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And another culture (and shooting) war event happening right now, event of more importance than the pathetic one in Montreal.
After a year (lightning speed for justice) events that happened during protest at ICE detention center in July 4, 2025 were resolved.
In rather unexpected way, by maximum possible prison sentences.
Ineffectiveness of your resistance is no longer an mitigating circumstance, and using Signal is highly aggravating one.
The judge openly said that the sentences are meant to "send a message".
As expected, Xitter celebrates while Bluesky mourns. We will see if this is one time occurance, or Trump's promise to crack down on Antifa was meant seriously.
I have no theory of mind for the people who are outraged by the verdict or believe that this is somehow creating a chilling effect on the right to protest. The idea that the first amendment is a license to shoot a cop is fundamentally absurd and I have no insight into the mind of the person who is shocked that doing so would result in a prison sentence. The most charitable way I can think about this is that they feel a social obligation to speak in solidarity with their fellow travelers, and the fact that doing so requires them to spout obviously absurd bullshit is not an obstacle to this.
Are you making a distinction between people who are outraged about Song's verdict and those who are only/primarily so about the others? That Song was convicted seems undisputably reasonable (though US prison sentences continue being bafflingly draconian to my European eyes - an effective life sentence, and he didn't even actually kill anyone?), but from what I gathered a lot of people do believe the others' claim that they did not know that Song planned to have a shootout at all (however plausible or not that claim is). If you buy into that narrative, it does really seem like a precedent for severe collective punishment if your politics are a bit out there and one of the people you associate with turns out to be crazier than you bargained for. I mean, what's the guarantee that if a Mottizen goes postal under a future Blue administration, there won't be calls to put us all on the hook based on this precedent?
The fact that they were committing a terrorist act at the time, and the victim was a police officer, are both aggravating circumstances here.
Extremely implausible that they did not intend, or at least reasonably foresee, some sort of shootout considering they brought loaded rifles and first aid kits, and wore body armor.
A conspiracy under the law in the United States requires an agreement to commit an illegal act, and in most jurisdictions an overt act furthering that agreement. The prairieland suspects had a history of close association in which they communicated their plans to commit a terrorist act, and then they all showed up at the same place at the same time wearing the same uniform carrying rifles and explosives and wearing body armor and committed a terrorist act with those rifles and explosives. No, some lone nut going postal is not grounds to put any of us away just because we happened to post in the same comment thread on some web site. To believe this to be even remotely possible is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the charges against the prairieland suspects, and the law itself.
An easy thing to do, given how mainstream sources have not been exactly forward about the details. All I'm saying is that you don't need to theory-of-mind someone who knows/believes the same version of the events as you do, and then is outraged by the verdict - all that you need to understand is how someone who has probably not heard a version other than "a bunch of people went to protest for a Good Cause with fireworks, one of them had a gun because he was an ex-marine, and shot a sketchy cop thinking he was acting in self-defense; the state used it to lock them all away for believing in the Cause" from any source they considered credible would come to be.
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