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Notes -
New footage of ICE shooter
Forgive another high-level post but the body cam (or cell phone?) footage of the cop who shot has been released by AlphaNews and this may significantly change perceptions of what happened (to those willing to have perceptions changed):
https://x.com/alphanews/status/2009679932289626385?s=46
To my eyes it appears that:
The ICE agent is clearly hit by her car and goes down
The ICE agent was not standing in front of her car but walking from one side to another
The driver’s wife is not passively observing but actively shouting at the agents (this should undermine the idea that the driver and her wife were somehow neutral people accidentally caught up in everything)
Perhaps most importantly, but maybe most open to interpretation, it appears to me that the driver looks directly at the ICE agent before driving forward. From this bodycam angle, her face is clearly shown looking directly ahead where the officer is seconds before she moves her car forward.
I suppose a lot of new interpretations are possible, but to me this video footage clearly debunks several going interpretations I have seen proposed. At the very least, maybe reasonable people can agree that the cop did not shoot the driver in cold blood from the side window.
I would also not be surprised to see the idea spread that this new video is AI.
Edit: per corrections from others below, this is not bodycam but cell phone footage (my mistake as it’s clearly even labeled as such) and this explains why it tumbles at the end of the video. Thanks!
I don't find this video particularly clarifying.
I am generally avoiding the discourse around this because I find it so tiresomely tribal and bad-faith on all sides. Rightists screeching that of course Good had it coming for (rationalizations/justifications-but-basically-because-she's-Other-Tribe), leftists screeching that this was murder because (ICE-is-fascist).
It's remarkable that people can look at very short video clips and conclude very firmly and confidently what was in the minds of both the driver and the ICE agent(s). I've watched all the videos from various angles and I have opinions, but I do not think anyone can honestly claim they know what the intentions, state of mind, or even level of awareness of any of the parties involved was. I think it's entirely possible that any of the following could be true (though I have opinions about their relative probability, I do not believe anyone who claims certainty, I think you're just matching your priors to a convenient conclusion):
(a) Good was intentionally trying to run the ICE agent over.
(b) Good panicked and hit the accelerator without thinking.
(c) Good was just trying to drive away and didn't even register there was an agent in the way.
(d) The ICE agent legitimately believed he was in mortal danger and shot someone he thought was trying to kill him.
(e) The ICE agent was a poorly-trained thug who shot a woman who defied his authority.
(f) This was a tragedy with no bad guys, Good panicked in a situation she shouldn't have been in, the ICE agent reacted on an adrenaline dump.
(f) Other variations.
Before your knee flexes and you start slamming your keyboard to argue any of these points, read again what I said: all of these are possible. I am not saying they are all equally likely. But if you say no, (a) or (b) or (c) or (f) are impossible or implausible, you're not being honest. You don't know. You can't read anyone's mind and you can't analyze what was going in in a split-second of video from "eye contact" or a swerve or which direction someone jumped or what someone shouts or mutters.
I have concluded that almost everyone (including our Motte effort-posters) forms a conclusion based not on actually trying to analyze videos and consider evidence, but rather, how they feel about ICE, ICE protesters, immigrants, and Trump. You probably think it was a good shoot if you hate immigrants and lesbian protesters, and you'd think it was a good shoot if there was video of the ICE agent literally walking up behind her and shooting her in the back of the head. You probably think it was a bad shoot if you hate Trump and ICE, and you'd think it was a bad shoot if there was video of Good shouting "I'm going to kill you!" before gunning it straight at a group of ICE screaming for her to stop.
Two observations about this particular video:
Come on man, surely you’ve seen leftists presenting a story like this: “Lady and her partner were on the way home from dropping off their kid at school. They make a wrong turn and completely accidentally end up in the middle of an ICE operation. Agents begin shouting confusing orders including “turn around.” Lady is panicked, tries to comply and do a 3 point turn, agent deliberately positions himself in front of her car and murders her.”
This is an extraordinarily popular narrative online and this convincingly debunks every one of those points. This isn’t some “two screens” rationalist bullshit, this is like Nicholas Sandmann, there is a straightforward lie and there is the truth.
You can still accept this video and say the shot was unjustified, but to say this doesn’t clarify anything just isn’t true
Yes, this is what happens when "My outgroup is evil" is straight up not allowed. When you can't just go "Well, they've lied about literally everything the last 15 years of my life... so I'm just going to assume the worst about them this time."
Obviously every narrative about this shooting from the left was going to be a lie. Did we already forget the cloud of bullshit they kicked up attempting to claim the Kirk shooter was MAGA? The weeks people spent here giving time to lies that were obvious immediately, irrefutable days later, and still trying to be "charitable" to obvious liars wondering in here weeks later from new accounts to discuss if Kirk's shooter was actually MAGA.
I'm reminded, ironically, of one of Sam Harris' criticisms of Donald Trump. Which is that, if he tells 1000 lies, just completely thoughtlessly, maybe 10 seconds per lie, and it takes you 2 hours to disprove each one... Donald Trump still wins because he wasted minutes of his life on the effort and you wasted days if not weeks or months.
