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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16377 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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Apologies if someone has brought this up already, but new video of Pretty is out from days before he died.

https://apnews.com/article/minneapolis-ice-alex-pretti-videos-immigration-809506eb23f44a3e8f6e53b9fda7b700

He appears to be caught on video at least one other time engaging violently with the police while armed (for some definitions of violent) and is alleged by some sources to have been spitting at the cops.

This generates two thoughts for me:

  1. Every single time. Every one. The person involved deserved it - many here may think deserve applies in the traditional sense, but I think at minimum we see "deserve" here in the sense of "engaged in stupid avoidable behavior that necessitated the response or failing that represents a lifestyle that drastically increases the likelihood of a bad outcome."

Don't do crimes. Hell, don't be a career criminal doing multiple crimes. Don't engage in unethical and illegal protests. Don't attack the police, however well intentioned. Rarely - don't date people who commit serious and violent crimes.

I can think of a very small number of cases where this sort of thing didn't turn out to be true and while those are tragedies we have a large population with a large criminal underclass, if our ratio is a hundred million to one then we are doing okay.

These are simple rules - don't be a criminal asshole, even if you are convinced of your own virtue unless you can accept the consequences. And perhaps we shouldn't burn down our society for anti-social criminals.

As corollaries-

I am now essentially convinced you can dismiss most defenses of these individuals reflexively. This is probably not good intellectual hygiene but every single time (every one!) you see a lot of lies put forth without evidence that don't make sense and often contradict available information. People later acknowledge the error or follow-up. People still don't know the undisputed facts about Rittenhouse, or the issues with the Arbery narrative (as seen in this weeks thread).

Additionally I don't know how many of us here actually regularly interact with American black people but it's a core feature of my job and I have some in my extended family. They (and their woke allies) are absolutely convinced they are liable to be killed for no reason at all at any time by police. This includes the guy from the ghetto, this includes the well behaved upper class by birth Harvard educated chair of surgery who walks to and from work in a suit more expensive than most cars.

The beliefs many people have are just completely untethered from reality and unchallenged. If knowledge is a justified true belief then these people know nothing.

  1. The psychology of the left is worse than you think and if anyone has any white pilling at all I'd love it.

My social network is unsurprisingly riddled with healthcare professionals, as Pretti was. To fully describe what I see in most of them in full would likely get labeled as a straw man, so I won't, but most of the accusations seem to be trivially true for me - they think Trump is literally Hitler and that ICE is the Gestapo, they are seeking violence and finds it justified and at the same time don't seem to think what they are doing constitutes violence.

Perhaps most importantly - everyone seems to have big opinions and feelings about politics but at the same time has no quality information, consumed no quality analysis and doesn't know agreed upon facts, much less the ones that aren't agree upon. Nothing has ever been engaged with critically, analyzed, discussed, pushed back on.

This includes the highly intelligent and educated and the guy who pushes the food carts.

Feelings about ICE and Pretti and Good are mandatory. Informed opinions are absent.

In truth I am not sure why I wrote this, some if it is surely cover to point out that Pretti appears to be an idiot. Some of it is processing my feelings. I don't think much of what I'm saying is novel, but I can tell those who don't have the experience that as someone working in an environment with a lot of minorities and a lot of institutionalized wokeness...well people have been lobotomized.

Perhaps I'm hoping someone will say something that gives me hope, but even here our left leaning posters mostly seem to be blind soldiers for the cause.

I definitely wouldn't say Pretti and Good deserved to be shot dead, but yeah. They weren't innocent passersby who just happened to wander into this situation by honest mistake.

We've been arguing over him having a gun, but I stick to my guns (as it were): if you bring a gun someplace, you expect that you might have to use it. If you're bringing it to a protest involving the cops, ICE, or whomever, that is going to get you shot.

This is not to excuse the agent who shot Pretti, it seems that he might have shot him anyway even if Pretti genuinely was unarmed because (going by reports floating around) said agent was an idiot. But having a gun on your person when you're fronting up to agents who then tackle you to the ground is a bad idea.

My brother posted some weird screed on Facebook about how handsome Pretti was compared to the ICE agent who shot him, how healthy Pretti looked, how educated Pretti was compared to the typical ICE agent. Basically implying it was dysgenic to shoot Pretti, except I think eugenics is still considered a no-no. I seriously tried to puzzle out if my brother was in the closet despite having a string of serious girlfriends.

I think it was bad to shoot Pretti. I also think Pretti did some stupid things and earned a stupid prize, and that was apparent even before this video came out.

For the, "Pretti is not a hero" argument:

He went to a protest while armed, which is apparently illegal in Minnesota. He wasn't wearing a comfortable weapon that would be typically worn in for a conceal carry. It was a several thousand dollar handgun that had several accessories making it bulky and likely uncomfortable to wear for extended periods of time. It's highly unlikely he just forgot that the gun was on him at the time.

If someone is conceal carrying and gets any kind of attention from a law enforcement officer, that person needs to keep their hands visible, clearly state, "I have a conceal carry permit, gun is on my (left/right)," and do exactly what the police officers say. Pretti had a right to self defense. So do LEOs. And they will exercise their right to self defense very quickly and broadly if they feel threatened.

Pretti did not act like someone should when conceal carrying in the presence of LEOs. He joined in a fracas. He shoved someone, then wiggled around while being held down by CBP. Now, the wiggling around is basically a human reflex, but it is one that must be suppressed if you find yourself in the position of being arrested.

On the flip side, no one should be shot for exhibiting a normal human reflex. Typically that does not happen in most arrests. My understanding of the situation, from the perspective of the CBP, is:

They were there to arrest a bad guy. A bunch of screaming people started getting in their way, blowing whistles in their faces. Again. They are trying to arrest their third bad guy of the day, after working 10 days in a row. Somehow, having to arrest child rapists isn't the worst part of their jobs. They haven't slept well for over a week, because these screaming whistle people are also banging pots and pans together all night outside every hotel they've tried to retreat to.

One of the screaming whistle women gets too close, pings some sort of danger radar, one of the CBP agents pepper spray her. Guess it's arrest time. Try to arrest her, a screaming whistle man comes and tries to push you off her. He just signed up to get arrested for assaulting an officer. He tries to fight you off, it takes four of you to try to hold him down.

One of your buddies sees a holstered gun. He reaches in, grabs it and says, "I've got his gun."

Unfortunately, you are still surrounded by the damned whistle people. You don't hear all that sentence. You heard the word "gun" because your ears are highly invested in hearing the word "gun." But the rest of it is drowned out by the drone of invectives being thrown your way.

The detainee's gun goes off in the agents hands. One of the infamous Uncommanded Discharges from a Sig. The bullet hits the ground next to an agent's foot. This created an imminent sense they were in deadly danger. There was a gun, they were being shot at. They shot the detainee.

Now, the dumb part is they shot the detainee while he was being detained by four of their own people. They were holding his hands. He wasn't facing them. He could not have possibly been the source of the shot. And shooting him risked the lives of the people trying to restrain him. This was a really bad shoot.

Legally, I don't know if they should be charged with murder, manslaughter, or just placed on leave and given a desk job. I think Pretti's family has standing to sue for a good amount of money. It was a bad shoot. And Pretty played stupid games and won a fatal prize.

My brother posted some weird screed on Facebook about how handsome Pretti was compared to the ICE agent who shot him, how healthy Pretti looked, how educated Pretti was compared to the typical ICE agent.

Maybe your brother is into dudes and has a type.

My brother posted some weird screed on Facebook about how handsome Pretti was compared to the ICE agent who shot him, how healthy Pretti looked, how educated Pretti was compared to the typical ICE agent.

Weirdly, I saw something online claiming that the images released (and being used) of Pretti in his scrubs had been tidied up by AI to make him look more appealing. I have no idea if this is right or just Internet conspiracy stuff. But it echoes all the admiration Luigi Mangione was getting, and I think for the same reasons: he's the Hero taking on the Bad Evil Wicked Horrible Guys, of course mm-mm he's so dreamy and smart and the rest of it.

Also, a lot of the protesters/resistance are heavily invested in "ICE, besides being evil and so forth, are all the dregs of society: dumb, stupid, violent, criminals or would-be criminals". They can't just be ordinary average Joes who maybe are not well-trained and a little bit incompetent, no, they have to be dumb trailer trash (and hence inferior in every way to us good people, even if I'm a Person of Hair Colour with multiple piercings and no steady employment since I finished my degree in Gender Studies Regarding Marginalised Folx in the Underwater Basket-Weaving Industry).

But it echoes all the admiration Luigi Mangione was getting, and I think for the same reasons: he's the Hero taking on the Bad Evil Wicked Horrible Guys, of course mm-mm he's so dreamy and smart and the rest of it.

It's weird that this has happened twice, and it's doubly weird that Oracle's brother was the one doing it this time. I'm really not sure why it's a thing for some people on the left to talk about the physical attractiveness of their heroes like this -- I thought the left would be the ones saying that your values are more important than your appearance.

But also the pattern-noticer in me is considering that this has happened only in instances where white adult men have been the grand hero of the left. I can't recall George Floyd being praised for being a dreamboat. And bizarrely the American left types who might have venerated Thomas Matthew Crooks were convinced he was a Republican (?) false flag operation (?), and anyway I guess he radiated "loser teenage boy" energy rather than "big stronk warrior man" energy.

Actually, it's startling to me how little we know about Crooks, his motivations, and the failures of the Secret Service, but unfortunately there's no force that actually wants us to know more. Despite the historically-significant photo he got out of it, Trump seems incredibly embarrassed about his near-death experience and hasn't milked it the way he should have. He seems grateful for the Secret Service despite their failure. Given everything that's happened since, Crooks' assassination attempt is one of the most historically significant events of the past 20 years.

This gives me an idea!

Apparently in 1990, the KGB wanted to improve its image, so they held some beauty pageants and chose a "miss KGB" to represent the agency. Link. ICE could do something similar! A friendly, pretty, female ICE agent could make people realize that ICE are humans too!

Google "ice bae".

He went to a protest while armed, which is apparently illegal in Minnesota

First time I'm hearing that this is illegal in MN.

Well, damn. I fell prey to misinformation. 11 states forbid it, but not Minnesota.

How are the 1st and 2nd protected while the 1st and the 2nd can't be protected at once?

Kash Patel said it was. It isn't.

More than that, there were screenshots going around with a citation to a law, but it actually was for Illinois, not Minnesota.

My brother posted some weird screed on Facebook about how handsome Pretti was compared to the ICE agent who shot him, how healthy Pretti looked, how educated Pretti was compared to the typical ICE agent. Basically implying it was dysgenic to shoot Pretti, except I think eugenics is still considered a no-no. I seriously tried to puzzle out if my brother was in the closet despite having a string of serious girlfriends.

He was likely looking at the AI altered photo circulating that made Pretti look significantly more attractive than he did in the original, so I guess the person who made those doctored images achieved their goal with at least your brother.

The detainee's gun goes off in the agents hands. One of the infamous Uncommanded Discharges from a Sig.

It's highly highly questionable whether this actually happened -- certainly it's an appealing narrative in some kind of Chekhov's (unreliable) Gun way, but the guy carrying it away just does not act remotely like a gun just went off in his hand.

Also shouldn't we hear it go off at the right time in at least one of the videos? People keep point to a super grainy slowed down part of the video, when there should be much clearer evidence.

At the time of the solo beginning shot (which itself is weird, they seem to shoot in threes), I cannot for the life of me see who's shooting. The guy who got his gun out isn't really angled in a good way to shoot at Pretti. The Uncommanded discharge theory just seems to fill in a lot of gaps.

I saw a video where it visibly jumped in the guy's hand, but who knows if it was doctored. I think the rest of the description still works, just hearing someone say, "GUN!" in the loud chaotic environment could be enough to make some jumpy exhausted people shoot, even if the true statement was, "I grabbed his gun!"

After the shooting they were all looking around asking, "Where is the gun! Where is the gun!" so they clearly thought the gun was in play at the time.

I saw a video where it visibly jumped in the guy's hand,

That's not what I'm talking about though -- I've never had a gun go 'bang' when I was expecting a 'click' (or worse yet, nothing) but even an unexpected 'click' really get's your attention.

If the guy had just accidentally shot the ground next to his feet we wouldn't be doing a frame-by-frame analysis to see if the slide moved; he would have stopped what he was doing, looked at the gun in horror, etc. As it stands he just keeps running across the street; it's completely implausible that he would be this cool having just plucked somebody else's gun from it's holster and having it AD in his hand.

I thought he looked back, towards Pretti, but also towards where the proposed shot would have gone. Would you be more likely to look at the gun or the direction it shot? I think a case could be made for either.

Pistols are really loud, like ‘agent is now temporarily deaf and probably has permanent hearing damage’ loud. Looking elsewhere doesn’t seem likely.

No dude -- guns are loud, when one goes off unexpectedly in your hand you do not look elsewhere first. Looking back is in fact much more consistent with the shot coming from some other gun in the area.

Now, the wiggling around is basically a human reflex, but it is one that must be suppressed if you find yourself in the position of being arrested.

