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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.

There's now an unedited video with context:

https://x.com/JoshEakle/status/2008970977699639681

The other ones kind of gave a different impression; I still think it's, like -- a pretty defensible shoot, but not as good as (say) Rittenhouse.

The guy did in fact dodge the car; some of the other ones make it look like she hit him a bit with the hood. This doesn't seem significant to me, and the first shot he fired was golden (pretty polished draw BTW), but it sure looks/sounds to me like he cranked a couple rounds in the open side window as she's going by, which was probably not a great decision.

I'm now having Binger flashbacks in which he rolls the tape back and forth pointing at blurry items onscreen with a laser pointer and trying to look imposing -- alas, I think the Feds have jurisdiction on this one?

EDIT: Actually that's the same as the youtube version of Angle 2 in @zoink 's post -- I kind of get the impression that the driver may not have even noticed the guy in front until she started forward, which is always a mistake, especially when the guy in your path is an armed cop. Always check that your way is clear before shifting into drive, people!

The other ones kind of gave a different impression; I still think it's, like -- a pretty defensible shoot, but not as good as (say) Rittenhouse.

I agree, but Rittenhouse struck me as being close to superhuman in terms of his split-second judgment and reactions.

It's too bad he's been burned for life and never got a chance to go in the military or police.

Vast majority of military and police members are never gonna have a real livefire incident, and lots of weird edgecases happen.

My dad almost got Court Martialed for breaking ROE 50 years ago for reasons that were partially not his fault but also just kind of messy fog of war.

My dad almost got Court Martialed for breaking ROE 50 years ago for reasons that were partially not his fault but also just kind of messy fog of war.

You seem to have begun telling a story, and then forgot to tell the actual story.

Long story short

My dad was a military electrician driving around the Independent Southern part of a European country famous for its north-south religious divide, as a member of the military forces of their Eastern neighbor. Said Eastern Neighbor had somewhat-condoned listening posts inside the Southern country, and my dad was essentially maintaining those driving around in an unmarked van.

One night he stops in at one concealed in a rural barn and stays for the night, then wakes up at 2AM since he needs to go to the toilet. He leaves the barn and goes into the nearby woods to shit, and in the meantime a small group of locals come up on the guys inside the barn and have them at gunpoint. My dad sneaks back from the woods, grabs the nearest weapon (which was the hunting rifle of the commanding officer of the listening post and filled with hollow point rounds) and then opens fire on the locals after they open fire on the guys inside the barn. He ends up being the only survivor, and once the military police descended on the situation it turned into a huge clusterfuck.

My dad was accused of opening fire/shooting the locals in the back (despite the fact that they clearly fired on the guys inside the post since they're also dead), and of breaking the Geneva Convention due to using hollowpoint rounds (since he'd literally just grabbed the nearest weapon which wasn't his/loaded by him) plus there's a ton of ugly diplomacy around the location and status of this particular incident since it's not inside the country in which this particular police action was supposed to be taking place. He then spends a month or two getting grilled, before eventually being discharged on goodish terms and the court martial not sticking but there was an attempt.