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For some of the people confused about why Minneapolis is such a big deal still, it's not a scissor event, it's a mask off moment and puzzling how some people aren't just reasonably disagreeing, but out of their fucking minds. I don't want to be accused of moving goalposts, so for the purposes of sane (hopefully) discussion, this thread is only intended to make the primary point that Trump, Noem, Vance, are portraying this with what can only be called outright propaganda, fabrications, alternate reality, whatever you want to call it, probably lies. I know that's a word that scares some people here, so I'm using it as a synonym for deceit in this post. Let me repeat that. I'm talking about the Trump administration's official response, and not just that it's inaccurate, but that people echoing it is callous and polarizing in the extreme (the second point). I do apologize by the way for yet another Minneapolis thread.
Sometimes someone else simply says it better. I'm vibing strongly with this video which feels worthy of appearing here. So here's (most of) his words (transcript and own parentheticals, no real edits):
(Showing a NYT overview video, voiceover, picking up around 2:30) The moment the agent fires, he is standing here to the left of the SUV and the wheels are pointing to the right, away from the agent. This appears to conflict with allegations that the SUV was ramming or about to ram the officer. President Trump and others said the federal agent was hit by the SUV, often pointing to another video filmed from a different angle. And it's true that at this moment in this grainy low-resolution footage, it does look like the agent is being struck by the SUV. But when we synchronize it with the first clip, we can see the agent is not being run over. In fact, his feet are positioned away from the SUV. The SUV crashes into a white car parked down the road. A bystander runs toward the collision. The federal agents on scene do not appear to rush to provide emergency medical care. Eventually, the agent who shot the motorist approaches the vehicle. Seconds later, he turns back around and tells his colleagues to call 911. (original video audio:) "Shame. You shot someone. You shot someone." Agents block several bystanders who attempt to provide medical care, including one who identifies himself as a physician. "I'll go check a pulse! -No! -I'm a physician. -I don't care." At the same time, several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene. (End clip) Okay, I think that video makes it so clear that what happened was not the normal course of business for what this officer should have been doing.
This is so obviously a murder. This is so obviously the person with the guns acting outside of the realm of what they are supposed to be doing. And it's very frustrating to me to see people deny like the basic reality I'm seeing with my eyes from multiple angles, from multiple sources. I don't know how to say it clear. So, I want to go through I and and when I say people, I'm really not just talking about random fucking people on Twitter or bots.
There was two things that happened after this action. First, Kristi Noem comes out and says this was an act. This, this right here again. Watch it again and listen with the sound. This woman, mother of three, kids stuffed animal in the car, just dropped her kid off at school, six-year-old, has stickers on the back of her car. This woman is committing an act of domestic terrorism, (shows video) first waving the car by with her hand, then saying, "I'm pulling out." Then screamed at by masked men with guns... Then clearly fleeing. The idea that she 'broke bad' and is attempting to run over and kill the officers is insane. She is clearly trying to flee. Then he kills her. There, there is no I can't imagine not seeing this different way. I think this is a fucking pure Rorschach test. I don't I don't understand people taking this a different way.
So she calls it domestic terrorism. Then Trump said she "violently, willfully, and viciously" ran over the ICE officer. There is no way you could watch that video and say that what she was doing was violently, willfully, and literally trying to kill this ICE officer. An insane thing to say. He even said, "It's hard to believe he [the ICE officer] is alive, but [he's] now recovering in the hospital." I want you to juxtapose that quote from Trump over the actual footage of this officer casually strolling away from the murder. (Shows clip) There, I, there is no way you cannot see this is a lie! There's no way. This is like, this is demonic.
