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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   36912 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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The initial reaction to George Floyd was universal condemnation. I watched Sean Fuckin' Hannity talk about how terrible it was and how his MMA training (lol) would never have allowed him to do that kind of blood choke for that amount of time the night it happened. This did not succeed in preventing riots. The riots preceded the right coming up with reasons that it's actually fine for cops to kneel on necks for nine minutes.

Huh, looking back through old stories and discussion boards, it appears I misremembered the timeline. For example, /r/themotte’s initial thread was pretty unanimously condemnatory. One user’s comment actually makes my original response to @coffee_enjoyer look pretty hopelessly naive (bolding added):

The George Floyd incident is notable in that it appears to be far more uncontroversial than other police-killing-black-man incidents. The use of force depicted in the video seems clearly unwarranted, and the non-controversy appears to be reflected in widespread condemnation across the political spectrum. SSC readers (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/) may recognize this as a situation where the story will not last very long in the collective consciousness because there is little controversy to fight over. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially if this particular incident is able to spur political reforms more effectively than previous ones over which there was more controversy due to lack of complete video documentation, lack of >99% proof that force was unreasonably used, etc. If that is the case, it may provide the lesson that consensus-building, rather than encouraging controversy and (sometimes seemingly intentionally) alienating others is the surer path to political reforms. I am reminded of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, where the events that seemed to have the greatest impact on public were those such as horrific lynching or police brutality against peaceful protestors which couldn’t possibly admit of any mitigating explanation and thus were not open to differential interpretation along partisan lines.

I remember it being the opposite in my spaces (admittedly very martial arts focused). Nobody could reliably recreate a strangulation from that position even if it is a highly uncomfortable position

Chapeau to you for the double check. Seriously, I appreciate the effort and lack of combativeness. The only reason I remembered it the way I do is because I was one of people that was initially on the total condemnation route and started to rationalize it after my town got jacked up by riots. Pretty hard to consider myself cleanly rational on the matter when I think about the reaction and then the rereaction.

My reaction was condemning until more information came out, such as the bodycam footage that painted a very different picture.

Unfortunate that the liberal court didn’t allow the bodycam footage be to used as evidence for no reason outside of that it would have been exculpatory, but letting Chauvin walk would’ve inflamed things quite a bit I guess

I had been a regular Reason reader since the early 2010s, so I had seen plenty of stories of police officers getting away with all manner of brutality, theft, murder, etc., directed at people of all races. Thanks to that background, I mostly remember being annoyed that Floyd’s death was instantly chalked up to racism, before being thoroughly pissed at TPTB for siding with the rioters while at the same time enforcing/defending onerous Covid restrictions. I didn’t care enough about the incident itself to bother forming any firm opinions, so my memory of the immediate reactions was apparently pretty hazy. In 2020, my anger about everything Covid-related took precedence over everything else.

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