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I'm starting a new top-level regarding trigger happy Iceman meets wine mom in Minneapolis because, rather than debating the videos, I'd like to focus more on a compare and contrast to get a true culture war angle. People have made an analogy to the woman who died on Jan 6th but I don't think it lands strongly enough. Permit me to cut closer to the bone, friends.
The only fatality on Jan 6th was an unarmed woman being shot by a federal agent[1] because she was opposing what she considered an illegitimate government action. Liberals tearlessly argued this is what happens when you Fuck Around while conservatives argued she was righteously Resisting (TM).
Today the players are the same but the jerseys are flipped. Liberals cry with so, so many tears of empathy for the dead woman in the car while conservatives argue they were obstructing a legitimate state function and put the officer in danger and this is what happens when you Fuck Around.
In broad strokes it's clear neither side cares about democracy or rule of law per se. Conservative faith in rule of law evaporates when it says no to Trump and liberal empathy for the scrappy civil disobedients dries up when it's a Chud. Both sides are happy with mob violence when it's their side doing it and cry tyranny whenever they Find Out.
These are qualitatively different events. The Babbitt question is about whether the police officer was justified in killing someone for tresspassing non-violently because (a) previously the protesters were violent, (a2) though they weren’t violent upon gaining entry into their desired locations, (b) pursuant to the security of VIP politicians, (b2) though the politicians had already begun evading minutes before, (b3) and despite no imminent danger to any politician. As we do not ordinarily kill on sight those who are trespassing while non-violently protesting, it is the politician’s security which is the pertinent detail.
In the ICE officer’s case, he was in the process of being hit by an accelerating car, and arguably excused for believing he would be run over in the center of the car rather than the side.
The Babbitt situation involved someone breaking a window and then Babbitt attempting to climb through the window. Breaking and entering is not usually part of nonviolent protest.
Babbitt was already in the building with Capitol Police standing next to her as the window portion of the door was broken, doing nothing.
Personally, I haven't been in a situation where I found myself mistaking a broken window for an invitation to climb through the window and enter. Have you had this happen to you?
I've never stood next to a police officer as other people damaged property, no.
But if that was the case and the officers approved of such conduct, as they did, I would think further similar actions are also sanctioned.
Ah, but that's not what I asked. The question is whether someone can reasonably confuse a broken window for an invitation.
Approved? Did they give the guy a handshake and $100 for breaking the window?
If you try to go through a window (already the sort of thing more often done by criminals rather than normal people), you're told there's a guy with a gun on the other side, the guy on the other side tells you not to go through the window - seems hard to believe that you thought you were invited to crawl through that window.
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I think if 1/6 had been a left-wing riot, the response to this would be "breaking a window shouldn't be a death sentence!" and the left would memorialize the incident as "Ashli Babbitt - murdered by the government over a broken window," and would totally ignore every single other piece of important context around the incident. We are seeing this phenomenon happen right now with the ICE shooting in Minneapolis.
I say this not to suggest that Babbitt was a bad shoot, but to point out that the facts of the case simply don't matter all that much as far as politics are concerned. Folks have no problem lying to themselves and everyone else in order to create a good martyr as necessary to their cause.
We don't need to rely on hypotheticals, we can just look at recent examples of other legislature stormings, such as in Hong Kong, Nepal, Mexico, Bangladesh etc. The answer is that it just doesn't get widespread condemnation unless Red Tribe does it.
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Conversely, if Minneapolis had been ATF "rounding up illegal gun owners" and shot someone in a car with a MAGA bumper sticker, all other facts remaining the same...
If it had been ATF doing it
They would not have been in danger from any car
They would have shot at the wrong car
They would have missed.
But even if all these things were false and things were mutatis mutandis just as in the Minnesota situation, the bulk of the right wing would not have supported the driver. That a lot of "moderates" have a headcanon that the right and the left are the same in this does not make it so.
It is true that some of the right is rather consciously trying to become more that way, since Jan 6, since the Trump assassination attempt, and especially since Charlie Kirk's assassination. But it's a fairly small part and it mostly hasn't taken.
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Yeah this is the point to me. I'm not arguing that Babbitt was an illegal shooting, but typically the way the leftwing litigates shootings is more vibe-based than giving a single shit about whether the shooting was legal in the current structure. The Good Shooting I believe a decent amount of people just focus on how bad the optics are and either aren't going to care or will have long moved on by the time that the police officer is absolved. The optics on Babbitt were bad enough (Unarmed woman posing zero threat getting gunned down on camera) that her Portland equivalent would be a gigantic national martyr.
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I want to pay someone to make a huge mural of Good and Babbit hugging each other in heaven, just to see the reaction. It's also just a warm and de-escalating thing to do. (I mean, in theory.)
I think the hard part will be finding the artist willing to do it. Sounds like a job for (ugh) AI.
Managed it: https://x.com/DainFitzgerald/status/2010219703877431412
It's beautiful. Almost makes the cost of RAM worth it.
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That's a great point! I'm whipping one up on Gemini now. Good's likeness isn't so, well, good, so far.
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