This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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".
If you think the pardon is wrong based on the facts of the case, I would like you to argue for this directly. I changed part of my post since based on the specifics of the case you might be might be motivated by the facts of the case leading you to be skeptical of the pardon.
I don't think the goal of the justice system should be to get different political tribes to agree. And if that is the goal, then it might require censorship, blacklisting, ideological selection. It should be ideally for cases to be decided based on their merits. By prioritizing agreement, wouldn't this encourage appeasement, realistically in favor of the blue tribe, even where it would result in people being unfairly prosecuted or not punished when they should? Including people getting punished more severely than they ought to, when there might be facts in the case that could be used to not throw the book at them. Take for example the Rittenhouse case which shouldn't been brought to trial, or the Floyd case.
Additionally, I don't buy that non appeasing the blue tribe, counts as escalation. There are going to be cases where there are two sides fighting and one is clearly in the right, as was the case in the Rittenhouse case. If the merits are there it is better but even in more contentious cases, there is value in pushing the system from being too biased in a left wing direction. If a pardon shouldn't been given it should be based on the merits of the case and not due to caring too much about not offending the blue tribe. If the system is in fact biased in the left wing direction due to the influence of the blue tribe, then the red tribe exercising pardons is not necessarily bringing escalation, but pushing the system in a healthier state. But I do find this particular case to be tricky, but I have also read some news articles that mentioned that he slowed down, instead of rushing the protestors. Most paints an ugly picture but it is mostly left leaning media that paint it.
On another note, there is an element of current year fanaticism, where a greater part of the establishment sided with BLM or hardline covid enforcement. BLM became less popular as did COVID punishments. Hence, we have been seeing people punished on covid getting also pardons, or not prosecuted now. I am not sure how much of a backlash this will cause now.
You have fundamentally misunderstood my post. I am not claiming that "both sides are unreasonable partisans, and they just need to be reasonable". I am claiming that our current system makes unreasonable partisanship the only viable policy option, and pointing out that anyone who expects anything other than an escalation spiral is lying to themselves. I am attempting to argue this from the outside view, ignoring any question of which side is right and which wrong, simply looking at the incentives. I obviously have my own opinion of who is right and who is wrong, and I've argued that further down in the thread. I am making this argument because it is common for moderates here to argue that the Culture War isn't that big a deal, that it's blown out of proportion, and that our existing systems are basically fine and simply need routine maintenance for everything to work out fine. I believe that such moderate arguments are dead wrong to the point of being actively dangerous, and I am attempting to communicate the basis for that conclusion across the tribal divide.
I have my own position, based on my own values and my own best interpretation of the facts. What I'm trying to show is that the larger pattern is obvious regardless of particular values or understandings of the facts: regardless of whether you side with Foster, Perry, neither or both, the situation is obviously unsustainable for our existing system. Rule of law requires common trust in the law and its application, and it, together with the rest of our sociopolitical systems, exist to constrain the scope and scale of civil conflict. These limiting systems have evidently failed, and those that remain are observably blowing out as the culture-war blast front washes over them in sequence.
As I see it, our current choice is between a near-total collapse in federal authority and semi-peaceful balkanization on the one hand, and large-scale fratricide on the other, with the latter being significantly more likely given our current social trajectory. I've been arguing this for a long time, this is just the latest data to illustrate the point.
I don't. I not only support the pardon, but would be furious with any other outcome. I believe Perry's conviction was part of a pattern of nakedly-illegitimate prosecutions of armed self defense by Reds, while murder and attempted murder by Blues was treated with kid gloves. I've argued as much many times before.
The only point of the justice system is to get the population in general to agree. If it can't do that, it serves no purpose and will not survive. The whole point of the system is to constrain conflict, to get people to accept outcomes they don't like and maybe even hate, outcomes they consider deeply unjust, because it's still the lesser evil. If people stop considering the system to be a lesser evil, they will simply tear it down.
Yes, obviously. Homogenous values are the result of these tools, and sufficient homogeneity for a sufficient amount of time makes it easy to fool ourselves into believing that the tools are unnecessary. We dispense with them, and as a result values drift apart until the homogeneity is lost, and then the need for them becomes obvious.
Coexistence, cooperation and mutual tolerance require coherent values, and cannot function in their absence. Values-coherence must be actively maintained, or it decays.
I'll just quote myself here:
There is no reason I can see for Reds to not take the above stance. It is the objectively correct stance to take, given the realities of our situation. It is also true that this stance will not result in things trundling along as they have previously, with everything basically being fine. It is likely to lead to a fight, and that is again acceptable given the alternative of endless abuse without recourse. Those who value the current system and wish to see it perpetuated, though, should be warned that it is very clearly collapsing before our eyes, for reasons well outside the control of any individual actor.
As I am using the term here, "Escalation" doesn't mean "bad thing", it means applying additional force to the system in the hopes of changing the outcome. The system can only survive so much force, and past that threshold it fails completely. This threshold has no connection to morality and justice; being right doesn't grant the system additional load capacity. Embracing and facilitating mob violence was an escalation. confronting that mob violence with legal self-defense was an escalation. prosecuting the defenders and protecting the attackers was an escalation. Pardoning the defenders is an escalation. All of these escalations have been employed because people decided that escalating was preferable to accepting a loss. This last escalation will be no different: Blues will not accept it, and will look for an escalation of their own to top it. At some point down the line, the escalation for one side or the other will be unsurvivable to the system as a whole, and it will fail. Again, people counting on the system's survival should be made aware of this.
I edited my post because arguing about the possibility that one side can be correct and how the pardon might provide justice didn't sit as right with me the more I thought about it, and wanted to remove some pro perry sentiments which in second thought don't fully reflect my views when thinking over the case more. But my view about bothsidesism being convenient and wrong remains. It is just that I don't want on this specific case to take position for the pardon. If it was the Floyd case I would support pardon on the merits of the case.
In general, I just don't think it is healthy to treat the culture war conflict as something where it is both sides equally to blame, and respect that the disagreement between tribes is more important than the merits of the case, and cases in general. We should talk about the facts and then argue whether one, or both tribes are wrong.
There is an implication in your post where moves that offend one side, but could actually be potentially promoting justice are a bad thing.
This idea itself encourages bad behavior, when we ought to be promoting the merits of the case. Additionally, if the pardon was correct, then it would not be an escalation, even if the blue tribe was offended. Appeasement of the blue tribe, on the basis that however they react it is important for them to trust the system, gives them no incentive to argue over principle, when they can get their way through outrage. But I modified some of this because this case is one that they might have a point in thinking him guilty.
I asked you about what you think about the facts of the case because it is directly related about whether one can argue that the pardon could be an escalation. I actually don't think it is much of an escalation, even if Perry deserved harsher punishment than a year, when considering how biased the system has been by the blue tribe. When it comes to whether this encourages, or discourages further escalation, it probably doesn't. The reason is that much of blue tribe excesses aren't stochaistic, but the result of too much appeasement and too many cases of getting away with it, and also related to symbols such as pro BLM, or anti BLM. Some of it relates to current year obsessions that tend to remain as sentiments but become weaker, and replaced by new current year obsessions. BLM being something not as popular today than in the past.
Fundamentally, this idea of appeasement being the road to peace, doesn't work, and the system in various western countries has escalated in authoritarian far left directions due to the right wing failing to constrain the use of power by the left. And even sided with it/acted like it. There is this understanding that the value of democracy is about allowing counterweight to too much influence to one side, and yet there is a sentiment in favor of an impotent right and impotent identity groups of the right, that interprets any moves for them and their rights as inherently dangerous and extreme. This is even more absurd in nation states. But it isn't the case even in multiethnic countries. This sentiment is dangerous and ensures that you are going to get increasing double standards and abuse of regulations, laws.
Good compromise and mutual respect require the right to actually show up.
There is no objective definition of "Justice", such that we can measure it with a ruler or weigh it with a scale. I believe that Justice is both real and fundamental, but I have no way of making you or anyone else agree with my understanding of Justice other than persuasion or force. Persuasion pretty clearly doesn't work at this point, and we are devolving toward less and less veiled dependence on force.
Do you believe that such arguments are generally productive? Do they tend to lead to consensus across tribal divides, even here? My observation is that the most "productive" outcome is the sort of Blue-Wins-By-Default both-sides-isms that you seem to be complaining about. For me, long-term, good-faith attempts to bridge the divide have resulted in deep cynicism and considerable radicalization. I think it's pretty clear that the tribal gap is currently unbridgeable, and rapidly getting worse. That's why I've written the OP the way I have; because the amoral, outside view of is and not ought is the only avenue for productive conversation across the divide that I can see.
See the edits above, as well as my arguments in the rest of the thread.
It doesn't matter if you think it's an escalation, any more than it matters if Blues think barricading roads, attacking motorists, and facilitating and protecting those who do is an escalation. Your assessment of their actions is what matters, because it determines how you'll react. Their assessment of your actions matters, because it determines how they'll react. There is no way I can see to get either side to accept that the other side's last action was legitimate, or that their own actions were illegitimate. The result is obviously going to be escalating tit-for-tat until the system runs out of capacity.
I never claimed it did. In fact, it not working in either direction is my entire premise. Blues will not accept the pardon any more than Reds accepted the conviction, any more than blues accepted the shooting, any more than Reds accepted the rioting, any more than blues accepted the justice system's delivered outcomes. For the purposes of this analysis, it doesn't matter which side is right. Neither side is going to back down. The conflict is self-sustaining and will likely continue to expand until things break which we cannot fix or even patch.
Good compromise and mutual respect do not seem to me to be options on the table. If you see evidence of them, I'd be interested to see it.
