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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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After a day of reading and watching videos of the woman killed in Minneapolis yesterday, here are some thoughts:

  1. This iceman was hit by a different car previously.

  2. The woman was cosplaying resistance fighter, not really realizing how dangerous what she was doing actually was.

  3. 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.

  4. it seems reasonable to me that the iceman was looking for retribution for the previous car strike, and she gave it to him.

  5. 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?

He shouldn’t be setting traps, he should by building golden off-ramps to de-escalate.

Granting the argument for a second, I fundamentally disagree, more traps like this should be set up. There should be shit tests the same way the left has tried to cancel and un-employ people with the pronouns shit. They should be forced to put up or shut up for their ideology, where putting up essentially gives the authorities a carte blanche to imprison or use force against them.

Agree. Building “golden” off ramps is just going to incite more of this shit, where people think disrupting police activity is acceptable and then panicked fleeing when they are detained. Even if officers try to comically deferentially deescalate, it’s a fundamentally dangerous scenario to embolden. What happens when a detainee hurts someone or the fleeing driver hits a bystander in their recklessness.

And the whole, find them later and arrest them, is also a joke. First the massive waste of resources and difficulty, second what happens when those involve reckless fleeing. “Officer showed up at their home and they ended up shot” is going to be much worse optics than it happening at the scene

Agree. Building “golden” off ramps is just going to incite more of this shit

Yes, in formulating policy, one needs to keep in mind that these Leftists are not ordinary criminals but rather organized agitators who are there to disrupt, obstruct, and provoke. If an additional "off-ramp" is set up, these protestors will only adjust their tactics so as to dance even closer to the line of full on attacking the government agents.

these Leftists are not ordinary criminals but rather organized agitators who are there to disrupt, obstruct, and provoke

What is the difference from a mob, in practical terms?

What is the difference from a mob, in practical terms?

Let me give you a hypothetical: Suppose that ICE were to implement a policy that if a person is sitting behind the wheel of a running vehicle, and that vehicle is obstructing them, they will not attempt to arrest that person until they have read that person a formal statement and then given the person a chance to calmly drive away. (So that there is a nice "off-ramp" on the path to escalation.) In that case, these protestors will almost certainly adjust their tactics by blocking ICE with vehicles, ignoring any requests to move, waiting for that formal statement, and then driving around the block while other vehicles block ICE, their drivers confident that they can similarly ignore any requests to move.

With a random mob, there is a chance that adding "off-ramps" might actually improve the situation. A random, unprepared person who is asked to disperse by the authorities might actually comply.

Yes, it's true that an off-ramp to escalation could be gamed by protestors. But it seems to me that the situation is already being gamed by the police (or ICE in this case), and that isn't good either, especially since the police can game things that protestors can't.

Yes, it's true that an off-ramp to escalation could be gamed by protestors. But it seems to me that the situation is already being gamed by the police (or ICE in this case), and that isn't good either, especially since the police can game things that protestors can't.

How exactly are the police gaming the situation?

By standing in front of the car, they are creating a situation where fleeing is a threat to their life and therefore they can shoot someone who is fleeing.

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