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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   22617 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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That's a point very much in contention.

It is not in contention. Multiple autopsies confirmed George Floyd's death was caused by homicide. A court found the police officer who sat on his neck guilty of second degree murder. You clearly do not like the man, but that doesn't change the facts.

  • -36

I don’t believe this is in contention anymore, but I come from the other side. The data looks very clear it was 90% an OD with Chauvin being negligent in realizing he was ODing and providing health care.

So Yes I agree with you this is not in contention. It was just an OD.

That is in contention. I hold it in contention. Minneapolis juries aren't valid.

Yes a jury with an activist who lied to get on and a jury who knew if they gave the “wrong” verdict their town would be destroyed and their lives at risk. After all Congresswomen showed up to make that point. It was for all intents and purposes a show trial.

Ultimately, I don't know what best practice for maximizing a fentanyl-overdose patient's chances of survival looks like, but I would be very surprised if it looks like pinning him down in a chokehold, any more than best practice for a stab victim is to try to handcuff him. Whether Floyd died from physical choking or as a result of the drugs he'd ingested doesn't let Chauvin off the moral hook; in Floyd's as in Nowak's case, it would still leave us with officers who wasted time "restraining" an already-dying man instead of trying to save his life.

If it’s an OD it 100% lets Chauvin off the moral hook. You can say he was not competent and should have realized it’s an OD and healed him, but that is potentially an elite talent.

I am not sure how hard it is save George there. I think it’s harder than if you asked me to recite the alphabet. If reciting the alphabet saves him then I am morally culpable. If it was as hard as doing brain surgery then I am not morally culpable.

His blood level would not have been reversed by Narcan even if they'd dosed him with it the second they arrived.

Admittedly not a toxicologists so I don’t know if that is true. But that case changed a lot of my beliefs. I know longer think we live under the rule of law. I’ve got no problem with Trump setting up billion dollar slush funds with government funds. Having the modern Democrat Party in power is no longer viable. The goal is to win. Accumulate power you can use. Don’t lose it.

I think Thiel likes Argentina long term. They do seem very gay so maybe that’s part of it. Having a friendly government to go to as an escape route must be considered now.

I think the 'eggshell skull' principle would apply to this case.

It does not; for one thing, it's a civil doctrine.

The biggest difference is that Floyd was human excrement. The world was better off with him not in it. Novak wasn’t committing a crime. Novak wasn’t tweeking from hard core drug use. Novak wasn’t acting fucking wild when the police showed up. Novak doesn’t have a history of home invasions where Novak held a gun to a pregnant woman.

The police’s job with Floyd was to restrain him because he was a criminal who was acting very wild. Notably the police did not start with kneeling on his back. That’s the first video that came out but if you watch the bodycam footage the police tried a lot before kneeling on him.

The biggest difference is that Floyd was human excrement.

Less of this, please.

No. I provided the support for way he was terrible. I spoke plainly.

As I said in my other reply, by saying Chauvin was responsible for his death, I am not necessarily saying that he acted wrongly. Prioritizing the safety of the innocent over that of the guilty can be the correct utilitarian choice in a fraught situation. But you're still responsible for pulling the trolley lever. Even if it wasn't you who tied the person you sacrifice to the trolley tracks, you still made that choice; you can justify your actions, but they are your actions.

The analogy doesn’t hold. In the trolley situation, the victim is exogenously tied to the tracks. In the criminal situation, the criminal tied himself to the tracks. It was in fact just desserts (ie do bad things and bad things are likely to happen to you)

I don't actually think it especially changes the trolley problem if the single person is a suicide attempt.

We disagree. The point of the trolley example is that you must make a choice of killing more or less. What messes with our intuition is that there is an obvious right answer (make sure fewer die) but it feels morally wrong to take action to kill an innocent.

It seems less morally wrong to take action to kill someone that created the situation whereby you must choose to kill more or less.

Perhaps, then, that's a part of why the ingroup vs. outgroup behaviors really evolved: if you have one ingroup and 5 outgroup tied to the track, you can sleep easy not pulling the lever specifically because they are your outgroup. Remember, humanity didn't even invent 'love your enemies'-style accountability, and even that's pretty vague in terms of what you're actually required to do there.

Most of the equivocation about this topic mostly comes down to the fact that in this situation, and in psychologically-normal human beings (the sociopaths are going to sleep easy regardless), a justification will be found to either pull or not pull the lever, because the decision must be made.

Floyd was exuberantly resisting arrest and either lying about being unable to breathe or having a medical episode well before anybody laid a finger on him. Chauvin followed the department handbook (He could have attended to him earlier on the ground, sure, but he also likely didn't have a reasonable expectation of the guy overdosing) on how to restrain somebody resisting arrest. I don't mind a court finding him negligent for not checking Floyd but murder is an absolute miscarriage of justice

Wasn't the murder conviction more a result of how Minnesota names negligent manslaughter?

Floyd was in the care of the police and hence they were responsible to provide medical care to him, which they didn't, they exacerbated the situation.

Perhaps this view is overly harsh to the cops, perhaps it isn't, I don't really know (even if sentencing probably was excessive). The point though, is that it wasn't really a murder conviction in the colloquial sense of the word.

Oh, I agree. I'm just saying that "(partly) responsible for his death" is a much lower bar than "guilty of murder".

Coase made the point that any conflicts in rights are bilateral monopolies. That is, my factory is only a nuisance to your home because your home is there.

