation route and started to rationalize it after my town got jacked up by riots. Pretty hard to consider myself cleanly rational on the matter when I think about the reaction and then the rereaction.

My reaction was condemning until more information came out, such as the bodycam footage that painted a very different picture.

Unfortunate that the liberal court didn’t allow the bodycam footage be to used as evidence for no reason outside of that it would have been exculpatory, but letting Chauvin walk would’ve inflamed things quite a bit I guess

I had been a regular Reason reader since the early 2010s, so I had seen plenty of stories of police officers getting away with all manner of brutality, theft, murder, etc., directed at people of all races. Thanks to that background, I mostly remember being annoyed that Floyd’s death was instantly chalked up to racism, before being thoroughly pissed at TPTB for siding with the rioters while at the same time enforcing/defending onerous Covid restrictions. I didn’t care enough about the incident itself to bother forming any firm opinions, so my memory of the immediate reactions was apparently pretty hazy. In 2020, my anger about everything Covid-related took precedence over everything else.

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