So this is me weighing in finally. I don't understand why anybody even entertained a leftist narrative when the obvious reality is that this woman chose every step of this encounter, and fucked around and found out. She was not innocent, confused, wrong place wrong time, panicked, any of it. She's a brainwashed lesbian activist who thought she could run down an ICE agent because she's on the right side of history and Democrats have been telling her she can for years now. She doesn't deserve charity, the people creating fog of war do not deserve charity, evil actually exists no matter how much you claim it's against the rules to discuss.
To say nothing of Tim Walz having every appearance of being willing to cross the Rubicon because the Feds are finally going after his fraud kickbacks. Which is rich after having been beat over the head with "Insurrectionist" for 4 years.
There are no offramps or political solutions. It's between you, your God and your conscience your level of involvement in what's coming. I pray that keeping your head in the sand works out for most of you.
So let me ask you two genuine questions (and to forestall any objections or claims that I am trying to "bait" you-which I have never done, contrary to your repeated assertions- I swear that even if you take this opportunity to insult me in whatever fashion you wish, I grant you immunity):
Is it your genuine sincere belief that every single person identified as being "on the left" is an evil liar? That it's literally impossible for anyone to be a Democrat or a liberal and sincere and well-intentioned?
If we allowed some of those anti-MAGA posters who wander in to post like you do, would you be okay with that, or are you explicitly advocating we make the Motte a "leftists fuck-off" space?
Because the point of not allowing people to just post "My outgroup is evil" is not that no evil people exist or that you cannot believe your enemies are evil. The point is that if people just post how much they hate their enemies with no nuance, context, or argument, we will just have people screaming at each other and competing for who can sneer most dramatically - unless we are just all circle-jerking each other about who our enemies are.
I think they do evil. I think at this point to be a Democrat is to be deeply committed to doing evil. The hills Democrats have chosen to die on (castrating children, giving billions in fraud to immigrants of questionable legality, forcing people to take experimental medications, mass censorship) are virtually unrecognizable from the Democrats of 30 years ago. All the good ones left the party and joined the Republican ticket. Which is probably why so many high ranking positions in Trump's administration got filled with former Democrats (RFK Jr, Tulsi).
I have in laws who are deeply committed Democrats, deeply committed to destroying the country. They don't think of it that way. They are hopelessly, and willfully, ignorant of the consequences of their policies. If "Evil" had a version of "without intent" like manslaughter, they'd be that. All the same...
If they were honest. I only care about honesty. They may view me as evil, for caring about my heritage, and wanting it to continue to exist. For not wanting billions of 3rd worlders enshittifying my homeland. For the very fact that my ancestors conquered this nation in the first place. And these are the exact reasons these differences can only be sorted out finally. I cannot exist in their world, and they cannot exist in mine. We are mutually evil to one another. I find their morality an abhorrent inversion of proper morals, and they feel the same. I can recognize this however, and accept that it's all over now but the violence. We cannot coexist.
But only if they are honest. If they stroll in here like Darwin of yore, playing Arguments as Soldiers, refusing to be pinned down, refusing to ever admit what the negative space around their rhetoric is gesturing towards, fuck em.
Which goes straight to it, and you see this over and over and over again. The leftist always calibrates their speech towards maximum fog of war. Among their own it's "Yes, I want to destroy the white race." but then in public it's "Oh why can't we have sympathy for the 65 IQ serial rapist an NGO imported from Africa? He just needs more restorative justice. That 3 year old probably won't even remember what happened to it." Which also goes straight to why LibsOfTiktok went so viral. These people just put all that nonsense out there, under their real ass names, employment in bio, and thought they were the victims when people outside their bubble saw it. Because, like Hillary Clinton famously said, sometimes you have two sets of opinions, a public set and a private set. It was an invasion of privacy to see their private opinions... even when they posted them publicly.
Do you believe your in-laws literally want you dead and your daughter transed?
I suspect not. (If you do- well, I don't know what to say except that must make things tense at Christmas.) This is the problem with such absolute statements.
Wrong question. People love to abstract evil away into mustache-twirling schemes to deliberately do harm, so they never have to face the evil in their own hearts. Evil isn't doing a "paperclip optimizer" routine, but for double mastectomies, it's convincing yourself your cause is so good, that you can, say, lie to promote / defend it because the chuds would """weaponize""" the truth.
What you want to ask in the case of his in-laws is, if his daughter said she's trans and he opposed it, would they hear him out, or write him off as a transphobe? Or for the "want him dead" part: if the cancel mob came after him, would they defend his character, or throw him under the bus (or for a borderline case: squirm like Alec Holowka's sister, hinting at the truth, but refusing to state it outright for fear of the mob going after her as well)?
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No, but they literally keep voting for local politicians who have that as their party platform. They just... I donno, refuse to grapple with that part of things.
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