You don't have an outside view but a biased view is the point. This idea of neutrality is a false one when it comes to any and all of the rationalistic and adjacent space. They have a side, and they take it and it is a sneaky way to suppress and sometimes censor opposing views. And how can neutrality exist if "red tribers" take a neutral position, in a conflict where it would be correct for them to take their own side? Would the result be neutral? You might not be a rationalist but have been infected by a part of their way of thinking that is especially harmful in your case because rationalists as leftists who want a left wing status quo, are being strategic at promoting their perspective as an outside, neutral one as a way of imposing their preferences. As someone who seems to be pro red tribe in other contexts, this framing of both sides escalating isn't helpful to the red tribe, in the way the rationalists way of framing things is helpful for their side, which isn't mistake theorists outside the culture war conflict.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the dynamics of what is happening. The right is full of strategically inept and people who betray their own side while the left are unreasonably extreme because that is their nature in part due to becoming more like this as the right has behaved in an inept and treasonous manner and let extremists take over and collaborated with the left. While extremism has been covered by terms like moderation and hysterias against the far right. Part of the problem is both right wingers being against right wingers, and other right wingers failing to be sufficiently for their side. So the right divided, and the left more united, has resulted in such ends. Part of this division of the right is because of excess fear of the right and its current and future actions, by the right.
No, it is not. This idea disregards the value of the justice system in solving in a correct (aka just) manner particular conflicts on a level beyond just how it affects broader tribal conflict.
It also forgets the point of the tribal conflict which is also about justice and makes it easier for liberals/far left to win, by not keeping them accountable by how what they support is fundamentally unjust. It also helps the left win, since by having right wingers pretend to be neutral and avoid talking about the merits, the right can be subverted by pretending that leftists are right wingers which has been the number one way the right has been destroyed. The left wing people who became part of the right and have had also identitarian sympathies in such direction, cancelled actual right wingers.
Are you willing to treat as legitimate the right wingers to your right?
Blue vs red partisanship helps the left actually because the content of the right wing establishment is sorely lacking and under threat of shifting further left if not policed. And it also breeds conformism to a very left wing status quo, and helps police outsiders who actually do have at least some reasonable ideas that are kept down because the status quo is left wing and opposes them for that reason.
Yes, it is productive because lack of substance and bothsidesism, helps the left by transforming an analysis from "left wing excesses that need to be reined in" towards one of the problem of right wing escalation, or of both sides escalating.
Why is consensus the end be it all? And why isn't it possible even if consensus doesn't exist, to push the envelope more or less in a certain direction, even before winning.
It would be aiding the left by framing right wing moves as escalation, when it might be doing the correct thing and not escalation.
In a particular case there might be a point, because talking about mutual escalation in case like Floyd or Rittenhouse, would be nonsense. Which is why I have a problem with this type of argument, because I do care in fact about justice and see how it can and will be applied in many other issues.
Left wing excesses are a problem because in a genuine way they do promote injustice. If you are unwilling to accept that there is a genuine justice infringed and take the view that we can't say and ascertain that, then you help cover for a real injustice commited.
This postmodern irrationality where we can't assign accurate values because it would be presumptuous, is itself extremely arrogant and presumptuous perspective.
An attitude that promotes blue vs red partisanry as respectable and necessary is going to maintain that divide while doing things like censoring and keeping down people like Colbert, and similiar characters would change things. Your description doesn't capture the divide accurately because the left is the aggressive side, in ways that are in principle unjust, and the right mostly with a few exceptions, fails to fundamentally oppose them. Even some of those right wingers who do oppose them on some issues might even side with them in others. This framing of escalation can and will help paint such moves as escalation.
Escalation does mean a bad thing and the right loses for various reasons but also because it uses harmful language against its own side while not policing the left's use of inappropriate language. You might want to argue that according to your view it isn't bad, but it is possible to offend another side and even fight against them by acting in a manner that isn't escalating the situation. The very language aids the leftists who want to win but present their side's victory as the neutral default against both extremes. It helps marginalize the right and promote a left or even far left uniparty in moderate clothing.
People falsely claiming to be neutrals also fail to support correct language. It seems in this case your perspective does relate to the particulars. I don't think it is part of any big escalation though when considering everything happening and also the timing. Nor do I buy that, not in this specific case but in general, that the right wing moves that counter left wing excesses count as escalation, over trying to put things in a healthier balanced equilibrium even if the left wouldn't like it. Even the left can compromise if pushed enough. And don't forget how we reached the current situation, which was through too much compromise by the right, and cancel culture against right wingers, leading the left to become more arrogant. This is still happening now. If the tittivate against this on the right does increase as there is a little trend, stop cancelling right wingers and try to constrain left wing extremists, the left will not necessarily escalate but might have to compromise. A greater share of people might become non leftists or non leftists get involved in positions of influence. When the right is exercising power, the left loses some of its influence. Some past blue tribers were less extreme and they became more extreme not because the right fought back, but because it didn't. I don't buy your nihilistic perspective.
I also don't see why the system collapses in the way you envision and not more in a South African direction where one side wins but the resulting society is increasingly shittier. Which is a high possibility if the trends continue, and the right fails to become an effective opposing force.
Anyhow, we do disagree about the possibility of compromise arising through strength, and how weakness breeds escalation and submission and then new escalation, etc. If the right was stronger the left would be less arrogant and more moderate. There would also be less leftists, and the nominally left wing party would be less left wing one. Part of the weakness relates to the right being divided due to the existence of impotent and left wing factions. And even outside people who are sufficinelty left wing to count as leftists, there is a problem of buying into harmful left wing perspectives, that make them incapable of being an effective opposition that defeats the left. This isn't to say that the right should be as purity spiraling radical as possible. Actually focusing more on the areas were you have a point, even and especially politically incorrect ones and being persistent is more valuable than losing political capital by being some kind of the boogeman far right stereotype.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with your assessment that playing tribal politics in the justice/pardon system is capital-B Bad.
In general, I am kind of opposed to a pardon process controlled by the executive, because I see them as more tribal than a jury. At least require bipartisan support for a pardon or something. 25 years seem excessive and politically motivated, pardon at the earliest opportunity also seems politically motivated. An early pardon after five years or something would be much different.
I always find it amusing that Germany has (on paper, at least) stronger self defense laws than the US, where there is generally a duty to retreat in public spaces. But even we have the concept of deliberately having produced a situation where you need to employ self-defense may negate your claim to self-defense.
For me, a lot would hinge on circumstantial facts. Was that barrier on a route which Perry took for some reason, or was he intentionally going to the barrier itching for any excuse to shoot someone? Did he try to report the barrier to the police before driving up to it?
If two people are both itching for a fight, and one kills the other, a manslaughter sentence for the survivor may in general provide good incentives. Similarly, if Gang A illegally occupies a building, and Gang B decides to take a stroll on the sidewalk of that building to provoke a confrontation and it comes to a shootout, I would generally advocate manslaughter charges for the survivors on both sides.
Edit: my other take is that if (a) the police was aware that there was an illegal road block by armed men and (b) they decided to wait that out, then whoever made that decision failed hard in their duty to keep the peace. Keeping the peace could have meant telling the BLMs to clear the roadblock, using a water gun vehicle to clear the blockade or even just setting up their own police roadblock a bit upstream (under the fiction that the BLM road block was an approved demonstration).
The pardon was not a unilateral act by governor Abbott. The Texas board of pardons and paroles recommended it and governor Abbott decided to sign off on it.
While I have no doubt that the board of pardons and paroles are republicans, they’re not national level political figures.
More options
Context Copy link
This is just handing over control of whatever an aggressor wants to them. It's already bad when the government allows Gang A to occupy the building. It's worse when the government punishes someone for not respecting Gang A's claim; now the building is de facto Gang As property (even if the title was not some third party but Gang B itself)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This feels to me like another example of how America does not really seem to have a coherent philosophy when it comes to gun posession and use of force. Like, you are allowed to have a weapon, you are allowed to use it to defend your home, you are allowed to shoot intruders... But the police are also allowed to issue no-knock warrents for a wide variety of crimes, allowed to explode into your home in the middle of the night, and if they see you with a gun/knife/bat/dog chew they are definitely allowed to put 27 rounds into you. If they get the house wrong it's NBD. But yeah bro, you're definitely allowed to use guns to defend yourself.
Similarly here. Foster was allowed to open carry a rifle. He was allowed to walk up to a car on the street. He was allowed to have a hand on his rifle. ... He's allowed to have two hands on his rifle? well maybe, but low ready is out, apparently. Though, the jury thought it was in, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. He's not allowed to point it at anyone, sure. but there's point at, and point at, isn't there. is he allowed to muzzle sweep you? what if it's just your legs? Foster was clearly in a position to 'quick draw' on Perry... is that enough to justify shooting first?
I don't know. Seems like a pretty thin knife edge to balance the lives of two men on.
Is this problem even solvable? It seems to me that it probably isn't. If you give your citizens free access to devices which can kill in a split second it's understandable that the police don't particularly feel like politely knocking at the door of the crack house and giving some PCP-addled junkie the opportunity to fill them full of buckshot. Perhaps, like school shootings, this is simply a price that Americans are willing to pay to ensure they have access to firearms.
He's allowed to do all of those things. He's not allowed to stop people going where they want, and he's not allowed to use his rifle to threaten and intimidate people who want to move past him. If, like Kyle Rittenhouse, he was simply there to render aid, instead of acting as an enforcer for the aggressive protests, then he'd still be alive, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I don't see how this is hard. Just because you have the right to own and bear a gun doesn't mean you can do anything you want, especially when it interferes with other people.
Unfortunately for the police, they don't set the laws and their concerns aren't what determines how we limit our government.
It's not just about firearms, it's about the government having limited powers that they constantly try to expand. However, firearms discourage the worst abuses, and serve as a backstop of violence if necessary.
How often does it happen in the US that someone gets acquitted for killing a cop because they thought a no-knock-raid was a robbery and shot first? How often are police convicted of using excessive force during no-knock raids?
I know these are rhetorical questions to make your point, but I think looking at examples underscores it.
Last time I looked there was someone who a grand jury wouldn't indict and someone else who a jury wouldn't convict, but for the most part the raidees' odds weren't good. And in the time since that comment, Marvin Guy's status changed from "several years without trial" to "acquitted of capital murder, convicted of murder, sentenced to life in prison".
One cop was indicted for spray-and-pray tactics in the Breonna Taylor incident (not for excessive force against them, mind you, but for the risk to their neighbors further down the line of fire), but was cleared by a jury last year. Three cops were convicted over the Kathryn Johnston case, so that outcome is not unheard of either. But a typical outcome seems to be the one in the Phonesavanh case, where even if behavior is egregious enough to put taxpayers on the hook for it ($3.6M in that case, about half medical bills and damages vs half punitive, from a warrant based on false information that led to a baby being burned and mutilated by a flashbang grenade to his crib), it's still not egregious enough to convict anyone at fault.