I don't think this is a fair standard by any means but reminds me of the Gom Jabbar from Dune.

In the next line I said the opposite of "failure to control this reflex should be an instant kill shot." But there are plenty of people who are arrested for resisting arrest in basically this way, even if they weren't being charged with any other crime besides resisting arrest. I don't really agree with this, but it happens and people should be aware of what is expected of them if they're in that situation.

The bitter pill for people to swallow is that if Pretti had been arrested after this and given a week or month to cool down in a jail cell somewhere, he'd still be alive.

It's almost as if enforcing the law... saves lives. Even the ones breaking them.

Yes, I'm well aware that strict interpretation of the law opens up alot of holes to fall down. It's a thorny mine-field, and in my experience good law enforcement is all about adhering to the spirit of the law, as no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes.

But I don't think it's all that crazy to suggest that maybe we need to be a little more strict about some things, such as what's shown in the video.

The person involved deserved it - many here may think deserve applies in the traditional sense, but I think at minimum we see "deserve" here in the sense of "engaged in stupid avoidable behavior that necessitated the response or failing that represents a lifestyle that drastically increases the likelihood of a bad outcome."

Following that definition, would it be fair to say that you think a woman whose lifestyle involves walking around in the bad part of town at night in a miniskirt without male company deserves to be raped? Or that smokers deserve lung cancer, even?

I dislike politically motivated redefinitions of a word. "GWB is a Nazi[1] ([1]: where a Nazi is anyone to the right of Clinton). "Protesters deserve[2] to get shot ([2]: where deserve means to have a lifestyle which makes the consequences much more likely)". "Gas[3] the Jews ([3]: where gassing means to coordinate to cut back the influence of AIPAC)".

By design, the Motte does not do a lot of thought policing against ideas which most would find repugnant. If you want to argue that death is a fitting punishment for Pretti, you can do so openly. No need to torture the English language so that you can make a claim which sounds like that but acktually toootally means something much more harmless.

Also, I can not recall reading many people here who were arguing that people who are protesting by annoying ICE (through whistles, filming, blocking their cars etc) deserve (in the traditional sense) to be summarily executed, that it is an injustice that they are )mostly) suffered to live.

they think Trump is literally Hitler and that ICE is the Gestapo, they are seeking violence and finds it justified and at the same time don't seem to think what they are doing constitutes violence.

I think you would have to stretch the definition of violence to its breaking point to make the claim that most protesters are engaging in violence. If ten of the protesters in MN were serious about violence the way the IRA or the mafia in Sicily was, they would be able to murder ICE agents.

To judge the Pretti shooting, we do not need to milk his background for all its worth ("He was a nurse helping people" - "He had kicked out the taillight of an ICE car"). The people who shot him did not know either fact. The only case in which a jury would care about his character is if there was a dispute about what actions he was engaging in, and his character might make one version more likely than the other. (For example, if someone claimed that he fired shots at ICE, prior footage of him firing at a car with ICE people in it would be relevant in the absence of conclusive video evidence.)

From the videos, it seems to most (even here on the Motte) that there was insufficient justification for shooting him. This makes the shooting, morally if not legally (so far) manslaughter. The rest does not matter except for people trying to spin public opinion (e.g. everyone). If it turned out that he had been a serial killer or the reincarnation of Christ, it would still be manslaughter. (So far, he seems closer to the latter rather than the former, so on top of the shooting itself being unjustified, the left has been winning rather hard with this case.)

Was his behavior risky? Sure. But that is the miniskirt argument again. This case is not like a smoker getting lung cancer. We have a perpetrator who had signed up for a job which entailed scuffles with demonstrators, some of whom were armed, in a very stressful environment. If a truck driver runs a red light and kills someone, I would not give a fuck about his excuses for him being in a bad mental state (short of "someone drugged me"). You had a bad night of sleep, low blood sugar, migraine, anxiety, whatever? Too bad, by starting the ignition (or your ICE shift), you certified that you were of sound mind, so manslaughter it is.

Following that definition, would it be fair to say that you think a woman whose lifestyle involves walking around in the bad part of town at night in a miniskirt without male company deserves to be raped?

We call these women ‘prostitutes’ and getting raped is an occupational hazard of streetside prostitution.

Now that doesn’t mean they deserve it, but as the vice squad will tell you, they should get normal jobs to avoid it. Their lifestyle is, well, having sex with people who hire shady illegal prostitutes, a much larger percentage of whom are rapists than is normal for sexually active males in any culture.

If it turned out that he had been a serial killer or the reincarnation of Christ, it would still be manslaughter.

I made the same argument about the people trying to dig up dirt on Renee Good. Either it was a good shoot, or it wasn't. Her prior criminal record (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with it.

We have a perpetrator who had signed up for a job which entailed scuffles with demonstrators, some of whom were armed, in a very stressful environment.

I am guessing that was not the case when the perpetrator signed up for the job. That it is now such a job is the decision of the protestors, not of the perpetrator.

"We're going to follow you around make your job as stressful as we possibly can, what did you expect? You signed up for a stressful job!"

From Pretti's perspective, what he was doing was tantamount to wearing a miniskirt into a 1%er biker bar and dancing on the tables. It was past just "risky" and well into "inviting trouble". That he got into it through error rather than malice on the part of the "bikers" is a flaw in the analogy, certainly.

It depends on whether the woman was raped in self-defense.

Your honor, it was self defense. She called me a faggot.

Following that definition, would it be fair to say that you think a woman whose lifestyle involves walking around in the bad part of town at night in a miniskirt without male company deserves to be raped? Or that smokers deserve lung cancer, even?

Frankly, I'd say a (qualified) yes. I think many more conservative posters here would be willing to bite that bullet. Basically you're just saying that your actions have consequences, and it's important to be aware of those consequences. I'm not saying it's 'right' or that they 'deserve it' necessarily, but human nature being what it is, women who walk around in skimpy clothing in bad areas alone are dramatically increasing their likelihood of being raped. It's fine to tell them that they are increasing their risk, and also fine for them to take that risk.

Should we try to lower the risk as a society? Absolutely. Does that mean that the hurt person is totally blameless in the situation? No.

Was his behavior risky? Sure. But that is the miniskirt argument again. This case is not like a smoker getting lung cancer. We have a perpetrator who had signed up for a job which entailed scuffles with demonstrators, some of whom were armed, in a very stressful environment. If

This is a very different situation. These people are explicitly trying to provoke violence. That would be like if a super hot woman walks around a crime riddled area in a bikini repeatedly telling all the men how horny she is and that she bets they'd like to get some of this.

Should we try to lower the risk as a society? Absolutely. Does that mean that the hurt person is totally blameless in the situation? No.

I suspect sometimes people pattern-match to arguments of the form "Doing FOO causes thing BAR, therefore people who FOO deserve BAR, therefore we shouldn't try to lower the risk of BAR given FOO or ameliorate BAR when it happens to someone who FOO.", e. g. not prosecuting someone who raped a woman who walked through a 'bad' area in revealing clothing as vigourously as someone who raped a conservatively-dressed woman in an upscale neighbourhood.

These people are explicitly trying to provoke violence. That would be like if a super hot woman walks around a crime riddled area in a bikini repeatedly telling all the men how horny she is and that she bets they'd like to get some of this.

If a woman walked around anywhere and told men "how horny she is and that she bets they'd like to get some of this", then I think she should get in (mild) trouble for some kind of public indecency (and maybe she should also get in trouble for wearing a bikini )

If she got raped/assaulted/etc, then the blame would fall solely on the attacker(s). In fact, assuming she did get victimised (and not just a bunch of disgusted looks for being obscene), she would actually be acting virtuously.

When law-abiding citizens make the selfish (but completely understandable, given modern progressive attitudes to crime) decision to just avoid "crime-riddled areas", "no-go zones", etc, it helps hide how bad those places are: whilst an actual crime incident is objective and legible in statistics, it's much harder to quantify this sort of "latent" crime which would have hypothetically taken place if someone had walked down the street at night alone, but didn't happen because they predicted that and stayed away instead.

People should walk down the streets anywhere, at anytime, no matter how vulnerable and/or sexually alluring. And the police should come down hard when a criminal preys on said person. And if a criminal keeps doing the same thing, they should be permanently removed from society - they aren't Minecraft mobs who naturally spawn whenever there is a low population density.

I think the actual distinction between Pretti and the miniskirt hypothetical is that ICE fulfills a necessary role in society, so there is a tradeoff to be made in letting them do their jobs vs preventing overreach. There is no such trade-off for a criminal.

In fact, assuming she did get victimised (and not just a bunch of disgusted looks for being obscene), she would actually be acting virtuously.

How so? Just being bait for evil predators doesn't seem virtuous, unless there is a side of "getting said evil predators what they deserve"...it's analogous to walking around in a rough neighborhood with visible $100s, if you get mugged that doesn't seem virtuous; if you're carrying and shoot the would-be muggers it might be.

I think the actual distinction between Pretti and the miniskirt hypothetical is that ICE fulfills a necessary role in society, so there is a tradeoff to be made in letting them do their jobs vs preventing overreach. There is no such trade-off for a criminal.

Fair, yeah I agree that rapists don't add anything to society. I still think that your 'should' is doing a lot of work here.

Everyone wants discrete categories. Deserve or not deserve. Good or bad shoot. Nothing in the world works this way, only in our mind do these categories exist.

So I wouldn't want to 'bite the bullet' on that yes. Smokers deserve lung cancer MORE than non-smokers. But only God can give us true justice.

I was vague because I am not sure if the word deserve applies and think it's a tough situation - the rational and emotional parts of my brain are both split.

As a more immediate note - if you wear a gun in front of cops you have certainly behavioral responsibilities that he did not meet on multiple occasions.

He didn't walk around the bad part of town wearing a miniskirt, he did it while wearing a miniskirt and making racial slurs and daring people to assault him. This certainly doesn't ethically clear any rapists in full, but it alters the calculus quite a bit.

People need to have accountability for behavior, especially when what not to do is obvious, clearly understood, and impulse control does not apply.

Echoing my comment to @ThomasdelVasto:

As a more immediate note - if you wear a gun in front of cops you have certainly behavioral responsibilities that he did not meet on multiple occasions.

Agreed. The cops are doing an necessary job, so there is a tradeoff between exercising your rights and obstructing them from their duties.

...he did it while wearing a miniskirt and making racial slurs and daring people to assault him. This certainly doesn't ethically clear any rapists in full

It doesn't ethically clear the rapists at all. Unlike LEOs, Criminals are not a necessary part of society, and no one is ever has "behavioural responsibilities" to avoid provoking them to commit crimes. Actually it would be especially important to make sure the rapists were prosectued to the full extent of the law, to make it clear to everyone that it is never okay to commit crimes, even if someone verbally offends you.

He would also be a guilty party for being hostile and antisocial (but his guilt would be dwarfed by the rapists')

My understanding is that the legal system draws a distinction between "move, I want that seat" and "hey nigger move your bitch ass or I'll rape your ugly retarded mother,"

Some behaviors have a clear, dangerous response. See: "fighting words."

The institutional loss of knowledge of these tensions is causing problems. Obviously wearing a miniskirt in public doesn't justify anything. Doing the same alone at a bar where date rapes happen and not monitoring your drink also doesn't justify anything, but it certainly is a sign of poor judgement.

Breaking into a private biker bar and shouting "rape me pussies." Yeah... that one is your fault.

Where to draw these lines is important and hard, but at some point people need to understand that their actions have consequences and they become part of the blame equation.

My understanding is that the legal system draws a distinction between "move, I want that seat" and "hey nigger move your bitch ass or I'll rape your ugly retarded mother,"

You've changed the hypothetical completely - originally it was someone being verbally offensive, and was talking about their own rape. Now your hypothetical person is trying to forcefully displace someone from their seat. Neither of these (not even the more banal "move, I want that seat") are okay to say - and I would be open to a self-defense argument there.

but it certainly is a sign of poor judgement.

Sure. But I disagree that poor judgement in this case amounts to any level of guilt. Even though we live in an imperfect world where crime occurs, we should avoid blaming people for being victimised to avoid legitimising crime.

Breaking into a private biker bar and shouting "rape me pussies." Yeah... that one is your fault.

If you break into a private establishment, then yes, things become grayer. I am okay with actual lethal violence in that case, and might even overlook rape - just on the principle that once you trespass you essentially forfeit all your rights.

But again, this doesn't map to the original hypothetical, because "the bad part of town" is not private property (not even at night), and the public has a (pro-social) right to be there.

...but at some point people need to understand that their actions have consequences and they become part of the blame equation.

Only if those actions are inherently bad (like breaking and entering, obstructing the duties of law enforcement, etc), if they are good/neutral, then the only people to blame are the criminals who enforce these wholly illegitimate consequences.

