This comment section should let you know that you are doing a lousy job, Max.
Maybe you should have prefaced this article with another one outlining how criticism & animosity to MAGA and Trump gets metabolized in their favor and contributes to building up their 'orgasmic throes'.
Good post. I wish we had this energy earlier, but I’ll take it now. Also, fuck your MAGA cult fans that read this substack, reply on twitter, and write/ call in to your shows.
My goodness what a response! ICE Agents, DHS, Police officers should not be seen as dangerous dogs, which you need to be careful around. I understand they are just that atm but that doesnt mean they shouldn't be held accountable. The lady which was pushed to the floor (physically assaulted) was videoing the agents, she was no threat.
This idea of interfering has been stretched massively. The agents conducting the operation were on the other side of the road. If you are 20 feet away it shouldn't be acceptable for an agent to walk 20 feet in your direction, assault you and then claim you were interfering.
In any sane place Pretti getting involved to stop the office committing a further assault against the woman shouldn't be seen as reckless, it should be seen as basic decency. Him getting involved did lead to him being beaten and murdered on the street but I dont think that is an appropriate escalation to say the least.
If I went to a coffee shop and someone was being abusive to staff and I told that person to stop. And then the person beat and shot me I dont think any reasonable person would subscribe any blame to me getting involved. But when it comes to officers, ICE etc it seems that logic goes out the window and everyone just treats them like rabid dogs with no responsibility.
You fucked around by going near the rabid dog and you found out.
I have mixed thoughts on these incidents. On the one hand they look like clearly excessive force - these people didn't deserve to die for their actions. One also wonders at the training these agents received when signed up, given they were so quick to escalate to lethal force.
On the other hand, people need to behave a little more sensibly around armed law enforcement. You don't try to drive away when they pull you over. You don't join a scuffle to 'help'. Both of those actions are escalatory - they raise the stakes and increase the odds that someone does something stupid.
Unless you truly believe they're enemy combatants and that you need to fight the good fight by resisting them - but understand that you are then taking the role of a soldier, and soldiers find themselves in violent situations.
As for the maga responses, I guess it goes to show that not only 'woke liberals' go power mad - so do the people on the other side of the aisle. Human nature I suppose.
That is not the other hand like this is a 50/ 50. Maybe the other pinky toe nail.
How many severe abuses of force are done to people who are perfectly acting 100% in the best way to optimize for non aggressive responses?
Maybe they shouldn't even be there, why protest when that puts you in danger?
No. The ones in power bares the burden of the by far larger responsibly, that is just something we have agreed to be the trade off in most modern societies. If we don't focus on the increase of facistic acts or even spend equal time talking about why every victim wasn't acting like the perfect sheep, we are playing in to their hand.
Basically my internal reaction was this: 'welp, over-aggressive officers, but those victims were kind of stupid too, guess they paid the stupid tax with their lives'.
Did you see the video that came out of pretti kicking and damaging the car and being aggro with officers 11 days prior? Guy clearly had a chip on his shoulder and a desire to wade into battle, so to speak.
Let me be candid, and include more of your comment which you have later edited:
"I'll be candid - when I read your comment I hear it being laced with emotion and rhetoric. Nothing wrong with that but it's just not the way I look at the world. Let me explain. Firstly, I'm an engineer and games developer, so I tend to think in logic, probability, etc - kind of unemotionally. Secondly, I don't have a stake in these things. I don't care about red vs blue, I don't care about fascist or anti-fascist, I don't give a hoot. From my point of view the world has always been and will always be an unjust place - all suffering started in the hands of God or nature, depending on your belief. Humans travails are just a flow on from that down the line. And I accept it all completely. So it's from that detached/impartial point of view that I basically go: 'welp, over-aggressive officers, but those victims were kind of stupid too, guess they paid the stupid tax with their lives'."
Now, I appreciate being able to look at things logically. But in my opinion, your detachment is clearly hurting your ability to interact with this.