It's been decades since the explosion in no-knock raids and its de facto consequences started making national news, but the de jure consequences still seem to be more a matter of luck than any fixed principle. Defending yourself from home invaders claiming to be police isn't safe, and of course non-police home invaders know it too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This comment is an example of the same thing I mentioned earlier - a narrative which blurs much detail in order to claim two things are much more similar than they are, in this case in order to promote gun control.
No, there is not just a "thin knife" of difference between a man with a rifle at the ready approaching a car and demanding the driver lower the window, and the driver being in the car with a handgun. Perry was allowed to drive on the street. The group Foster was part of was not allowed to detain Perry in his car, nor to beat on said car.
There's no dilemma here which requires Americans lose access to firearms.
More options
Context Copy link
Interestingly, once you go meta the guns are irrelevant to this case - both the car and the mob are deadly weapons, and IIRC car vs mob situations had ended in fatalities without guns being present in other BLM-related clashes. The issue is the American (mostly Red Tribe) culture of escalatory self-defence. (Of course, there is a feedback loop because self-defence culture makes permissive gun laws easier to pass and carrying a gun makes it easier to engage in escalatory self-defence).
The best take on the theory I have found is this post by Mark "Animal" MacYoung - his business appears to be training for violence professionals, but his website is mostly targetted at the general publ[ic with a message of "if you are not a violence professional, it is sufficiently easy to avoid situations where violence is likely that learning how to do this has a much better effort/reward ratio that learning combat skills". My summary of the idea is that
Because I am lawyer-brained, I tend to think of it as the difference between "duty to retreat" (DTR) culture and "stand your ground" (SYG) culture. (Note that the legal DTR isn't an invetion of modern hoplophobes - it is a codification of centuries-old English common law that was originally made by and for warrior-elites. But in the late 19th century most US States (some through the legislature, others through their Supreme Courts) decided that backing away from fights when you were in the right was unmanly and/or un-American, leading to the first wave of SYG laws. There is a second wave in response to the 1970's crime wave.
DTR culture says that the right to self-defense does not generally extend to fighting situations, even if you are right on the merits. This doesn't have to apply absolutely everywhere - the "castle doctrine" is the idea that the rules in your own home are SYG even if they are DTR in the streets. This means that the appropriate police (or other authority figure) response to a fight is to punish both parties unless one was so badly hurt that their crime was self-punishing. And if there is a fight ending with a corpse, then the winner is going down for some lower-degree homicide regardless of what was being fought over or who threw the first blow. A corollary is that to make DTR culture work at urban population densities, you need something like broken windows policing to stop obnoxious blowhards ruling the streets by behaving badly and treating a request to stop as a challenge to a fight. Someone who spits on the floor in a biker bar is going to receive a challenge to a fight which will end with them backing down or getting beaten. Someone who spits on the floor in your local golf club clubhouse is going to be warned by the Secretary and kicked out (ultimately backed by a threat to involve cops) if they continue. Someone who spits on the street needs to face the same kind of consequence.
SYG culture says that a man should only back down from a fight if you are wrong on the merits or have no reasonable chance of a good outcome(and that a RealManTM has developed combat skills to the point where the latter should only happen if massively outnumbered), and that challenging someone to a fight is praiseworthy if they are engaging in sufficiently anti-social behaviour. The corollary is the response of the authorities to a fight needs to include investigating the merits of the dispute - although common police practice is to arrest both parties and let the lawyers sort out blame. But if SYG laws are enforced as written, most fighting situations involve both parties having a sufficiently plausible claim to self defense that they could raise reasonable doubt and secure a criminal acquittal if they hired a fancy lawyer. The other problem is that most fights happen in sufficiently confused situations and investigations are sufficiently difficult that "investigating the merits" usually means "blame the guy who looks more like a stereotypical wrong'un". It probably isn't a coincidence that American SYG culture developed at a time when the wrong'uns were conveniently colour-coded, although there isn't anything inherently racist about it.
It should go without saying that DTR culture produces better outcomes if you have cops doing their jobs - you have a lot less fighting, and a lot less community-breaking post-fight litigation. But if the cops can't or won't do their jobs then the alternative to SYG is anarcho-tyranny. This is a particularly serious problem in the places which need most policing and often get least - schools and prisons.
The Perry case looks like a fighting situation - you have evidence that both sides were spoiling for a fight beforehand, a series of decisions by Perry to end up in that situation that would be a display of truly shocking poor judgement if he was trying to avoid the fight, and mutual escalation by threat display (car driven towards a crowd, crowd swarming car, gun kind-of-sort-of brandished). So from a DTR perspective, Perry is morally guilty and it is easy to make a close legal call (was Foster holding the gun in a way which made him a threat in the legally relevant way) against him. From a SYG perspective, the key question is whether Perry was right on the merits, which comes down to how sympathetic you are to street protest in general and BLM in particular.
This post is too long already so I won't do the list, but I think most scissor shootings that do not involve cops (Zimmerman and Rittenhouse) are fighting situations and the scissor is that DRT and SYG are working from completely different moral frameworks.
As @KMC notes, Rittenhouse was not a DTR/SYG case, and as I describe below, neither was Zimmerman (with the exception of one annoying detail, which I explore).
More options
Context Copy link
What about the Blue Tribe culture of aggressively taking over and blocking explicitly public transit spaces? That action happens to be illegal (at least as the laws are written) in most US jurisdictions.
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't the fact that he was driving the car on a public street trying to get to his destination enough to make him right on the merits?
More options
Context Copy link
Rittenhouse was not a fight by your own standards, which calls into question the entirety of your post.
Kyle was attacked by Rosenbaum, after some third party fired the first shots. Kyle ran, Rosenbaum chased him. Then Huber chased him. Then Grosskruetz tried to trick him into dropping his guard, so Gaige could shoot him. This was not a fight, and Kyle Rittenhouse literally, truthfully, did nothing wrong.
More options
Context Copy link
A division between Stand Your Ground and Duty to Retreat philosophies exists, but in addition to the lines being a lot blurrier than this summary (eg, even a lot of SYG advocates promote deescalation and avoidance, most famously Masaad Ayoob), I think you're badly strawmanning SYG perspectives as RealManTM.
The problem with DTG isn't that retreat is Unmanly, or the various pragmatic problems where a jury second-guesses split-second decisions about ease of retreat. It's that it demands a surrender of the public sphere:
(Or cfe here)
Even in a perfect world, where police hammer every criminal action, a ton of 'fight' happens well below the level of criminality or what should be seen as criminality. Whoever is willing to defect can commandeer large portions of the public sphere, readily. And we do not, bluntly, live in that perfect world: no small portion of coastal cities have transparently given permission for extralegal actors to crush political positions they don't like, while ignoring (sometimes 'mandatory!') restrictions on bad actors they do like.
IMO neither "Stand Your Ground" nor "Duty to Retreat" neatly solve all cases. I don't think there's a general solution to what I'd call the Thunderdome Problem ("two men enter, one man leaves") regarding how the justice system should, absent other evidence, a dead body and the survivor's claim of having been attacked. I, at least, don't think the criminal justice system either categorically believing, or disbelieving the survivor's claim counts is sufficiently fair.
It may be the case that Thunderdome cases are sufficiently infrequent to not matter generally, but some of our more scissor-y examples of claimed self-defense violence (Zimmerman, perhaps most notably) do seem to fit with that pattern. It seems plausible to me that people are applying their personal biases toward the general case to sufficiently fuzzy specific cases.
It is almost true that SYG has nothing to do with the Zimmerman case, and I find the thin bit of exception annoying, because it doesn't engage the philosophical point at all.
In Zimmerman's case, his actions were fully covered by either a generic SYG regime or a DTR regime. The philosophical difference does not apply to that case in the slightest--when he shot Martin, he had no ability to retreat, and it was Martin that forced the encounter, not Zimmerman. All of that is very clear-cut in the evidence presented at trial; if Florida had been a full-bore generic DTR state, Zimmerman would have been equally justified under the facts of the case.
The problem is that the word "generic" in the last paragraph is doing a bit of lifting. Florida's specific SYG law did apply to the case, but on a completely secondary point--the text of the law prohibited the arrest of someone claiming self-defense unless the officers had probable cause to believe that the self-defense argument was a lie. Zimmerman's arrest violated the SYG law because the police never had probable cause to believe he was lying; the evidence collected immediately at the scene and the following day (with Zimmerman's active cooperation) uniformly supported his description of events, as did every bit of subsequently developed direct or eye/earwitness testimony.
"Categorically believing, or disbelieving" is a false choice that does not describe the law accurately--the law set up a presumption in favor of the self-defense claimant in protecting him from arrest, but that presumption could be defeated by sufficient evidence to establish probable cause.
My understanding of the Zimmerman/Martin case is that there are no witnesses to how the altercation started between Martin and Zimmerman that ended up with Zimmerman on his back and forced to shoot Martin, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that it was a "fighting" situation. Clearly if you start the tape with Zimmerman on the ground then it looks like Zimmerman defending himself against a criminal attack by Martin, but there is no reason to think that Martin (who was going about his lawful business peacefully at the time, regardless of his rapsheet) would respond to Zimmerman following him in a car by hiding in the bushes on the offchance that Zimmerman came back to confront him on foot allowing Martin to jump him.
The most likely scenario and, roughly, the prosecution theory of the case, is that Zimmerman (legally but stupidly) confronted Martin to ask what he was doing, Martin took offence, two hotheads verbally escalated when they should have de-escalated, and blows were thrown. The tape starts when Martin has already won the fistfight and is trying to finish the job, and we see Zimmerman pull out a gun and finish it his way. Classical "fighting" scenario, except someone bought a gun to a fist fight. With reasonable doubt as to who threw the first punch, a clear acquittal under SYG.