This is (modest) evidence that ICE are not all psychos: you can yell at them, spit at their door, smash their car light, and all they will do is push you down, and not even charge you. There were likely hundreds of similar instances in the Minneapolis area since the start of the year. [On an unrelated note, I think recent events are as evidence toward my thesis a month ago that humans naturally love engaging in the evolutionary Coalition-Trickery-Warfare repertoire of instincts. The anti-ICE folks love to engage in coalition-formation against a common enemy, they love harass the enemy “raiding parties”, they love to use Call of Duty -esque profane language against their enemies, they want to see them miserable and crying, they enjoy conspiring in secret on how to trick and subvert their enemy’s expeditions, and they are even using primitive war whistles. They have completely dehumanized ICE agents, which is also adds to the fun. I wanted them to activate these instincts against Somalis, but their ingroup / outgroup wiring is different, so they are having fun doing it against ICE, and investing many hours in it. Because it’s fun! These are people who would ordinarily call themselves non-violent pacifists; unfortunately for such people, they have the same exact instincts as the rest of us].

ICE are not all psychos

I believe that ICE is still mostly staffed by career civil servants who take their duties and their commitment to the nation seriously and are both highly trained and very professional. They are augmented by a huge influx of new hires who are inexperienced and undertrained and are being thrown into the front lines. Furthermore, some of the new hires (in particular those who do not come from a law enforcement background) might have questionable motivation for seeking the job, or so the story goes (e.g. claims that everyone who was once a Proud Boy is now a federal agent; probably not the case, but may have a glimmer of truth).

I think the most dangerous part of wokeism is how ego-syntonic it is. It tells you all your worst instincts are completely appropriate (against them), it tells you are a good person and you have empathy.

It's is a scaffolding which permits so much bad behavior, just as the worst religions do.

Additionally I don't know how many of us here actually regularly interact with American black people

I didn’t date my first white woman until I was 35 years old - I’m now probably the most racist person I know.

I lived the ‘ we are all the same … some smarter some more athletic some nicer etc but fundamentally all the same ‘ for a while. Jon Stewart told me so.

But it just isn’t true. I feel bad for the portion of that population that is just like everyone else - just normal people with normal thoughts some smart some athletic some good cooks some bad friends whatever … but no where near the seething hatred I have for what America could be if the issues black Americans bring were sorted out.

I sometimes wonder if it’d have been better for everyone had my family and I just stayed in Poland. At least I’d have several weeks vacation every year and I could walk down every street I see. Have a national spirit and pride.

I know the implication is you dated non white women but it would be funny if you just hadn’t dated anyone until you turned 35

Vacuously true statements about the empty set are one of the best things in life.

Indeed the first sentence suggests OP himself is black, when I think he's saying he's white (Polish) and dated non-white women until 35.

I wish I had a country I could consider going back to. Alas.

Does Poland allow any sort of returning expatriate citizenship/visa programs? Every now and again you see countries with that. Like if you can prove some sort of ancestry they'll grant you citizenship.

I’m still a Polish citizen - I can just apply for a Polish passport.

I think it’s called Citizenship by Blood or something equally cool sounding.

Issue with that is I enjoy America - I’m American!

My friends always teased me that I was the best American they knew.

But worst comes to worst … who knows?

Yesssss, one of us, one of us.

Pretti was the obnoxious child running up to much bigger kids, putting his finger 0.0000001mm away from their faces, and chanting "I'm not touching you" until the bigger kid punched him in the face. After which point, having accomplished precisely what he set out to do, Pretti cried that he was hit and demanded that the bigger kid be punished because technically he didn't deserve to be punched by the rules as he understands them1. And yes, technically we don't want to encourage children to punch other, smaller, more obnoxious children. But sometimes, as a parent, you have to play dumb. "I didn't see anything, just learn to get along."

We, as a nation, need to play dumb. Let however many of these adult children face consequences (even unfair ones) for the first time in their entire lives. I wasn't there, and neither were you. I didn't see anything. Now go learn to get along with ICE.

  1. Well, not literally. Pretti was dead, a far superior outcome for an adult engaged in such behavior.

Additionally doing the 0.0000000001m stunt whilst armed is just massively increasing the risk of something going off the rails even if you are actually 100% compliant and pleasant in your interactions with law enforcement.

Devils Advocate:

Can't we apply this to other killings? Charlie Kirk was engaging in calls to coordinate state violence against his out group (ie running on political issues that would negatively effect the alphabet folks). He was destroying the fabric of our society for profit and fame. He technically is allowed to do that by the first amendment, but it is rules-lawyering. We as a nation should "just play dumb" when his outgroup coordinates violence directly against him in response, because influencers profiting on division and tribal polarization of our society is bad. Let the adult children face the consequences of their rhetoric.

In other words, would you say that Mr Coil's argument proves too much?

I'm going to need to read that and get back to you, 2013 Scott is wayy prior to my introduction to the Ratsphere.

He was destroying the fabric of our society for profit and fame.

Is this your devil's advocacy purposely hyperbolizing or do you believe this? Because it's certainly arguably both wild overstatement (the first part) and very presumptuously ascribing motive. I frankly don't see how your comparison here works. Unless you're trolling, in which case, well played I guess.

I fundamentally believe there are a class of influencers that sell tribal turmoil: Hatred of the out-group, Us-vs-them, Dehumanization, Crazy-highlighting. They create communities/followers around these manufactured identities, belief systems, narratives. In doing so they raise the political heat level, it sows division, and division sells, hatred sells, tribal fighting appeals to the basest of our human desires. Doing it torches the commons. It burns the social fabric of a society.

I have a coworker with a PhD in the cognitive science of radicalization. We talk about this topic at length and we both see it. Is it hyperbole? I don't think so. Its insidious, slow. Kirk isn't solely the perpetrator. He is part of an entire ecosystem of tribal influences, left and right. Describing motive is more nebulous, do I think Kirk and his ilk are mustache twirling villains? Absolutely not! Their incentives are the same as everyone else: personal enrichment, wealth, fame, status. But what sells better? Moderate takes, restrained discourse? Or provocative knuckle dragging, ape is stronk! content? Idk how anyone on the internet can fail to see that? People follow incentives, and incentives to exploit hard-wired human nature are undoubtedly the most profitable.

EDIT: Kulak is a very clear Motte-based example of this.

I just typed out a lengthy reply then lost it by clumsy typing.

The gist is I think Kirk was, in fact, a good example of the restrained discourse you describe (if not moderate takes.) Candace Owens more neatly fits into the system you describe. And I still wouldn't advocate or nod at her murder.

I also suspect personally that Kirk was motivated by genuine conviction. My previous reply was better, apologies, cynicism vs naïveté, etc.

Edit bc of your edit: Kulak and Kirk are leagues apart.

And I still wouldn't advocate or nod at her murder.

I'm not advocating for nor nodding at their murder. I'm pointing out what I see as a very human reaction to heated tribal politics that I think Kirk contributed to.

Yeah, Candace Owens, Fuentes, Kulak are definitely more extreme than Kirk was, but its also unclear if they had his reach. I don't really think he was all that moderate. To me this is a class, Kirk could absolutely be on the lower end of the extremity scale but he's still in that class. I think that entire class of individuals is a problem.

I also suspect personally that Kirk was motivated by genuine conviction

I think that was part of his brand. Genuine conviction doesn't make you worth 12 million at 30y. You don't chance into that kind of wealth. History is ripe with people of genuine conviction who advocated for political change, are immortalized for it, and still died poor.

You have a reasonable view here, but my original dispute (apart from how we may classify Kirk on some spectrum of shit-stirring or snakeoislmanship) is with your comparison of the Pretti killing to Kirk's murder. I think there is a fundamental difference in the two that makes any comparison specious. Namely that while Pretti was armed, waded on purpose into an escalating situation, and, if the recent video of him kicking the SUV is any indication, was gunning (cough) for a fight. Kirk didn't do any of that. He was--at least verbally--inflammatory, yes, and did not shirk from an (oral) conflict, but did not advocate violence (to my knowledge), and was squarely in the zone of "words can never hurt me" for his critics, one of whom nevertheless shot him dead.

No, because Kirk as you describe him is lot real - it’s a media lie.

Who you’re replying to is … I mean, almost verbatim what the video shows.

So one is real and one is fictional.

I think that should have meaning.

No, because Kirk as you describe him is lot real

Considering my media diet is pretty sparse (predominately here) and I know of Kirk/Crowder/Walsh from my MRA/Debate-Bro days, I find the insinuation that I am believing some sort of mainstream media lie pretty unbelievable. You are welcome to believe what you want of course.

If you want to do the effort of changing my belief, I am open to some evidence. My current stance is that he was a debate bro influencer who stirred tribal tensions and hate towards the outgroup for profit, while advocating for a return to traditional Christian conservative values. Should give you clear goal posts.

‘ I believe in Heaven and Hell - that should give you clear goal posts ‘

No thank you. You’re welcome to hold beliefs that are incorrect.

That's what I assumed, being asked to prove that something is a media lie is too much effort. It's much easier to sit on the couch and throw arguments in from the peanut gallery.

If you can find a clip of Charlie Kirk spitting on a woke snowflake and then roundhouse kicking her car causing enough damage that it is no longer street legal, then I will agree with this take.

The urge to create this in Sora is strong...

This is what I am talking about. In the OPs metaphor, Kirk is analogous those middle-school mean girls who go spread rumors, sick the teachers on you, maliciously turn people against you. All without actually personally inflicting violence on you. Their motives are to get fame, popularity, social cred, friends, all very banal human things. Are you the sort of person that when someone fights back violently, for being bullied, you punish them because those mean girls weren't physically violent? Or are you the adult that "plays dumb" because those mean girls need to face the consequences of their social violence?

If you are the former, then a lot of people on the right complain about this zero-tolerance fighting problem and how it punishes people for standing up for themselves. If you are the later then the Kirk situations is just that scaled up with far deadlier consequences.

Kirk is analogous those middle-school mean girls who go spread rumors

Even if this were true, "sticks and stones" is much more typical advice on dealing with meangirls than "it's OK if you want to shoot them in the neck"?

Probably because violence against mean girls has been so restricted that once something pops past the threshold it is insanely more violent than it should be. This is an argument that some earlier low level of violence probably would have prevented later lethal violence.

It is hilariously a very feminine argument that mean girls should just be ignored. You ever see the videos of female privilege to mouth off colliding with someone who doesn't recognize it? Maybe we really do live in a longhouse.

You are actually advocating for violence as a response to mean words?

Fascinating -- I do agree that men tend to be politer to each other because violence is always on the table -- but historically the accepted response to unacceptable speech is a challenge to violence, not skipping straight to the party.

If the dude had challenged Kirk to pistols at dawn in defence of his boygirl-friend's honour that would be fine with me -- but sneaking around to get yourself a sucker-punch opportunity is not in fact a masculine activity.

A challenge to violence is definitely the preferred approach but it is not always going to happen. Sometimes you just get punched. I'd argue that skipping straight to violence is because a challenge to violence is not legal and would be giving away the opportunity.

I'm openly unsure how to square this honor cultures being absolutely shit places to live.

You are actually advocating for violence as a response to mean words?

As a government policy? Absolutely not. As a social reality? Yes with caveats.

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And the result of following that advice was letting the mean girls run everything.

And wokies are mean girls in power

Kirk peacefully went and spoke with people in order to change their minds and promote his message.

You're equating that to someone interfering with federal officers while armed, multiple times, while shouting, "assault me."

It would be laughable if there were any humor in it.

There's humor in everything, you just need to look for it.

I am not claiming Kirk violently assaulted people, and I never have. There might be some sort of masculine honor in that at least. Instead, he advocated for the state to go inflict violence on people, he advocated for a return to laws and norms that would physically hurt his out group, he engaged in running political campaigns to do that. He knowingly kept the temperature of political discourse high and cultivated a following out of these efforts that provided him with a very very lavish lifestyle/worth. And he was effective in doing so. Apparently his out-group can predict the future better than you can, they felt this future violence, real or imagined. And they decided to act, to do something about it.

Act like a mean-girl, and maybe someone is going to violently attack you for it. Profit off of stirring tribal hate and division and maybe society should "Turn a blind eye" when some of that hate and violence finds you.

You started all this by saying “Devil’s Advocate”, so do you really believe it was fair to kill Kirk or is this still just a provocation to prove a point? Because it is sounding like genuine belief

You keep saying that Kirk advocated for using state violence. Yeah, no fucking duh, that's called politics. You're making it out to be some sort of nefarious scheme when that's what all politics is about. That's why there are trannys in the first place, because of state violence threatening people.

You are not serious, and engagement with you is not in good faith.

You are not serious, and engagement with you is not in good faith.

I am and I'm sorry you feel that way.

That's why there are trannys in the first place, because of state violence threatening people.

So you understand what it feels like for activists to coordinate state violence against you and people like you then? You also understand the violent urge to respond to that? Yet you can't understand how your mirror, some lefty feels?

Not all politics is about abrogating negative rights of individuals via the state. Only tribal politics around radicalization and extremism.

Tell me, how advocating for relaxing zoning laws advocating for state violence? How does it remove your negative, natural law rights?

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Isn’t this a generalized argument against any civil discourse? If that guy wins, my team loses, therefore pew pew. Should we all just go gangs of New York style and hit the streets with shillelaghs and cleavers instead?

