domain:eigenrobot.substack.com
To what degree did the protestors' tactics of illegally barricading streets, widespread throughout the Floyd riots and a recurring prelude to tragedy, bear responsibility for the outcome?
Close to one hundred percent. The tactic is classic dilemma action, penning people into a position where they must either submit to the intimidation tactics of the mob or become violent against the mob. In either case, the mob organizers like the optics of the outcome - heads they have shut things down and flexed their might, tails and they're the poor innocent victims. No one should ever treat these tactics as "peaceful".
How should we interpret Perry's comments prior to the shooting, or Foster's for that matter?
As I wrote elsewhere:
Allow us, for a moment, to consider that everyone involved here is telling their truth to the best of their ability. Garrett Foster was a good and decent man that lovingly cared for his tragically quadriplegic fiancée. He was at these protests due to a deeply felt conviction that black people are oppressed by the police and was personally invested in the matter because the love of his life is a black woman. He carried a firearm at the protests because this is his constitutional right and he wanted to protect his ingroup from agitators. Daniel Perry was just an Uber driver trying to go about his business. He got confused because BLM protests occupy streets that one can normally drive down, he made a mistake in traffic, and found himself surrounded by protestors. The protestors were panicky because they're familiar with the widely broadcast Charlottesville story. Perry was frightened because many protests have turned violent. Foster attempted to defuse the situation and move Perry along.
If all of that were true (and I don't accept that it is, but let's run the thought experiment), this highlights why I was so goddamned angry at the people that allowed BLM riots to happen. The above all could be true and we would wind up with one good man's life ended and another good man's life ruined because these absolute donkeys running the show couldn't be bothered to stop BLM from rioting. Take away the riots and there's no need for Foster to arm up. Take away the riots and there is no plausible reason for Perry to be genuinely fearful. But no, we got tacit support from leftist mayors and governors around the country and a bunch of people died because of it. I am never, ever going to forgive these people.
Note - I don't really believe that this charitable view of the two men is accurate, but the point is that it could be and the same thing could have happened because of the context.
In explaining what I don't believe:
I don't buy that either man was basically an innocent bystander sucked into an unfortunate vortex. They could have been, but I doubt it. I think the evidence that Perry really, really hated protestors is compelling evidence that he embraced the confrontation. On the flip side, I have an extremely negative view of BLM and basically just don't believe anyone that says they're peaceful - I think all BLM marches are intimidation tactics and are only peaceful to the extent that people are effectively cowed into submission. Doing anything other than submitting will tend to result in very unpleasant outcomes. My model of these clashes is much more of communist-fascist streetfighting in the 1930s than it is sincere misunderstandings between well-meaning people. I think BLM rioters relish the fight and Perry enjoyed killing one of them.
Nonetheless, like I said, I think someone could take the maximally charitable view and have that be consistent with the known facts of this incident.
The answer to, "so now what" is to aggressively enforce laws for blocking streets, for false imprisonment, and so on. These aren't legitimate protest tactics and allowing them gets people killed. I don't care whether Perry was a cold-hearted murderer or an innocent victim of the system, the result was an entirely predictable consequence of BLM tactics that have little to do with the individuals in any specific altercation.
SteveKirk
49m ago
Side note for that last one, it was "protester shoots at car they were mobbing, hits other protester mobbing the car"
Clever bit of headline writing to make it sound like the driver did the shooting.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
42m ago
Does it? Below someone said that because Foster had his gun angled down, but could have pointed it directly at Perry and fired in an instant that Perry was correct to have felt threatened.
The comment was that Foster had his gun angled down, from a standing position, which did point it at Perry, who was sitting in a car. Foster was also advancing on him while doing this. Rittenhouse did not point his gun at anyone until immediately before shooting, and he ran away rather than advancing.
It is difficult to overstate how absurdly perfect Rittenhouse's actions were, and how minimal the ambiguity was due to the abundance of clear video evidence. The fact that he was still charged and tried for murder despite the well-established facts was profoundly radicalizing for me, and I imagine for many other Reds. Rittenhouse should not be accepted as a minimum standard for what legitimate self-defense looks like. He is an example of how even complete, obvious, absolute innocence will not be accepted by the Blues as a tribe.
