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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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FWIW. Still other views on Floyd in the right-wing. Funny I believe that guys an Israeli, but everyone everywhere knows American culture war.

Why should I privilege the views of a non American specifically selected on idealogically grounds over the 12 randomly selected ordinary American citizens who apparently spent like two weeks listening to just the testimonies alone who all decided he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, plus the other 12 randomly selected ordinary American citizens who also did a similar thing and also all decided he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? And don't forget all the appeals courts (including the US supreme court!) who all turned him down.

American culture war.

This comment is especially revealing. The question of Chauvin's innocence in court is not a culture war one, it is a legal one.

His views are representative of the right. Which is why I say in Texas that even if say a leftist Austin jury found him guilty that he would be pardoned in a right controlled state like Texas.

“Chauvin’s innocent in court is a legal one not a culture one”

Sure I agree. I am just pointing out in different legal jurisdiction with different cultures he would be innocent.

Also not an unbiased jury. Jurors have biases based on their culture. In this case hang whitey was their culture.

Bias: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/photo-of-chauvin-juror-wearing-blm-t-shirt-at-march-raises-questions-of-impartiality-experts-say/

His views are representative of the right. Which is why I say in Texas that even if say a leftist Austin jury found him guilty that he would be pardoned in a right controlled state like Texas.

The conservative majority Supreme Court had the option to take the appeal and turn his conviction! We already have high up conservative officials who didn't do this exact thing that you're saying they would definitely do.

Also not an unbiased jury. Jurors have biases based on their culture. In this case hang whitey was their culture.

Why do you think a jury is made up of 12 people who have to all agree and not 1 then?

Adamiak was convicted of a crime he clearly did not commit, partly under an interpretation of the law not even yet finalized at the time of the 'offense', by a jury. The Conservative Supreme Court didn't care.

I've never heard of this specific case but in general almost all of those types of claims like "they got convicted for something they clearly didn't do!" or "they got in jail just for hanging out with friends!" or other such statements, they're typically wrong. Either on accident by people who don't know the specific details of the case, or by liars like "im just on the sex offender list for peeing outdoors" when they actually jerked off in front of a kid or whatever.

google exists, as does the search engine on this site.

If your counterargument is just that typically people claiming to be falsely convicted of crimes are liars, that's... probably true, and also probably useless. If your counterargument is that this specific claim must not be a person falsely convicted because most claims of false conviction are false, congratulations for making an even worse riddle of induction. If your counterargument is that this specific claim must not be a person falsely convicted because he hasn't specifically been found innocent later, congratulations on your new rule as the king of tautology club.

Thing is that there's not really much point into looking any specific circumstance because it's one of those heuristics that is 99% right.

But even more so

google exists, as does the search engine on this site.

Yes obviously, but do you actually understand at all how long pouring over a bunch of court documents and the like would take? Maybe if you're happy with "here's what the defense's lawyer said after judgement" or "here's what a politically motivated person says" as your basis for why it's unfair, but tons of defense lawyers and politically motivated people say that after (it's their job!) and they're almost always wrong about it.

And all of that for what, to convince a guy on social media who thinks "just Google it" is the extent of figuring out specific complex legal questions when no one changes their mind on social media to begin with, no matter how deeply you actually bother to explain it to them? I could spend some time looking over court documents, seeing what this random guy was charged with, the evidence for it, and the legal opinions of everyone involved, but there's no gain for that amount of effort.

If he's truly clearly innocent (or the law he was charged under is unconstitutional) he can keep appealing upwards. At the very top of it we have a 6-3 conservative majority SC, if they think it's biased against the 2nd amendment they can always take it if they want. It's very rare a supreme court does that (because again, basically every one of these claims are bullshit and the ones that aren't bullshit get resolved before even reaching "let's appeal to SC" level) but he has tons of options left.

Now I'm sure there are some rare specific examples where a person, despite all available evidence at the time showing that they shouldn't be found guilty, was anyway and the appeals court also fucked up and the process up did. Complete perfection is not a goal that is expected or achievable, unless we dismantle the justice system completely there's always that risk. Blackstones ratio as a concept is entirely about acknowledging some innocents will inevitably end up punished unfairly, and arguing for us being sided towards finding people not guilty. That's why we have multiple layers of protection for the accused to begin with.