So then this woman comes out and says, (direct quote) "Our officer followed his training and did exactly what he was taught to do." And I looked into this. There is absolutely no way that is true. ICE officers are trained to never approach a vehicle from the front, which this guy did (video shows documents at 6:52). Now, there's a lot of brand new rookie ICE officers who are getting thrown in with almost no training. But this guy, it turns out, was from since 2016, so he's a veteran. He would know never to approach a vehicle from the front, 90° angle. They're also instructed not to shoot at a moving vehicle. Firing at a vehicle will not make it stop moving in your direction. So even all things aside, it's not even smart. It doesn't stop it. Okay. The best thing to do is get out of the way. By the way, once she's shot and killed, the vehicle rolls to the right far away, proving again that it was not even moving in the officer's direction.
(I think this point has been lost in the noise, but it bears repeating: shooting at someone in a car does in now way guarantee that the car will stop, in fact the opposite is obviously true! We even see it here as the vehicle continues accelerating only to crash uncontrolled! So, the ICE officer is not in any way following his proper training here. That's simply a lie.)
Then she said, (direct quote) "You know, people need to stop using their vehicles as weapons. This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to try to kill law enforcement officers is going to stop. And I'm asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it as domestic terrorism because it's clear that it's being coordinated. People are being trained and told how to use their vehicles to impede law." This is fucking insane. The idea that she was a domestic terrorist trained to use her vehicle and not a scared mother of three is fucking crazy, bro. This is her fucking glove box. (Video shows stuffed animals spilling out) It's fucking crazy.
So, you look at the shots. The first shot, you can look at his feet, dude. You can see him right here. He's able to get out of the way of this car, which is the number one priority. Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape if you think the subject is just escaping. You can't use deadly force. Running from the cops is not reason enough to use deadly force. You can only use it if no other reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle, which he already did. He can and did move out of the path of the vehicle. The first shot, he's already out of the way, but by the third shot, it is fucking crazy. That is a kill shot into a fuckin mother's car. The shots one and two could only be justified if no safe avenue of retreat existed. Shot three, the deadly force is only justified while the threat is ongoing. So even if you somehow thought shot one and two were fuckin there, shot three, he's out of immediate danger. There's no fucking way to justify it. There's just no way.
And this all this reporting I'm doing right here, not only the New York Times, this comes from the Washington Post. This is from a fucking magazine, or a paper that is owned by Jeff Bezos who has donated millions of dollars to Trump. What I'm saying is I don't it's not even about your fucking politics. Anyone with eyes can see that this guy crossed the line. This officer needs to face punishment. This guy, (shows a tweet) Marine Corps veteran, "If you are the guys with guns, you are responsible for the situation. Doubly so if you outnumber the person"; there has to be a higher standard for the people in masks with guns that have been trained than the mom in the car.
(Yet again a point deserving emphasis, especially here. If "both-sides-ism" is a sin, I'm probably among the worst offenders on this forum. Almost nothing in this conversation requires you to think Good was doing was right, or if she did it the right way, or was a nice person, or had accurate political views, you can think the protestors are scum of the earth, but that shouldn't have a serious bearing on the standards we have for federal officers with the power to kill at the drop of a hat. Good probably made mistakes. Ross definitely made mistakes. But Ross' mistakes are inherently more serious. We can have a conversation, a separate one, about what kinds of protest are good or bad or criminal or super-criminal and all that, but we're talking about life and death here. Frankly I don't think it matters very much at least with respect to what you think the officer, Ross, should be facing in terms of punishment.)
And I talk about this a lot. I try to get points across to people that have different values than me. Okay? I understand people are often talking past each other. Some people value certain things differently. Okay? But if you are somebody who feels like you have a fuckin 'don't tread on me' bumper sticker. I don't see how you've suddenly gone from this to supporting a mass militia of the government killing people. I don't get it. People like this. (Shows tweet). This guy's saying if I is doing a raid in my neighborhood, leaving the safe of my own home is -- she was a mile from home – "Even if I had to leave for work or something, I would drive in the opposite direction". The idea that, your argument is that people should feel like they have to cower in the safety of their homes if there's ever a federal agent in their neighborhood is fucking crazy.