If one of those is a threat then surely the other is, even if we removed them from protest situations and just had them standing on the street minding their own business.
Carrying a rifle is not a threat. Aiming a rifle at someone while advancing on them, while they are already being illegally assaulted by your companions, is a threat. If there is ambiguity here, it seems to me that it is not coming from the facts but rather from a tribal tendency to refuse those facts when they are inconvenient.
I'm given to understand that other motorists reported that Foster threatened them with his rifle previously. If that were the case, would you agree that it undermines a claim that his actions were legitimate?
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a full pardon for U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted last year of murder in the shooting death of Garrett Foster, a USAF veteran and BLM protestor. Foster had attended a downtown Austin protest armed with an AK-pattern rifle, and joined his fellow protestors in illegally barricading the street. Perry's car was halted by the barricade, Foster approached the driver's side door, rifle in hand, and Perry shot him four times from a range of roughly 18 inches, fatally wounding him. Police reported that Foster's rifle was recovered with an empty chamber and the safety on.
Perry claimed that the shooting was self defense, that the protestors swarmed his vehicle, and that Foster advanced on him and pointed his rifle at him, presenting an immediate lethal threat. Foster's fellow protestors claimed that Foster did not point his rifle at Perry, and that the shooting was unprovoked. They pointed to posts made by Perry on social media, expressing hostility toward BLM protestors and discussing armed self-defense against them, and claimed that Perry intentionally crashed into the crowd of protestors to provoke an incident. For his part, Foster was interviewed just prior to the shooting, and likewise expressed hostility toward those opposed to the BLM cause and at least some desire to "use" his rifle.
This incident was one of a number of claimed self-defense shootings that occurred during the BLM riots, and we've previously discussed the clear tribal split in how that worked out for them, despite, in most cases, clear-cut video evidence for or against their claims. The case against Perry was actually better than most of the Reds, in that the video available was far less clear about what actually happened. As with the other Red cases, the state came down like a ton of bricks. An Austin jury found Perry guilty of murder, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
Unlike the other cases, this one happened in Texas, and before the trial had completed, support for Perry was strong and growing. That support resulted in Governor Abbott referring Perry's case to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. A year later, the board returned a unanimous recommendation for a pardon to be granted. Abbott has now granted that pardon, and Perry is a free man, with his full civil rights restored to him. He has spent a little more than a year in prison, and his military career has been destroyed, but he is no longer in jail and no longer a felon.
So, now what?
It seems to me that there's a lot of fruitful avenues of discussion here. Was the shooting legitimate self-defense? To what degree did the protestors' tactics of illegally barricading streets, widespread throughout the Floyd riots and a recurring prelude to tragedy, bear responsibility for the outcome? How should we interpret Perry's comments prior to the shooting, or Foster's for that matter?
Two points seem most salient to me.
First, this case is a good demonstration of how the Culture War only rewards escalation, and degrades all pretensions to impartiality. I do not believe that anyone, on either side, is actually looking at this case in isolation and attempting to apply the rules as written as straightforwardly as possible. For both Blues and Reds, narrative trumps any set of particular facts. No significant portion of Blues are ever going to accept Reds killing Blues as legitimate, no matter what the facts are. Whatever portion of Reds might be willing to agree that Reds killing Blues in self-defense might have been illegitimate appears to be trending downward.
Second, this does not seem to be an example of the process working as intended. If the goal of our justice system is to settle such issues, it seems to have failed here. Red Tribe did not accept Perry's conviction as legitimate, and Blue Tribe has not accepted his pardon as legitimate. From a rules-based perspective, the pardon and the conviction are equally valid, but the results in terms of perceived legitimacy are indistinguishable from "who, whom". As I've pointed out many times before, rules-based systems require trust that the rules are fair to operate. That trust is evidently gone.
This is what we refer to in the business as a "bad sign".
Have any of the non-AR successor platforms taken off?
