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The definition of a scissor statement (or event) is that both sides are very confident in opposite interpretations. What you are quoting is falling on one side, and you are very confident in your interpretation. Thank you for representing that perspective. Let's start with your last paragraph.
From my perspective, my political philosophy is very much not defined by empathy. I try to look at the system: motivations for behavior, what people on each side are thinking, what our society has decided is right to do (via tradition and via the law). I was raised to believe that Justice should be blind; the tragedy in Minnesota should be no more or no less tragic and no more or less justified if a middle-aged, childless man was driving and a mother of three was shooting. (In practice I admit that I do value mothers' lives above childless mens' lives.)
I also recognize that people are irrational in the moment and have their own interpretations of events. From the driver's perspective, she was fleeing an attempted kidnapping and probably didn't see the officer. Fleeing was irrational. From the officer's perspective the agents had initiated an arrest, the suspect was fleeing, and the car was coming at him (and he had been dragged by a car before). Shooting was irrational.
Lets start with where we agree:
However, there are some things that you/your video deemphasize which I think are very important.
Also, I believe it is relevant to quash some of the hysteria about ICE intentionally killing protestors:
The mirror to your focus on children and stuffed animals is the legalistic perspective, which shows we have an individual fleeing arrest in commission of a federal felony, who strikes one of the arresting officers with their car. At low speed and probably out of negligence, but legally that's an assault.
So I find that I probably have to agree to disagree with you about whether the officer was justified in the moment or should be charged with a crime.
There is a strong incentives-based counterargument here. If activists find that they can use their vehicles to block ICE, and ICE officers cannot cross paths with those vehicles when they are in "drive" (or go behind them when in "reverse"), then activists will use their knowledge of these rules to more effectively impede ICE. If activists learn they can drive away instead of being arrested, they will flee arrest in their vehicles. If activists are legally permitted to accelerate vehicles toward ICE officers and ICE officers have a duty to get out of the way (and are not allowed to retaliate), then we are incentivizing activists who intentionally use their vehicles to scatter ICE agents. This seems like very dangerous behavior.
Finally, there are several things you emphasize which just don't matter:
Phenomenal post
Great and balanced takes, and excellent synthesis of the discussion so far.
This is, in my opinion, the penultimate output of this conversation, and pretty much everything said after it is shit-flinging
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I am sure it is a reason, but also sure that it is not the only reason.
I assume that perhaps 1% of the population believe in their heart of hearts that it is good if cops are killed on general principle, and perhaps 5% believe the same about Trump's ICE. Luckily, most of these people are also cowards not willing to die or go to prison for their moral beliefs. I am sure that there is some story somewhere of an ICE agent being identified by violent anti-ICE activists and then tracked down and murdered while off duty, just like some criminals will id and kill the cop who arrested them, but if there was a general trend of catfishing and murdering ICE agents, I think we would have heard about it.
I think the bigger reason is that a third of the population despises Trump's ICE without actively plotting to murder them. To be fair, they are easy to despise: sent into states not selected for their high fraction of illegals, but for voting for Harris in 2024 (because Trump is vindictive af), arresting kids in schools, sometimes arresting foreign-looking citizens by mistake, etc pp. (A further third believes that ICE is doing the most important job in the country, and a further third is mostly meh, I guess.)
Some of the despisers might actually commit minor illegal acts towards identified ICE agents, like spitting in their coffee, but most will probably just treat you like if they had seen your blood group tattoo -- refuse to do business with you, shun you socially (and invite their friends to do likewise), perhaps offer your liberal parents their condolences on Facebook for having a child with such a career. Entirely legal.
With the number of protesters (legally) filming ICE on the job, virtually every ICE agent working in public would be identified in short order. And the SJ left can be just as petty and vindictive as Trump. With ML, programming a website 'iceassholescanner.example' which takes random snapshots of civilians and tells you if they have worked for ICE during Trump II is easily within the capabilities of the wokes.
The relatively high salary (considering the length of the training) is definitely meant as a compensation for 'a third of the country will shun you'. But if you operate masked, you can have your 100k$/year cake and eat it too, all for the low cost of matching some Daesh aesthetics.
I am sure that most ICE agents delude themselves into thinking that they are hiding their face to foil murderous Antifa terrorists who would otherwise try to murder them in their sleep, but realistically, most of the utility is in the woman you will be dating in five years not getting urged by her girlfriends to dump you for having been ICE.
**
This leaves the moral question which life choices should be made public and which life choices should be kept private (if the individual desires that). I will admit that I have a bit of trouble fitting my liberal sentiments into general principles here, so the following is more ad hoc than a long held deep belief system. E.g. frequenting a gay night club should be probably kept confidential (excepting sex partners, and possibly excepting extreme cases of hypocrisy), medical records (including abortions, births, gender surgery) should be kept private, as should be membership in less political religious organizations (e.g. the RCC). For more political organizations, e.g. the KKK (also religious in a way, I think), the John Brown Gun Club, the GOP, the Dems, the DSA, I think outing members is not immoral.
