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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14190 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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@FtttG, couldn't reply in the wellness thread, since it's CW-adjacent. You wrote in your blog post:

Conversely, if it could be shown that Good didn’t strike Ross with her car, and that the shooting was unjustified, then Ross should be sent to prison, and it would matter not a whit if Good had a rap sheet a mile long.

It doesn't matter whether Ross was clipped by Good's car or not. If I shoot at you and miss, you are allowed to shoot back at me. Even if I shoot at something in your general direction and you think I'm shooting at you, you are allowed to shoot back at me.

Earlier in the blog post, you wrote:

did Ross have a reasonable fear (per the reasonable person standard) that his life was in danger? if so, was the amount of force he used proportional?

This is the only standard. Just like it doesn't matter which one was the better or worse person overall, it doesn't matter why Good accelerated her car and whether she hit Ross or not and if she missed was it because she had poor aim or Ross was the dodgeball champion. The only real answers for the jury to give are if a reasonable person working as a law enforcement officer can interpret the car lurching in his direction as an attack and if shooting the driver is a reasonable action if you have just a split second to decide.

I'll admit that I may have phrased my argument poorly (as I said in the wellness thread, I was under pressure to meet my self-imposed deadline). The argument I was trying to make is that, in the hypothetical world in which it could be established that Ross's shooting was justified beyond reasonable doubt, it wouldn't matter if Good had been a scrupulously law-abiding citizen prior to the altercation. Conversely, in the hypothetical world in which it could be established that Ross's shooting wasn't justified, it wouldn't matter if Good had had numerous criminal convictions beforehand. I probably shouldn't have bothered getting into the weeds of what either of these hypothetical worlds might look like, as they weren't relevant to my argument.

Also showing a pretty crass misunderstanding of the Floyd situation. Chauvin got railroaded on vibes for performing a maneuver that was expressly taught to him by the police force, and one that doesn't lead to positional asphyxiation unless the victim happens to be having a drug overdose despite having horrible optics.

What about the Floyd situation did I misunderstand?

Chauvin got railroaded on vibes for performing a maneuver that was expressly taught to him by the police force, and one that doesn't lead to positional asphyxiation unless the victim happens to be having a drug overdose despite having horrible optics.

Given that Floyd was having a drug overdose, you realize you basically just admitted that Chauvin shouldn't have used that manoeuvre, and hence that the jury of his peers was right to convict him of murder? That's one hell of a "railroading".

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