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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33155 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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someone else has already raised this but should the same charity be extended to James Fields in the Charlottesville attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack).

Well, not anymore, but you could have maintained a charitable stance right up to the end of his trial.

Looking at the case, it's unlikely. Fields plead guilty and admitted to intentionally driving into the crowd with hostile intent, striking dozens of people before fleeing the scene, which even if the hit is accidental, hit and runs are still illegal. He was also found guilty on all charges by a jury.

These don't seem to be directly comparable cases, he had his due process and the public found him in the wrong.

I remember analyzing that at the time. I know those streets in cville. GPS would never take you that way. He chose to drive down that street.

I think if she had hit and killed the officer instead of getting shot and killed shed be getting a murder charge like James Fields.

And if someone had shot James Fields on that street as he was accelerating down it towards a crowd they would have been in the right.

some of the roads were blocked off so GPS would instruct drivers to use a path which was impossible to use which meant people there trying to leave were just turning down roads trying to find ones which weren't blocked off so they could leave; the entire area was a complete mess

fields chose to turn down that road because of the armed group of counter protestors who pointed a gun at him

as he was accelerating down it towards a crowd they would have been in the right

when? when he was going 25mph down the road, when he slowed before the crowd at which point his vehicle was hit by flag or bat, and then he accelerated into the crowd?

it is just not believable that fields wanted to ram anyone let alone ram his way through a crowd until he was already surrounded, had already had a gun pointed at him by a different group of people, went down another street, was surrounded by another group of people, had his car attacked, and then hit the accelerator

sometimes from different people's perspectives, they can each be reasonably "in the right" if they used deadly violence against each other

I feel like this is missing the difference between "these people could rip me from my car and do whatever they want, it's an angry mob, bad stuff has happened before and I could be next" and "ripped from the car and arrested" in terms of threat provided by what is happening outside the vehicle.

Your perspective is missing "I placed myself with a deadly weapon (a car) in a situation where it could be used as a deadly weapon"

Without that caveat I'd say both Fields and this lady have much more defensible reactions with their vehicles.

But vehicles are shitty deadly weapons. They are endangered by people to the sides of the vehicle, but they are deadly against people in front of and behind the vehicle. So self defense is much harder to justify.

Kyle Rittenhouse brought a deadly weapon to a protest and then managed to kill three people only in self defense. Ironically if he had been in a vehicle his body count likely would have been higher and against people in front of the vehicle and not his direct aggressors to the sides of the vehicle.

in terms of threat provided by what is happening outside the vehicle.

In terms of objective threat, sure.

But that's the entire debate in a nutshell: if one suffers from a [perhaps reasonable] expectation that cops are about to black-bag you, and in attempting to flee from them get shot by one who [perhaps reasonably] believes you're going to drive right into him, is it reasonable to suffer death under those circumstances?

Of course, we already have an answer to that: 12 locals and the relevant executive have to agree it isn't reasonable, since either one can [from a subjective standpoint] pardon, and the executive spends political power to do that.

Which is probably what it's going to come down to.

Objectively speaking nothing happened to Fields, even after he killed people, while Good was shot three times. So the threat is definitely different but not in the way you intended, I think.

My assertion is that an agitated mob of protestors is more of a lethal threat outside of a vehicle than cops arresting you is.

You can absolutely alter the threat level by doing things like leaning out of your car and shouting racial slurs, or threatening/assaulting the police with a deadly weapon (potentially by accident in this case, but still). The baseline is important however.

Also, who the administration considers cops to be varies.

In a protestor-friendly administration, the fiery-but-peaceful protestors (who are enforcing the law the administration wished it could have) have qualified immunity while the cops don't; in one that is not so friendly, they do not.

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