WandererintheWilderness
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User ID: 3496
A terrorist is someone who uses violence for political ends
I disagree: never mind rioters, this would make every soldier or insurrectionist a "terrorist". The clue's in the name: the salient quality of terrorism is that it involves acts of extreme violence specifically intended to create fear in a wider populace. Breaking your way into the White House, killing everyone, then declaring yourself Emperor of America by right of conquest: definitely political, definitely violent, but not terrorism. Killing a thousand innocent randos across the country, then broadcasting a message in which you demand to be handed control of the country in exchange for the randomized killing to stop: terrorism.
Terrorism is a special kind of evil because it is an attempt by a weaker party to make up for its handicap by fighting maximally dirty, and we want to disincentivize that kind of thing even harder than regular political violence. I'd even go so far as to argue that terrorism needn't necessarily be political (the demands could be anything, really), though apolitical terrorism is certainly non-central.
The claim that Good was a "domestic terrorist" is actually plausible in principle. Had she 100% deliberately intended to run over an ICE officer with her car, and had her intent behind doing so been "this will scare other ICE agents out of doing their jobs for fear of the same thing happening to them", that would qualify as terrorism. I don't believe she was thinking anything like this, mind you. But it would be a perfectly conventional example of the class, car or no car.
though it's a grace she would have been very unlikely to offer back if she'd killed him instead.
Maybe. But if law enforcement are going to be lawfully empowered to kill people when necessary, in a way that ordinary people are not - and they know that this is part of their job when they sign up - then I am going to hold them to higher standards in how they conduct themselves on such occasions than a random felon.
When he very likely doesn't even know if she's dead or hurt?
But IMO that makes it worse. He doesn't know if she's dead, but he certainly knows he tried to kill her. His first priority "should" have been to in fact check if he'd actually killed her, or if perhaps she was injured in such a way that calling for urgent medical attention would be of some use, etc. Likewise, the idea that he said it partly because she'd been acting obnoxious before is not exculpatory in the least.
The entire argument for the killing being justified is that it was an attempt at self-preservation in the face of her presenting a sudden, unexpected, immediate threat to life in a way he could not have foreseen, and had only his instincts to fall back on. For interpersonal irritation at her earlier behavior to still have been a factor on his mind post-gunshot is mildly concerning for that narrative; it raises once again the possibility that he did in fact shoot her at least partly because he was mad at her. Which I don't believe is actually true, but it certainly doesn't help his case - that is, if you believe the sympathetic self-defense version of why he shot her then "obviously, if you expect him to shoot her, you expect him to curse her out as well" doesn't add up, because we're then talking about aaaaah-car-coming-at-me as the rationale for the shooting, not Mrs-Good-is-annoying-and-I'm-mad-at-her.
Basically I would like to think that if I was in the situation "someone is irritating me > suddenly out of nowhere they seem to attack me > I reflexively fight back > now I blink and they're dead", the kind of profanity that'd come to my lips would be more along the lines of "oh shit" than "what an obnoxious fuck". That Ross's mind-state trended more towards the latter tilts me ever-so-faintly in the direction of suspecting that he does not regard the act of killing with all the gravity it warrants. That's all.
Again, all it alters is my respect for Ross as a person, which isn't really here or there to anything, in the grand scheme of things. I'm not claiming anything more than "it makes him feel like a noticeably less likable person to me", and I don't see how that's absurd.
WandererintheWilderness
13hr ago
I mean again, I'm not saying the words, in any context, would warrant any kind of punishment. I'm only speaking of personal sympathy and judgment here. But to that very subjective extent, I don't think "if the shooting was warranted then any nasty words were warranted" follows. Taking a human life is a grave thing, even when it becomes necessary, and respect for the dead is an important part of civilized humanity. If you've just killed somebody, and the threat is passed, then you should ideally be somber, even contemplative; you should take time to make the gravity of what you have done sink in deep, even - indeed, especially - if you are confident that your actions were just. Insulting your victim beyond the grave like an action-movie thug is just not decent. I don't think insulting someone you've just killed is ever warranted, however justified the killing.
(Whether it is forgivable is a very different question, and again, to the extent that Ross(?) may have blurted it out because he was still in shock from her seemingly trying to kill him, it's an understandable emotional reaction much more than it is a moral lapse.)