Not to my knowledge. I think the Army is still claiming they're gonna retire the m4 and standardize on Spears, but I'll believe it when I see it. There was a really good writeup I found once, talking about the "Glockpocalypse" that wiped out like 90% of variation in the handgun market, as everyone gave up on their bespoke designs in favor of various flavors of Glock clone. The Glock 17 was just straight-up better, cheaper, more durable, more reliable, and most previous designs simply couldn't compete. The AR15 has done pretty much the same thing, both because it's an amazingly good design, and because it hit critical mass such that the design has been perfected to an absurd degree as a result of network effects. At this point, it's hard to imagine it ever going away, or why there would even be competing designs in another few decades.
Did the IAR project for the Marines ever happen, or did it get shelved to buy them more anti-ship missiles?
Last I heard they were still gonna get IARs, but those were going to be piston AR derivatives from H&K.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
There is a narrative here where Rittenhouse was found not guilty (correctly) because he did not point his gun at someone and therefore was not threatening, and Foster also did not point his gun at someone so was not threatening and was thus murdered by Perry.
A "narrative" is all it is. It elides a bunch of significant detail in order to claim two things are far more similar than they are, and therefore make out defenders of both Rittenhouse and Perry as hypocrites.
WhiningCoil
4hr ago
So, now what?
If I've learned anything, it's never, ever post your violent fantasies online. Not on Facebook, not on Twitter, not on Reddit, not on Discord, not even on Signal with people you trust with your life. Somehow the feds will get ahold of them the moment you protect yourself from their foot soldier, and then it's off to the rape cage with you.
It's probably off to the rape cage with you anyways, but being hoisted by your own petard in the media just adds insult to injury. Your very seriously injured colon.
IMHO the man who was menaced in his vehicle by armed protestors, and ran over several to escape at the Virginia Charlottesville riot was railroaded even harder, but I sincerely doubt any governor of ours will have the balls to pardon him. The state stripped him of his lawyer, introduced prejudicial social media posts, and recorded phone conversations with his mother, and then quietly sentenced him to life in prison.
sliders1234
5hr ago
U-Visas, or Visas for illegals who suffered violent crime in the U.S. has recently come into the news as a gang in Chicago did fake robberies to help illegals get U-Visas. The program was originally designed to help sex trafficking victims. But had already expanded.
https://cwbchicago.com/2024/05/chicago-fake-robbery-visa-scam.html
If I had to guess this gang was probably not the originator of these schemes. And there are immigrant attorneys and NGO’s spreading the loophole.
https://www.injusticewatch.org/project/u-visa/2022/chicago-police-u-visa-denials/
Leftist piece detailing two Chicago cops who were known for denying U-Visa claims. One case in particular caught my eye of an illegals son being murdered in Chicago and then using it to apply the entire family for U-Visas. Basically if you let the gangbanging families into the country eventually junior gets killed and everyone is legal. A lot of the cases sound like antisocial illegal behavior making them eligible for getting U-Visas.
What started out as a nice way to help sex-trafficking victims then turned into a whole institution for getting immigrants legal. And then it turned into let’s just fake the crimes.
Of course this is a prime example of perverse incentives and the cobra effect. Once you start measuring something people find a way to get the incentive in a way that does not accomplish your goal.
It’s also an indicator for why America is becoming a low trust society. As a Republican I see no reason to ever compromise with the left. If you try to do something reasonable like U-Visas or Asylum or money for terrorist attack victims (turning into massive student loan relief) the left will abuse your reasonableness.
It’s also why the right with some help from Trump was wise to shutdown the immigration bill. That which is written on paper isn’t important. It will be abused. Controlling the executive, beauraucracy, and the process is where the power lies.
But I do think reading the room would tell Perry that it was cosplay.
"The room" was a mob of protesters illegally blocking the road, swarming his vehicle and beating on the exterior while screaming at him, and then one of them advancing on him with a rifle raised in firing position. What part of that sounds like "cosplay"?
Do you have a source for vehicles being fired upon?