Even if Zimmerman had verbally provoked Martin, he can still use force to defend himself if
"Such force or threat of force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use or threatened use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant"
Zimmerman pinned down by Martin (thus unable to escape) and having his head bashed fits that condition. Note this is NOT a Stand Your Ground rule -- a person who has provoked another DOES have a duty to retreat; this rule is intended to cover inability to safely escape, not unwillingness.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In Zimmerman's case we have abundant evidence that his story was accurate. We have testimony from Trayvon's friend who was on the phone with him shortly before the encounter that Trayvon made it all the way home and decided to double back to attack Zimmerman. We have an eyewitness who saw the fight from a distance who saw (based on the colors of the clothing he saw etc.) Trayvon on top of Zimmerman, beating him. We have the reports of paramedics and medical examiners showing injuries to Zimmerman consistent with him being grounded and pounded, while the only injuries on Trayvon's body (apart from the obvious bullet to the chest) were to his knuckles.
It was pretty much an open and shut case, and were it not for public pressure (and protests by advocacy groups funded by and working directly with Eric Holder and other members of the Obama DoJ) it would have never gone to trial, and rightly so.
Edit: source on the DoJ's involvement https://theweek.com/articles/462236/did-justice-department-incite-2012-trayvon-martin-protests
That's fair. I was thinking more when the case originally blew up in the media and the facts that came out at trial (the injury details) weren't as clear.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'd consider a mob of people surrounding a car as such a set of obnoxious blowhards.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Of note - "America" isn't a person and can't have a coherent philosophy. Many individuals are equally incoherent to what you posit here, but others really aren't. There are plenty of police-state enthusiasts that think people shouldn't own firearms. There are plenty of firearm enthusiasts that want to eliminate no-knock raids (outside of rare, extreme circumstances).
Again, many individuals may have an incoherent stance, but mine is fairly clear - blocking streets is a crime, using a firearm to do so is an escalator, and the government should have cracked down on BLM intimidation tactics. They didn't in Austin because Austin is a left-wing city and the city leadership offered tacit or explicit endorsement of BLM and its tactics.
Its true that it is difficult for a nation to have a fully coherent philosophy, but I do think the US is more..inconsistent than other Western nations. Probably because Federalism is essentially the idea that you can have different philosophies of government co-existing within the same nation. Its deliberate that Texas and New York can make different decisions on what they teach or tax. Even if the Federal government has steadily expanded its reach over time.
That and sheer size and population compared to most other single nations means you're not really propagandizing one single philosophy.
This happens other places as well of course but i think it is more evident in the US. Whether this is a positive or negative is dependent on your POV I suppose.
Because we are a union of separate nations, governing themselves separately, while allowing for free movement and free trade within the member states.
Right, exactly my point. So essentially this is kind of baked in to your model. That you are going to have even more incoherence because it's like comparing Germany to France. But due to the 2 party nature of your politics it's not 50 separate nations, it's become kind of twoish with a bit of wriggle room.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Foster (and his crew) was committing a crime (trespass, false imprisonment). So I disagree with your description.
I would like to see felony murder charges brought against the other “protesters” who surrounded Perry’s car.
I think it’s too far to actually convict and sentence on felony murder. But a credible threat for future similar actions seems appropriate.
Legally this does feel like textbook felony murder. That being said it would still be the first time felony murder was used on this sort of case.
I am assuming the State can’t being the charges and the local DA’s would not.
Your assumption would be correct. The state can’t generally bring charges.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, but if you commit a crime, and someone dies during the commission of that crime, then you have committed felony murder.
I think that's bullshit, but it's the law as it stands today.
I can see the case for a felony murder (or manslaughter) as a desirable law when the victims are innocent bystanders.
If you break into a home and give an old person a fatal hard attack, that should be manslaughter. If you break into a home and your accomplice is packing and starts shooting, it is reasonable to assume that you either new they were armed or accepted the possibility and thus have some part in the murder.
It gets murkier if the causal link between the death and the crime is more complex. If you steal a car, drive it safely and someone runs a red light, crashes into the stolen car and dies, I don't think it is reasonable to blame you for it.
If an accomplice of you dies, for example by falling of a roof and breaking their neck, then your relationship to the accomplice matters. If you are a hardened criminal who convinced a kid to climb to that window and open the door from the inside, I feel manslaughter charges are appropriate. If you were on equal level with your accomplice, then it should not be held against you if they kill their stupid selves during a criminal act, unless you had a more direct hand in their death.
I don't think it is reasonable to presume that the fellow BLM protesters coerced a veteran to stand there with a rifle. The more likely story is that they tolerated him being armed, which would have them on the hook if the rifleman shot anyone (provided they also get convicted of a felony), but not if he just got himself killed.
Of course, this is just my gut feeling what would be just, the law is probably different.
Makes sense. They went after literally everyone at the Charlottesville protest based on that theory, but there was zero attempt to go after even the ringleaders when actual, organized BLM groups killed kids.
We're long past the point of legal principles mattering, but yours is one I could definitely live with.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, but the law as it stands today is also that if you commit a crime, the local DA may at their discretion simply ignore it if they don't think it's moral or feasible to convict you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Alot of this is what I was trying to get at and I agree. Guns are both a right to carry around and a cause to be shot. Should someone open carrying a rifle raise your alert level or not?
If it should then an open carry right is going to trigger some number of escalations. If it shouldn't then cops overeact to people who are legally armed all the time. See Castille et al.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with everything you've said. But there's another American tradition that comes into play. Surely you've heard of "reasonable doubt." In a case like this, there seems to be an awful lot of it. Case closed? Well, the idea that reasonable doubt ever gets the appeal that our foundations say it should is pretty laughable, but everything you've listed seems like clear cut reasonable doubt. It's not like this guy went out and sought someone to murder in something that looked like it could have been self-defense, and the risk vs reward of imprisoning someone wrongly as opposed to accidentally letting a nearly-self-defense-but-actually-murder-committer off the hook doesn't really favor a conviction.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That Perry fellow obviously knows that 'Around Democrats, never relax'. The best course of action in this case was to take a large detour around the city and not get in this situation in the first place.
After that it's kind of a coin-toss. Do I trust the armed anarchist high on holy fervor to let me go with my life? Would I rather go through the gauntlet of the American judicial system? The question at this point for the right-winger who ends up in this still-rare predicament, is the following, once you've started shooting; why did you stop? Why'd he let the wannabe-defunded-kneelers put him in a cage?
He killed an enemy and walked free. I would take that over killing 10 enemies and then dying.
No, Perry is temporarily released from the box he was locked in for 1 year already. His enemies are trying to find a way to put him back in. He'd better be leaving the country or stocking up right now to go out in a hail of glory.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Right boys, it's death-or-glory time, and we're all out of glory.
More options
Context Copy link
I (very much a "gun guy" and an avid motorcycle rider) feel the same way about armed self defence as I feel about motorcycling:
People often get in motorcycle accidents and say "it wasn't my fault!" Maybe technically you're right, and by the laws of the road it wasn't "your fault". Maybe a car failed to yield to you, or ran into you at a stop light, or just merged into you. All clear violations of the law. Congradulations, you're still in the hospital or dead. There are steps that you could have taken to prevent this outcome, and you're paying the price for not taking them. You can be "right" or you can be upright.
There are hundreds of off ramps to almost every violent confrontation, and when it comes to guns, everybody is as vulnerable as a motorcyclist is on the road. Sure, they had no right to block the freeway. Sure, its real fucking sketchy to have one of them come up to your car with a rifle in his hands. Sure, you're probably legally and ethically justified in shooting, so long as you keep the frame of reference constrained to the immediate circumstances. But our ethical lives are not constrained to the immediate circumstances, and Daniel Perry made a series of dumbfuck decisions that led him to the moment his car was being approached by a guy with an AK. I don't think he should be convicted of murder, I would have acquitted, and I also think he is an irresponsible dipshit. His refusal to take the obvious pragmatic precautions like avoiding the protest altogether led to this nightmare, and the retarded culture warrior convictions that led him there were not to his or anyone's benefit.
While I'm grateful for this guy bringing a little bit of 'find out' to the infamously popular 'f around' vibe, I still find his mode of operation quite bold.
Wasn't there a way to escape that barricade using the vehicle rather than shooting his way out? How would he know that escalating with his firearm would not start a broader shoot-out with other armed protesters? Was he ready to shoot at a crowd if needed?
While social distancing from Democrats is the generally advisable move, it's hard to see how this can reasonably generalize spatially and temporarily.
'Did you hear that so-and-so passed away in a brutal bout of acute democracy?'
'Oh dear, good lord...'
'Yes, they foolishly decided to visit LA. Can you imagine?'
'May God have mercy on their soul!'
You know, I was going to put together a whole post about how, for whatever reason, it seems less legally dubious to shoot a protestor pointing a gun at you in your car, than it does to run over dozens in an attempt to flee an angry mob. But as I kept trying to find supporting evidence, minus the poor bastard in Charlottesville, it seems people who run over protestors that are menacing them get away with it. And a lot of Republican states have specifically enshrined your right to do so.
I mean, I still wouldn't roll my dice on that in a district with a Soros DA. You'll just spend 5 years behind bars without bail fighting in the appeals courts, over behavior that was specifically legalized by your state. And you'll probably still lose, and be bankrupted to boot.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ah, the law-and-order conservative position. If something bad happens to you it was your fault; just ignore the decisions made by others in that situation and work back until you find a decision by the person something bad happened to and mark that as the wrong choice. And take it further -- make this not only a practical wrong, but a moral one. Thus justifying punishment for Perry.
Of course, you could apply the same reasoning to Foster instead of Perry. Which makes this sort of reasoning "who/whom" at it basis.
My argument is not a moral argument, it is a practical argument. Did you not read that I said I would acquit?
It wasn't worth it. He accomplished nothing of value and severely damaged his own life. He even damaged his tribe by stepping into the villain role that the blues laid out for him, the same way J6 protesters did (Yarvin is completely right about this).
Of course the same argument applies to Foster, any reasonable reading of the facts utterly condemns him.
That doesn't mean Perry was in the right. They were two retards with guns on a collision course and it ended terribly and predictably.
We're all already in the villain role. His problem was that he stepped into enemy territory, started fighting, then gave up and was captured.
The people of Austin should have started cheering for the death of a thug terrorizing their city. But they did not. They booed. Yet he stopped shooting, while he was still surrounded by hostile enemies.
The J6 picnickers' mistake was not attempting to visit the Capitol without getting shot. Their mistake was showing up empty-handed.