My concern is not offensiveness; my concern is excusability on the basis of survival instincts kicking in. Shooting at the threat as a split-second reaction to a belief that you are in sudden, life-threatening jeopardy is not necessarily a poor reflection on someone's character. Insulting someone you have just killed, who is no longer a threat to you and about whom, if you have any kind of conscience, you should be starting to wonder whether or not your knee-jerk survival instincts were justified - that is a more intellectual process, and as such, one that can be more readily judged. (Though less so the closer to the event, and thus, the more spontaneous/unreasoned, it was.)
WandererintheWilderness
16hr ago
Fair point. Still not a great thing to say about someone you may have just shot in the head on instinct, but admittedly more excusable on sheer adrenaline grounds.
Repeating some of my positions from the other thread: I agree that the claims that Good was somehow actively malicious, or that her death is anything else than a tragedy that shouldn't have occurred, are disgraceful. However, circumstances being what they were, I do have some sympathy for Ross's position. She wasn't actually trying to run him over, and shooting her wouldn't have helped even if she had, but I am prepared to believe that in the context of a split-second life-or-death decision, he sincerely got both of these things wrong. I don't buy that this was some sort of premeditated, cold-blooded murder-by-loophole. I don't think he's guilty of murder, I'm not even sure his tragic mistake was foreseeable enough to warrant internal sanctions. If there are actions worth taking here, I would think they have more to do with revising training and procedures so this sort of thing is less likely to happen again.
Of course, I would expect a decent person in his situation - a man who shot a mother of three for what, in hindsight, he ought realize were probably spurious reasons - to be, like, torn up about it. Remorseful. To release some kind of statement, say his heart is with the kids and the widow. Which AFAIK he hasn't. And he loses still further sympathy points if it was him who said "fucking bitch", to say the last. But then again… being an asshole about having committed manslaughter doesn't make you a murderer. It would make me less likely to shake his hand and offer my sympathy for the tough hand Fate has dealt him if I should chance to meet him (as I would with, say, a driver who'd accidentally killed a pedestrian through circumstances that mostly weren't his fault); but I don't think that lack of remorse should affect his case at the judicial level. Nor do we know for a fact that he isn't privately grieving and just staying silent for legal/institutional reasons.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
I doubt pressing this point will get us anywhere, but "civilization" and indeed "good" don't "exist in nature" either. Why do you "think of what's good for civilization"? What is it to you whether civilization lives or dies, if you are a cold nihilistic Darwinian machine? And anyway, can't "I just think of what's good for civilization" easily be rephrased as "I just consider things which hinder the flourishing of civilization to be evil"? Either you have 'arbitrary' preferences about world-states that don't entirely depend on your own survival and genetic fitness, or you do not. If you are going to plant your flag in a concept as woolly as "civilization" then you have already accepted the idea of a value system not rooted in nature; we're simply haggling over price.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
I didn't ask what the average person wanted, I asked what they would consider evil. It is perfectly routine to want things which could (only?) be achieved by means which you know would be immoral. Whether or the average person wants the train to run on time, I don't think that they would consider murdering random women in order to terrify people to be an acceptable price for that.
What are some things you would consider "evil", if not this? Is there any foul deed which you think would be too far, if it could magically remove all Somalis from Minnesota and restore train schedules to their platonic ideal?
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Right, well, that leaves us with very little disagreement between us, if any! Fancy that on the Motte. Miracles do happen.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
First of all, I'd say you're definitely counting your eggs before they hatch here. It is plausible that Good's death will have the chilling effect you hope for, and anti-ICE obstructionists will vanish overnight, but we're rather far off from that being a certainty, and it could certainly go a lot of different ways.
Nor would I call murder a "new technology". People have been bashing their brothers' skulls in with jawbones since before humans developed language, often to secure the chieftain's authority. Some of us had rather hoped that we were in the process of outgrowing that sort of thing.