I don't understand how this is an argument. This guy-- I'm trying to find sources that will get people to understand, even if you're not ideologically aligned with me. This guy right here, Greg Nunziata (shows a tweet). Greg Nunziata was the general counsel and domestic policy adviser to fuckin Marco Rubio. He is a he's a Senate Republican policy committee. He's executive director for the side. He is Republican as it gets. Bro, this guy is saying, "I've watched the videos" and "the reflexive defense of it is grotesque". I don't understand where people are getting looking at his footage and coming up with his entirely insane conclusions that this guy should just walk off scot-free, that he should shoot three rounds into a mom's car. It's crazy. The fucking Libertarian Party of Louisiana is saying that the police state, fucking 4chan is calling this shit out. I don't get it. Like where is, just who are the people defending this?
And then I got fuckin' the vice president of the country I live in going on fuckin' news and saying (direct video quote) "the precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He's saying that this officer has absolute immunity. What the fuck are you talking about? The reason we have these rules is because they apply to the officers. When you have the monopoly on violence, which the state does, they are the ones that are allowed to have guns to physically arrest you and in some cases kill you. You have to have rules and accountability, or it is just it's a fuckin' thug owned by someone in power. It's there has to be rules and accountability. Of course, there does. And especially in the past like year and a half, ICE has gone from being already like I think a problematic organization, but the masking is new. So now we have a rise of masked officers, which by the way has led to a lot of fake ICE doing robberies.
The idea that there's just no accountability, you can't they can wear plain clothes or have a mask and they can kill people and then the vice president will say they have absolute immunity is not a reasonable path for for America. I don't care what politics are on. You have to agree that that is not that is not the right direction to go. And as I'm saying this, as I'm making these fuckin slides a few hours ago and feeling like shit during this time, two more people get shot in Portland. The FBI tweets this out and then deletes it (tweet saying CBP agents shot 2, "please follow this thread for updates"). How is this normal? It's like I don't know. I I I just find it so frustrating that people they can't even... Listen, even if we disagree on immigration, the idea that this there can't be any ICE officer who went too far. There's not one fuckin guy who didn't follow the training that this guy can't suffer some consequences for killing a woman. That's the bare minimum.
(Here I should pause and ask: are there prominent administration members who think that he should be punished, but just in some other way than criminal charges? I'm not aware of any, and that's crazy. I hope I'm wrong, but isn't that a fair characterization of their position, that zero consequences are appropriate? Take a step back and ask yourself if that seems appropriate. My answer is: hell no.)
Trump had a interview that came out today that kind of like pulls this back into perspective for me. They did a wide-ranging interview with the NYT today, three-hour long interview, and they asked him, "Are there any limits on your global powers?" He said, "Yeah, there's one thing, my own morality, my own mind." (direct quote) That is not the country of the United States. That is not what the Constitution says. That's not what anything says. There's no president for a president saying the only thing that I decide is my own morality in my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me. This has to change.
So 2026 is an important year. And that's why I'm bringing this up. Trump has said if we don't win the midterms, referring to Republicans, he'll get impeached. That's what he said. Now I don't know whether impeachment will go anywhere, but it'll mean he has less power. He'll be a lame duck.
And he has floated this. He said it as a joke, but he often starts things as jokes. Canceling 2026 election (video direct quote) "We have to even run against these people. Now, I won't say cancel the election. They should cancel the election because the fake news will say he wants the elections canceled. 'He's a dictator.' They always call me a dictator." I just want to repeat that sentence. "...These people. Now, I won't say cancel the election. They should cancel the election because the fake news will say..." I won't say cancel the election because then the fake news will say he wants to cancel the election, he's a dictator. Why would that be fake? If you said it and then they reported on it, why would that be fake?!
