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 -
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.
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.
Yes, well, ask Robespierre how that went. He might find it difficult to answer without his head, but you could ask. Ruling through fear - through actual fear, as opposed to reliable justice where punishment is meted out to the guilty in a predictable and orderly way - has not historically produced stable, long-term outcomes. If you make your government out to be made up of loose cannons who just might go nuts and kill you for sneezing at them, so watch it… you will only succeed in incentivizing the population to stay out of your way in the short term while plotting their very best to remove you ASAP.
If you want to solve the obstruction problem, you can actually arrest and prosecute people for obstruction, en masse, in an orderly, lawful, consistent way. A government which gives in to the temptation to murder random dissidents pour encourager les autres loses its mandate in a way that one which simply prosecutes crimes that are actually on the books in a scrupulous way does not.
(Of course, all of this is without getting into the thing where killing random people to create a state of terror, you know, falls petty squarely within what 99% of human beings would consider evil. I don't feel like getting into that would be a useful direction for this conversation, but it bears repeating.)
I'm going to argue against this because I think it's a good shoot, but I don't want Opt-out's position representing mine.
It is reasonable to believe that someone who is obstructing lawful actions (as in, ICE) should be placed under arrest. It is also reasonable to have to use lethal force against someone resisting arrest (not in all circumstances, but in circumstances where they will be hurting others, or where they is reasonable cause to believe that they will hurt others).
I believe that if someone is going to ignore the cops' orders to get out of the vehicle, then drive into a cop afterwards, a reasonable and predictable consequence of this is that they end up shot. I believe that ICE had the right to be there, as immigration and border enforcement is a federal affair. Given that ICE is not receiving on the ground assistance from state police, I believe the best strategy they can do is arrest people who are in directly in the way. In this case, it ended in tragedy; the fault lies with the woman who had numerous off ramps to stop this situation, but chose to pursue it to the bitter, predictable end.
tl;dr - Murdering dissidents is bad, no one should aspire to that. Arresting people who are directly in the way of lawful action is good. Some percentage of arrests will end up in deaths, which is bad, but can't be avoided without preventing arrests from working at all.
Oh, I don't take anything you say here to constitute "arguing against me", really. I was very much reacting to Opt-out's premise that it would have been a good shoot even if the specific circumstances did not objectively require lethal force specifically because it would have a chilling effect on other would-be obstructionists. That is the position which seemed to me to be ghoulish, extremist, and impractical. I happily recognize that this is not what the average defender of the shoot believes, and certainly, I would find the notion that Jonathan Ross shot Good for anything even resembling that reason to be farcically unlikely.
(As to the facts of the case: we part, slightly, in that I am somewhat less convinced than you that this was a situation where, in hindsight, lethal force was in fact warranted. Or to put it another way, it seems very likely to me that in the world where Ross doesn't shoot, no one dies at all. Of that, I am something like 70% confident. With a much lesser threshold of confidence, let's say 30%, I suspect that there are lessons to be drawn from that first observation, which, if taken to heart by LEOs going forward, may save lives should similar incidents occur. Even if I'm right about both those points, however, I still wouldn't call this a "bad shoot" in the sense that Ross should be disciplined for it. Some percentage of split-second judgemental calls will be wrong in hindsight, that doesn't make the cops in question murderers.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link