We are having civil discourse right now, have I threatened your negative rights? Have I sought to remove them or advocated for their removal via first or known second order effects?

If that guy wins, my team loses, therefore pew pew.

Pure conflict theory, extremely tribal, us-vs-them mentality. Politics doesn't require you to take from other people. If your view point was correct why don't we see one side genociding the other after every election? Afterall if all politics is existential then why even have an election if you can't afford to lose.

It seems like it a generalized argument against civil discourse only if all politics can be interpreted as advocating for state violence against or in favor of X... which seems like quite a stretch.

One was gunned down in completely cold blood whilst the other was deliberately trying to make an already hectic and confusing environment yet more stressful essentially entirely for the purpose of generating videos of bad activities by making them more likely.

"One was killed advocating and coordinating political action to remove the individual liberty and bodily autonomy of minorities while the other was executed in cold blood trying save a woman who was pepper sprayed and protect his neighbors from a violent authoritarian regime"

The inability to exercise some cognitive empathy or minimally some epistemic humility is a sign of being a tribal partisan.

There is no possible argument for the Charlie Kirk killing being in anything but cold blood with an abundance of forethought. Even if you are maximally pushing the 'he was doing harm through espousing his ideology', you have to acknowledge that it was a planned assassination from somebody who sat down and rationally thought through the plan. I don't think the Pretti killing was necessarily good or justified, but it was a spur of the moment decision from somebody in an inherently stressful and chaotic situation.

I'm not disputing the details of a premeditated assassination vs a spur of the moment decision.

I'm arguing the meta level lens of the metaphor around turning a blind eye to immature child-like behavior in adults when it has deadly consequences and how it applies to both sides evenly in ways that gore both sides sacred cows/martyrs.

But discourse about government isn’t child-like behavior. Go around kicking SUVs is child like behavior.

You seem to be making a category error.

But discourse about government isn’t child-like behavior.

I, at least in this thread, am not really discussing government behavior. Government is blunt instrument and this is a problem that requires a scalpel. I have no desire to put a loaded gun on the government's table for use in restricting speech.

Go around kicking SUVs is child like behavior.

Absolutely, Pretti/Anti-ICE movement acts like a child, deliberately attempting to toe the provocation line and claim injustice when they get punch back. WhiningCoil's argument is that we should should ignore it to teach the left a lesson. I think this idea can be applied to other behavior as well, that he might really hate. Like Kirk's mean-girl like behavior.

It is a meta-argument around people trying to abuse the rules-as-written but wanting to avoid the natural consequences of people recognizing that as defection and responding/punishing it.

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So Charlie Kirk is not entitled to his beliefs due to them potentially being against the absolute maximum freedoms for other people, or is simply not allowed to advocate for his beliefs in public if it may result in any modification of society that resembles that?

To be fair, Charlie Kirk said Biden was a "corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America." He was generally pretty decent to people and was willing to agree to disagree, but there's evidence of him occasionally making a controversial comment that would concern moderates and really piss the left off.

There are no direct calls for violence, but I'm pretty sure he made a few comments that kept the political temperature nice and high.

The point here is that we see extralegal justifications from both sides. I still think the Pretti shooting wasn't justified, but the extralegal justification for his shooting gets more arguable when a video of him behaving like a leftist agitator surfaces. People hate this type of person, especially here.

He can advocate for what ever he wants. If his beliefs are around restricting the negative rights of others then he can also face the consequences of what happens when people don't want their rights restricted.

The government should not be in the business of restricting speech, but people are allowed to respond to coordination of violence with violence. To do otherwise is just letting the fantasy of rabbinically-inclined and wordcells to replace reality

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Yes, we are currently in a civil war. Both sides have internally consistent moral claims for exterminating the other. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can make more productive choices.

Yes, we are currently in a civil war.

Obviously it's a matter of semantics, but I would say it's more of an intifada than a war. In the sense that one side is attempting to get its way by means of sustained and systematic lawbreaking, violence, and the like. If both sides go that route, then yeah, it's a war.

The "one of us" post you link complains about the left using "lies" (your word for their exaggeration / selective reporting of facts). But then you go and say things like "we are in a civil war" which is so obviously not true. Maybe we're on the path towards one, but even that is super debatable (and regularly debated here).

I just want you to know that I can't take you seriously when you hypocritically call other people out for stupid-language-tactics and then do your own stupid-language-tactics. Again, I'm sure you have lots of justifications for this tactic (many of which are valid!), but as a tactic for achieving your goal of getting me on your side, your rhetoric is failing.

I might prove to be wrong (it happens, but rarely). I am not lying. I sincerely believe that from the very depths of my being. But radical truths often sound like inflammatory rhetoric, so I don't blame you.

I'm not claiming you are wrong or lying. I am claiming you are ineffective.

If you are correct, then a more effective communication style (i.e. more consistent/less inflammatory) will probably get you the results you want faster. At least with me and fellow mottizens if not the general public.

Would you find it surprising to know that only 20% of Democrats believe Kirk's killing was justified? https://www.cloudresearch.com/resources/blog/justifying-murder/

Or that only 40% of Republicans believe Pretti's killing was justified? https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/53972-what-americans-think-about-immigration-enforcement-and-the-death-of-alex-pretti

Not really; there's a lot of room for society-poisoning callousness outside of a strict justified, on both sides.

Sounds like as a radical centrist my productive choice would the extermination of everyone that's a knuckle dragging ape who thinks we are in a civil war and can't get along.

Just looked out my window, I currently don't see a war going on. My left and right wing coworkers seem to get along just fine, as do my friends of various political persuasions. The only people who seem to think we are at war are the terminally online, mentally ill folks.

Yeah prettymuch the only thing that'd change my vibe on Pretti would be conclusive proof on whether or not his gun misfired whilst being confiscated. If it misfired and people reacted off that I think there's sufficient argument for it being a reasonable shoot, whilst if it didn't then it's essentially inexcusable.

Most of the Minneapolis Mounted Whistle Orchestra is coordinated and belligerent so Pretti having multiple contacts with ICE is pretty par for the course.

If it misfired and people reacted off that I think there's sufficient argument for it being a reasonable shoot

IMO it's still bad because they managed to shoot someone who wasn't shooting at them. Maybe a bit understandable to hastily assume Pretti was the one who fired, but still tragic. If the shot had come from elsewhere (another protester? A cop justifiably shooting a different protester nearby? A firework?), I'm uncomfortable generally excusing the death of any nearby suspects being apprehended.

Although with what I know today, I maybe wouldn't fault a jury for declining to convict in this situation.

It really should cause an update to see Pretti screaming "assault me motherfucker!" at police while he was concealing a handgun. Then when they disengage he chases after them, spits at them and breaks their taillight. This person was dangerous and out of his mind.

"assault me motherfucker!"

Humorously, this has me wondering if there is any jurisprudence in this regard: "The suspect asked to be assaulted. Like literally, we have it on the badge cameras."

I assume standards of professionalism disallow use of force in this circumstance (absent other details)?

"assault me motherfucker!"

Are the words in quotation marks here a quote? Could you link the source? The only copy I've found of the earlier video didn't have anything like that, but possibly because the clip was too truncated.

They left that part out. How curious.

He literally says that. Try this: https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/2016700958315593760?s=20

I don't think it was bias; the clip I ran across was focused on him smashing the tail light, and actually committing a crime is more damning than just running his mouth off.

But there is something to be said for dramatic irony, too. Thank you very much for the source!

(The clip I ran across wasn't from that APNews page - does that page actually publish any of the Pretti videos? You'd think a story headlined "New videos show..." would show new videos, but the only video player I can find on that page just gives me a mix of ads and unrelated headlines.)

Someone being an asshole yesterday does not change a shoot from "bad" to "good" today. It can change the perception of the victim, and perhaps mean that the police are more likely to interpret certain actions as hostile, but I do not believe that materially changes the circumstances in this situation. Now, if it were say, "this person attempted to drive a car into officers yesterday, so they thought that was happening again," that would change the context. But that doesn’t appear to apply in this shooting.

If we assume a fixed fact pattern for the encounter, yeah, it makes sense that prior encounters the officers weren't aware of can't change whether or not their reaction was justified. Of course, his being a ICU nurse or whatever is also irrelevant from that standpoint.

However, it seems like in a lot of situations like this, what the facts of the matter were (and which are important) is at least a little ambiguous. Our interpretation of events is colored by the purported character of the parties involved and the narratives at play. Was he a trained nurse trying to help a woman in need or an armed, repeated belligerent trying to 'micro intifada' a fellow insurrectionist and subsequently resist arrest?

There's also a broader question: much of the left's rhetorical framing around police violence is "it could happen to you & your loved ones." But, in point of fact, neither I nor any of my loved ones have made a hobby of harassing police. If violence is only dolled out to folks engaged in blatantly lawless actions or even just those ambiguously-right-at-the-boundary-of-protected protest, then I have absolutely nothing to fear from law enforcement, since I have never deliberately impeded the lawful discharge of their duties and, absent an open civil war or blatantly genocidal actions, can not imagine I'd ever do so.

The framing in that last paragraph is really important to understand the 'auth' reaction to a lot of this. If there are bright-line rules that serve a legitimate state interest, that are easy to know and be on the right side of, that rarely harm anyone but repeated, anti-social malfeasors... well, empathy is a limited resource — both psychologically and especially in terms of informing policy — and there are many who are more deserving.

It can change your priors about things like how threatening he was this time, if being threatening this time is correlated with being threatening last time.

And if they had just beaten him a bit too heartilly with their truncheons (yes, I know, no longer a thing due to bad optics), or shot him before he was disarmed and being restrained, I'd agree!

I interact with lots of minorities, but not ones selected for being woke. I’ve spoken to black small business owners who say ‘yeah, thé police kill unarmed black people all the time, but they’re thugs who have it coming even if they didn’t deserve it in that moment’. I’ve talked to people who became Republican for RFK’s health crusade- conspiracy theories about fast food controlling the population and stuff. I’ve talked to people who believe smoking is good for you and it’s being covered up by big pharma. I’ve talked to people who believe the flu shot is a conspiracy to spread the virus so the healthcare system can sell tamaflu. I’ve talked to people who think Amazon is manipulating the price of concrete as a 3d chess move to drive competitors out of business. There’s people out there claiming jet fuel is fake, so therefore 9/11 is too, that the US military runs a human experimentation program that’s already developed gene editing technology, that the government is secretly controlled by the British, It just goes on and on and on. And lots of dumb, crazy beliefs get results. The military human experimentation guy correctly predicted everything that went down with the border in Biden’s term.

Almost everyone believes a wide variety of stupid things all the time. When these are uncoordinated stupid things it doesn’t cause much problem. But a coordination mechanism for stupid things people believe, now those are dangerous. It could be used for good, sometimes. There’s a decent case civilization arose by coordinating stupid ideas around taboos into construction projects. But it can be used for evil, as well. That’s what woke is, and it’s why every society has a state ideology and represses, however softly, alternatives.

Thanks, this one helps - I see a wide swath of the population but what people say and espouse to their doctor/while at work isn't necessary the full run of thoughts and experiences. Good reminder.

that the US military runs a human experimentation program that’s already developed gene editing technology,

This one is actually true, but in a stupid and dumb way.

The amount of Monster Energy drinks and dip than an average Marine Infantryman consumes on a weekly basis does alter their genetic profile. That's sound as stone. This then lets them become super soliders in combat while weighing 165 lbs, failing to ever surpass a 3rd class PFT score, and paying 28% APR on their Dodge Hellcat, which they wrecked - twice - on a 72 hour libo.

I'm having some trouble discerning what exactly it is you are arguing for here. That there should be no negative consequences for the ICE officers who killed him? That it is a good thing that he died? That the circumstance that he was killed should not make people update in the direction of a negative opinion of ICE, their mission, or the way they are implementing it? These are all different assertions, and a post that only amounts to a nebulous "boo Pretti, and boo all of the people who say yay Pretti too" does not do a particularly good job of defending any single one of them unless all you are doing is playing the Ethnic Tension game.

However antisocial or stupid he was seems irrelevant to the immediate charge which got so many people (including, seemingly, ones who are otherwise sympathetic to ICE and police shootings) riled up about the case, which is that his killing was unambiguously unnecessary for the safety of the ICE officers who did it. Whether this charge is actually true can be debated separately, with no reference to Pretti's character or past actions. If it is in fact false, his character doesn't matter anyway because you have as much of a right to self-defense against Mother Theresa as you have against Hitler. If it is true, I wish you would be more explicit about the actual contours of any right to performing summary executions you want to grant ICE if the target is a sufficiently bad person.

Consider the case of a woman who is raped by a man she met at a bar. It's a terrible crime, we should change the way we teach men to behave around women.

Then you learn that she had a weird hobby of wearing revealing clothing and shamelessly flirting with men at various bars, accepting drinks from them, following them home, coming in for a coffee, agreeing to look at their collection of etchings and then laughing at them and leaving.

Should we let the rapist go free? I say no.

Should we say she got what she deserved? I say no.

Should we condemn her behavior? I say yes.