Armed "protesters" murdered a young black motorist and critically-injured his passenger under similar circumstances, roughly a month before this incident, and were allowed to escape without arrest or prosecution. Armed "protestors" in Georgia fired on a vehicle under similar circumstances a few weeks earlier, killing an eight-year-old black girl. Videos of protestors attacking motorists' vehicles and in some cases the motorists themselves were everywhere online. Likewise videos of protestors shooting up vehicles without hitting the occupants, or threatening motorists or counter-protestors with firearms.
I am referring to Foster as paying the asshole tax. You cosplay revolutionary, shit on the commons, and then probably actually pointed a gun at a person.
...Ah, I misunderstood.
The issue with this is Perry probably did just see the chance and killed him for fun.
He was driving on the road legally at low speed. his car was blocked by protesters barricading the road illegally, who then mobbed his car, while one of their number, armed with a rifle, advanced on him with the rifle raised. In that situation, how does one disambiguate "seeing the chance and killing for fun" from "legitimately fearing for one's life"?
Perry likely knew that the victim was cosplaying revolutionary and wasn’t going to execute him at any high non-neglible probability.
Why do you consider this "likely"? Protestors had been making a habit of attacking motorists for quite some time at this point, if memory serves. Vehicles had been fired upon, and motorists lawlessly threatened with lethal force.
In ordinary life when someone exposes themselves that you can do something bad to them and get away with it we usually choose not to do something bad to them.
This argument applies even better to Foster as well, doesn't it? Perry "exposed himself" by driving on the road; Foster's fellow protesters illegally detained and harassed him, and Foster threatened him with deadly force by pointing a rifle at him. Why should we not consider Perry shooting him in self-defense to not be Foster paying the "asshole tax"?
100ProofTollBooth
2hr ago
Dude, chill. I went to Wikipedia to get the guys name so I could reference it with specificity here.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
1hr ago
This is exactly why I think in the tactic of blockades must be made illegal and that law must be enforced. There’s a huge escalation in doing that, in taking over public roads because sitting in a vehicle puts people in a somewhat vulnerable position— escape is hindered by the need to first exit the vehicle, and that people naturally threatened when a crowd of people make moving their car or getting themselves out of their cars dangerous. And it’s hardly surprising that people who are trapped in a vehicle and have no way out are going to kill.
Was the shooting legitimate self-defense?
Yes. Foster had his rifle shouldered with both hands on it. While the barrel was pointed downward (not straight down, but at an angle), Perry in his car was actually below him... and in any case he could have raised the rifle and fired in an instant. Perry's car was also surrounded and being banged on by Foster's fellow travelers at the time. Perry was in reasonable fear for his life.
They pointed to posts made by Perry on social media, expressing hostility toward BLM protestors and discussing armed self-defense against them, and claimed that Perry intentionally crashed into the crowd of protestors to provoke an incident.
The social media evidence (concerning Perry saying he wanted to kill some other set of BLM protestors) was prejudicial and never should have been admitted. Perry obviously hated them, but that doesn't make him a murderer. Social media evidence from Foster indicating he carried his rifle in order to intimidate, and that he'd blocked streets before, were not admitted.
The claim that Perry "crashed" into the crowd is contradicted by the evidence.
As I've pointed out many times before, rules-based systems require trust that the rules are fair to operate. That trust is evidently gone.
The left never had that trust. The claim that the system is rigged in favor of the Man is a standard leftist one. Now, at least Abbott has finally realized that he doesn't need to act as if institutions controlled by his enemies are trustworthy.
Edit: Apparently they can STILL get him. He still has to face a misdemeanor deadly conduct charge. You'd expect this would be double jeopardy (since the charges stem from the same act), but I think we'll find the courts decide that the pardon wipes away the original jeopardy.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
I suppose to turn the discussion back to you, if you had clear video that Foster did not point his gun at Perry, and was just walking around, would you accept that he like Rittenhouse did not actually threaten someone and thus Perry shooting him was murder?
Yes. See here. As @Capitol_Room loves to quote, "what profits a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?" Tribalism may be an inescapable reality, but it is not the foundation of Justice, and Justice cannot be denied.
I'm not sure how much that's worth, and I'm not sure how much worth it will retain as things continue along the current trajectory.