And I would never be so insulting to my political opponents as to say that "nobody cares" who wasn't a political ally of Good's. I do in fact believe that an overwhelming majority of human beings are generally against killing people, and especially against arbitrarily killing people to create a state of terror. This is, I repeat, an evil thing to do. Wicked. Wrong. Sinful. There may be millions of people who will buy the idea that Good actually had it coming, or that Ross's actions were otherwise justified in context; but, thankfully, I think there are very few people in America who would endorse your view that making an example of her would have been fine and dandy regardless of how much of a threat she actually posed to Ross.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
How do you propose to describe a woman who has performed particular ceremonies to join herself to another woman, and obtained a certain legal status as a result, which entails certain rights and obligations? I'm not totally unsympathetic to the view you espouse (pun not intended), but substituting "partner" or "lover" wouldn't fit the bill. By Good's "wife" we do not simply mean a woman she loved very much and had sex with, we mean a woman who is legally entitled to her inheritance etc. The terms are not interchangeable.
Oh, I don't take anything you say here to constitute "arguing against me", really. I was very much reacting to Opt-out's premise that it would have been a good shoot even if the specific circumstances did not objectively require lethal force specifically because it would have a chilling effect on other would-be obstructionists. That is the position which seemed to me to be ghoulish, extremist, and impractical. I happily recognize that this is not what the average defender of the shoot believes, and certainly, I would find the notion that Jonathan Ross shot Good for anything even resembling that reason to be farcically unlikely.
(As to the facts of the case: we part, slightly, in that I am somewhat less convinced than you that this was a situation where, in hindsight, lethal force was in fact warranted. Or to put it another way, it seems very likely to me that in the world where Ross doesn't shoot, no one dies at all. Of that, I am something like 70% confident. With a much lesser threshold of confidence, let's say 30%, I suspect that there are lessons to be drawn from that first observation, which, if taken to heart by LEOs going forward, may save lives should similar incidents occur. Even if I'm right about both those points, however, I still wouldn't call this a "bad shoot" in the sense that Ross should be disciplined for it. Some percentage of split-second judgemental calls will be wrong in hindsight, that doesn't make the cops in question murderers.)
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
America doesn’t have the technology to run a process (…)
Even accepting that premise, it doesn't really matter what percentage of arrests would lead to actual convictions for obstruction. The process is the punishment. Even making suspects spend a night or two in jail before letting them off with a warning would have significant deterrent value for dilettante protestors, never mind the prospect of a court-case-shaped millstone around their neck for the next two years. If they want to obstruct lawful operations through childish inconveniences like blocking roads with their cars or shouting "SHAME!" very loud, then inconveniencing them back, only harder, seems like the proper response.
Mrs Good may not have been some innocent bystander who wound up at the protest by mistake 'on the way' to picking her children up from school - but it is AIUI seemingly absolutely true that she casually thought she could maintain a schedule that went "3 p.m. - obstruct ICE raid, 3.15 p.m. - pick the kids up from school". This is the kind of attitude that you are up against. The prospect of handcuffs and a night in the slammer would be enough to cool down many tempers.
Even if you want to be meaner - even if you absolutely insist that extrajudicial violence is needed to get the point across - things like deploying tear gas into a rioting crowd still seem like a good bet that's far more ethically justifiable, and far less likely to result in a loss of perceived legitimacy for the regime, than jumping straight to murder.
Yes, well, ask Robespierre how that went. He might find it difficult to answer without his head, but you could ask. Ruling through fear - through actual fear, as opposed to reliable justice where punishment is meted out to the guilty in a predictable and orderly way - has not historically produced stable, long-term outcomes. If you make your government out to be made up of loose cannons who just might go nuts and kill you for sneezing at them, so watch it… you will only succeed in incentivizing the population to stay out of your way in the short term while plotting their very best to remove you ASAP.
If you want to solve the obstruction problem, you can actually arrest and prosecute people for obstruction, en masse, in an orderly, lawful, consistent way. A government which gives in to the temptation to murder random dissidents pour encourager les autres loses its mandate in a way that one which simply prosecutes crimes that are actually on the books in a scrupulous way does not.
(Of course, all of this is without getting into the thing where killing random people to create a state of terror, you know, falls petty squarely within what 99% of human beings would consider evil. I don't feel like getting into that would be a useful direction for this conversation, but it bears repeating.)