...So I'm I'm just bringing this up. This is this is like the la this midterm I do feel at this direction is like one of the last peaceful ways to make change. I that's what I honestly feel. I know it sounds alarmist, but it's what I honestly feel. And so I, I'm encouraging that. And I also want to say I'm I'm a person listen if you disagree on disagree with me on fuckin tariffs or you disagree with me on there's a lot of things you can disagree with me on. And I am often willing to find common ground or intellectually listen to what you're saying and try to figure it out.
But this, this tweet from Paul Graham kind of stuck with me (shows tweet, which he paraphrases). This situation I feel like has been a a real Rorschach test of character. I can't imagine if you've watched the videos coming away with the idea that he should suffer no consequences, that what he did was okay. That that is how an officer of the law should behave. I don't understand. I don't understand that. I, I, that's not a bridge I can cross. And if you do think that way, I sincerely urge you to reconsider. It's not going to lead to a good direction in this country. That's all I got to say. That's, that's, that's all I got to say.
I think some of you here, effectively serving the role of ICE apologists, don't seem to get why this is a big deal for some of us. Hopefully this illustrates the why. You have the President saying, just outright saying, that he doesn't have any restrictions on his use of global power whatsoever. You have the Vice President saying that any federal cop who shoots someone is immune to consequences. You have both of them and Noem attempting to decieve people in broad daylight by accusing Good of domestic terrorism and intentionality, something that is plainly clear to almost literally everyone with eyes to be false. That has an impact! And I will echo those words. I'm a "the system works" kind of guy. This is not working. I've complained about dishonesty from official sources before - most recently this came up when talking about the BLS head being baselessly accused of fraud - but this is another level.
To use a conservative comparison, this is a major "fake news" mask-off moment for liberals and probably moderates too (like me). For whatever naive noises liberals often make about how virtuous and awesome the press is, most of us know that at the end of the day there's some spin expected and at the very least, some selection bias (a la "the media rarely lies" Scott post). It's yet another thing when the administration itself makes such a habit of lying and using deceit. That's what it is, folks. The administration thinks that the ICE agent deserves zero consequences and that just doesn't fit at all with the video we can plainly look at.
All this to say I am horrified at some of the upvote-downvote patterns in the threads this last week and I'm not lying, it hurt my faith in humanity a bit, and the Motte specifically. Are people really so wrapped up in the culture war that they have lost empathy for a dead mother has a child who's six years old and an orphan because she's on the 'other side'? That the officer did nothing wrong? Quibbling over "domestic terrorism" definitions as if that's in any way the way you'd describe it? She blocked half a road for likely five minutes in her local neighborhood because ICE was hanging out around schools to nab immigrant parents as their kids get out. She said stuff like "I'm not mad at you" and "I'm pulling out", and those are not the words attempting to murder a federal agent. For fuck's sake, someone (possibly Ross) called her a "fucking bitch" not two seconds after she was shot, which cuts the other way. Again: none of this requires you to think Good's wife, for example (!), or nearby protestors, or Good, are virtuous, only to think that the cop did at least something wrong. Something is wrong, and it's the attitude here.
I thought about calling a few people out but I'm not going to, but if this reads like an accusation, it basically is. Just needed to get that off my chest. Consider me officially flipped. Everything is no longer fine; the system is breaking; its replacement would only be worse; beware of helping it along.
So we're really doing "will nobody think of the children?" now? Okay, "dead mom of six year old orphan" would not be a dead mom if she stayed home like a normal person and didn't decide to play La Résistance.
So you really think that cowering in your home, as the cited person on twitter was saying, is a valid thing we should accept as a society? Anyways, you've made my point nicely for me. Victim blaming can be bad for a few reasons (it can also be abused, for sure) but possibly the biggest one is when excessive attention on the victim leads to ignoring the consequences for the perpetrator.