For professional careers, I tend to think that putting people on lists is generally morally permissible. So the person who shot one porn home video which got leaked to the internet is not on the list, but if someone wants to make a list of all porn models which have produced lesbian/fetish/interracial content, I don't think it violates their privacy. Or if someone wants to make a list of lawyers who have ever defended a cop or an accused rapist or worked for big oil for some reason. I guess this means that the anti-abortion radicals can have their lists of gynecologists.
Additionally, I strongly believe that people who employ violence, either particularly (accused criminals, people acting in self-defense) or professionally for the state (cops, soldiers) or third parties (security services) should be a matter of public record. Social disapproval is a useful tool to deter immoral violence, after all.
What do you think of Hollywood blacklists of Communists during the 1950s?
I am not deeply familiar with McCarthyism.
Basically, given my stance, I would say that if a studio decided that it did not want to hire commies, that would be fine. However, if all studios decided on that, then I would suspect that this is not because their execs are fierce anti-communists, but because the government had told them that they could do this either the easy way or the hard way, and they chose to comply rather than being singled out for tax or fire safety audits or whatever other regulatory repercussions a state might visit upon a company it wants destroyed.
It is not dissimilar to the government telling social media companies to censor COVID misinformation 'or else'.
There are positions which are genuinely so unpopular that most people will prefer not to do business with you, and it is ok if they collectively decide that. It is different if someone is coercing them to do so, especially if it is government.
If someone wanted to refuse to serve blacks at their lunch counter, would it be okay with you as long as this was not legally required?
Civil right legislation aside, I think that in many cases the market would solve this problem to everyone's satisfaction.
If you have five food trucks, and one of them is run by a KKK member who only wants to serve White people (and not the wrong White people, either), I think the market can solve this. Likely he will mostly be serving burgers to Neonazis, and the four wiser food truck owners will pick up his mainstream customers.
There are of course situations where a market failure is more likely. If our KKK member has leased the only cafeteria at a workplace, or is the only decent ISP in an area, they might deserve more regulation. (Things get messier if there is a prevailing sentiment of customers distorting the market, like "places willing to serve Blacks are low-class". Or if the government leans on businesses, but I already mentioned that.)
I think most businesses are aware that preemptively banning outgroups means opening a can of worms which they do not want opened. "We do not preemptively ban anyone" is an easy Schelling point to defend. Once you saying you will not serve people who are convicted of sex crimes against children, that is as good as saying that you are positively willing to serve people who have committed sex crimes against adults, or non-sexualized violence against children, or murder, or large scale fraud. And once they also ban all of these, people will demand they ban people with BLM or MAGA outfits, and no matter what they decide they will lose a fraction of their customer base.
Okay, now backport this to your original idea, which is that it's fine to blacklist ICE employees, and to reveal their identities so they are easier to blacklist. What if this makes it hard for the ICE employee to participate in large swaths of society, just like it does in the "KKK members lease everything" scenario or the "customer sentiment" scenario? How exactly is "places willing to serve blacks are low-class" different from "places willing to serve ICE employees are fascist collaborators"?
(Except that you can probably tell who is black without having to reveal their identity first.)
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Let me go in reverse order because I think that orders it best in terms of most to least serious objections. But I should say first that I greatly appreciate your comment and how you laid it out.
Frankly, I don't. I don't trust them to present anything appropriate to a Grand Jury at all! Four other people IIRC have been killed by ICE just this year; none of them have been charged as of writing for anything. I don't think that's actually a huge gotcha, these things take time, but we've also seen some shocking incompetence out of Kash Patel's FBI when it comes to legal charging decisions so I think there's some grounds for it.
The other and worrisome point is that I'm getting the sense some people genuinely seem to believe that there shouldn't be any consequences at all - i.e. don't even bother to review it or charge him or anything. It's strongly implied when comments show up - like above this post a short ways - that essentially say "she deserved it" and then say nothing else.
This is important, because it's a hint to state of mind. It also wasn't just swearing. He (and I think after reflection it's almost certainly him) called her a "fucking bitch" immediately after. The vibe is "you deserved it", not "oh shit I almost died". Those two things to me don't actually have that much overlap.
Honestly I think the jury might still be out on this. There are some pretty callous videos circling around, including ICE agents pulling their guns out in situations where they really shouldn't. But even so, we have to think about incentives, you're right. What message does it send to ICE agents and cops that the administration thinks zero consequences are ever justified? That's the message being sent. That's terrible. We should be emphasizing higher standards, and under no stretch of the imagination were Ross' actions the highest standard.
Specific to this case, I should mention that Ross pulls his gun out almost immediately at the moment she comes to a stop and switches the gear to Drive and out of reverse. Immediately. I think that point is underemphasized. It strongly suggests that he's pulling the gun to avoid her leaving, not because he's in danger, because at the point of drawing the gun (not firing yet!) the car is just barely beginning to move forward.
