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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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I've posted about this before. Watch police bodycam videos. The speed at which ho-hum traffic stops turns into "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" is frightening. One of the things cops are doing is assessing how compliant you're being. If you're being compliant, they can make some assumptions about the next 15 - 30 seconds. If you're not, they're operating on the assumption of "this could go bad right now."

My father was in the Coast Guard. During training, he almost failed out because of a fatal mistake in one "shoot/no shoot exercise scenario". It was a routine check of yacht, where instead of complying with his request, an old grandmother went about her business getting food out of a picnic basket. Now, my father's not the sort to shoot an unarmed old lady just for not complying immediately - after all, perhaps she's just getting a sandwich or a drink to offer the nice young man? - so when she pulled a gun out of the picnic basket and shot him... well, exercise failed.

So your father almost failed out of the Coast Guard for not pretending to not believe in stereotypes.