Most narrowly, the point of the post was this: Looking at the situation and believing the officer should face zero consequences is insane. There are people making noise about immunity or asserting that it's so clear-cut that we don't even need to charge the officer. That's a massive problem. I've looked at a lot of comments by now and if you want to think the shooting would hold up in court, that's fine I suppose. But virtually no one seems to be actually continuing that thought and saying that he should be charged anyways. We have rules. ICE has rules. That's the point of having rules, to use them! If Good had survived and Ross died then I would be saying that Good should be charged too.
More broadly, we're starting a slow society-wide slide into cheering for death. That's scary. That's bad. It's happening to some extent on both sides (e.g. Charlie Kirk). But only one of those sides is making a habit of claiming immunity, pardoning people left and right, and undermining the rules of law on some misguided quest for vengeance "because game theory". I mean for fuck's sake, I read an article recently that the pipe bomb guy who they caught might get off scot-free because Trump's J6 pardon, being so broad, probably applies to him too!
There are other options besides automatically prosecuting any officer who shoots someone on the assumption that a trial will sort it out. Granted, I doubt ICE's ability to conduct professional internal investigations, but in theory, that is how a professional police force would handle it.
Good's side is definitely claiming protesters should be immune from consequences (to include being arrested or forcibly removed from the area, I don't mean they deserve to be shot), and had Good in fact injured or killed the officer and not been shot herself, I am confident you'd see a lot of anti-ICE people saying she should face zero consequences.
No one is really (openly) claiming that the person who killed Charlie Kirk should face zero consequences, because "You should literally be able to murder someone in public and not be charged" is actually insane. (In Good's case, whether it was "murder" is in dispute, in Kirk's case, no one disputes it was murder.) But people were certainly celebrating it, piling on anyone who expressed such tepid sentiments as "Hey, celebrating a husband and father's murder is bad mmkay?", and would almost certainly fist-pump an acquittal for his killer.
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Biden pardoned a bunch of people at the end of his admin.
J6 enforcement was extreme compared to say BLM rioting. The whole point of the pardon power is to correct injustices. The extreme disparate treatment was injustice.
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No, you can walk around anywhere without impeding ICE operations. You can even get a poster printed by a union or a Soros NGO and go scream whole day under Trump tower, and absolutely nothing would happen to you. You can even harass ICE and still absolutely nothing will happen to you as longs as you do not actively resist arrest and try to run people over with a car. Worst you are facing is a brief arrest followed by quick release and Gofundme fundraiser. There are plenty of opportunities to hashtag-resist the literally fascist dictatorship of literally Hitler in thousands of ways, some of which, as rumor has it, can provide one with a decent living. But some ways - like violently attacking the police - are not a free ride. It was once a widely understood banality, but the reality of Trump's literally fascist regime, together with complete detachment of luxury liberal class from reality and some thorough education helping to erase any trace of the said reality from one's consciousness somehow made some people think that violently fighting the police on the streets is a safe and fun activity. At least antifa, with all my disgust with them, understands who they are - when they are LARPing the revolutionaries, they go all the way and they expect to be treated accordingly. Chardonnay liberals don't even have this much of connection to the reality.
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Except one small detail - the Left does not believe in having rules. At least not in any rules they don't like, and that includes any rules that allow for any enforcement of the immigration laws, especially - any enforcement against the people already on US territory. They believe no enforcement should be happening at all, thus listening to any noises from their side about how exactly this enforcement should be happening is pointless - it is nothing but a tactics to lead to the ultimate goal, no enforcement happening at all, ever.
You don't need to pardon if you don't convict. Michael Byrd had not been convicted. And, of course, for "pardoning left and right" one first needs to "prosecute left and right" (otherwise there's nobody to pardon) and I don't remember any examples of mass political prosecutions by the right (giving the left the chance for mass pardons) anytime in 21st century. With all the hate directed at the last two Presidents from the Left, I do not remember any effort to frame them for treason, prosecute them criminally and all the security apparatus working against them while they are being nominally in power. Democrats are the party of lawyers, and the are much more successful in lawfare than Republicans had ever been. The only two weapons on Republican side are pardons and SCOTUS (the latter is more a matter of luck, and so far Republicans have been lucky).
