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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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Perhaps, but look at the exact context of the incident that led to this.

George Floyd died while he was in handcuffs, face to the floor, with a grown man kneeling on top of him. He was 'unarmed' by any fair definition of the word.

A lot of people believe the cop's actions killed him, a lot of people believe it didn't, and say it was probably the drugs. Indeed, the mainstream conservative position is turning into Derek Chauvin deserves a pardon.

The rule proposed by Yudkowsky cuts the knot and just removes any 'bad' cops from the job even if we don't know for sure they're bad cops, so as to restore trust to the police as a whole, where the people who believe ACAB at least see that there's a consequence for the death of 'innocent' (yeah, I know I know) people in police encounters, and the "law and order" people can see that its the simple application of a facially neutral rule that holds the police to a 'high' but not unfair standard.

George Floyd was murdered and his murderer is currently in prison. The system worked, to the degree it does for handling murderers after the fact.

I would rather point to Michael Brown of "hands up, don't shoot" fame. He severely beat a cop with his bare hands. Fractured skull while in a car wearing a seat belt level beating. But Mr. Brown failed to take the cop's gun despite trying. Many cops have retention holsters and merely grabbing the grip of their gun and pulling won't get it out. Michael Brown then briefly ran away, but stopped, turned and charged the cop. It was then this cop defensively and justifiably shot an unarmed man to death.

Despite attempted railroading by the Obama administration, this cop escaped criminal punishment for his entirely justified defensive shooting of an unarmed man. Good thing Yudkowsky doesn't have some special veto power to punish this cop regardless. There's a reason we don't just cut knots. We need unruined un-carved-apart basic government institutions.