Yes obviously, but do you actually understand at all how long pouring over a bunch of court documents and the like would take?Maybe if you're happy with "here's what the defense's lawyer said after judgement" or "here's what a politically motivated person says" as your basis for why it's unfair, but tons of defense lawyers and politically motivated people say that after (it's their job!) and they're almost always wrong about it.

There's a fantastic missing middle option between 'deep research of an entire case down to its bones' and 'hey, let's pattern-match to this sex offender case'. I mean, I'd be fascinated if you actually could find some defense the ATF in Adamiak's case that didn't devolve to 'we should have a Chevron but worse and retroactive and for felony crimes'...

But I'm not very optimistic. And it's still more engagement than 'oh, I don't know what that is'.

If he's truly clearly innocent (or the law he was charged under is unconstitutional) he can keep appealing upwards. At the very top of it we have a 6-3 conservative majority SC, if they think it's biased against the 2nd amendment they can always take it if they want.

They didn't.

They also didn't take the Gardner case, where Gardner definitely did the behavior (brought a gun into Maryland, shot someone trying to kill her), but the law itself was unconstitutional (not even just on a Second Amendment matter! She couldn't even apply for the required permit at the time, because she wasn't a Maryland resident, so fuck you privileges and immunities clause).

It's very rare a supreme court does that (because again, basically every one of these claims are bullshit and the ones that aren't bullshit get resolved before even reaching "let's appeal to SC" level) but he has tons of options left.

No, he doesn't. At this point he can hope for a pardon, or attempt some procedural habeas or other post-conviction efforts that are just or more differential to the original jury finding and expert testimony as his first appeal, and unlike an illegal immigrant, SCOTUS won't give a damn about.

Again, "If your counterargument is that this specific claim must not be a person falsely convicted because he hasn't specifically been found innocent later, congratulations on your new rule as the king of tautology club."

Complete perfection is not a goal that is expected or achievable, unless we dismantle the justice system completely there's always that risk. Blackstones ratio as a concept is entirely about acknowledging some innocents will inevitably end up punished unfairly, and arguing for us being sided towards finding people not guilty.

Blackstone's Ratio may well prescribe exactly the level of policy we're facing, but it doesn't actually make the innocent guilty, nor tell us that the policy as implemented is morally correct.

(also, ten-guilty-free prioritized over one-innocent-jailed has some hilarious ramifications when put against your heuristic, but that's a separate problem.)

There's a fantastic missing middle option between 'deep research of an entire case down to its bones' and 'hey, let's pattern-match to this sex offender case'. I mean, I'd be fascinated if you actually could find some defense the ATF in Adamiak's case that didn't devolve to 'we should have a Chevron but worse and retroactive and for felony crimes'...

That's just a common example that you'll find of bullshit complaints about the legal example.

They didn't.

Then it seems like the top court of the US, with a conservative majority, disagrees with your assessment.

Again, "If your counterargument is that this specific claim must not be a person falsely convicted because he hasn't specifically been found innocent later, congratulations on your new rule as the king of tautology club."

Yes it is generally true like 99% of the time or whatever. People who are innocent (and also not extremely unlucky where the circumstances make them look guilty) and last that long are rare. It is a perfectly fair heuristic.

Heck it's not even just the legal system, the same sort of discussion happens with stuff like getting banned from video games. Almost every single complainer you'll see on a game forum saying they were unfairly banned was actually a cheater/spammer/saying slurs/etc. The cases where they were actually unfairly banned either on accident or abuse of power are few and far between.

It is such a good heuristic (almost all complaints about getting punished in a free society or popular consumer product or whatever are from people who really did deserve it) that it's true even with far less serious consequences to be avoided.

Blackstone's Ratio may well prescribe exactly the level of policy we're facing, but it doesn't actually make the innocent guilty, nor tell us that the policy as implemented is morally correct.

Sure, but the US system looks to be pretty accurate overall. If you do spot checking instead of cherry picking, you'll easily see that basically every single case you look at would not just deserve it but clearly so.

(also, ten-guilty-free prioritized over one-innocent-jailed has some hilarious ramifications when put against your heuristic, but that's a separate problem.)

Nope, they both work at the same time! Refer back to the video games ban I mentioned. As a consumer product, they are incentivized to ban rule breakers while also accidently banning as few innocent paying customers as possible. So they have their own type of blackstones ratio avoiding false positives because each one is a loss of money.

Thus you create that situation, most people complaining they're a false positive ban are actually liars. It's not perfect, but it is a general thing you can assume and be right about all the time.

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