In your brief time on this board, you’ve picked up a wide variety of warnings and bans. The common thread? You’re clearly more interested in waging the culture war than understanding it.
Please take your outrage somewhere else.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wasn’t Daniel Perry doing his job?
Saying he could have avoided it is like blaming a poor person for a crime because he was poor. Hey Mr. Poor person. It’s your fault you were mugged at knife point. You could have deescalated and protected yourself by living in a neighborhood with low crime. It’s your fault for living in the bad neighborhood.
Also not a big fan of giving up our commons to the veto vote.
It was not his job to drive through a road blockade.
How would he know there was a blockade. I believe he was following app instructions.
Are you kidding?
If I said it I meant it. Google sucks and I tried pull up his dash cam video for me; it wasn’t there, but by my memory he was just following google maps.
I can’t get myself anywhere without using google maps.
Well, there's your problem!
Knowing how to read a map and find your own way can save your life!
More options
Context Copy link
You don't have to do what google maps tells you to, you're still responsible for driving your car. If a road is flooded, or there's an accident, or there's a blockade of armed, screaming people...go around even if your phone doesn't tell you to. Obviously.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There is a saying for cyclists here, which is widely applicable and succinctly describes what you're talking about: "Saying 'but I had the right of way' does not help after you got run over".
This works up until you discover a pattern of motorists intentionally running over cyclists.
Being "run over" in this case is not a regrettable accident that all parties were trying to avoid. The "protestors" made a general tactic of willfully breaking the law in an effort to force altercations, and the police and authorities let them do it. In numerous cases, including this one, they deliberately escalated the altercations in an effort to intimidate and victimize the law-abiding. It's true that their tactics were trivial to avoid for a large majority of the population, so long as we ignore the small minority they viciously brutalized, which most people were entirely willing to do. That doesn't make it right. Perry's response is straightforwardly preferable, and by no small margin.
FWIW, I actually apply this moreso to the protesters, in particular Foster, than to Perry. Even if they technically stay within the realms of the law, they're just asking for something to happen. I mostly read Armed's first paragraph, thinking he would be talking about Foster, and skipped straight to the comment, not noticing that in the second paragraph he calls out Perry in particular.
To be clear, I have no sympathy for Foster at all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Alright, so what would be a “good sign”?
Assuming that the evidence was genuinely unclear, I don’t see how the scissor can be avoided. Either the initial conviction was unjust, or the pardon was. This isn’t new to Current Year.
I suppose I find it a bit premature to say people aren’t accepting his pardon. On Twitter, sure. Until someone denies him a job as if he were still a murderer—or until Jack Ruby shows up to launch a conspiracy theory—I’d say law and order are holding together.
I've recently pointed out elsewhere that I'd expected the feds to go after Rittenhouse, and that didn't happen, and it's meaningful that it hasn't. I've been meaning to do a deeper breakdown on other contemporaneous predictions I'd made, and while the retrospective looks bad, it's not maximally bad. As another example, not seeing Biden pardon Reality Winner helps suggest that there's some goals other than hitting the other team as hard and as unabashedly as possible, as much as situations like the mockery of James Gardner might feel like it.
There's space for other stuff, here. We could have seen prosecutors not immediately respond with another dip to the same well. TraceWoodgrains highlighted, as a specific contrast to calls for unilateral disarmament, the importance and possibility of a Biden administration that would "seek Republicans out and install them into the less overtly ideological spots in his cabinet", instead of dodging court mandates to throw money at people with four-year degrees. We could have some level of insight when major court cases not bother to use any more than a handwave to distinguish a Gadsden Flag from Students for Justice in Palestine with a handwave, or maybe faculty showing a bit more of a standard today. We could have people here respond to my presentations of extremely short sentencing or outright non-prosecution of serious bad actors by showing something similar and/or encouraging such leniency with the political valence flipped, or at least discomfort where pardon of an aggressive sentencing turned into a spurious bribery investigation, rather than demanding increasingly impossible statistical analysis. We could have a FACE Act prosecution on religious matters drop the hammer.
We don't, often. That sort of costly signal is costly, after all, even if not necessarily that costly.
It happens. Stranger things have happened! Just not often.
On the other direction, I'm disappointed, if not surprised, that Abbot and the Parole Board provided very little explanation or justification highlighting the specific evidence they believe justified this pardon. This isn't an analysis; it's an order. I don't think progressives would care whether Abbot was motivated specifically by scattershot of thirty different tiny details from the court record, or some bad process by the judge in question, or a sudden appreciation for limits on jury research, or whatever.
But it would at least open the possibility of debating a matter on the merits or the facts. Instead, rather than risk depending on factual claims that might be wrong, there's nothing here but frame control and leaving space for others to fight over frames.
I am absolutely saving that Tong ruling to respond to crocodile tears about the "free speech" of Hamas supporters.
This country turned into a hysterical parody of East Germany in 2020.
We used to make the Czechoslovakia comparison, but at least "why won't you put up the Workers of The World Unite sign, comrade?" was only an implicit threat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Communicate that in an unambiguous way, and find him not guilty. If necessary, explain the presumption of innocence and lay out exactly how and why the evidence was insufficient to convict him. That's how the system should work with genuinely unclear evidence.
Instead, he was found guilty, the rationale was not communicated clearly and effectively, and there isn't even agreement over how it should be judged.
This is a problem inherent in jury trials, not people acting stupid in this case. If you are trying to answer "why guilty?" for yourself, you can reasonably assume that the jury accepted the prosecution's theory of the case, but that doesn't have the same impact as a written, reasoned judgement by a judge in a bench trial.
I think juries have generally performed well when they have been given this type of case, but I wouldn't trust a jury to be able to explain its reasoning in a way which clarified rather than obfuscating.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's interesting because the guy with the rifle was in some sense doing a right wing coded thing. Open carrying a rifle, which in Texas is legal. It's been a left wing talking point that this in and of itself should be considered a threatening act (see Rittenhouse, K). Which means in other circumstances it could quite well have been the case that the right was outraged by the shooting, as open carrying a rifle in and of itself should not be grounds to be seen as threat of violence, that justifies self-defence. In fact if Foster had shot and killed Perry as he was driving a car towards a protest he would have been in the Rittenhouse position! Arguing he brought a rifle to the protest to defend against just such an attack.
Which is why (as with Rittenhouse) the case hinged on whether the rifle was pointed at someone and if this itself constitutes a threat. Only without clear video in this case to show one way or another.
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. In that case the left would have a case to argue that they did indeed play by the rules more than the right. Rittenhouse was acquitted. The jury set aside all the political stuff and acquitted him. Perry was found guilty then a political intervention happened. That's how I would contrast the two stories if I were still going to bat for the left in a political sense at least. The left left (hah) it up to the judicial system to decide the right (hah!) outcome, the right refused to do that and blatantly freed a convicted murderer. Might have some bad optics for squishy moderates. But of course plays well with those already convinced. Unlikely to make a difference in Texas, but might have some play if pushed nationally, perhaps.
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?
Open carrying a rifle in a sling is legal. Open carrying a rifle in your hands is not.
This is a perfectly reasonable schelling point. It’s a different schelling point from the majority of first world countries, but Foster holding the rifle in his hands instead of leaving it slung was technically a serious crime and if this had been tarrant county instead of Travis would probably have been enough for Perry to avoid indictment.
This is a fair point. But presumably the idea in carrying the gun is that at some point you may have to actually unsling your gun and use it legally. So there must be some circumstances in which that is legal. Self-defence being one I would assume. Trapped in a room with a bear?
So holding the rifle can't always be a serious crime?
Yes. In point of fact, intelligent people have already thought about this and brandishing is a crime even if openly carrying is not: https://california.public.law/codes/ca_penal_code_section_417
More options
Context Copy link
Self defense, yes, but Perry wasn’t pointing a gun at him.
But he may have been driving a car at the crowd right? If Perry drives car at crowd, then Foster can hold unsling his rifle and presumably open fire and Perry can't claim self-defence because he provoked. Unless of course by blocking the road Foster was provoking Perry.
Its why I think all self-defence shootings should have to to trial. Because most of them hinge on who was reasonable to fear what. And the people best suited to decide that is a jury of peers. But the trial should have to be expedited.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think there is a higher standard to convict someone of murder when they have a legitimate self-defense claim, compared with the standard of having a legitimate self defense claim in the moment.
The standard for self defense is: Would a reasonable person have felt like their life or limb was threatened in that moment? So lets look at an alternative, what if Rosenbaum actually got his hands on Rittenhouse and killed him? Would Rosenbaum have had a legitimate self-defense claim? I don't think so, because of how far he chased Rittenhouse. But if it was a shorter distance, then maybe.
And both those things can be true, that both the killer and the slain could have had a reasonable fear for their life.
And both those things can be true, that both the killer and the slain could have had a reasonable fear for their life.
This is a good point, and I agree! Not all situations are clear cut.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Only in the barest sense. It is very important to note he was carrying while committing a crime that crime was false imprisonment and every "protestor" that stops traffic and begins to surround a vehicle should be so charged.
Again no. While some jurisdictions would charge you with manslaughter or murder for ramming an illegal protest I think this is a genuine misapplication of prosecutorial discretion and we should probably have a federal civil rights banning such prosecutions. IMO any one whos car is stopped or is being threatened to be stopped by a riot is rightfully in fear of death or great bodily harm. See: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CCtoRHcyirs
Nope, like I said. He Foster forfeited his life rightfully when he join a mob attempting to intimidate and functionally imprisoning people.
Blocking roads has been part of American discourse for a long time. Legalising just ploughing through the crowds seems a little over the top.
Sorry, your comment is not right enough. Automatic downvotes! Only running down protesters is approved behavior.
Eh, if being downvoted bothered me, I'd have been gone years ago. I'm content that most people here wouldn't actually be mowing down protestors.
Some certainly imagine that they want to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So has installing "self-defense cannon" in a structure as an anti-mob measure. But law has, for better or worse, evolved on that question.
More options
Context Copy link
Blocking roads is turning the public property into private. It is wrong and shouldn’t be seen as “American discourse”
I would ask you to imagine what side of the Boston massacre you think you would have been on in 1770.