And, of course, Biden's blanket pardons should put the topic of "pardoning people left and right" to rest for good.
As for immunity, all the law enforcement has immunity, so the claim only one side claims it is transparently false. If you want to get rid of qualified immunity, I am all for it, but somehow the left only remembers such a thing exists when it's convenient to use it to claim Republicans are fascists, but completely forget about it the moment it becomes inconvenient for them. Again, one can't help but conclude there's nothing but angling for power here.
And I read an article that aliens built Egyptian pyramids and stole Atlantis. There are a lot of articles on the internet, so what?
Maybe, but this slide does not look like you're implying it looks. The left has slid to the bottom and gleefully and openly celebrates any political murder for years now. Charlie Kirk is just one of many examples, and we see many people on the left openly agitating for the same treatment for other political enemies. So if the right is "starting" to slide into it - which is doubtful, I haven't seen any celebration and cheering - as opposed to somber justification, which is not the same thing - on the right - the "starting" here would be only on one side, the other side is deep down the slide already. There is no implied symmetry here - the right says "if you attack a cop with a deadly weapon, the cop has the right to kill you", the left says "if you say words we do not like or think thoughts we do not like, anybody of use has the right and the duty to kill you". Very different thing.
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Yeah but he's clearly enough on the right side of the rules that nobody with any real power on the Democrat side of the aisle wants to force this to a court case since they'd lose embarrassingly.
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Yeah, no. It's happening extremely heavily on one side -- the side that your obvious example is on.
Attempting to parley that into "akshually the other side is doing it worse!" needs receipts you don't have.
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You don't have to cower in your home. You can just go about your life, neither interfering in ICE operations nor hiding from them.
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What was your opinion of lockdowns?
Probably does us a disservice to get into it, but I begrudgingly accepted them for the first half a year or so as an emergency measure, and then opposed them after (emergencies can't be indefinite, nor did the facts suggest it should have been). I was the only one in my liberal family (I'm more of a moderate) to oppose the (massed, non-distanced) BLM protests on grounds of hypocrisy, so no issues there.
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After the government and media messaging circa 2019-2021, I think that would be an unequivocal yes from the vast majority.
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Point me to the law that says people who act in self defense must be tried in a court of law to prove their innocence.
The fact that the case generated extreme controversy ipso facto suggests that a trial is likely needed.
I disagree that that is how the law should work. For example, the Rittenhouse case should never have been brought to trial. Prosecutors generally do not bring cases to trial that they know they will lose. This case is likely one they would lose. Therefore, the incentive is against drawing this out in a court of law.
Honestly I feel like the calculus for Democrats is pretty good for drawing this out in the court of law. Keeps it in the media cycle longer and from the Rittenhouse thing the guy actually being cleared probably wouldn't actually change most people on the 'murder' side of the affair's opinions
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That kind of makes a mockery of your commitment to due process, if we're just making decisions based on public opinion.
What? No. It's strictly a one-directional formulation. If super controversial -> then charge someone seems like a perfectly reasonable take to me. Nothing there violates due process. The whole issue about prosecutorial discretion (which to be fair isn't quite "due process") is a tricky one, and honestly probably the weakest part of our system (though possibly the "least bad" attempt at a solution), but that kind of "patch" seems super reasonable, yeah?
To add a personal flavor to this:
One of my police uncles was out on patrol one day with his partner. They responded to a robbery at a convenience store. When they tried to arrest the guy, the partner was shot and killed. My uncle was shot and seriously wounded - multiple surgeries in a hospital wounded. My uncle managed to shoot back and killed the guy.
Believe it or not, this was controversial in the local community! The black community decried it as racial discrimination. Surely he could have shot to wound, surely petty larceny wasn't worth the lives of two people, why did the police have to intervene? The gun was planted, it didn't even belong to the robber (no one argued the guy didn't shoot, just that the gun didn't belong to him, except it turns out it did!) There was even an article in the NYT I'm not going to link to for the tiniest bit of opsec remaining to me. But trust me, it was controversial.