It is true that without the police Floyd may have lived that day (or may not have). But it’s also true that Floyd’s actions also caused his death. That is, there isn’t a single party responsible but multiple parties.

but I would be very surprised if it looks like pinning him down in a chokehold,

Why? Every policy is written in blood. How many people going on deranged crashouts would hurt themselves or someone else if they weren't forcibly restrained?

I once called the cops to assist some delirious homeless guy who fell over and cracked his head open on the sidewalk. Do you think the cops should have let Floyd drive away while ODing on fent, which is what he would have done otherwise?

I'll go on the record and say that if I'm ever in a similar state, I would be thankful to be restrained, because I have a bare minimal "deserves to live in a decent society" level of concern for the likelihood that I might accidentally hurt someone else while out of my mind.

I said "best practice for maximizing a fentanyl-overdose patient's chances of survival"; not "police best-practice for dealing with a drugged-out suspect who might be dying but might also still be a danger to others". It may very well be that keeping him restrained on the off-chance that if they'd relaxed the hold, he would have turned out to be faking enfeeblement and run off and harassed people, was a defensible gamble for public safety. But if, in a situation of Bayesian uncertainty, you choose to prioritize neutralizing the potential threat posed by an individual over that individual's own health, and it turns out he was in fact dying, then you're responsible for his death. That doesn't necessarily mean you made the wrong choice, but you did make a choice that led to his death and you need to own up to that.

But if, in a situation of Bayesian uncertainty, you choose to prioritize neutralizing the potential threat posed by an individual over that individual's own health, and it turns out he was in fact dying, then you're responsible for his death.

It's also worth noting that the police were surrounded by hostile people yelling at them. That's going to split attention and make it difficult to stop and check the guy and do first aid. And they had an ambulance on the way. (Iirc, it actually took a wrong turn and was delayed for several minutes.)

And the concern isn't just that Floyd might have hurt others. He could very easily have tried to get up and fallen and hurt himself. Like I said, I've personally seen someone in a comparable state literally crack their own skull open by falling over and hitting the corner of the curb. And in such a case, the PD is still getting sued or worse because "He was obviously in distress, why didn't you keep better control of him!"

If Floyd ingested a gigadose of drugs then he's responsible for his own death far more than the policeman who held him down.

And likewise if Digwa stabbed Nowak through the lung he's far more responsible for Nowak's death than the police officers who failed to get Nowak first aid, but responsibility still exists even if it isn't exclusive.

I think there's an important difference in kind. The state has a legitimate use on the monopoly of force.

When you rob a store the state has a duty to restrain you. The first danger to Floyd's life was caused by his own decision to swallow his own drugs. The second danger, the use of force by the state, is justified in principle. Now we're just debating how much force was appropriate.

When you're stabbed by someone the state has a duty to restrain him. The first danger to Nowak's life was caused by Digwa. The second danger was caused by the inappropriate use of state power to restrain Nowak. It's a different kind of mistake: the state did not monopolize its use of force. Digwa was allowed to use lethal force. And the state watched.

If Nowak had been actively resisting and fleeing arrest, as Floyd was at the time of the start of the restraint, there would be some sort of point you're making. It's not like Floyd was passed out in the gutter when Chauvin rocked up and then Chauvin spontaneously decided to kneel on his upper back.

Reddit levels of _"nuh-uh!" with nothing to back it up.

The Fall of Minneapolis is an entire documentary, that you can watch for free, about the extensive fuckery around the George Floyd case. While, charitably, there is room to argue about Floyd's cause of death, the idea that any sort of fair process of justice was carried out after the fact is close to laughable at this point. Chauvin being in sentenced to over 20 years is perhaps the most recent and glaring example of a literal political prisoner.

Then you have to layer on the contest of lackdown double-standards from 2020. "Stay home with no exceptions unless you want to murder your whole neighborhood" gave way to "It's not possible to catch COVID at a George Floyd rally" awfully quickly.

The entire George Floyd meta-cycle ought to be studied as one of those particularly shameful mass events in American history. I'd put it up there with, ironically enough, something like the spontaneously lynchings in the South over the first 20 - 30 years of the 20th century.

Yeah I'm sure the position contributed to Floyd's death on some level but I feel it is a rounding error compared to the drug ingestion and it was an appropriate thing to do to a felon actively resisting arrest. I've also yet to see anybody render anybody unconscious via the 'chokehold' that Chauvin was applying which is definitely an uncomfortable position but is not any sort of actual strangulation.

No, two autopsies found different results. The original one "revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation."

The second autopsy, the "independent" one, was hired by the family, represented by race-baiting huckster Benjamin Crump.

The tox report found Fentanyl 11 ng/ml. 2-3 ng/ml is lethal for someone without a high tolerance

“[Dr. Baker] said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death,” the memo said.

That's not utterly conclusive, but I think any reasonable person would consider it a reasonable doubt, especially given the unprecedented pressure campaign going on. If you were a medical examiner during the Summer of Love, would you have been willing to send all the people burning cities into a berserk rage by declaring it an OD? At what confidence level?

I've got no doubt that the position and the stress of being arrested contributed somewhat to Floyd dying. But I'm also sure that his diet and existing lifestyle factors also did and nobody from McDonald's went to prison

And well he should’ve been arrested. Don’t steal from stores; don’t get arrested.

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