This sounds similar to Jordan Peterson's statement on if you were born into Post WW1 Germany you probably would have been a nazi, or at least wouldn't have actively gone against the regime. But I think the circumstances between being a German citizen during WWII and a colonist in the 1770s are different enough that the same line of thinking doesn't apply.
Analysis of the American Revolution suggests 40% of whites were Patriots, 20% Loyalists, and the rest neutral. So just based on probability, one is twice as likely to have been for independence than side with the British government.
It's very likely at the moment of the Boston massacre the percentage of colonists that wanted independence was much lower, but it was exactly events such as the massacre that pushed many colonists to become Patriots.
I think part of what is muddying the discussion is that the people who are using these protest tactics (such as blocking the road) are advocating for the most insane things and it's hard to feel any sympathy for them. People would be more tolerant of these actions such as roadblocks if the protests were about things that mattered to the general population. Instead, these protestors are protesting first-world problems that only a rich, privileged society would have time to support a population that would care about such things. A poor person in Africa doesn't care about climate change, they would be rather happy to burn coal to generate electricity. A starving person doesn't care about animal rights and veganism.
Furthermore, these protest tactics have almost no actual risk to the protestors. Nobody protesting by blocking the streets is actually expecting that there is a chance a car will just plow through them. If they really had the conviction to die for a cause they should strap themselves onto railway tracks, because that would actually get some attention. When they do something dangerous, all the protestors start to panic as if dying wasn't a possibility of their action.
So these protestors masquerade as potential martyrs of what they claim to be the most pressing point of concern in the world, yet in reality they argue for things most people don't care about and pretend to engage in activity that would make them appear as if they are putting something on the line when they aren't by taking advantage of the goodwill of their fellow citizens, so in the end all they do is serve as a public nuisance. And when the state refuses to take action against this type of behavior, people will eventually lose all that goodwill and will be forced to take action by their own hands.
I mean you do have the extreme folks burning themselves alive still...or have we already forgotten that airforce guy? I agree that a lot of the protests are performative, or not relevant to the culture that the protesters occupy. I disagree that it is an illegitimated form of expression. It has been here from the start and even if it is a poor copy at least they are out there doing it. More than I can say for most of us.
Aaron Bushnell is already out of the public consciousness and his actions did not have the impact he was hoping for.
I will agree that he at least had the conviction to do something, as stupid as it was. Stupid in the sense that it did very little to push his supposed cause of freeing Palestine.
I drafted a post of around 3700 words about Bushnell the week he self-immolated looking into the history of self-immolation and its most prominent and impactful examples and how Bushnell's action relates to it but I never posted it because I never finished it as I got busy and now it's not a relevant event anymore. My prediction was that it would have little to no impact on the public discourse or opinion on Palestine and I think so far that prediction has held true. His actions, in the end, were just a minor net negative outcome to the world. Maybe we might see something happen. But probably not.
I'm actually in agreement with you that the willingness to fight for a cause is something many people lack, and if applied properly can be an admirable quality in a person. The difference between the colonists rebelling in the late 1700s versus a vegan protestor blocking the road on the streets is that the colonists were fighting for a cause a large portion of the population itself cared for, and the colonist was actually putting his life in danger by engaging in literal warfare (or standing up to actual British soldiers pointing guns in the case of the Boston massacre).
The goal of the protestors should be to get people to join your cause so you get the desired end result you want. If someone is going to be a public nuisance to protest for a cause, at least have it be a cause that people actually care about. Otherwise, all it does is make people hate the cause. It's worse than just screaming on the internet or even doing nothing, now you have people who actively go against the cause you want to advocate for. The protests over insignificant things in a manner detrimental to the public is why these discussions are happening in the first place. I think there are a lot of people who say they are against roadblocks as a form of protest but would be willing to condone or at least not be vocal in opposing it as a tactic if it was an issue of enough public importance and significance that it impacted them. But the point is that it's not, these protests in America have been about climate change, veganism, Palestine... all things that ultimately don't matter to your day-to-day American citizen.
Too many of these protests over insignificant things and society will decide it's enough and find a way to just stop them outright. I think I can agree with you that protests can serve a cause and push society in a better direction... but it needs to be used for things that people care about, and in a manner that impacts the people that can make actual decisions. Blocking roads is actively detrimental to a cause, if these people want to protest they should pick a more effective tactic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
@Supah_Schmendrick is correct. The "Boston Massacre" was absurd propaganda, and the troops involved were successfully defended in court by one of our founding fathers.
It was great propaganda! The troops and all of England lost in the court of public opinion and the propaganda helped inspire the revolution. The protesters of today are also, often if not almost always, legally in the wrong, but they are hoping for the same result.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The same one as John Adams, thank-you-very-much.
So a non-participant also willing to provide a defense to the much maligned accused parties while actually being sympathetic to the protestors' cause?
"On that night, the foundation of American Independence was laid,” wrote John Adams. “Not the Battle of Lexington or Bunker Hill, not the surrender of Burgoyne or Cornwallis, were more important events in American history than the battle of King Street on the 5th of March, 1770.”
Sympathy to a cause has very little to do with analysis of the behavior of that cause's partisans in a particular instance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Civil disobedience is is a well worn use of public power in the West. Though I think the French may be the champions at it.
I am not sure it is quite as American as apple pie..but rebelling against authority through acts of civil disobedience were right there at the dawn of the Republic.
Mobs blocking streets and harassing motorists is civil? If they were more civil he'd probably still be alive.
Blocking streets would be almost a textbook example of civil disobedience yes. Harassing motorists less so, but probably still covered, depending on the motorist and the level of harassment, particularly if they were trying to break the blockade. Whether civil disobedience needs to be peaceful is debated. Civil relates to citizens and their relationship with the state, not civil as in polite or peaceful necessarily.
Civil disobedience doesn't mean they are correct of course, it just means publicly breaking laws in service of some goal. Refusing to pay your taxes can be civil disobedience (a la Thoreau) and so can illegal marches and protests (a la Gandhi).
Thoreau, yes. Gandhi and MLK also. All examples of peaceful civil disobedience. Equating their work and the the BLM lawlessness is grotesque.
Blocking roads and harassing motorists is not spinning cotton or mining salt. There's no nexus between the 'demands' and the disobedience.
Much of the effect of civil disobedience is forcing the state to arrest and prosecute you for your violations. The greater the nexus of the violation to your complaint the better. Frequently leading them to appear petty and vindictive, rallying others to your cause.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Civil disobedience properly is directed at the governing authority; not random citizens.
It is one reason why the J6 narrative is so funny to me. Here you had a group of rioters attacking the government. That is the worst attack since Pearl Harbor according to some. But the summer where thousands of people burned cities and harmed regular every day people? Well that was mostly peaceful civil disobedience. Who, whom.
In a democracy, particularly one as deeply run by small-scale voluntary and communal organizations as the US used to be, there often wasn't much of a difference between the two.
Of course, the U.S. hasn't been that kind of democracy for a long time.
This is a 'Hamas was justified killing Israeli citizens, because some used to be IDF' tier justification.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How about a "right to retreat"? If you decide to leave and there isn't a safe route, that's the blockade's fault. They're still free to block the road, but they can't surround and attack vehicles.
I completely agree protestors should not surround and attack vehicles. Those who do should certainly be arrested and charged.
Or if they're not being arrested, they may be shot / run over.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is necessary in the face of increased violence of the protests as well as the bizarro world prosecutors that bring cases against people being kidnapped.
Essentially, the reality is this article, but using the same stats to say the opposite: https://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2021/10/vehicle-rammings-against-protesters/tulsa/
This is also not "blocking roads" (although I oppose that as well and would defend criminal and civil immunity for rammers) the guy in this present case was carrying a rifle, the person in the "sob story" in that Globe article was part of a group that was throwing bottles and significantly damaged the truck in question. Its not that peaceful protests dont exist anymore, its that they cannot be a reasonable presumption, so the BOP needs to be shifted. And because prosecutors cant be trusted (the ABA and the profession as a whole are heavily partisan) places like Oklahoma and Florida are correct to protect drivers.
What we have right now is near total lawlessness in many states with regards to these riots. People have taken the peaceful protest meme/loophole from the media and attempted to turn it into the Chicxulub crater. My proposed pushback isn't even extreme, its temperate given the problem we are facing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
Fair and a good answer!
I do think Arbury, Rittenhouse and Perry show that things are not as bad as they may seem judicially at least.
The justice sysyem agreed with you on Arbury (admittedly after significant publicity to actually bring charges), agreed with you on Rittenhouse (i think?), and presumably disagreed with you on Perry, though at least that one wasn't as clear cut, and Texas being much more ok with carrying rifles around makes it an interesting one, and it was still able to be corrected within as you point out the rules of the system.
I know it is said the process is the punishment, but if the system were hopelessly skewed against you and yours, the outcomes would also be worse, I think.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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?
As far as AR alternatives out on the market, I think most only have any success in their country of manufacture (examples: VHS-2, Howa Type 20, MSBS), and any country without enough of a home industry to draw on (e.g. France) will probably just buy AR-15s, HK 416s, or maybe CZ Bren 2s.
Yeah, because they're hilariously overpriced. When you can buy 6 ARs for the cost of one (in the VHS-2's case) and it's only marginally better it's not a surprise they aren't flying off the shelves.
People give HK shit all the time for this but all the European manufacturers do it with their military rifles (Beretta and CZ are better than average, or at least Beretta would be if they actually still sold the ARX-160). Sure, that strategy works in Europe where AR-15s cost just as much or more than the indigenous options, but expecting that to apply everywhere?
Oh, Beretta abandoned the ARX? I know they have the NARP now (surprise, it's an AR!), I didn't realize they had given up on the ARX.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
Last I heard they were still gonna get IARs, but those were going to be piston AR derivatives from H&K.
The only real thing wrong with the AR is that it doesn't lend itself as well to mass production (read: aluminum/plastic extruded upper, polymer lower) as the AR-18-based designs, and that if you're on a rifle replacement schedule that exceeds 50 years, you want a gun with slightly-beefed-up parts whose wear surfaces you can change out so that you don't have to do what the US does and replace bolts every 10,000 rounds because getting any kind of military spending in most Western countries is like pulling teeth.
