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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20304 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.

You guys have all gotten so into the weeds about the mechanics of the individual shooting that you’re missing the big Fort Sumpter style moves that are going on right now:

•There’s something like 3000 federal law enforcement offers deployed in Minneapolis right now

•Mainstream media, Reddit, and various politicians have incited multiple assassination attempts on these officers

•Relatively photogenic citizen non-felon in gunned down in ambiguous situation, there is now a bloody shirt to waive

•Mayor and Governor are now calling for the removal of all federal agents from Minneapolis

•Governor Walz is now threatening to use the Minnesota National Guard to remove federal agents from the city, setting the stage for conflicting guard federalizations and call up orders

•You will have an armed unit of the state/federal military apparatus actually having to pick a side in a legally ambiguous situation

•You will have armed state/municipal police facing off against armed federal agents with the national guard caught somewhere in the middle

This is not good. No matter who’s fault it is, this is not good.

Don't forget about the Mark Kelly video from a few months ago reminding soldiers that they should think hard about what orders they follow because they need to personally decide if they're legal or not.

I didn't follow that one too closely but it seemed like what he said is just...true, isn't it? Was the issue the implication?

I am not any kind of relevant professional, but my impression is that the military has a pretty strong "You should be following orders unless they are obviously insane" ethos... which seems pretty critical to their functioning as a military. Kelly's wink wink nudge nudge "You should disobey orders that might upset the cast of The View" is probably not the sort of thing that a serious military can tolerate.

I am also not a soldier but my understanding was we actually have a pretty strong tradition of relying on the judgment of ground troops as to whether or not an order is illegal.

I suspect that's less a tradition than just the only thing that's actually practicable. The man on the ground receiving the potentially illegal order is the only one who can decide not to obey it. But I would be shocked if the military actually stressed this as something for soldiers to routinely think about. Even just being peripherally aware of it is a cost in friction for every action you want that solider to take.

I would expect the real world implementation is something like "Here's your mandatory once per year 'don't obey illegal orders' video. Shut up and watch it. If you get an illegal order, you have to refuse to obey it. This is your own responsibility, and if you ever guess wrong you're fucked. And if any of you dumbasses actually questions or refuses orders, you are way more likely to do pushups until you die and then we will court-martial your corpse. Now, never think about this again until next year's mandatory ethics video."

‘By the way, this video is in between our sexual harassment training video and our drug use in the workplace policy video, both of which you will actually be tested on.’

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