Should we update our opinion of men away from them being vicious opportunistic rapists? I say yes.

I'm on board with the object-level counterpart to the first three points, but only partially with the last one, because I think standards for federal agents (who are supposedly a selected group) about killing should be higher than standards for men in general. Likewise, with the bar story, if you replace the generic man at a bar with, I don't know, a social worker involved with prostitutes, I would absolutely consider him not being able to resist the temptation to rape a slag a signal in favour of "male prostitute counselors are vicious opportunistic rapists".

But, I mean, if you want to match the metaphors, the woman in your scenario would've also literally been yelling "rape me! rape me!" at the man she met at the bar...

That there should be no negative consequences for the ICE officers who killed him?

Correct. Also, everyone involved in that riot should be charged as accessories to murder for creating the chaotic conditions where such law enforcement accidents happen. When criminals commit a robbery, and police accidentally shoot and kill civilians, the robbers get charged with those murders too for creating the conditions in which they happened.

When criminals commit a robbery, and police accidentally shoot and kill civilians, the robbers get charged with those murders too for creating the conditions in which they happened.

Yeah, that always struck me as stupid tough-on-crime porn that creates wrong incentives too. It's not like the people who do messy robberies have the executive function or maybe even just the value function (would you not just think caught = it's over in the US?) to be influenced by this additional threat, but for the police it would just strip away incentives to pursue even low-hanging fruit as far as proportionality or care for bystanders is concerned. US police already looks spectacularly unprofessional compared to other first-world countries; I'm familiar enough with all the structural arguments about their job being uniquely hard, but it seems to me that forcing them to shape up has never really been tried.

US police already looks spectacularly unprofessional compared to other first-world countries;

Lol what.

Here's the Mannheim police stabbing. This particular video does the shitty editing thing where they long pause during the gory bits and then zoom forward, but you can dig up the unedited footage if you like.

Notice how the police mostly stand back and shout instead of getting involved. Except for the biggest male police officer. Who then gets stabbed in the head. Because his colleagues aren't swarming the attacker. It was nice, and professional, though, of the police woman to put her hand on his shoulder at the end - "You alright, hon? Yeah, looks like you got stabbed in the head there."

Most other "first world" police are basically crossing guards. This is because most other "first world" countries are a) surveillance states that can prevent crime by violating civil liberties in ways that are cut-and-dry-illegal in the USA and b) either ethnically homogenous (Japan) or ethnically / socially caste like societies where the lowerclasses are allowed to murder each other so long as all that riff-raff stays out of the Nice Parts of Town.

American police actually, you know, police the worst areas of society instead of flatly ignorning them. Which means their job is fundamentally very difficult.

Pretti should not have been shot. He was disarmed and not a serious threat at that moment. Unfortunately, it was a highly chaotic situation with protesters doing their best to cause stress and confusion. Pretti was disarmed just a moment before he was shot, and it is unlikely the other officers present knew he had been disarmed. It's quite possible one of the officers called out something like "I've got his gun", but in all the chaos another heard "he's got a gun!"

It was not an execution. It was a panicked split-second decision that proved fatally mistaken. Shooting him multiple times in quick succession is actually evidence of this, since your goal is to quickly and decisively end the threat. You don't shoot once and then wait to see if he can still shoot back before resuming fire, because that's just a good way of getting more people killed. Executions are more deliberate and conservative with ammo.

The video evidence of prior days indicates that Pretti was repeatedly inserting himself into dangerous situations with police while armed. He was indisputably obstructing, not just exercising his first amendment rights. He was intentionally creating circumstances that would give officers a legitimate fear for their life and heighten the chances of one of those officers making a fatal mistake. If you keep playing Russian roulette, you will eventually end up with a bullet in the head.

While the new videos don't change the narrow question of whether the officer should have shot at that moment, it does a lot to change the whole narrative around the shooting and how much blame should be apportioned to the victim himself

It was not an execution.

By definition it was an extrajudicial summary execution, as it was a killing that was not sanctioned by the court and he was killed without the benefit of a free and fair trial. He was killed while restrained by multiple government agents.

It was a panicked split-second decision that proved fatally mistaken

This is just an attempt to spin a narrative to defend the in-group. Government agents killing people in "panicked split-second decisions" does not make it not an execution and does not engender the levels of competency that should/is required by agents of the state. If ICE agents cannot act competently in high stress split second situations then they shouldn't have guns and the power to exercise the state's monopoly on violence.

extrajudicial summary execution

It was an accident, in all likelihood the claim from everyone will turn into "we thought he still had a gun."

That's accidental mutual combat, self-defense, a tragedy, whatever - not an execution or assassination as we see the media try.

I'm not sure how shooting a disarmed person in the back who is being restrained will ever be seen as "self-defense". A Tragedy, absolutely. An accident, sure I can grant that. But accidents that lead to death is manslaughter and the ICE agent should be tried for that. Mutual combat is far fetched.

I wrote about similar situations in one of my recent posts.

If you haven't been in a scuffle like this it is hard to convey.

Even if you do something (like disarm the guy), it takes awhile for everyone to be aware of that, even in a controlled environment. In a messy situation like this? Fuck no.

It looks bad, but if you had omniscient level understanding of everyone's moment to moment information and thought process you'd likely see that the thinking here was not the problem.

These things just aren't like the movies or how people think they are, which is one of the reasons why after the Good situation a lot of were like "no, stop doing this, no training and skill is enough, keep doing things like this and more unavoidable bad outcomes will happen. When not if."

He was in the process of being restrained, but he was not actually restrained. If he had a gun, which he did for the majority of the altercation, then he could have drawn it.

If you didn't know he had been disarmed and you had mistaken reason to believe he was/had drawing/drawn a weapon, then yes you can shoot in self-defense. Shooting him in the back is irrelevant, because once you decide he is an imminent threat, you don't wait for him to turnaround and get the first shot. You shoot and you keep shooting to decisively eliminate the threat. Self-defense has to do with the perceived threat. You are in no real danger if someone draws a replica gun on you and threatens to shoot, but you can still act in self-defense if you don't know that it's a replica. The question is how reasonable was the perception of threat, and that is unfortunately a kind of squishy concept where law enforcement is usually given the benefit of the doubt.

For me, the Pretti shooting is an edge-case, even moreso than the Good shooting. I think the officer who shot first needs to be reprimanded in some fashion, but exactly how depends on details that cannot be gleaned from the videos. Firstly, it has to do with how much danger the officer thought he was in at that moment, not whether his evaluation of the danger was correct. Secondly, presuming his evaluation of the danger was incorrect, does that error rise to the level of criminal negligence? These questions are not easily answered by watching the videos.

By definition it was an extrajudicial summary execution, as it was a killing that was not sanctioned by the court and he was killed without the benefit of a free and fair trial. ... Government agents killing people in "panicked split-second decisions" does not make it not an execution

This is not in fact how the word 'execution' is used in any other context. Your definition would include killing in justified self defense too. If a man kills a home invader rushing at him with a knife, do you think his defense attorney would call that killing an 'execution?' If you look up how many Germans were executed by the allies during and after WW2, you will get a number in the thousands, not the millions; the allies -- allied soldiers tasked with violence on behalf of the state -- killed millions of German soldiers in the war, but absolutely no one calls those deaths 'executions.'

'Execution' implies deliberation and, most critically, control over the situation. Killing in the course of an altercation can be (and is in this instance, I think!) manslaughter or murder, but it is never an execution. If your definition of 'execution' is co-extensive with 'killing,' why insist on the former? Is it because 'execution' sounds worse because no one else uses your definition?

(ETA: After considering it a little more, I think 'execution' particularly requires that you kill because you believe the victim deserves to die (as a necessary but not sufficient condition). Killing out of confusion or fear of someone's current behavior can't qualify. 'Extrajudicial summary execution' refers to cases like occupying soldiers hanging or shooting civilians on suspicion of sabotage, not those same soldiers firing into a crowd of rioting partisans.)

... does not engender the levels of competency that should/is required by agents of the state. If ICE agents cannot act competently in high stress split second situations then they shouldn't have guns and the power to exercise the state's monopoly on violence.

This sounds good, sure. Have you actually considered the implications? US (non-ICE) police have acted incompetently in high stress split second situations before -- I expect you're familiar with at least a few examples -- so should we abolish the police? US soldiers have absolutely made mistakes like this before; do we need to disband the military? Unfortunately, while 'no lethal mistakes, ever' is a laudable standard, it's one that no group tasked with exercising the state's monopoly on violence has ever met or ever will.

I certainly agree Pretti's shooter, specifically, shouldn't have a gun or the power to exercise the state's monopoly on violence, and in fact should be tried for homicide. The shooting is cause to update in the direction of ICE being incompetent thugs... but update how much?

Out of 50,000(? Organizers claim, anyway) protestors in Minneapolis, ICE has only actually killed two of them. I happen to think that Good's shooter would have been easily acquitted had it gone to trial, but allow that that was murder too: is the failure rate per violent encounter here actually worse than average? I'm not sure, but you haven't even tried to make the argument that it is.

If ICE agents cannot act competently in high stress split second situations

Define it.

Define "competently"

I need your full rubric, please.

Otherwise, this is just a weasel way of saying "ICE agents should only every make perfection decisions in all circumstances"

If I give you a rubric what's to stop you from rule-lawyering it as a bad faith actor? Written laws cannot fight back as they have no agency. I can definitely say that any LE shooting someone who is restrained and is not pointing a gun at someone is outside of it is outside of it. This is not restricted to ICE. FBI, ATF, Fed, DEA, DoE, anyone with the power of violence. Do you think the ATF were competent at waco/ruby ridge? Do you think the LEs were competent here: Daniel Shaver?

I'm willing to give you an effort post in what does a competent government agent look like, if you'll return the favor/effort and give me examples of government LE agents behaving incompetently in the past decade? People on the right here love to complain about the lefties acting incompetent in the gov Bureaucracy, shouldn't be hard.

I can definitely say that any LE shooting someone who is restrained and is not pointing a gun at someone is outside of it is outside of it.

By that rubric, if I yell "I'm going to shoot you!" and point something that is an exact facsimile of a gun at a police officer but isn't, and they shoot me, that is incompetent on their part, even though it would require psychic powers on their behalf to know the difference.

I think the problem here is that you seem to very much want to remove any subjectivity from the rubric, but this is just logically impossible without leading to absurd outcomes like the above. Subjectivity requires us to examine things like, even if there was no gun, did they believe there was? If so, why? Was that belief reasonable even if incorrect? If not, just how unreasonable was it? In this case, it hinges on factors like what the person may have said, how they may have acted, whether or not an accidental discharge took place, etc. These factors would determine whether criminal charges are appropriate, if so which ones, and whether and which workplace disciplinary actions would be appropriate.

I can definitely say that any LE shooting someone who is restrained and is not pointing a gun at someone is outside of it is outside of it.

What about law enforcement shooting someone who is not pointing a gun and who they are not even attempting to restrain?

I believe you are the big advocate for rules having no agency around here. Are you going to apply that same argument to your own arguments?

Mu.

Human rules cannot constrain human will. This does not mean that rules are useless. It does mean that they are not a general solution to the problem of human evil. You appear to be doing an absolutely fantastic job of demonstrating this reality with your arguments, so my congratulations on that. I will certainly be quoting your arguments in the future.

Logic is not a human rule. If you are appealing to it, you must be bound by it. I believe I am doing a fairly good job of being bound by logic.

If the above is not a satisfactory answer, I invite you to elaborate.

More comments

Government agents killing people in "panicked split-second decisions" does not make it not an execution

Of course it does. "Execution" isn't a word that includes legitimate or illegitimate attempts at self-defense, involuntary manslaughter, or even anything covered by the felony murder rule. The etymology is a contraction from "execution of death" (i.e. a death sentence) which uses the general/original meaning of execution, "the carrying out (of a plan, etc.)".

If a killing was pre-planned, it might be described as an execution. If a killing happened unplanned because the killer was on a hair-trigger and "Someone said gun!" then, even if it was criminal, it wasn't an execution.

This has changed my view, it being an "execution" would have required some premeditation on the executors part. However do you grant that this has the optics of an execution? Where 5 agents dogpile a guy to restrain him and another draw and shoots him from behind while he is kneeling and being restrained (who wouldn't resist their "execution")

I suppose? It's more like the optics of a street gang fight to me, honestly. A bunch of people on both sides who like to talk shit and throw hands, ready to smash things or deliver a beat-down to someone who they think earned it, none of them with any kind of faith that a judge might be able to deliver justice instead, going armed but still swinging and shoving and stepping up like they can't risk their pride or can't imagine the guns might add any weight to those choices, and then some point a gun flashes and someone's panicked and suddenly there's screaming and flying bullets.

This is just an attempt to spin a narrative to defend the in-group. Government agents killing people in "panicked split-second decisions" does not make it not an execution and does not engender the levels of competency that should/is required by agents of the state. If ICE agents cannot act competently in high stress split second situations then they shouldn't have guns and the power to exercise the state's monopoly on violence.