Which is why all the modern rifles that kind-of-but-not-really compete with the AR all do the things that you'd do to an AR if you weren't constrained by its existing design, like:
And then the tactical considerations, which is that because these guns are a bit heavier up front, they can stand up to more use as ersatz automatic rifles; as far as I'm aware, you can dump your entire combat load in one sitting without destroying the gun or making it catch on fire (it'll sure cook your hands, though; hope you brought gloves!). If your nation is small, why not just give everyone slightly heavier RPK-equivalents so they're still perfectly serviceable in 50 years?
The HK416 is notable in that it does literally none of these things. Granted, it was the first real attempt to make the AR-15 a serious automatic rifle, but it fails to improve in any way on the original design and even makes some problems worse (it's heavier and the carrier tilts; contrast the MCX, which is a significantly better design).
Oh yeah: foreign manufacturers could always get development on their rifle platforms too, if they felt like passing the savings onto the customer (and actually commit- Beretta actually sold the ARX-160 at a very reasonable price, and that was even before hyper-light rifles were made cool again, but none of the other promised features materialized). But they won't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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. But we have video of Rittenhouse wandering around gun pointed low where he also could have brought it up and fired at any of the people around him.
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.
Now i'd say neither should really be taken as a threat in and of themselves granted carrying the rifle around is legal. Because it would mean that we have a tension where a legal activity also grants enough of a threat to createthe right to legal lethal self-defence, which just seems problematicly circular.
I'll point to Cornered Cat for a summary that's focused on a not-lawyers-not-legal-advise, but the tripod of ability-opportunity-jeopardy is common to a much broader ethos among Red Tribers. Someone being physically able to harm you can't be a threat on its own, or everyone from a police officer to a car driver to a stick holder is cause for justifiable self-defense. Someone who says they'll hurt you can't be a threat on its own, or a trash-talking Call of Duty player would be justifiable self-defense. It's the combination of both that make for justifiable self-defense.
I think the situation for Perry is a lot more unclear, not least of all because of the low quality of all available video. But having people beating on your car doors and windows is a lot closer on jeopardy than a rando giving out bandaids (as, importantly, was Perry's driving!). Maybe not enough, and I'm disappointed that neither Abbot nor the parole board seem interested in explaining the evidence they found so compelling. But enough that it seems to be a big missing factor in a lot of the discussions and comparisons.
((That said, in turn, Rittenhouse is an obscenely good shoot for reasons that have been covered elsewhere; he set a standard that is wildly above the minimum for lawful self-defense.))
Right, its quite possible Foster was threatening Perry. Or even he was about to shoot him. It's just nowhere near as clear as Rittenhouse and just angling your gun down as you would anyway can't be as clearly dispositive.
I think Foster was stupid for bring a rifle at all, but thats neither here nor there.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
@The_Nybbler is right. You are trying to tie these cases together with some sort of general principle that falls apart the second you tug at it.
Rittenhouse was running away. All his pursuers had to do was let him go.
No, before that, when he was walking around, gun pointed slightly down. That was the focus of the prosecution that he was causing people to feel threatened, which was the contention on why Rosenbaum may have felt threatened and charged Rittenhouse and thus had a self defence claim.
If that is all it takes then Rittenhouse was clearly threatening all the people he walked past. My contention is that is probably not true for either Rittenhouse or Foster.
The problem is the link you're smuggling in between "feeling threatened" and "charging." Not "shoving someone away from you" or "running away" or "hiding" but "charging". Actively running towards the person who you think is threatening you.
As far as I understand it from our very long threads back in the day the law in Wisconsin doesn't specify you have to defend yourself in the smartest way. If someone points a gun at you, running may well be the smart play, but if you choose to fight, you still can claim self defense. That is why the prosecution were trying to establish Rosenbaum had the gun pointed at him prior to him charging.
IF Rittenhouse had openly threatened Rosenbaum, charging him would have been legally permissible, though stupid.
This is a common and extremely perverse pattern in prosecutions of self-defense cases, as well as in the general discourse.
At this point in the altercation, Rosenbaum had chased a fleeing Rittenhouse a considerable distance, and then cornered him. With no further retreat available, Rittenhouse turned and pointed his gun, hoping that Rosenbaum would stop. When Rosenbaum instead charged him, he fired.
As I understand it, the prosecution's claim is that if he were legitimately in fear of his life, he would have fired immediately, rather than trying to warn Rosenbaum off. That makes his threat illegitimate and thus gives Rosenbaum a right to self-defense against him, which he exercised by lunging at Rittenhouse.
This is not how it is supposed to work. Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse is an illegitimate threat, and cornering him is an illegitimate threat. Rosenbaum is very clearly the aggressor, and Rittenhouse is very clearly in a position of legitimate self-defense. Pointing his gun at Rosenbaum is a threat, but it is a legitimate threat, because all three elements necessary to establish the legitimate use of self-defense very clearly exist: Ability, Opportunity, and Jeopardy. Giving an aggressor a last chance to back down or surrender before employing lethal force is not supposed to invalidate a self-defense claim, and the prosecution's attempt to do so is appalling.
Compare the Arbury case.
Arbury was clearly a case of self-defense because he was clearly not the aggressor: his attackers had no reason to consider him threatening when they initiated their attack, and he retreated from them until cornered. Rosenbaum was the aggressor for the exact same reason that Arbury's attackers were, because he illegitimately pursued and forced an altercation with no plausible justification. In the case of both Arbury and Rittenhouse, assuming that they did nothing to provoke their attackers, retreat should not have been necessary, and they would have been entirely within their rights to shoot their attackers on the spot. Still, to the extent that circumstances may have been ambiguous, the fact that they retreated until their attackers cornered them and forced an altercation should make their claim to self-defense immutable.
Unfortunately, that's not the way it actually works out. Motivated prosecutors and commentators routinely play the salami-slicing game with self-defense cases. It should be obvious that if you are justified in shooting an attacker outright, you should also be justified in pointing a gun at them in warning of the impending shot, provided the situation is favorable enough to leave you the option of a pause. And yet it's common to see this game played, where anything other than an immediate shot fired is used as evidence that the shooter wasn't really in danger, because they had enough time to try for a warning. Alternatively, if the shooter fires immediately, prosecutors can ask why they didn't give a warning first. What it comes down to is that some people don't believe legitimate self defense actually exists, and will twist the facts however hard they must to achieve their desired result.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Foster was in a mob of angry people surrounding Perry's car. He wasn't just off in the distance with a gun at the time he was shot.
Each of these cases really needs to be examined on its own merits.
More options
Context Copy link
Even if that were so, and I can find no evidence it is the case, then by running away Rittenhouse terminated the confrontation and any justification for use of force against him.
I would agree with you. Though I think Rittenhouse did himself no favors in his testimony because he said as Rosenbaum charged him, he did point the gun at him to try and scare him off. Then ran, when he kept charging, then shot him when he was getting close. Had the jury felt he HAD initially threatened Rosenbaum, the second (admitted) threat might have been viewed to show that Rosenbaum might have believed Rittenhouse would have got more distance then turned the gun on him again. A podcast I was listening to at the time was concerned he had just given them a reason to convict. Though that turned out not to be the case of course.
Rosenbaum was i think unstable, and looking for trouble, so whether Rittenhouse did have his barrel angled somewhere near him was probably the excuse he was looking for.
This is what Rittenhouse says in direct testimony:
On cross-examination he's asked about the video by the prosecutor, Binger:
This was during the chase, not before it. Rittenhouse (by his own testimony, which was not contradicted by other testimony) pointed the gun at Rosenbloom once; Rosenbloom was not deterred so Rittenhouse shot him. Rittenhouse did not run, point the gun at Rosenbloom, run again, and then turn and shoot him. He ran, pointed the gun at Rosenbloom, and then shot him.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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?
But if you can't have your rifle pointed down, because that threatens a person seated below you, then that means the general freedom to open carry a rifle is severely circumscribed. In a city there will always be cars around.
In fact in the hours that Rittenhouse was walking around we have images him of gun angled down walking past an occupied car. If that is enough to trigger threat then the occupant could have shot him!
My point is that on its own should be ok. If it is ok to open carry a rifle then we must accept some people will have it angled towards them. Rittenhouse in the image has his gun pointed at the legs of the man next to him. Unless you are always pointing your gun directly vertically down, its just a statisical certainty. So if open carrying rifles is legal, then that cannot be the standard.
You can legally in Texas walk up to a car with a rifle open carried. The question is does that mean when doing the safe thing, and pointing it down, you are automatically threatening the occupant because you could shoot them in seconds? I say the answer logically has to be no, in order for the legal carry right to make any sense.
Now to be clear that does not mean Foster wasn't actually threatening Perry! He may well of been and certainly previous testimony might make that more likely. But it can't come solely from walking towards an occupied vehicle with your gun angled down. Because that is I am given to understand (and as Rittenhouse did!) the safer way to point it. Is he supposed to raise it? Because that seems more likely to trigger a response. If open carrying is legal you can walk towards people legally, you can walk past them, you can ealk up to their car window and knock on it. You can ask them for the time or pet their dog.
My point is not that Foster was not threatening Perry, but that the description of WHY it was a threat seems biased. If Perry was threatened it was not because the gun was simply angled down and he is lower, it has to be because it was actively pointed at him. That was the determination in the Rittenhouse trial, that merely turning with your gun angled down such that it is passing a trajectory where you could shoot someone can't count as being actively threatened so Rosenbaum could not have been defending himself. Whether the gun is pointing at your leg or your body because you are sitting down doesn't matter.
If we want to claim that Perry was legally threatened then it has to be because Foster was aiming at him. Not just holding the gun in his general direction. And the problem is, from the images we have we can't see that, which is why Nybbler has to fall back to the gun being angled down being a threat because that is all we can make out. He is inflating the level of evidence we have. Again to be clear it is entirely possible Foster was pointing his gun right at Perry. And if so Perry would be justified in seeing that as a threat. Likewise in a state where open carry of rifles is not permitted maybe the walking towards you carrying a rifle pointed close to you might be a threat. But if you are going to legalize open carry of long arms, they WILL be angled towards people at some point (seriously go watch the pre-shooting footage of Kenosha, particularly when some of the "militia" are standing and walking together, their barrels are angled down but pass trajectories of peoples legs all the time) and if that legally counts as a threat, there is a serious mismatch, that risks inciting incidents. (Assuming we are allowing open carry, I don't think it should count for the record.) That is true even if Foster was about to shoot Perry in cold blood (and he might have been!).