Also, in before a million arguments with your hypothetical.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1hr ago
It's a minor thing, but I wonder about the coding of AK-pattern rifles (this case) versus AR types. I know right-leaning folks who own AK patterns, but every example of the right bringing guns to a protest seems to prefer ARs. I assume the American-designed AR is more 'patriotic' than a foreign platform? The AK specifically has all sorts of 'adversary' connotations.
But I suspect there are some here far more familiar with the thinking.
SteveKirk
56m ago
Have any of the non-AR successor platforms taken off? Last news I heard was Germany (partially?) ditching their replacement to go AR. Did the IAR project for the Marines ever happen, or did it get shelved to buy them more anti-ship missiles?
So the question, then, is how we create the social conditions so that women feel empowered to give that "no" and men feel compelled to respect it.
You've got to create a consent culture. If most women positively responded to very fastidious requests for explicit consent and respect for hesitance or rejection, men would go for it, every bit as much as they would start walking everywhere on their hands if that's what women wanted.
But, having spent too much time in the wild, women generally hate it when you ask for explicit consent; I've been told multiple times that I ruined the mood by asking if it was okay if I kissed her. Instead, there's a set of implicit rules that men are never explicitly taught but are expected to learn through repeated failed attempts. Underlying all of that is still the goal of discerning real consent, but obscured by social games. (This isn't something that comes up nearly as much in gay culture; if you want to fuck, you can ask someone if they want to fuck, and it won't affect your chances either way.)
So long as that's the landscape that heterosexual men have to navigate while dating, there will still be "consent accidents" where the man mistakenly misreads a signal, and there will still be men who take advantage of the ambiguity to get what they want but excuse it by feigning confused signals.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4hr ago
I agree, especially given that the video evidence leads me to conclude that Foster did, in fact, point his rifle at Perry.
Do you expect Blues to achieve consensus that their side was in the wrong, and the pardon is a legitimate outcome?
hydroacetylene
33m ago
Cultures which treat women like children have notably higher marriage rates, and marriage is probably the best proxy for what women actually want(loving, committed, and more or less monogamous relationships).
SteveKirk
34m ago
About to set up a new phone. Does anyone have strong opinions on Graphene vs calyx?
I'm leaning towards calyx just because I'm familiar with MicroG for Vanced, it has a reputation for being user friendly, and the kind of people who support graphene all appear to have overwritten their reddit posts in protest of something or other.
Also accepting votes for "ur a retard, just use stock android"
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
34m ago
Lots of men go to the trouble of putting date rape drugs in women's drinks
Odd that when their urine is tested these drugs almost never show up and it's almost always sky high alcohol levels. Inexperienced drinkers are bad at monitoring signs of drunkenness until they get some experience with them.
The conclusion was that only 21 of the 1,014 accounts could be classified as potential DFSA cases.
detailed examination of the testing results does not support the contention that any single drug, apart from alcohol,
This echoes an investigation in Wales in 2007 which found no evidence of covert drink spiking but did find excessive levels of alcohol consumption and frequent illicit drug use.
These studies strongly suggest that the media fixation on covert drink spiking with a pill or powder is misplaced, and that such acts are vanishingly rare.
WhiningCoil
8hr ago
Witnessing what my friends went through, as well as living through my own batch of lackluster dates, I wondered if I should just wait to have sex.
The idea felt odd. And boring. I wasn’t religious, nor did I have my sights set on a diamond ring. So I wasn’t scared of hell, nor a future puritanical husband. “What are you waiting for?” people would ask me. I’d ask myself as well. I didn’t have the gall to admit that I was sort of waiting on my gut to tell me when. It felt like a cop-out. I knew gut feelings were wonky moral compasses– afterall, that semester we were reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in class, and learning how Huck’s gut feeling of guilt for abetting a runaway slave is shaped by the social mores he’s been exposed to. That was also the year the media littered the term “implicit bias” in basically every headline,27 to unmask rampant racism and sexism in institutions. Suffice it to say, gut feelings were not in season.