This strikes me as an opinion that is completely unaware of the standards and realities of policing, or more likely, is trying to obfuscate those realities and hold ICE agents to an entirely different standard. I don't think, to extend an olive branch, that this was a "good shoot". However, these things, as you can see if you watch any amount of body cam footage, do not fall in simple boxes of "good" or "bad". Those split second decisions that you seemingly think ICE agents are not up to the standard of are ones that cops are exposed to - and often call poorly - every day. Most of the time, if cops could have reasonably believed, in that moment, that the suspect had a gun, or was reaching for one, they are cleared, even if it turns out they made the wrong call.

If your opinion is that the level of organization of the ICE agents was overall poor, and there were things they could have done to reduce the amount of confusion (or even avoid the shooting all together); then great! I agree. If your opinion is that American policing is on the whole too protective of officers; that's an opinion I do not share, because I think it would bind police's hands in a lot of cases and get cops and innocent bystanders killed; but I think it's at least a consistent opinion to have. But the media circus and your adherence to it as an ICE-specific problem makes me think that's not your opinion. As I said, at best you are simply unaware of what is required of cops and what standards are applied to them after the fact. At worst, you're disregarding it to frame this as some kind of wild outlier because of the relevance to the culture war fight of the week.

I'm inclined to think it's the latter, right down to your framing. Your classification of it as an "extrajudicial summary execution" is both legally and morally weak.

Legally, the choice to call it an execution implies the intent was killing, even though in every American context (be it law enforcement or personal self-defense) it is a choice to use lethal force to stop a threat. Yes, that (often) leads to death, but it's not the intent! That's explicitly why the agents could actually be in legal danger here, as if they can't prove they thought he was a threat they were not allowed to use lethal force to stop him. Then the choice to call it "extrajudicial" implies that they are exercising some power that is illegitimate or otherwise not vested to them, which is just false.

Morally, it's weak because the word "execution" is an exceptionally loaded term, and you're doubling it up with "extrajudicial". It's an attempt to paint ICE agents as some kind of unprecedented perversion or conduction of law enforcement, when that explicitly is not so. So unless you're trying to sovcit chadyes at me and tell me that every form of police killing is an "extrajudicial summary execution" and that the cops should not have that ability, you're just talking up a very mundane (in the scheme of things) shitty police shoot as some sort of unique thing, and it's just not.

For what it's worth, if this shooting sparked some huge discussion about how American policing is conducted, I'd find it somewhat tiresome but at least internally consistent. There are things I don't like about the "rules of engagement" for law enforcement (Despite the bad implementations in cities like Chicago, there are certain crimes/potential criminals that can simply be dealt with after the fact, when they're less aware of police presence and more likely to be caught by surprise/when they're not amped up), but this was never the discussion. It's just another piece of manipulated evidence to hammer home how fascism is very obviously around the corner.

your adherence to it as an ICE-specific problem makes

I have never claimed this and don't agree its an ICE-specific problem. It's problem across LE agencies and executors of the Governments Monopoly on Violence (GMoV).

American policing is on the whole too protective of officers

I am more here. Police are given enormous power, prestige, respect and authority. And that level of authority needs to come with consequences when you fuck up big time. "Great power = Great responsibility". When a police officer fucks up, us citizens pay the bill, both in loss of rights, and loss of money as the government needs to settle with our taxes.

Those split second decisions

Nobody is forcing these people to become police officers, if they lack the temperament, or ability to react in a competent manner in split second decision making, even after training then they should either be confined to a desk or fired. I'm remined of the previous discussion on the Uvalde Police officers and how the neighboring police actually responded competently vs the local ones who just cowered and beat up parents.

I ignored the bottom half your post because I think you are tilting at windmills that aren't my position. I changed my opinion that "it is literally an execution" to it has "The optics of an execution", It's manslaughter, and if I was on a jury I'd convict on that charge. As I've said elsewhere this site is really my only media use, so charges of believing some MM propaganda are super hollow. I am able to develop an opinion via my own thoughts and senses even if you don't agree with the conclusion.

By definition it was an extrajudicial summary execution, as it was a killing that was not sanctioned by the court and he was killed without the benefit of a free and fair trial. He was killed while restrained by multiple government agents.

OP describes why it is not an execution by highlighting the difference between an execution and an accident. You claim it is a summary execution by describing what makes an execution "summary". You did not respond to OPs points at all, and this rhetorical tactic of ignoring what OP said makes you look weak.

You may very well be correct, but you are not arguing correctly.

My opinion has been changed. It is not premeditated enough to be an execution. It is manslaughter and gross negligence on account of the shooter. It's not an accident because the shooter did not "accidentally" unholster, point, and pull the trigger. He did all of those things very deliberately. His failure of situational awareness resulted in death.

By definition it was an extrajudicial summary execution, as it was a killing that was not sanctioned by the court and he was killed without the benefit of a free and fair trial. He was killed while restrained by multiple government agents.

In other words, not an execution in the way any ordinary person uses that term.

This is just an attempt to spin a narrative to defend the in-group. Government agents killing people in "panicked split-second decisions" does not make it not an execution and does not engender the levels of competency that should/is required by agents of the state. If ICE agents cannot act competently in high stress split second situations then they shouldn't have guns and the power to exercise the state's monopoly on violence.

Then the state should not have a monopoly on violence. There is really no good evidence that ICE or CPB are particularly incompetent compared to other law enforcement agencies, because they are almost unique in being subjected to a very well organized protest and obstruction operation with the tacit (or perhaps even explicit) support of local authorities. Normally, they lean on local law enforcement for help in these kind of situations, but that help has been denied until recently. No matter how well-trained people are, there will always be mistakes, and the number of mistakes will increase in proportion to the number of risky and dangerous situations. This is an isolated demand for competence.

If we applied this logic to the Babbitt shooting, then we should also be disarming and standing down the U.S. Capitol Police. Babbitt was unarmed and, though acting aggressively and belligerently, she was not an immediate deadly threat. She should not have been shot for much the same reason that Pretti should not have been shot. However, with all the chaos and danger of the Jan 6th riots, it was likely that someone somewhere would get shot. For that reason, I don't have much sympathy for Babbitt. Although Lt. Bryd should not have shot, she also bears a lot of responsibility for putting him in a difficult situation. We could just demand more competence from Byrd and hold him entirely responsible, but that only incentivizes more reckless behavior by people like Babbitt.

Unfortunately, I suspect that is the ulterior motive behind these argument. If you can demand infinite competence from law enforcement, if the officer is always held 100% to blame for every bad shoot, then you can exploit that to further your agenda. It creates more incentive for these "protest" groups to insert themselves into dangerous situations to get what they want, because they will never even be held even a little bit accountable should an officer make a mistake. Of course, the alternative where we hold people like Pretti 100% at fault is also unworkable, because it gives too much power to officers that can and will be abused.

Then the state should not have a monopoly on violence.

If you keep talking like that I might just vote you into political office.

This is an isolated demand for competence.

It is not, I demand competence from all government agents who exercise that monopoly of violence. Sword of Damocles, or "With great power comes great responsibility" take your pick. If you can't remain calm under stressful situations that you have no right being a ICE agent, Police, Law Enforcement, etc. If your negligence or incompetence leads to someone dying you should be punished for manslaughter.

If we applied this logic to the Babbitt shooting,

Acceptable, put Lt. Byrd in a trial and determine if he was negligent in shooting when he did.

she also bears a lot of responsibility for putting him in a difficult situation.

Morally yes, and Pretti bears responsibility for putting himself in these situations, As does Rittenhouse, and so on down the line. Legally no, we don't punish the woman for dressing skimpily walking through the ghetto even if common sense should dictate that is a dumb idea.

Unfortunately, I suspect that is the ulterior motive behind these argument. If you can demand infinite competence from law enforcement

My agenda is that I think our current elites are grossly incompetent and attempting to hold them accountable for their fuck-ups, mistakes, and errors is how we get more competent elites. Apparently that is a radical idea. But I guess the tribal instinct to protect insiders from the consequences of their mistakes is too strong to have functional governments.

Acceptable, put Lt. Byrd in a trial and determine if he was negligent in shooting when he did.

You're too late for this. The chance to do so, and prove you had actual principles instead of partisan instincts, was five years ago. The opportunity has passed, and so now the one side will learn from the other and protect their own.

I am only human and have only recently awakened the urge to post online. My position hasn't changed, I'm just going to shrug. As for partisan instincts, mine are squarely in the libertarian section, entirely orthogonal to this left vs right divide.

Yes, of course the facts of use of force in a complex dynamic scenario are irrelevant here, that's not the game being played. The left never wants to play that game, you can see it with Rittenhouse, they'll rewrite the entire scenario so that they never have to play that game. The game being played, by the left, is "innocent mother who just confusedly found herself there" or "kind medic" shot by "fascist jackboot thugs". With no control over the media, the right can't chose the game to play, they can't reframe this on "let's just let the professionals do their job and we'll see if it was justified". So in the game we actually are playing, pointing out that Good was actually not accidentally there but willingly interfering, and that Pretti has a history of belligerent behavior towards ICE is fair.

With no control over the media, the right can't chose the game to play, they can't reframe this on "let's just let the professionals do their job and we'll see if it was justified".

Which professionals? State police working for Tim Walz? Federal cops working for the Trump administration, who immediately slandered the victim? Do you think that Kash Patel would piss of Trump by releasing a report recommending indictment? Or that in the current climate, any politically savvy state cop would say "totally justified shooting, would have done the same" (immunity aside)?

There are certainly cases when it is important to wait for the professionals to collect the facts. Forensic analysis can solve a lot of crimes. If there was body cam footage which would exonerate the shooter (e.g. of Pretti pulling a gun), Trump would release it in a heartbeat. So we must either conclude that there is no body cam footage (faintly damning in itself), or that it would not make us update from the other videos.

Eyewitnesses are terribly unreliable compared to cameras, even if they are not actively malicious. In this case, both sides would have every incentive to agree on a story each. In the Good shooting, if there was no video evidence, we would still be disputing if her car was moving when the first shot was fired -- not so much because of lying evil leftist demonstrators but because of human nature.

What evidence, exactly, do you expect the professionals to rely on then which we have not already seen online? Personally, I would trust a trial jury slightly more to get to the bottom of the facts than someone just watching the videos, but from the looks of it we will not get a trial jury before the next presidential election.

You can trust professionals only if you can reasonably believe that they do not start by writing the conclusion of their report. In cases so politically charged as this one, the chances of that are slim, Trump has not exactly made a big show of keeping federal forces and DoJ independent.

If four years ago, some SJ guy had written here "don't worry about people who committed crimes during the BLM riots getting charged, just Trust The Professionals(TM)", most here would have dismissed this as laughable, and been proven right. I think that the FBI investigating the ICE killings is no less laughable.

With no control over the media, the right can't chose the game to play

What definition of media are you using that does not include the most-watched cable news channel, several of the most prominent social media sites, and a large ecosystem of right-wing podcasts, youtube channels and so forth?

To a first approximation, a supermajority of all journalists and editors, a supermajority of newspapers and TV news stations, A supermajority of the people and companies making "professional" books, music, movies, TV shows, video games, a supermajority of celebrities...

Right-wing media consists primarily of podcasts, youtube channels and streamers, and as of a couple of years ago nation-state actors were openly coordinating blanket censorship against them.

That's fine, if that's all that is being pointed out. OP was not clear about that, and either way it's pretty pointless to point it out here where approximately everyone participating in the discussion is in agreement about the basic facts of what happened.

Ok, let's put it this way. The nitty-gritty of use-of-force is mostly irrelevant. Innocents being summarily executed by the state deserves wide social reaction and reevaluation of the politics of those supporting it in a way that "person plays stupid game, wins stupid prize" doesn't. What the OP is doing is pointing that Pretti's shooting matches the second characterization better than the first.

Whether this charge is actually true can be debated separately, with no reference to Pretti's character or past actions.

This is not correct. If you're trying to assess the reasonableness of an officer's belief that someone's actions created an fear of imminent death or great bodily harm, you would have to take into account knowledge about that person's behavior and past actions that the officer actually possessed at the time of the decision point.

Did any of the officers involved know that Petti was the same guy in this video?

I don't know, but that's at least relevant information.

Okay, but given that even the DHS is not saying that the agents knew that he was a repeat instigator and the DHS has claimed just about everything possible to justify the shooting including a bunch of bullshit about him planning to massacre the agents, I think it's a safe assumption that they didn't know he was the same guy. Happy to hear evidence to the contrary.

I don't see how it matters. Even if they did, the shooting was a mistake, and even if they didn't, the protests were still designed to cause chaos, and increased the chances of a situation like that.

If knowledge of his past behaviors doesn't matter. you should take it up with the guy who said it matters.

Question - do you respond to comments from the new queue, or do you actually read the thread?

I mostly do it from the new queue, and it does occasionally happen that I step on a rake this way. Oops.

I'm having some trouble discerning what exactly it is you are arguing for here.

That every single time there was major culture war drama trying to frame the red tribe as authoritarian istophobes, it was based on a lie. That people shouldn't jump in with massive finger-wagging screeds because we don't uncritically accept the latest Blue narrative about fascists killing people. In fact, given the track record, any such narrative should be dismissed by default, and only accepted when overwhelming evidence is presented.