I don't think it is, because he was hit by an SUV. It isn't possible with the information we have to differentiate between demonizing her in his head because she was an activist and demonizing her in his head because she hit him with her SUV.
I agree. Law enforcement should not be made "absolutely immune", and activists should obey the law. Frankly, it seems to me that left-wing orgs are not being properly educatng their members on the law. In the past year I have been told (via chain emails) that "an ICE "warrant" is not a warrant," to "not open your door to an officer", and that "you have the right to remain silent". These are all technically true, but if an immigrant is legally in the US, their residency is usually conditional on cooperation with immigration authorities, and those here on conditional permanent residency are required to open their home for inspection by immigration authorities to maintain their status. Let me say that again. Left-wing orgs are giving out advice which if followed will result in immigrants losing their green cards, because it will inconvenience ICE.
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Ok, let's play this game:
So, when exactly is he allowed to react to the woman driving a 1.5-ton machine towards him? Half a second later? A second later?
There's obviously no point in time that won't make you go "ah! Of course! This PROVES he's a murderer!"
This is damning for your character, not his.
If he already had his gun out, that would be an unnecessary escalation unjustified by law enforcement policy. If he pulled out his gun on approach, ditto. Is there any reason to conclude otherwise? There's a reason cops during traffic stops do not pull their gun out on everyone, every time. I do not claim that he wanted to kill her anywhere. It's possible though. It's also not the point I was making in the OP. At any rate, there is, yes, clearly a point with sufficient evidence where pulling out a gun on someone driving at you is justified. Why would I think any different? Don't play slippery slope games unless you're actually alleging something.
hopefully-quick edit: I'm also not, and nowhere did, claim that we have indisputable proof that she was murdered. We had some evidence that cuts both ways. We have enough evidence in favor of "murder" that we should at least be discussing punishment. And more relevant to the original point, we have enough evidence that Ross did at least something wrong to be, again, at least discussing punishment.
I should add that my mental model of police is basically very, very rarely would they ever deliberately kill people. Somewhat common is killing people due to bad priors, however, partially due to the nature of the job but also partially due to flaws in ICE/law enforcement. I should reiterate that the standard is not "murder or not murder". It's "did he/they do something wrong" or "they were 100% innocent". The former is grounds for reasonable disagreement. The latter is what the OP discusses as being ridiculous and worrisome.
This is a lie. You said:
I don't care that your defence is going to be "sigh, apply some critical thinking skills -- that's from the transcript; I didn't literally say it!"
No. You dropped a massive transcript in your OP as if it were your own words. You said it expressed things better than you could yourself. You said you "vibe" with it. You presented it as a something you fully endorsed.
You did not go "actually I disavow the part where he says it was obviously a murder". The rules say to speak plainly. If you're going to drop a transcript with maximally inflammatory claims that you don't actually agree with, and then later go "b-but I never literally said those words!", then people are going to assume you're fucking with them.
This is some god-of-the-gaps bullshit. Any part of the transcript that becomes indefensible or inconvenient -- "oh, I never actually said it". All the other parts -- well, they get to stand as part of your argument, until the exact part where you need to discard them and pretend you never held them at all.
This is deceitful.
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"This is so obviously a murder" means that it is, in fact, indisputable that she was murdered.
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The vibe is "oh shit I almost died because someone hit the accelerator while I was standing directly in front of their car". I have to say, I think you're demanding an impossibly high standard of behaviour from police officers. It's one thing to say that police officers should endeavour to remain courteous and professional to the best of their ability. It's quite another to say that an officer cursing in the middle of a stressful situation, literally seconds after he was very nearly seriously struck by a car, is dispositive proof that he's a vicious murderer. And as I pointed out elsewhere, it's entirely possible that Ross didn't even know that Good was dead at the time he spoke.
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Seems to be she'd lived in Minneapolis for a while (multiple months iirc) and hadn't changed plates. I can't complain about that, I delayed changing plates quite a while to not pay new state taxes.
OT, but are state taxes significant? Were you trying to synchronize to insurance renewal dates or something?
Not that significant, I just dislike them. I prefer usage taxes.
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I remember when Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with crossing state lines by the Reddit Department of Justice in 2020. I'm half tempted to go kick the hornets nest with a similar comment about Ms. Good.
I originally read Rittenhouses' "crossing state lines" to be about "crossing state lines with a firearm", which would have potentially put him in legal jeopardy. But many uses were also implying malicious intent. You're right that the same rhetoric could be used here: "she crossed state lines with a weapon to attack ICE!" would be a maximally uncharitable interpretation of her actions.
I agree, it's not a good argument. I would only do it to piss redditors off, which I can't stop myself from doing from time to time. Shameful.
There was a legal basis to them arguing Rittenhouse's crossing. It was just absurd how many times I read "he crossed state lines" in 2020.
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