I'm not complaining that people are defending Perry. More that they are pitching certainties or potentially reasonable things as absolute proof. Such that there is no chance the jury was actually correct.
To be clear, just as I think it was dumb of Rittenhouse to be wandering around a protest with a rifle regardless of whether he did anything legally wrong, then Foster was just as stupid, possibly more so. I don't think its a huge loss he got shot. Though I am sure as it always is it is a loss to his family. Attending protests has risk, attending openly armed inflates the risk that someone will take exception. Possibly Rittenhouse is only alive because Rosenbaum was not armed. And in the US, that is not a good gamble, as Foster perhaps learned...well briefly.
Also I keep typing Genosha instead of Kenosha, so if any made it through, I apologise.
More options
Context Copy link
I really really don't want to engage in 'chan' behavior, so I'm going to try to write something more than just pointing at your paragraph and saying 'this'. But seriously, this.
The more I found out about the Rittenhouse case, the more I felt that someone really needed to give that kid a medal. Running away from attackers at every turn, only firing in the last possible resort, firing the fewest number of shots possible to end the threat, with nigh-immaculate aim at every step (e.g., shooting the bicep of a man pointing a handgun at him), and with precisely zero bystander casualties. He did everything right.
Personally, I felt that Rittenhouse would have been a prime example for progressives to use, to persuade conservatives towards a greater skepticism of police and especially of prosecutors. Something like:
That's a lay-up, and now we can have a conversation about prosecutorial discretion, qualified/absolute immunity, and 'anarcho-tyranny' -- reforms far more palatable and meaningful than 'defund the police'. But no, we had to have a conversation about how Rittenhouse crossed state lines (seriously, how was that the major talking point?) or how he shot three black guys (two of the three were white, and the third's identity only became public knowledge months later).
The point has never been skepticism of police, and especially of prosecutors. The point, at least for the largest bloc of the Democratic coalition, was that the police hate black people. I suspect many on the center-left who boosted these ideas, especially the elite ones, would be shocked to encounter police in a negative interaction. Many middle-class+ white people have no fear of police. And somewhat ironically, it was these types who boosted "defund the police."
Because their history of no or positive interactions with police contrasted with the stories they hear from civil rights activists about black interactions with police, they assumed the problem really must be racist police. They assume it was not a broader problem of police misconduct, necessitating the racially-sensitive reforms they were told were necessary by activists. (And there's also a reason these were the people who turned immediately from defund the police as soon as even the slightest crime problem emerged.) This is why something as mainstream as Family Guy had the skin color police chart as a gag. This is "common knowledge," really a common belief.
There is a contingent of further-left people who hate police more generally, from anarchists to activists. This comes either from ideology or experience. And there's also a group of white conservatives and libertarians who are incredibly skeptical of police, and hate things like no-knock raids. This could form a coalition for real, enduring police reform if reform were made as a government power issue, not a racial issue. But it's been massively polarized along racial and tribal lines, and I now know people with thin blue line stickers on their trucks who hate the police and think they're bumbling idiots who are having a good day if they're just being stupid, not malicious. You had natural allies and you alienated them, making them believe your reform proposals were a call for literal anarchy. The "fiery but mostly peaceful" protests didn't help one bit. And I'll say one thing about libertarians, at least they aren't anarchists.
I read an article by a black activist once, who was frustrated that, despite cases in which white people were mistreated by police, there was no large contingent of white people won over to the police reform cause. "Don't you care that police are going after you guys too?" I recall him asking, to paraphrase.
And I wanted to scream at him: this is because for seven million years you've been screaming at the top of your lungs: "This is a Black Issue! This is a Black Issue! The racist cops hate us! Our equal rights are being violated! This is a legacy of slavery! White people could never understand what we're going through! You can never understand how it is to be mistreated by the police as we have been!"
And white people, especially those inclined to sympathy for the plight of African-Americans, took you at your word. Negative white interactions with police don't register to them, because the civil rights movement has spent forever describing the problems with policing as a racial issue, not a broader issue with police misconduct. The bailey of BLM, or at least the cry from terrified activists on Twitter, was "Black people are being hunted down like escaped slaves by police and systematically murdered." This is decidedly not a message conducive to expressing police reform as a cross-racial issue, especially when the rallying cry was "Black Lives Matter" and not "Police Misconduct Matters," and even "All Lives Matter" was considered an insult. The goal was "centering the Black experience of mistreatment," not talking about the issue as something that could, even in theory, impact whites. What has been sowed is being reaped.
Police reform and accountability would be a winning issue in the US if the left would stop making it exclusively a racialized issue and the right would acknowledge that at least some police corruption hits black people worst.
But hey, at least we have more body cams.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Any time during before, during, or after the trial the Blues would smear Rittenhouse as stupid or immature my eyes would pop out of my skull. The boy handled himself in a crisis situation with outstanding discipline. Those who criticized him would rather our young men be locked in their rooms playing xbox and masturbating than defending their communities from outside invaders.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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".
As I wrote elsewhere:
In explaining what I don't believe:
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
Is this the James Alex Fields Jr. case? If so, I am genuinely curious to get some non-biased background on it. Wikipedia (yes, I know) lays it out as a cut and dry "domestic terrorist" attack.
I have not found a source that summarizes the James Alex Fields Jr. case in an unbiased way. Here are some sources with bias in the other direction:
More options
Context Copy link
If you knew, you wouldn't have brought it up in the first place. It wouldn't have even occurred to you to look there, and if you chose to look there anyway, you would have known that it was precisely backwards.
I'm so sorry, Mr. Tarkanian!
Dude, chill. I went to Wikipedia to get the guys name so I could reference it with specificity here.
I'm sorry. It's one of my vices. I really don't like Wikipedia, but it's uncalled for in most circumstances, this one included.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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.
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.
The evidence against Perry was prejudicial, but that's not the end of the analysis. All evidence is prejudicial to some degree. The question is whether the prejudicial nature is outweighed by the probative value, and it was because it was clearly related to motive. The argument wasn't that it was evidence that Perry was a bad dude but that he specifically contemplated the actions which he was accused of. The evidence of Foster's prior actions wasn't admitted because it would only be relevant if Perry was aware of it at the time of the incident, and there's no evidence that he had seen those posts. Even then I don't know if it would be admissible because simply blocking a street isn't a deadly threat, and intent to intimidate doesn't necessarily mean intent to injure, but since Perry didn't see the posts, we don't need to go that far with the analysis.
Which those posts did not. He said he might have to kill a few people who were rioting outside his apartment, and he might have to go to Dallas to shoot looters. Foster wasn't one of the people rioting outside his apartment, nor was he a looter, nor was the group he in actually looting. The situations are somewhat similar but don't show that Perry specifically contemplated the actions he was accused of.
Perry didn't need to see the posts; he only needed to evaluate Foster's intentions. And what Perry's evaluation of those intentions was and whether they were reasonable depends on how Foster was acting, which in turn depends on his intentions, which those posts were evidence of. "Was Foster trying to put Perry in fear of his life or of bodily injury?" is a relevant question. It is certainly reasonable to have a standard where this is too indirect to be considered admissible.... but not if you're allowing Perry's posts.
More options
Context Copy link
Intent to intimidate may not imply an intent to injure, but it does imply an intent to get other people think that you have an intent to injure, or else they'll call your bluff and not be intimidated. That is, an intent to intimidate but not injure should, from the perspective of a victim, look the same as an intent to intimidate and injure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Greg Abbott figured that out a while ago. He’s also trying to take over the administration of Travis county(where it took place), although it’ll be a while before he gets it done.
Does the governor have the right to dismiss any district attorney (as in NY)?
No, it takes a baroque process. Texas has the least powerful executive in the country by actual de jure powers and the state government is very, very procedural and bureaucratic by design.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The issue with this is Perry probably did just see the chance and killed him for fun. It’s just that the victim was shitting on the commons to an extent that he opened the door for someone to kill him because he didn’t like the victim.
Perry likely knew that the victim was cosplaying revolutionary and wasn’t going to execute him at any high non-neglible probability.
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. In this case the victim broke public trust to an extent that people are less forgiving. He paid the asshole tax.
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"?
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.
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"?
I don’t think you can make a legal argument that it wasn’t self defense. But I do think reading the room would tell Perry that it was cosplay.
Do you have a source for vehicles being fired upon? I don’t know of any of these where they randomly killed some guy driving. Annoyed them yes. Delayed them yes.
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.
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
Never heard of any of these cases. And I am in right-wing spaces mostly.
The Provo case was discussed on the Motte. Somehow or another the shooter seems to have avoided a trial.
?He's set for a jury trial in 2025!? Nice problem to have if you're out on bail, but what the ever-living fuck.
There looks to have been some process stuff -- what looks like a pretty questionable police-tossed-my-evidence back and forth that took a several months, and a judge recusing because his brother-in-law turned out to be involved in analyzing the case -- but that's still nearly New York City levels of delay.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"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"?
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.
...Ah, I misunderstood.
The prior incidents of protesters shooting at cars is all well and good, but they're only relevant if the defendant knew about them and they influenced his decision, and the only way to admit that evidence is if he testifies to it himself. While that evidence may have helped his case, that help almost certainly would have been outweighed by the fact that he'd have to testify and open himself up to cross examination, which almost never ends well.
It is obvious enough that having protestors surround your car is a threat to your life that nobody should be required to testify that they think it's a threat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The original conviction was probably legally wrong due to Texas’s broad self-defense statutes, however.
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?
I accept the pardon is a legitimate outcome, elections do indeed have consequences! And expression of political power overriding the judicial system is part of those consequences. It's entirely within bounds as far as I am concerned.
I'll get back to you on the consensus part.
More options
Context Copy link
no, but party wide consensus seems to be an ephemeral state for both sides of the aisle these days. Im a red tribeish democrat voter and i certainly think its legit self defense even ignoring where the guys rifle was specifically pointing, and i imagine im not alone in this opinion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link