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A gunman has opened fire on an unmarked government vehicle carrying detainees to an ICE facility in Dallas, Texas. Initial reports are two detainees killed, one injured, no casualties among the officers. The gunman committed suicide, but left behind bullets with the phrase "ANTI ICE" written on them.
The online left has been openly calling for and encouraging violence against ICE agents for some time now, as well as attempting to facilitate that violence through doxing of agents and their families. These efforts have lead to a massive increase on assaults on ICE agents and threats to their families. Democratic leadership has refused to address these calls for and encouragement to violence from their base, and instead has joined in with calls for all agents to be unmasked and identified, as well as efforts to compel such identification through law.
This pattern of the blue grassroots engaging in lawless violence while the leadership offers encouragements of varying levels of plausible deniability, has been the norm for some time now. When the Blue Tribe grassroots engaged in a sustained vandalism and arson campaign against Tesla owners and dealers, recent Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz mocked the company's declining stock price and reassured Tesla owners that "we're not blaming you, you can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off". His subsequent non-apology is likewise a notable example of the form. Nor did it start there; as Blues unanimously maintain, Antifa is just an idea, not anything resembling an organization.
In any case, the ICE shooting in Dallas follows Sinclair Broadcasting abruptly reversing their plans to air Charlie Kirk's memorial service, after their local affiliates received numerous violent threats, and a teacher's union lawyer actually shot up the lobby of his local channel's offices.
Jimmy Kimmel is now back on the air, having been briefly suspended for blamed the murder of one of the most prominent right-wing activists in the nation on the right, an accusation repeated enthusiastically by numerous Blue Tribe influencers, activists and leaders. Polling shows that only 10% of Democrats believe Kirk's killer was left-wing. A third of Democrats believing that the man who wrote "catch this, fascist" on his bullets was right-wing, and a further 57% believe the motive for the shooting was either unknowable or apolitical.
Investigators are still looking into motive for what is being reported as a targeted killing at a country club in New Hampshire, where a gunman shouting "Free Palestine" and "The children are safe" killed one man and wounded two others. Likewise for the attempted bombing of a FOX news affiliate's van on the 14th.
We've had a fair amount of discussion over the last week about whether the left has a violence problem. It seems to me that not only does the left have a very serious violence problem, but that there is no one on the left capable of engaging with that problem in anything approaching a constructive way. Simply put, the American left has invested too much and too broadly into creating this problem to ever seriously attempt to resolve it. There is no way for them to disengage from the one-two punch of "The right are all Nazis/Nazis should be gotten rid of by any means necessary"; too much of what they have built over the last decade is predicated on this syllogism for their movement to survive even attempting to walk it back. The vast majority on the left cannot even bring themselves to admit the nature of the problem. But at the same time, at least some of them do seem to recognize that this is getting out of hand in a way that may not be survivable. Destiny's recent comments seem indicative of the mentality at play:
He appeared to elaborate on this train of thought in a recent stream:
...and the core point behind his somewhat incoherent further elaboration seems to be that the left must lean on the right to "lower the temperature", because otherwise the left itself will be forced to accept considerable losses.
The problem, of course, is that he is fundamentally correct. The Right is not particularly scared at the moment. We have had a long time to acclimate to the idea of leftist violence targeting us, and wile we are very angry about our political champions being murdered by leftist scum, with their actions cheered on by the grassroots left as a whole, many of us have long accepted the idea that this was going to come down to an actual fight in the end. We do not believe we created this situation; certainly, we did not bend the entire journalism, academia, and entertainment classes to normalizing the idea that our political opponents were isomorphic to subhuman monsters sneakily concealing themselves among the general population, whose violent deaths should always be enthusiastically celebrated. I've contemplated a post on simply cataloguing the number of TV shows and movies dedicated to one or both of the "The right are all Nazis/Nazis should be gotten rid of by any means necessary" paired statements. Suffice to say, we are quite aware that most of the left holds us in absolute contempt, and a large plurality wishes for our violent death. We are aware that any pushback on these sentiments will be framed as an offensive act on our part. We told the left this was a bad idea. We told them why it was a bad idea. They did it anyway. And now: consequences.
In parting, I've written and then deleted several posts about "conversations we can have in advance." This is, yet again, a conversation we can have in advance. At some point, someone on the left is going to get shot by someone on the right, and not in a legally justifiable way but as an actual ideological murder. And when that happens, all the people mocking the idea of online violent radicalization, after screaming about the dangers of online violent radicalization for the last decade, are going to flop back to being performatively worried about online violent radicalization. When this happens, they will be met with stone-faced negation from Red Tribe, and will then weep and moan about how the extremists of the right just refuse to engage with this obvious problem. This will not deliver the results they hope for, but they'll do it anyway, and we'll move another step closer to chaos.