That there should be no negative consequences for the ICE officers who killed him? That it is a good thing that he died?

No one on the Blue side is arguing merely "there should be some negative consequences for thr officers that killed him", or "it's bad that he died", and no one on the Red side argued the opposite, so I have no idea how these questions are relevant.

However antisocial or stupid he was seems irrelevant to the immediate charge which got so many people (including, seemingly, ones who are otherwise sympathetic to ICE and police shootings) riled up about the case

If it was irrelevant people wouldn't expand so much energy on claims about "peaceful protesters" "legally observing", and "cowering in their homes".

That it is a good thing that he died?

No one on the Blue side is arguing merely "there should be some negative consequences for thr officers that killed him", or "it's bad that he died", and no one on the Red side argued the opposite, so I have no idea how these questions are relevant.

@Throwaway05 on the top level post:

The person involved deserved it - many here may think deserve applies in the traditional sense

I would argue that people getting what they deserve (in the "traditional sense", e.g. what is their moral due) is generally something which is considered good.

"She totally deserved to go to prison for her crimes, but it is good that she got acquitted" does seem incoherent to me.

Or is this a Red hivemind thing? That @Throwaway05 can know that "many here think" he deserved to get killed, but nobody "argued" that openly?

The person involved deserved it - many here may think deserve applies in the traditional sense

I would argue that people getting what they deserve (in the "traditional sense", e.g. what is their moral due) is generally something which is considered good.

Why don't you quote the rest of the paragraph?

No one on the Blue side is arguing merely "there should be some negative consequences for thr officers that killed him", or "it's bad that he died"

I'm arguing those things (and not particularly much more, except perhaps that ICE is just engaging in accelerationism rather than acting rationally towards their declared aim, because I actually am against illegal immigration). I'm surely more "blue" than "red", so there, you're wrong.

I'm arguing those things

And how much pushback are you getting?

From whom? I'm not surrounded by enough Americans in real life nowadays to actually get organic interactions about this stance, and on this forum I certainly get the sense that a lot of posters think there ought to be zero negative consequences for the agents. I wasn't sure if OP was in that class, which is why I responded asking for clarification (as should have been made clear by the very first sentence of my post).

I'm having some trouble discerning what exactly it is you are arguing for here.

That CNN and the legacy media in general is lying through its teeth about his character and the nature of his activities, I guess.

I think this context adds some ambiguity.

It also speaks to the character of the protesters in general, especially the ones who interfere with ICE directly like our two casualties.

you have as much of a right to self-defense against Mother Theresa as you have against Hitler

He interfered with ICE arresting someone else. There's no self-defense for him to appeal to. He could have simply done nothing and be alive today. It was his choice to involve himself in an arrest that set in motion the events that lead to his death.

any right to performing summary executions

If you fight cops while armed, then you risk being shot. This is not a summary execution, because it wasn't an execution at all. He wasn't dragged up and shot in the head. He wasn't put against a wall. He wasn't accused of anything, because calling this an execution is disingenuous and hysterical.

He fought cops and died in the fight. That's not an execution, it's poor judgement.

He interfered with ICE arresting someone else. There's no self-defense for him to appeal to. He could have simply done nothing and be alive today. It was his choice to involve himself in an arrest that set in motion the events that lead to his death.

The putative self-defense argument is for ICE, not him. There is no law that says police can just shoot you if you annoy or obstruct them; either they justify their choice to kill him by arguing that he was an active threat to their safety and they acted in self-defense, or this was a summary execution (definitionally, because it was not preemptively sanctioned by the legal system).

I'm not sure you really appreciate how this looks and feels for someone like me. I would say the current equilibrium on illegal immigration is weird and it isn't desirable to have large numbers of people without proper rights and responsibilities in society nor to select for people who are willing to break or skirt rules. But my genuine honest opinion is that the impact of illegal immigrants is net positive even if you ignore the utility of the immigrants themselves in your calculus (which I don't), and most of the negative effects are the result of NIMBYism and problems in policing and the court system that should be fixed regardless.

From that perspective, what I see is that the right has created a scapegoat in illegal immigrants (and in the farther reaches of the right, non-whites), and has decided that removing them is the fundamental cause that will fix all of the problems in society (much as 2020-era wokeism decided that prejudice is the fundamental problem with society). The administration clearly cares more about increasing deportations than respecting constitutional rights, following court orders, upholding freedom of speech, and otherwise maintaining the things that have made Western society prosperous while also mostly treating citizens and people around the world morally. I find this really, really scary.

In Minneapolis, what I see is an administration sending in an unaccountable paramilitary force to intimidate its political opposition and frog-boil the country into authoritarianism. Yes, they ARE deporting illegal immigrants including many people I am glad to see deported, but that is not the ultimate goal. What I see in Pretti is someone who was rightfully mad about this, and got slightly carried away during an honorable protest and spit on an officer and damaged their car. I would not be opposed to him facing minor criminal charges for this. But that doesn't change my perspective of his death. We have it on video and what I see is that the federal agents were repeatedly the ones who escalated the situation into violence. I'd be interested to see more footage from before what we have seen, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some level of minor violence by a protestor, but I don't expect it to change my views significantly.

As you say, it is unarguable that Pretti was taking actions that increased his risk of being killed. You'll certainly see plenty of coverage on the left claiming false things about his actions (e.g. that he was not seeking confrontation), just like we are seeing people on the right claiming obviously false things (e.g. that he was trying to kill agents). But we can look past the bullshit, and what I see is a courageous man trying to defend someone from being assaulted by thugs.

I don't agree with much of this comment but I appreciate you sharing it.

I was mostly indifferent to immigration in the US. I am quite surprised that Trump could run on a fairly stomach turning immigration policy and win the election. My attitude is that it's now time for the people to get what they wanted, good and hard, as fans of democracy might put it.

This is all to say I mostly don't care for what Trump is doing.

But we can look past the bullshit, and what I see is a courageous man trying to defend someone from being assaulted by thugs.

I see something much more tragic. A courageous, probably mentally unwell man (and woman, in the case of Good), being unwittingly deployed as probabilistic martyrs, radicalized by stories that are mostly fictional.

I hope a few deaths will bring down the temperature, but signs are worrying. A lot of people in my city's subreddit are talking about getting guns, which is the absolutely wrong lesson to take from this weekend.

I have to wonder if disinfo managers at the Russian FSB are watching and saying "hot damn, did we do that?"

In Minneapolis, what I see is an administration sending in an unaccountable paramilitary force to intimidate its political opposition and frog-boil the country into authoritarianism.

This sentence is full of sound and fury signifying nothing. "Paramilitary force" here is just used as a snarl term; pretty much all uniformed law enforcement, except that which is part of the military, consists "paramilitary forces". ICE is not "unaccountable"; they have a defined chain of command (goes along with being paramilitary), and are additionally accountable at least to Federal courts. ICE does not appear to be confronting the administration's political opposition -- just the opposite, the opposition is confronting them -- so intimidation seems quite unlikely. And enforcing immigration law is an established thing; if it's authoritarianism it isn't NEW authoritarianism so there's no frogs being boiled here.

Apologies if someone has brought this up already, but new video of Pretty is out from days before he died.

https://apnews.com/article/minneapolis-ice-alex-pretti-videos-immigration-809506eb23f44a3e8f6e53b9fda7b700

He appears to be caught on video at least one other time engaging violently with the police while armed (for some definitions of violent) and is alleged by some sources to have been spitting at the cops.

Pretti likely felt like such a badass after managing to land a crit on a tail light with two kicks. Then he gets manhandled like a toddler roughhousing with his father the moment an ICE agent exits the car and grabs him by the coatty. Pretti tries running away but is clamped by the ICE agent just holding onto his coat from behind; he goes almost completely airborne, knee flying up from his attempt to run away. Pretti gets reversed back into the street as the agent yoinks him around, before getting thrown down into the tarmac.

When the first few videos were coming out, Pretti's supporters were hoping they had a tall bearded Chad martyr. However, then his photo circulated and he looked like a Reddit user who submitted a "fellas, is it time?" post on /r/bald, which took some wind out of their sails. Now this video will cause even further posthumous aura loss.

Additionally I don't know how many of us here actually regularly interact with American black people but it's a core feature of my job and I have some in my extended family. They (and their woke allies) are absolutely convinced they are liable to be killed for no reason at all at any time by police. This includes the guy from the ghetto, this includes the well behaved upper class by birth Harvard educated chair of surgery who walks to and from work in a suit more expensive than most cars.

Unsurprising, given high black racial ethnonarcissism and robust black victimhood complexes, despite them being the vastly disproportionate source of violent crime. Lebron James embodied this nicely with his Tweet: "We’re literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes". In contrast are whites, who don't appear to exhibit any racial in-group preferences on net, with white liberals exhibiting racial out-group preferences.

I do criminal defense work. It is probably a toss-up whether the defense community (which includes all kinds of NGOs) or the medical community is more woke or interacts more with minorities.

I can't disagree with anything you've written. There is no quality discussion of anything. It is all Big Feels about Trump being Hitler, ICE being the Gestapo, white supremacy and institutionalized racism persecuting minorities, and viewing law enforcement, immigration controls, and prisons as inherently unjust. Attorneys who deal with the worst of the worst and come away saying, "the real problem is that society has not tried enough Progressive solutions." Where graphs of the racial breakdown of prisons vs society at large is uncritically presented as proof that America is irredeemably racist.

There is no chance of me breaking through any of it with critical analysis of the issues. If I were to attempt it, I'd be shunned at best. The only reason I'm somewhat insulated is because I'm in Red flyover country. It was suffocating back when I worked in a Blue city, and my friends who work in those cities now repeat all the usual talking points when I see them. It's not possible to avoid the topics or talk about real life things instead; it's all politics all the time, except of course it's not politics, it's called being decent fucking human.

For what it's worth I think attorneys have it worse. :/

This is always the case in history. The agitators and revolutionaries or whatever you want to call them are not the most shelf-stable individuals.

Sam Adams was a perennial business fuckup. He could barely make money smuggling. Thomas Jefferson was terrible at running a plantation (he was more interested in rewriting the bible). Patrick Henry was a firery lawyer living on daddy's money. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Politics in general is not for people who have their life together. But also many people just routinely don't have their life together all that well. I've been lucky enough to say that my life has never been in shambles. But my father had his life in shambles for what sounds like a ten year stretch when I hear the stories.

As much as the people involved seem like fuckups I think it is still important to have good policy and procedures for handling situations. If only 5% of the population is career criminals and fuckups, the police will be spending most of their time dealing with that population, and they should know how to handle them as best as possible.

I said with the Good shooting that I don't think there was a policy that would have prevented her shooting. With the Pretti shooting I'm not so sure. I haven't watched the videos and evidence enough to be certain, but I feel like it was a communication failure on the part of the officers that led to the shooting. You'll see police officers sometimes calling out the situation to other officers as they restrain an individual, or giving commands to the individual that let other officers know where in the process of the arrest/restraining they are at. You'll also see police officers only have two or three officers close to a person they are restraining, and additional officers will stand back and keep other people at bay. But also keep an eye on the situation. I think either of these tactics employed with Pretti might have prevented him from being shot. Either they would have known he was restrained, or the officers standing back would have seen that he had not pulled a gun. Bad training on the part of the ICE agents involved, but I get that is not really their specialty area. So some of the responsibility loops back around to "why are they not getting backup from local law enforcement that does know how to handle these people".

I feel the need to be against any kind of policy that just casually wastes the lives of people who are fuckups. I owe my existence to someone who was a temporary fuckup. People can improve their lives. They can have kids that are better than them, etc.

Good reminder, thank you.

Well blind soldier for the cause here, I guess, because your post seems tantamount to saying that everyone who does dumb and risky things should be killed.

How do we feel about repeat drunk drivers who get killed in car wrecks that were someone else's fault?

Pretty strongly. We should try and do something about it on both sides. Warn your friends not to drink and drive. But also, create institutions and road safety infrastructure that reduce the probability of drunk people at the wheel getting in accidents.

Okay, presume we've done that already, but some people still get in accidents and die. How do you feel about the repeat drunk driver who dies in a car wreck that wasn't their fault (or at least mostly not their fault)?

If we've done that already, I think it's sad but inevitable. If we haven't done it, and there is, say, an unsigned cliff edge, I think it's worth kicking up a fuss and lobbying for someone to put up a sign.

In the case of ICE, it seems apparent that we haven't done this work. It is not currently minimising risk nearly as well as it could.

Edit: I'm not sure I entirely understand the stipulation that the wreck wasn't their fault, can you elaborate?

In the case of ICE, it seems apparent that we haven't done this work. It is not currently minimising risk nearly as well as it could.

