This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
After a day of reading and watching videos of the woman killed in Minneapolis yesterday, here are some thoughts:
This iceman was hit by a different car previously.
The woman was cosplaying resistance fighter, not really realizing how dangerous what she was doing actually was.
It is unambiguous given the videos that she did try to hit the officer with her car, but just barely, and seems to have backed off immediately when her tires slipped on the ice.
it seems reasonable to me that the iceman was looking for retribution for the previous car strike, and she gave it to him.
Shooting her would have had no effect on his safety, even if she had gotten traction. They were at “point blank” range.
All in all I think everybody here is a victim of the current evil in our society. A woman in a gay relationship with a recently deceased husband, in a new city, is being fed a constant stream of propaganda. I can imagine the state of mind if this person, and it isn’t pleasant.
She decided to try and help, which is good, but was essentially a pawn, or unknowing martyr for political power struggles I doubt she understood. A comparison could be a child soldier/suicide bomber.
The iceman: I expect better than this. Unlike the woman, acting on pure propaganda fueled adrenaline, he is supposed to train for this. He also interacts with these people daily. He should be thinking rationally here, and the rational move is to just get out of the way, not walk in front of the car of a neurotic woman screaming at you. He is legally, technically in the clear, but this was immoral. Hes basically exploiting a series of laws and norms to allow him to “innocently” kill a woman as a form of retribution. This is akin in my mind to entrapment of some form. The iceman sets up a series of traps, and just waits for an untrained, trigger, fight or flight woman to fall into one of them. He shouldn’t be setting traps, he should by building golden off-ramps to de-escalate.
Unfortunately the same which gripped both the woman and the shooter is gripping everybody forming an opinion online around this. nyTimes put out am [absurd] “forensic analysis” and determined she was trying to escape, which will never be questioned by the blue tribe ever. We will forever live in the reality where an iceman killed a woman in cold blood on Jan 7th 2026 in Minneapolis.
I don’t think this will metastasize into Floyd 2.0, mostly because the woman was white, but also because of the weather. We’ll see how this weekend plays out though.
A final question: will the shooter be charged with a state crime in Minnesota and will he be able to avoid that charge? Could we run into a Chauvin type situation here?
It is unambiguous that the officer was in the way of the car, it is not unambiguous that it was done with the intent to hit him. In a stressful panic filled moment where her attention was on the guys directly to the left of her, it is quite plausible she just didn't notice him get into that position to begin with.
This slowmo is probably the best thing for it yet. Where do you think her attention was focused? Probably on the masked man trying to reach into her car, and not the guy who was walking in front.
Likewise, he probably wasn't thinking of "revenge". He is just walking there on his phone, sees the car start to pull towards him and he panics too and pulls out his gun and shoots. Because if he wasn't panicking and was thinking through every movement, then he's an idiot for thinking shooting the driver would slow down/stop a car instead of using those precious seconds moving his body out of the way.
Edit: Actually, turns out there is video evidence from the front of it now too https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jbq98aqF794?si=JPc0rc7f7RQbuIf1 the guy literally just walks in front of the car as she's already pulling away and her wheels are turned towards the right away from him.
Yeah, I don't think was this intentional from her. She was distracted and in panic by the men grabbing at her and he seems like an idiot too busy focusing on his phone to think "is it stupid to walk in front of a car?"
Had the vehicle not moved, the spot the officer stopped moving would not have been in front of the vehicle. If you go frame by frame you can see he stops in the area covered by the tree. If you compare that to the angle of the car before it starts moving, if it moves straight forward it would not hit that spot.
I think it's pretty clear the woman did not begin backing up the war with the intention of running someone over.
I also think it's clear the officer did not deliberately position himself in front of the car with the intention of stopping the vehicle.
Considering the officer's previous experience of being run over by a car in a previous incident, it's possible he entered into a fight response, and in response he took out his gun to shoot at a perceived threat. But in reality she wasn't trying to hit an officer, she was in a moment of panic trying to run away from the officer that grabbed the vehicle's door.
It's important to note this all happens in a matter of seconds. There's a lot of analysis about what we can see from behind the car being able to rewind and watch what happened frame by frame. In contrast there is very little analysis about what the situation looked like from the perspective of the officer that took the shot (partially because there is still no footage from the officer's POV).
Stephen Crowder has an attempt at an analysis, although I find it a bit lacking and the positions to be off, but I think the key point he attempts to tackle is general correct, in that the officer has no vision of the direction of the wheel of the vehicle.
Now there could be an argument made about what the officer should've done as soon as the car starts moving backwards. I think my instinctual response would actually to walk backwards, which would actually put me MORE in the path of the car, but it's also possible this may have caused my figure to be more clearly in front of the car and maybe the woman wouldn't have accelerated forward to begin with.
Regardless, I think any analysis assuming he was trying to walk in front of the car is incorrect. I think there can be discussion to be had about his reaction once the car starts moving, but again this happens in a matter of seconds and I'm giving the officer some leeway here considering his previous experience of being run over. (There is also some potential discussion to be had about how someone would react if they had previously been in an incident and how fit that makes them to continue doing their job).
I think it wasn't a great shoot (especially for general optics), but also the officer was in a position where it's reasonable for him to say he perceived mortal danger (which was most likely contributed to by his earlier vehicular incident) which justifies the shot. But if people are going to make a policy of borderline-legal obstructionism of ICE at every turn that's inherently going to increase the surface area for incidents like this to occur
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link