Now estranged from the sex-positivity I once adored, I do believe there is a right and wrong time to have sex. I also believe that your sexual footprint does affect you, for better or for worse. And I think a lot of girls are having sex at the wrong time. All these beliefs are fundamentally at odds with the principles of sex-positivity, which beats out any notion of right or wrong sex, other than via the consent-yardstick.
A proper feminist should make prescriptions not off some optimistic blank-slate, but from these basic phenomena: girls are more agreeable, more susceptible to manipulation, cognitive-sexual overload, and sexual blueprinting. They are more likely to be pressured into the receiving end of violent porn fantasies, lied to about STDs, addled by sexual regret, and victim to partner violence.
Anyone who turns a blind eye to this epidemic and eggs on young women to carelessly leap into bed with guys in the name of female liberation, is grooming girls with a flashy, pink glove.
Instead of working against the culture of rampant sexual coercion, pop feminism basically just serves as a bottom-bitch.
Everything old is new again, isn't it? It's fascinating watching someone think out loud, going round and round and found in a neurotic spiral for 30,000 words.
When I tell people that I’m opting out of having sex, I get told a lot of things. That I’m prudish, wasting my “prime,” overthinking it, a control-freak, or even pathological.
I mean, both can be right.
It's fascinating, going through this bizarre, alternate reality hellscape of sexual relations. Absent is even a single person in a monogamous relationship. Not even a single one. How is that even possible? You don't know one single person in a relationship? You don't even know of one? This reads like some sort of speculative fiction where relationships have been outlawed.
Then again, I'm married. I've been with the same woman 15 years. Apps were brand fucking new right when I met my wife, old school dating websites being the standard. In my 20's I remember a lot of people in turbulent relationships. Or the weird friend groups where it seemed like everyone had tried a relationship with everyone at some point. Those were bizarre to me. It was rough. I know a few guys who opted out, and just couldn't take women's high expectations, sociopathic behavior and imperious attitudes anymore.
Maybe there really are just two breeds of men. The ones depicted in this article, who somehow get these broken women to throw themselves at him, and everyone else who these broken women take their trauma out on.
I can imagine how the experience of dating has deteriorated greatly since I was active. But the reality of this article where a monogamous relationship is literally not an option for anyone, and doesn't exist at all, seems a bit extreme. It seems more like cope to justify sex work and/or trying to rebrand as some sort of "intellectual" e-girl.
She'd be better served deleting her entire internet presence.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
58m ago
The AR is the American gun. Domestic design, often domestic manufacture. Long history as our service rifle. Strong competition for making both weapons and ammunition.
There’s also a “build your own” factor which gets more people into the ecosystem. This is exemplified by the common top rail, which makes it much cheaper and easier to mount all sorts of optics. But it extends to the stock, handguard, more or less every part. Combined with the hordes of manufacturers, and any gun show becomes a flood of garish polymer customizations and overpriced accessories. While such things are available for the AK, the market is much smaller.
As a mottizen put it, the AR-15 is the Wayne Gretzky of guns.
Are you familiar with Brandon Herrera? I don't think there's any connotation there. AKs used to be the "cheap" option, now they're sorta exotic/cool and impractical, but still generally beloved. ARs are slowly pushing them toward extinction, along with all other species of automatic rifle.
Alamosa, Colorado - June 4. Alamosa Attorney Charged With Attempted Murder After Shooting Man Driving Through Protest (https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/06/15/alamosa-attorney-james-marshall-attempted-murder-shooting-danny-pruit-protest/) Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=WviznA_clis
Provo, Utah — Jun 30, 2020. Police arrest 2 after man shot during Provo protest. Gunman shot driver, then hid weapon and continued to protest, Provo police say (https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/6/30/21308526/gunman-shot-driver-then-hid-weapon-continued-protest-provo-police-say-blm) Video: https://streamable.com/e/2lpo4b Video (zoomed in and slowed): https://streamable.com/e/hsytix
Aurora, Colorado — July 25, 2020. Car drives through crowd, protester shot in Colorado (https://fox6now.com/2020/07/26/car-drives-through-crowd-protester-shot-in-colorado/) Video: https://streamable.com/e/1y8pbi
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