Right, and the absolutely lowest hanging fruit is the cooperation of local authorities and law enforcement. In fact, this alone would likely be enough to satisfy your concerns, since the majority of controversial ICE incidents are occurring in jurisdictions that are not cooperating. Not only are they not cooperating, but local authorities have been encouraging and allegedly even coordinating the chaos. Perhaps ICE still need better training, but that is a longer-term project that is likely to only produce marginal improvements to performance, and it does not necessarily mean they should stop what they're doing. (I suspect higher quality recruits would be better than more training, but that presents other challenges. I suspect the left would heap shame upon any highly competent people who decided to join ICE, because they don't want immigration enforcement to be done better).

Our willingness to tolerate mistakes in law enforcement is proportional to the extent of the criminal problem they are responding to. Personally, I am fine with relaxing standards to address the illegal immigration problem. The "Biden wave" was enormous, and it came after decades of lax enforcement. Making a dent in that problem means acting swiftly, and unfortunately that comes with trade-offs. Up to a point, a per capita increase in mistaken detentions, deportations, or deaths is an acceptable outcome, albeit one that is not welcome. The blame here must land squarely on the people who created the mess in the first place.

Of course, if you don't think illegal immigration is a big problem, or perhaps not a problem at all, then any enforcement is a net negative and no increase in mistakes is acceptable. That is an entirely consistent position.

Please quote the part where he says, or implies, "should".

"Deserve" implies should. (OP dances around that a bit but, then, I only said his post was tantamount to saying such people should be killed.)

many here may think deserve applies in the traditional sense, but I think at minimum we see "deserve" here in the sense of "engaged in stupid avoidable behavior that necessitated the response or failing that represents a lifestyle that drastically increases the likelihood of a bad outcome."

This is exactly where OP equivocates. This passage fails to deny the 'traditional' reading of 'deserve'. (In addition it also implies that Pretti necessitated his own killing, which obviously many people think is not the case, even if it wouldn't have happened were it not for high-risk decisions that he took.)

I don't see it as equivocation, but as drawing a distinction. He also didn't say "necessitated his killing", but precisely what you said at the end - his behavior drastically increased the chances of "a bad outcome".

Doesn't sound that way to me at all, it sounds like he's saying we shouldn't be shocked when a disproportionate fraction of these fuckups get themselves killed while behaving in ways that generally only fuckups do.

I don't think it was a shocking event at all so on that level I agree. It was a dead cert that something like this would happen. That's one of the reasons they should have better policing practices, training and comms in the first place.

I spent an extremely long time this past week arguing with a Chomskyite about how this stuff isn't evidence of neofascist white nationalism and could not make a dent. Rittenhouse came up and we couldn't even concur that he was attacked by rioters, not shooting into a protest.

It didn't matter if I cited Wikipedia instead of usual wrongthink sources.

Stories are more important than facts.

I'm pretty blackpilled that outside of quant finance, maybe half of the judiciary, and a few other jobs, absolutely no one has skills or an interest in trying to understand the world.

I know people on the right are also attached to their narratives, but as an urbane white person who mostly talks to other urbane whites, the right's craziness is common ground. But I just take reputational damage if I observe hypocrisy or craziness on the left.

I had to stop posting about this stuff to socials because people were contacting my wife and asking her if she was safe with me. She even got in my face and said "what are you doing posting this shit to Facebook, this isn't Lesswrong. Are you autistic or something?"

She's right, of course. I should know better.

what are you doing posting this shit to Facebook, this isn't Lesswrong. Are you autistic or something?

Thank you for this, made my day =)

I know people on the right are also attached to their narratives, but as an urbane white person who mostly talks to other urbane whites, the right's craziness is common ground. But I just take reputational damage if I observe hypocrisy or craziness on the left.

This kills me on the daily. I am so willing, desperate even, to throw the people I talk to a bone, but I'm still looked at like a crazy person when I ask for even the tiniest concessions. It's led me to the point where I am explicitly against the left due to the amount of narrative control they have. If Trumpism becomes the de facto political movement in America (fat chance) I would likely flip the script as I would find myself getting shit on for pointing out dumb policies or excesses in this theoretical world.

More than that, I get very sick of the "oh are you both sides-ing?", as if reducing my own ability to recognize separate but still-true issues to some kind of waffling is a winning argument. The sides are very different, their excesses affect people in much different ways, but they often rhyme because it turns out humans lie, overreact, and punish their opponents in very similar ways! And if I point that out, I'm trying to fence sit.

I am happy that I have fostered real life friendships with left leaning people that will at least politely allow me to voice my concerns, even if I get troubled looks and "I don't agree". I have become very tired of politics in general, and I'd probably have taken the grillpill a while ago, but unfortunately unplugging doesn't fix the problem, so I might as well do a modicum of trying to get a clear picture of things so I can at least push back when I get told about fascism for the umpteenth time in a week.

Unfortunately that's the mad logic of war. We must enforce discipline to force our side to fight together at maximum strength. Anyone who dares to criticize our side, even if it's true (especially if it's true!) is either an idiot who needs reeducation, or a traitor to be eliminated. The neutrals will be seized for their resources. Those who just want to grill will end up on the menu!

taken the grillpill a while ago

Wait, what is this philosophy of life? Just becoming the "man that's crazy bro, catch the game last night" guy in the meme?

/images/17697046983660092.webp

Yes. It's adjacent to "hiding one's power level", as even if you have some political beliefs, you understand there's nothing positive that can be accomplished by talking about them in social situations. And in many cases, simply choosing to talk about it less actually causes you to care less, and happiness increases as a result.

I had to stop posting about this stuff to socials because people were contacting my wife and asking her if she was safe with me.

So I'm not a Social Media bird, and I've talked about this before, but my experience has been incredibly similar in the sense that my wife sometimes checks in because she's afraid that I might be an in-the-closet Fascist White Supremacist Neo-Nazi (and I'm talking genuine uncertain fear here, not performative) because in the past, I've had the gall to point out existing precedents engage in whataboutism sometimes when she wants to conversate in the vein of, "ZOMG Trump/The Republicans did a thing! Outrage!"

Sounds familiar, yes.

The irony in all this is my goal in my posts to socials isn't to own the libtards! My goal is to try to help people see that we're not living in a fascist dystopia. Billionaires don't matter! Things are improving! The economy is relatively good! Don't believe the hype about declining longevity and health care! Stop despairing all of the fucking time.

And people get so mad about it.

My wife knows a bit better but I think her deal is that she mostly feels like she lives in a sick society and wants to escape to Europe, where she had fond memories of doing an exchange program as a teenager and a semester of school or two. She knows Europe has problems, but they're not constantly blasted across media. Indeed, the problems her friends in Europe worry about are mostly problems in the US.

I get it. Even though she mostly avoids media (we're the usual no TV in house, no subscriptions, she minimizes screen use herself) she still can't help catch politics contagion from her friends and the few times a week she checks FB to see what her local mom's affinity group is up to.

I agree with your linked post. The correct, healthy response to all of this is (a) almost all of this shit is fake to start with but (b) of the things that are real, you mostly can't do anything about them anyway so you should not disproportionately spend your time worrying about it.

My wife knows a bit better but I think her deal is that she mostly feels like she lives in a sick society and wants to escape to Europe

In this respect, my wife has similar feelings. She now agrees with me that America is in decline and she, too, would love to live elsewhere. (ETA: I'm not necessarily so sanguine on the living elsewhere bit.) However, she has never been out of the country and has yet to experience actual culture shock, let alone any sort of negativity or hostility directed at her for being American.

I get it. Even though she mostly avoids media (we're the usual no TV in house, no subscriptions, she minimizes screen use herself) she still can't help catch politics contagion from her friends and the few times a week she checks FB to see what her local mom's affinity group is up to.

And in this respect, we differ. My wife is informed by her reading of NPR, which she does daily, and her political podcasts of similar vein.

The irony in all this is my goal in my posts to socials isn't to own the libtards! My goal is to try to help people see that we're not living in a fascist dystopia. Billionaires don't matter! Things are improving! The economy is relatively good! Don't believe the hype about declining longevity and health care! Stop despairing all of the fucking time.

And people get so mad about it. (emphasis added)

And this is precisely the part where long experience has taught me not to engage.

She now agrees with me that America is in decline and she, too, would love to live elsewhere.

I think everyone's realizing this. Left, right, and center. The debate is over who's causing it and what we should do about it. On that note I think there are things that most parts of the political spectrum have a good point about, because they notice elements of the decline that others don't, or don't want to notice.

I think the left is broadly correct about social mobility being down, and the benefits of productivity being increasingly centralized, and normal people losing economic power and agency, and the right is broadly correct about social cohesion being down, and people being unwilling to contribute to the common good, and people being more motivated by personal expression and self-actualization than participation in society. (And centrists for their part are right about social mood being elevated, and political anger being out of control, and political intensity causing mental distress.) The issue is these things are all connected.

But I do think the root cause is that productivity increases have declined in the past 10-15 years, so there's less pie to distribute, meaning that there's a drive to centralize and cut down on waste rather than spread treasure, which is why store closures and layoffs have accelerated. The economic incentive is to extract more value from each individual customer or employee while providing less real value in return. It was easy for America to feel great and happy and joyous in the midst of economic good times during the baby boom or the 80s/90s deregulation capitalism fun fest, but now that lean times are here, the knives are coming out.

I had to stop posting about this stuff to socials because people were contacting my wife and asking her if she was safe with me.

And then @Amadan will wonder why someone might consider a good chunk of left wingers to be actually evil.

Oh, such a zinger. How many times have I talked about having to censor myself on social media? I have had similar experiences to those of @dr_analog. You know why I don't talk about my personal life here much? Because a good chunk of right-wingers are also crazy and evil, and I have received literal death threats. I don't feel particularly threatened by a few mentally ill cheeto-inhalers, but I am mindful that if the crazies are saying it directly, other people are thinking it, so I should not widen the attack surface. Sure, leftists who cancel family members for having the wrong opinions about trans people and BLM are "evil," I guess, but I would submit that so are the people who eagerly express what they want to do to their political enemies in the coming civil war they can't wait to break out.

Because a good chunk of right-wingers are also crazy and evil, and I have received literal death threats. I don't feel particularly threatened by a few mentally ill cheeto-inhalers, but I am mindful that if the crazies are saying it directly, other people are thinking it, so I should not widen the attack surface.

Echoing this, I recently posted a deadpan joke right before the election and it was signal boosted by a right-wing influencer, essentially calling me a vile democrat and many people took it seriouisly. People found my phone number and I started getting phone calls threatening me to delete the tweet if I know what's good for me (and I'm sure a bunch of people who share my name also started getting them, not knowing what the fuck was going on).

I was being followed around the internet for a bit. All of my content was starting to collect dozens of deranged, threatening comments.

I posted a pic of myself shooting an AR-15 and it seemed to chill out markedly and I was soon forgotten. But I was definitely looking outside of my front window every few minutes the first two days there.

So, I'm sorry to say, I agree with you that it's not only the left that's fond of this kind of cancel-violence.

Depends on your definition of "evil". I generally require malice, and a malicious actor probably wouldn't try to confirm the situation with the wife before spreading rumours or making false reports to the police.

Not saying there aren't malicious people on that side of the aisle, of course - I'm not an imbecile - but this behaviour isn't something I'd take as evidence of it. With that said, severe delusion without malice clearly can suffice to produce major problems for others; the meme example is of course the Pyro.

a malicious actor probably wouldn't try to confirm the situation with the wife

That’s the malice.

There’s no confirmation - there’s a false question of safety.

These people are successfully suppressing right-wing discourse by harassing family members. Whether they literally have a tail and horns, that's evil.

I'm not disputing that this is a state of affairs that's a major problem in need of solution. The fact that the Pyro thinks he's helping does not remove people's right to avoid being incinerated - in that case, if perhaps not this one, lethal force in self-defence is perfectly acceptable.

But "know thine enemy" is a basic principle, and there's a difference between some loon who thinks you're an evil alien out to eat his brain and a Mary Ann Cotton.

I generally require malice

I don't. There aren't a lot of mustache-twirling villains in real life, and it doesn't take a lot of creativity to come up with a story where you're the good guy, actually.

I think I saw someone on Substack claiming that, with Pretti being caught on video violently engaging with police officers twice in the space of a week, it's possible that he was depressed and attempting to commit suicide by cop. Would that strike any of you as a plausible hypothesis?

Suicide by cop probably isn't the word I'd use. Probably something more along the lines of pursuing martyrdom/ascension to protestor Valhalla

I don't think so, these people really feel like they are saving the country from the Nazis. At the same time they have some dissonance and feel safe and don't understand that you don't do bad shit while armed.

Nobody in their social groups or in the media tells them what they are doing is a bad idea.

It’s possible to be both, right? I’m not a mental health expert, but ‘suicidal ideation’ ‘delusions of grandeur’ and ‘group persecution complex’ are frequently co-occurring.

This situation makes all of this quite complicated - you can't really call something a delusions if a good third to half the country believe it for instance.

Social pressures and informational pressures making unsafe (and maybe even evil) behavior not seem that way isn't a psychiatric issue, hell it isn't even a personality issue, that is what makes it so dangerous.

You break healthy people and make them do worrying shit.

This is why I think the left are the real Nazis. These are the people would be happily killing jews back in the day.

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