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Perhaps they think that ICE are paper tigers - not actual Stormtroopers but wannabe-Stormtroopers who are in truth no better than schoolyard bully, and will fall apart if someone is on hand to puncture their delusions of grandeur? Perhaps they take the "white privilege" stuff a little too literally, and genuinely believe that although they have no scruples about assaulting innocent blacks and Hispanics, ICE's own white-supremacy forbid them to ever lay a finger on a white blonde?
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Not taking the dark road means 1% of the population deciding they don’t want something can cancel the ability of the government to do anything.
This is a very silly false dichotomy: you are assuming the conclusion that "kill Mrs Good, possibly unjustly" is the only way to curb the problem of excessive obstructive protesting, creating a binary choice between human sacrifice and anarchy run amok. In fact, I don't believe that killings intended to create mass terror are the only way to curb obstructionism, if that is what you want to do - let alone that it is the most effective one. That's the whole crux of the debate, and you just whizz past it.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
I am not, but I don't feel I have a duty to do so, because the post you were responding to is not the one I was defending in the first place. If you want more than that, take it up with Amadan.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
I will grant you that this post, taken out of context, was very easy to interpret as straight bulverism. It's Amadan's original, longer reply to 2rafa which I believe can be more charitably interpreted as a more valid argument.
It comes down to whether you think obstructing ICE is good.
Well, no. By "analogous situations in the future" I meant things of the shape "armed LEO thinks that a hitherto-non-murderous civilian is suddenly about to ram them with a car", whatever the identity and motivation of the civilian (and indeed, whichever law-enforcement unit the officer belongs to).
Also, with respect, you reasoning seems like a textbook example of terrorism in the original French Reign of Terror sense. "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the state was justified in killing this particularly citizen; so long as the killing frightens other civilians away from non-lethally obstructing state action in the future, then it was justified" is a very dark road.
That's also true, but I still don't think it's a deciding factor in the differing attitudes towards immigration. Right-wingers, IMV, aren't wrong to view left-wing rhetoric about "skilled immigration" as broadly disingenuous. The average leftist would certainly recoil from a positive claim that immigrants are on average less efficient economic actors than natural-born citizens - but their support for immigration is not downstream of an earnest belief that immigrants are good for the economy.
Arguing that immigrants will turn into valuable workers is not germane to the left-wing worldview, but rather, an attempt to speak the Right's language. Having formed a model of right-wing voters as totally unmoved by moral arguments, they resort to claims that immigration is in the nation's economic self-interest. Those claims might be more or less strained, and more or less sincere, depending on the particulars, but they are never the ultimate root of pro-immigration sentiment; at best, for people who earnestly believe them, they are simply a sign of the moral order of the universe ("helping immigrants is the right thing to do and it pays for itself besides, so there's really no reason not to do it short of sheer wickedness").
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
This is true; but then one might argue that the ability to pursue terrible ideologically-driven policies absolutely unconstrained is a key danger of tyranny, not something else that various tyrannies happened to do by coincidence.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Well, hang on, now, now you seem to be saying that neither ICE's presence in Good's neighborhood nor the hypothetical Pride March should be considered legitimate; as opposed to saying that both of them would be legitimate. Which is it?
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Bulverism is only bulverism if it side-steps the speaker's argument entirely. Arguing that the speaker's motives caused them to make a reasoning error at a particular step in the chain is not bulverism. As I understood it, @2rafa argued that "so-called 'tyranny' short of North Korea isn't worthy of the name, because in practice it's very easy for ordinary people to live with unless they actively go out of their way to antagonize the regime"; and @Amadan retorted "no, in fact you are over-generalizing from the experience of a privileged few; living under USSR-style tyranny is very disruptive to actual ordinary people's everyday lives even if they keep their heads down, it's only the upper-middle-class who might get by alright if they're apolitical enough".
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
If asked why they were going into someone else's neighborhood, then they would almost certainly take the position that they are Americans and they have a right to go into any neighborhood they want.
I think more intelligent ones would argue, cogently enough, that the point of a Pride march through a Mormon community is to show solidarity to closeted Mormons suffering from the oppression of their own community - i.e. that they're doing it to make the Mormon neighborhood a better place to live for its own inhabitants.
I didn't say it was abnormal, just rather less than saintly.
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