Your lack of emotion may be the reason you are viewing things as smaller logical problems, rather than all the implications these interactions have. But I dare say, if you take just your logic and try to view this systemically, constitutionally, from the perspective of the roles of law enforcement and what we as a people have as rights to do in a non tyrannical environment (maybe ask some decent lawyers), I think you'll find that even with pure logic we can come to the conclusion that civil unrest is an actual known calculation for lawmakers and law enforcement, and it is not setup in the US currently as far as I know in a way to justify executions based on the comparative very small levels of rowdiness and threat from the victims in the two most recent examples.
The fact that you are responding to me in a long comment, drastically editing it, talk about clips from 11 days prior, show me that you are emotionally invested in this whether you know it or not. But your emotions might be about something else than trying to take in the actual events and what they mean.
"On the other hand, people need to behave a little more sensibly around armed law enforcement. You don't try to drive away when they pull you over. You don't join a scuffle to 'help'. Both of those actions are escalatory - they raise the stakes and increase the odds that someone does something stupid."
As a non-American this perspective is completely alien to me. The police in my country don't carry guns and are expected to deal with the public non-lethally. In the past 10 years I believe they intentionally killed 1 person, and there was a public investigation into it.
I used to work as event security, and there have been many, many times when someone has tried to interfere with an arrest. The police attempt de-escalation if the person is not violent, or they non-lethally subdue and detain if they are.
As annoying as some of the public is (young men mostly), I'd never once consider death to be a valid outcome for assaulting an officer - something I've seen a fair bit of.
They're trained and paid to be professional. They know public belligerence is part of the job when they sign up.
Funny re the non-American part, I'm Australian myself so there's very few guns here either.
I agree with everything you've said about how these agents should be thinking and behaving. But at the same time I think it's idealistic - that is, they're supposed to behave like professionals, but as seen... sometimes they don't. And that seems to be doubly so in the crazy land of America where these kinds of events are a little too common.
Ultimately I find I think of these events in a kind of coldly game theoretic way. It's not a +EV move to behave the way the victims did, the risk vs reward ratio just wasn't a good bargain, and they'd still be alive if they played it differently.
Even here in Australia I'd never behave the way they did (and I'm guessing you wouldn't either right?).
This comment section should let you know that you are doing a lousy job, Max.
Maybe you should have prefaced this article with another one outlining how criticism & animosity to MAGA and Trump gets metabolized in their favor and contributes to building up their 'orgasmic throes'.
MAGA cult is destroying America. Hopefully we can prosecute all these traitors once Trump is out of office.
Good post. I wish we had this energy earlier, but I’ll take it now. Also, fuck your MAGA cult fans that read this substack, reply on twitter, and write/ call in to your shows.
My goodness what a response! ICE Agents, DHS, Police officers should not be seen as dangerous dogs, which you need to be careful around. I understand they are just that atm but that doesnt mean they shouldn't be held accountable. The lady which was pushed to the floor (physically assaulted) was videoing the agents, she was no threat.
This idea of interfering has been stretched massively. The agents conducting the operation were on the other side of the road. If you are 20 feet away it shouldn't be acceptable for an agent to walk 20 feet in your direction, assault you and then claim you were interfering.
In any sane place Pretti getting involved to stop the office committing a further assault against the woman shouldn't be seen as reckless, it should be seen as basic decency. Him getting involved did lead to him being beaten and murdered on the street but I dont think that is an appropriate escalation to say the least.
If I went to a coffee shop and someone was being abusive to staff and I told that person to stop. And then the person beat and shot me I dont think any reasonable person would subscribe any blame to me getting involved. But when it comes to officers, ICE etc it seems that logic goes out the window and everyone just treats them like rabid dogs with no responsibility.
You fucked around by going near the rabid dog and you found out.
I have mixed thoughts on these incidents. On the one hand they look like clearly excessive force - these people didn't deserve to die for their actions. One also wonders at the training these agents received when signed up, given they were so quick to escalate to lethal force.
On the other hand, people need to behave a little more sensibly around armed law enforcement. You don't try to drive away when they pull you over. You don't join a scuffle to 'help'. Both of those actions are escalatory - they raise the stakes and increase the odds that someone does something stupid.
Unless you truly believe they're enemy combatants and that you need to fight the good fight by resisting them - but understand that you are then taking the role of a soldier, and soldiers find themselves in violent situations.
As for the maga responses, I guess it goes to show that not only 'woke liberals' go power mad - so do the people on the other side of the aisle. Human nature I suppose.