Despite it very clearly being an act of self defense, should my uncle have had to stand trial for this? If the only metric is 'Was the action controversial?" then yes, he would have had to go through a trial and relive that day with his freedom and life on the line. That would have been an injustice.
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If it's legally controversial, then sure. But the vast majority of people don't know much about the law at all, so their intuition about what is legally controversial is irrelevant. I don't consider show trials acceptable.
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I don't remember Biden evoking immunity, though?
Except when he gave Hunter an unconditional pardon for things he hadn't even been charged with
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwl3venz39o
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The officer should face zero consequences. This is just politics. I am not insane. Thank you for your opinion.
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How are you comparing this to Charlie Kirk? Charlie Kirk was talking at a college campus and was murdered in cold blood, a "bad shoot" by any definition. You've seen plenty of other comments giving a heck of a lot of reasons that this wasn't cold blooded murder. I'm not in many right wing spaces, but I have only seen one person actually celebrate her death online. Saying that the shoot was fine morally or legally or that they'd shoot in the same scenario is not celebrating. This is not a black-and-white scenario being presented.
Clear cut cases of self defense getting charged in court anyway is always intended as a chilling effect, because there's always a chance that the jury pulls an OJ Simpson and gives a terrible verdict, against all odds. Take a look at @stoatherd's post: what behavior are you trying to change, specifically?
Sorry, I guess that was unclear. I was referring to the whole conversations about some liberals being happy Kirk was dead, or even celebrating. So that example was more about "cheering for death" rather than "claiming immunity". A second, perhaps better example, was how many people seemed to be sad that Trump's assassination didn't work.
However there have been several comments here highly upvoted along the lines of 'that nasty protestor got what's coming to her and agitators are evil for putting her in that situation too' and 'the case is so clear-cut self-defense that we don't need the judicial process'. The behavior I'd like to see changed is less cheering on for one side and less 'revenge makes rules irrelevant'.
More broadly I'm seeing a worrying slide towards a pro-revenge society. You see it on reddit, instagram, tiktok, facebook, everywhere, and on non-political topics too. And I see intellectual apologists here saying with a straight face stuff like this comment.
Your moral compass seems broken.
Charlie Kirk by all accounts was a good man and father. He was murdered sitting on a college campus engaging in debate. His murder was fundamentally an attack on free speech and democracy itself. Better to silence your opponents with murder as opposed to best their arguments.
In contrast, Good wasn’t just some protestor who was shot. She was patently illegally barricading the road to prevent lawful exercise of the police power. She then attempted to flee arrest with reckless disregard for the life of LEO. Indeed, if the car didn’t spin out she almost certainly seriously injured the officer who killed her. She did in fact strike an officer with her car.
She was, in one sense, a low level insurrectionist. She could be compared to Babbit.
Comparing her to Charlie is an insult to Kirk and principles of free speech.
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I'll note that @oats_son asked you:
Your answer:
... you know that's not what my posts contain, right?
Or were you ignoring his question so you could answer a more convenient one? (with the bonus of being able to implicitly micharacterise my posts, so you could later go "sigh, I never explicitly said I was talking about your posts")
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I mean, it depends. I think people who don't belong in this country, who are here illegally, if they aren't going to do the honorable thing and leave of their own accord, should absolutely cower in their homes. Why do we want a world where criminals are free to parade themselves around our cities without fear of justice?
Some people deserve to be afraid of the consequences of their actions.
The whole point of the Constitution and our rule of law is that we must take great pains to limit collateral damage to innocents when pursuing the guilty. "Just trust me bro" is not a long-term viable route for justice, no matter how correct you might think Trump personally might be about stuff. The twitter guy said that innocents should cower in their homes. Those two things are not the same.
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