This is a way of addressing the problem. If ICE stopped being masked goons who look like they came straight out of a bad YA dystopia movie, and became normal accountable government officials who behave kindly and civilly, I think this would reduce the violent sentiments against them tremendously. Don't turn your guys into Stormtroopers if you don't want people to start fancying themselves Jedi rebels.
(I'm not saying the Left's "thinking everyone is a Nazi" problem is unilaterally the Right's fault or anything. But in practical terms, that problem is not going to go away until the Right stops leaning into it.)
Normal government officials don't usually mask, but law enforcement has never behaved kindly and civilly towards the ordinary people they are arresting. If you're lucky it's "Turn around and put your hands on your head" followed by being slammed against a wall, a car, or the ground. If you're not it's "Don't move, freeze, BANG BANG BANG".
Well, they ought to. It would reduce social tensions considerably.
By the nature of the job, police officers interact with dangerous, scary people who don't care about adhering to the laws of the country they live in or about hurting others. In order to do their jobs properly, police officers need to present a credible threat to criminals. If a criminal finds a police officer scary and intimidating, it stands to reason that a law-abiding citizen will too.
There's really no way out of this trade-off. Do you want a police force which is unfailingly polite and courteous to everyone, but impotent as a result and a laughingstock to hardened criminals? Or do you want a police force which hardened criminals find scary and intimidating, but which ordinary decent people also find intimidating as a side effect?
Of course you can dial this trade-off up and down a bit on the margins, depending on the concentration of hardened criminals in the community being policed. A cop in the Hamptons is bound to be significantly more mild-mannered than one in Compton, who in turn won't be anywhere near as scary as a cop in El Salvador. Probably no police officers are more scary and aggressive than the screws in maximum security prisons, in which "the community being policed" is made up entirely of violent criminals. But at the end of the day, there's no way around the trade-off. Police officers fight crime, which means they have to be intimidating to violent criminals, which means it's not reasonable to expect a police force to be as gentle and kind as your local pastor and still do their jobs effectively.
"No no, I'm saying that police officers should be tough and intimidating with actual criminals, but kind and civil to the ordinary people they're arresting."
If they're arresting you, it's because they don't know you're an ordinary, law-abiding citizen. As such they can't afford to give you the benefit of the doubt and must assume that you're a criminal.
I disagree that there's no way around this so-called trade-off. You constantly equivocate between intimidation and actual effectivenesss. But the fact that police officers fight crime simply means that police officers have to be effective at fighting crime. Intimidation doesn't have to come into it. Even if you insist on viewing deterrence as a major role of the police, the promise of swift and reliable response to wrongdoing - leading to arrest and sentencing - could provide that all on its own, without the cops needing to individually come across as scary mofos who'll beat you to a pulp at their own discretion. If you know he's indestructible and omniscient, Superman can deter crime just as well as Batman.
The ideal police force, IMO, should aspire to work like a magic spell that teleports you before a judge as soon as you commit a crime. The process should be smooth, it should be quick, but it should be inescapable. Simple as that. The punishment that deters crime is what happens after you are brought before the judge and found guilty; the process that gets you to that point should be as painless as possible, for the sake of the innocent-until-proven-guilty.
(Before someone brings it up, I am aware that we're currently far away from this system partly because judges are too soft, not just because cops are too tough. This certainly needs to be fixed at both ends of the process. But the current vicious cycle, where cops get ever tougher to make up the deterrence deficit from slap-on-the-wrist-prone courts, while courts get softer and softer because how can you not sympathize with criminals abused by such needlessly violent cops?, has to be stopped.)
No, sorry, it does.
Imagine you're a criminal who's just stabbed someone. A police officer shows up, levels his gun at you and tells you to drop the knife and put your hands on your head, or he'll shoot you. In order for this threat to be effective, you must believe that the police officer will do as he says - if you don't, you'll try to make a run for it, or even try and stab the police officer yourself. In order for the threat to be effective, the police officer must seem like the kind of person who would fulfil his threat, which means he must be at least scary and intimidating enough that a hardened criminal who's just stabbed someone will believe that he will act on his threat. (In game-theoretic terms, the police officer must pre-commit to a certain course of action if certain conditions are met.) This is true even if the police officer has never discharged his weapon in the line of duty, would greatly prefer not to, and actually would hesitate to fire if you decided to make a run for it.