"On the other hand"
That is not the other hand like this is a 50/ 50. Maybe the other pinky toe nail.
How many severe abuses of force are done to people who are perfectly acting 100% in the best way to optimize for non aggressive responses?
Maybe they shouldn't even be there, why protest when that puts you in danger?
No. The ones in power bares the burden of the by far larger responsibly, that is just something we have agreed to be the trade off in most modern societies. If we don't focus on the increase of facistic acts or even spend equal time talking about why every victim wasn't acting like the perfect sheep, we are playing in to their hand.
Basically my internal reaction was this: 'welp, over-aggressive officers, but those victims were kind of stupid too, guess they paid the stupid tax with their lives'.
Did you see the video that came out of pretti kicking and damaging the car and being aggro with officers 11 days prior? Guy clearly had a chip on his shoulder and a desire to wade into battle, so to speak.
Let me be candid, and include more of your comment which you have later edited:
"I'll be candid - when I read your comment I hear it being laced with emotion and rhetoric. Nothing wrong with that but it's just not the way I look at the world. Let me explain. Firstly, I'm an engineer and games developer, so I tend to think in logic, probability, etc - kind of unemotionally. Secondly, I don't have a stake in these things. I don't care about red vs blue, I don't care about fascist or anti-fascist, I don't give a hoot. From my point of view the world has always been and will always be an unjust place - all suffering started in the hands of God or nature, depending on your belief. Humans travails are just a flow on from that down the line. And I accept it all completely. So it's from that detached/impartial point of view that I basically go: 'welp, over-aggressive officers, but those victims were kind of stupid too, guess they paid the stupid tax with their lives'."
Now, I appreciate being able to look at things logically. But in my opinion, your detachment is clearly hurting your ability to interact with this.
Your lack of emotion may be the reason you are viewing things as smaller logical problems, rather than all the implications these interactions have. But I dare say, if you take just your logic and try to view this systemically, constitutionally, from the perspective of the roles of law enforcement and what we as a people have as rights to do in a non tyrannical environment (maybe ask some decent lawyers), I think you'll find that even with pure logic we can come to the conclusion that civil unrest is an actual known calculation for lawmakers and law enforcement, and it is not setup in the US currently as far as I know in a way to justify executions based on the comparative very small levels of rowdiness and threat from the victims in the two most recent examples.
The fact that you are responding to me in a long comment, drastically editing it, talk about clips from 11 days prior, show me that you are emotionally invested in this whether you know it or not. But your emotions might be about something else than trying to take in the actual events and what they mean.
Yes, edited it as I was unhappy with the tone/length of my original.
Anyway you sound like you're looking for an argument. Your first reply was essentially a pedantic nitpick.
I'm not interested enough in your opinion to read all of that.
"On the other hand, people need to behave a little more sensibly around armed law enforcement. You don't try to drive away when they pull you over. You don't join a scuffle to 'help'. Both of those actions are escalatory - they raise the stakes and increase the odds that someone does something stupid."
As a non-American this perspective is completely alien to me. The police in my country don't carry guns and are expected to deal with the public non-lethally. In the past 10 years I believe they intentionally killed 1 person, and there was a public investigation into it.
I used to work as event security, and there have been many, many times when someone has tried to interfere with an arrest. The police attempt de-escalation if the person is not violent, or they non-lethally subdue and detain if they are.
As annoying as some of the public is (young men mostly), I'd never once consider death to be a valid outcome for assaulting an officer - something I've seen a fair bit of.
They're trained and paid to be professional. They know public belligerence is part of the job when they sign up.
Funny re the non-American part, I'm Australian myself so there's very few guns here either.
I agree with everything you've said about how these agents should be thinking and behaving. But at the same time I think it's idealistic - that is, they're supposed to behave like professionals, but as seen... sometimes they don't. And that seems to be doubly so in the crazy land of America where these kinds of events are a little too common.
Ultimately I find I think of these events in a kind of coldly game theoretic way. It's not a +EV move to behave the way the victims did, the risk vs reward ratio just wasn't a good bargain, and they'd still be alive if they played it differently.
Even here in Australia I'd never behave the way they did (and I'm guessing you wouldn't either right?).