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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18411 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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A woman in Minneapolis has been killed in an altercation with ICE. I don’t really trust any of the narratives being spun up. Here are two three angles:

Angle 1

Angle 2 [Twitter] [youtube]

Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)

This is actually a fairly discussed type of shooting. Law enforcement confronts a person in a vehicle, the LEO positions himself in front of the vehicle, the person in the vehicle drives forward, and the cop shoots the person. Generally, courts have found that this is a legitimate shoot. The idea being that a car can be as deadly a weapon as anything.

Those who are less inclined to give deference to law enforcement argue that fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that usually in these situations the LEO has put himself in front of the vehicle.

I have a long history of discussing shooters in self-defense situations [1] [2] [3] and also one of being anti-LEO. However, I’m softer on the anti-LEO front in the sense that within the paradigm in which we exist, most people think the state should enforce laws, and that the state enforcing laws = violence.

The slippery slope for me: “Fleeing police shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“Resisting arrest shouldn’t be a death sentence”

“If you just resist hard enough, you should be able to get away with it”

People really try to divorce the violence from state action, but the state doesn’t exist without it.

I mean, running from the cops shouldn't be a death sentence, but trying to run them over should be. Not hard to make the distinction.

Remember that "citibike Karen" incident that went viral a while back? Where a group of young black men accused a white pregnant woman of stealing a bike from them? I remember a lot of the response to that, even before it came out it was all bullshit, was "how fucking dumb can you be, how ideologically motivated, that your narrative of events could completely upend what everybody knows about how the world works." Or things to that effect. And they were right.

Now we have an incident where the same people who were making those (ultimately correct) mocking posts have turned around and decided that it was more likely that a mother of three decided to go out in a blaze of glory killing ICE agents with her car, rather than a bunch of twitchy gung-ho goons lit her up with little provocation.

  • -11

Now we have an incident where the same people who were making those (ultimately correct) mocking posts have turned around and decided that it was more likely that a mother of three decided to go out in a blaze of glory killing ICE agents with her car, rather than a bunch of twitchy gung-ho goons lit her up with little provocation.

I mean, you can just watch the video that shows her driving her car directly into a cop. I'm not sure what's "twitchy" and "gung-ho" about believing that the person who just intentionally drove their car into you might intend you harm.

A woman going home from her job, vs a gang of the usual thugs.

A woman going out of her way to go to a protest and disrupt police, vs an officer doing his job.

These are not equivalent.

I think Ashli Babbitt's the easiest case to equivocate to this one and was a substantially worse shoot than this.

I am confused. What is/was your take on citibike Karen?

It's entirely possible, probable even, that she both (a) didn't intend to kill ICE agents, but also (b) provoked them quite seriously. ICE agents have been attacked with vehicles already, so it's not all that unreasonable they would anticipate that possibility, and she accelerated right at one in the process of attempting to flee their traffic stop (already a potential felony).

If ICE thinks it's that likely that someone would try to run them over, they shouldn't be deliberately standing in front of vehicles to try to stop them. That only works and is only safe if they know the driver won't do that.

[NormanRockwellFreedomOfSpeech.jpg] I think it is okay for law enforcement officers to shoot people who are willing to run them over.

Yeah I think it's reasonable department policy to suggest police don't stand in front of cars to reduce their chance of getting run over but on the other hand that doesn't mean attempting to run them over isn't a crime and massive escalation of a scenario.

It's entirely possible, probable even, that she both (a) didn't intend to kill ICE agents, but also (b) provoked them quite seriously.

Yeah, I think that johnfabian is presenting a bit of a false dichotomy here:

it was more likely that a mother of three decided to go out in a blaze of glory killing ICE agents with her car, rather than a bunch of twitchy gung-ho goons lit her up with little provocation.

It looks to me like (1) the woman's intention was to flee in her car; and (2) the ICE agent nevertheless reasonably perceived that he was being attacked either intentionally or knowingly.

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