All of this is equally true even for unarmed police forces: the police officer must seem like the kind of person who actually would Tase you, mace you, or smack you with a nightstick. If he doesn't seem like the kind of person who would follow through on his threat, no criminal will pay any attention to his instructions.
Imagine the alternate scenario, where you've just stabbed someone, a police officer shows up, and his response is to say "well, golly gosh, you've gotten yourself into a right pickle haven't you? Why don't you drop the weapon and come down with me to the station and we'll talk about this? But if you don't want to, that's alright with me too." All without so much as unholstering his weapon. Does that sound like a police officer who would be effective at fighting crime?
This has precisely nothing to do with deterrence. As argued above, if someone has committed a crime and is facing arrest, they would most likely prefer not to be arrested if they can help it. The worst-case scenario is getting shot dead by the police; the second-worst case scenario is getting arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced; the best-case scenario is getting away with it scot-free. In order to come quietly, the criminal must believe that if he doesn't, the police will shoot him dead - if he doesn't believe that, he'll ignore them and make a run for it. In order for the criminal to believe that the police will shoot him dead if he doesn't come quietly, the arresting officer does unfortunately have to be scarier and more intimidating than the average person.
It's so telling that, when illustrating how you think police officers ought to behave, you keep falling back on examples from fictional escapist media aimed at teenagers, rather than, say, examples of real police officers in the real world. (Because the trade-off I'm discussing is equally true everywhere, not just in the US.) But even this example doesn't illustrate the point you're trying to make: comics depicting Superman as an intimidating figure who scares criminals shitless are so common there's a trope about them. You're right in one sense, though: Superman can afford to be polite and courteous to everyone he meets, up to and including violent criminals with sub-machine guns, because he's a superhuman alien who is functionally invulnerable to harm from virtually everyone he meets. This description, you'll note, is not true of police officers, who are only marginally less vulnerable to harm than anyone else (even if you're wearing a bulletproof vest, getting shot in the torso will probably break a rib or two, and getting shot in the head will probably kill you). Because they are vulnerable to harm and would prefer not to expose themselves to unnecessary risks, they must instead rely on threats and intimidation which, once again, means that violent criminals must find them intimidating.
Well, no. But one who remains level-headed - who points the gun and without flinching, delivers the "you're under arrest. I don't want to hurt you, I will if I have to" spiel - seems like a better incarnation of justice, a better keeper of the peace, than one who cultivates the image of a capricious, violent bully. Not even just because that's better for the wrongfully-accused innocent. Consider that where black criminals are concerned, the perception is that cops won't give you a fair shake and will look for any excuse to beat you up or worse, however you behave. I think this incentivizes fight-or-flight over cooperation, while if cops took greater care to cultivate the image of reasonable authority figures who'll play fair if you play fair, petty criminals might be more inclined to surrender peacefully.
It's not true of individual cops, but it's true of The State. Again, cops in my view should come across as gears in a machinery of justice which is transparent, reliable, and inescapable. You should know that shooting a police officer to escape is pointless, not because that particular cop is invulnerable, but because another cop will just get you instead one housing block away. (Though also because that cop will shoot you if he can and you give him reason to. Again, I just don't think that "hair-trigger-tempered bully" vs "ineffectual pussy" is a binary. There are other options here. Would it sound completely ridiculous to say I want cops to be chivalrous?)
But, once again, a police officer who can point his gun at someone and say "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to" is already at least a standard deviation more scary and intimidating than the average person. The "I will if I have to" part of the threat must seem credible - it must be spoken by someone who seems like the kind of person who actually will do what they say if their conditions aren't met. And while a law-abiding citizen might be more easily fooled - if the threat doesn't come off as credible to a hardened criminal who is himself no stranger to violence (and hence is intimately familiar with the difference between people who are actually willing to do violence and those who aren't), then it's useless. If hardened criminals don't consider police officers a credible threat, you might as well not bother having a police force at all.
All of this means that, once again, even a police officer who is polite and courteous and who clearly views violence as a matter of last resort must be found intimidating by hardened criminals to have any hope of doing his job properly. If a police officer says "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to", and a hardened criminal doesn't believe that he'll follow through on the threat, the hardened criminal will ignore the instructions. If hardened criminals, collectively, don't believe that police officers will collectively follow through on their threats, hardened criminals will ignore the police and act with impunity. I'm sorry, but this trade-off is unavoidable.
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