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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.
The big difference between them is that the bullet that hit Babbitt was extremely effective. People were trying to break down the doors, one of them got shot, they stopped and lost all steam.
The iceman shooter could've been in the fight mode due to his previous car-related experience, but what are the situations in which shooting the driver is the action that fixes everything? Again, I'm not asking if his action was legally justified (I am leaning towards "yes" as in "yes, he's going to be acquitted"), but if it was the correct one.
Let's imagine there was no question whether he could dodge the car or not, that he was right in front of the grille. What would shooting Good have improved in this situation? It wouldn't have stopped the car, it wouldn't have saved him, it wouldn't have allowed her to escape justice. It could only prevent Good from going full Carmageddon on the rest of the team, which is not what she was trying to do.
It could have minimized the time a friend of his would get dragged, if he got stuck the same way he did in the other incident.
I can agree that with perfect hindsight he shouldn't have shot her, but that argument strikes as kinda insane. How was he supposed to have perfect hindsight in the moment it was happening?
He wasn't, but the point of discussing whether what he did was optimal in hindsight is, IMO, to come up with a consensus that can be drilled into other LEOs so that they act more optimally if they ever find themselves in an analogous situation in the future. This is a high-profile case; whether the consensus emerges as "it was a good idea to shoot Good" or "in an idea world he should have jumped out of the way/whatever" can be expected to have some influence on cops' gut reactions when they find themselves in similar predicaments.
There is no such thing as “optimal”. It comes down to whether you think obstructing ICE is good.
I am pro-shooting because it reduces obstruction and reduces future crime.
You might be right, but this is a massive assumption.
There's a world where she becomes a martyr and people rally around her image to protest ICE even harder in response.
I'm not sure what world we're in, but the outcomes of such things is not that easy to guess off rip.
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Well, no. By "analogous situations in the future" I meant things of the shape "armed LEO thinks that a hitherto-non-murderous civilian is suddenly about to ram them with a car", whatever the identity and motivation of the civilian (and indeed, whichever law-enforcement unit the officer belongs to).
Also, with respect, you reasoning seems like a textbook example of terrorism in the original French Reign of Terror sense. "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the state was justified in killing this particularly citizen; so long as the killing frightens other civilians away from non-lethally obstructing state action in the future, then it was justified" is a very dark road.
I prefer my dark road to anarchy. Not taking the dark road means 1% of the population deciding they don’t want something can cancel the ability of the government to do anything. A hecklers veto.
And we are struggling with this in a lot of places. Shooting one blue haired lesbian now lets ICE do their job. Honestly probably saves a billion in lost ICE man-power hours. It’s just a good trade.
This is a very silly false dichotomy: you are assuming the conclusion that "kill Mrs Good, possibly unjustly" is the only way to curb the problem of excessive obstructive protesting, creating a binary choice between human sacrifice and anarchy run amok. In fact, I don't believe that killings intended to create mass terror are the only way to curb obstructionism, if that is what you want to do - let alone that it is the most effective one. That's the whole crux of the debate, and you just whizz past it.
What are my other options?
Killing a few obstructors feels like it will solve the obstruction problem to me. Honestly there is a meme going around now where a “solves the problem button exists” and then everyone says these reasons I don’t care about will be a problem for not pressing it. I think I can just press this button.
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