US Politics: Stamping out Chauvinism

[Mindwalker]

YES!

Just heard of the verdict.

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

One assumes that they were caught off guard that the system worked against them for once...

I dunno, this seems like their base wasn't exactly backing Chauvin at any point.  I have an unfortunate amount of contact with some people who supported the Jan 6th storm the capitol stuff but who have maintained since last summer that this guy was guilty of murder, but they should also lock up anyone who yelled at a cop or jaywalked while protesting.  Run them over even.  I'm not sure this is one Fox News can do much with.

Of course this is the rare case where police brutality actually is addressed in the judicial system but it's still the Bad Apple theory.  I predict this will be used as evidence system works and no reforms are needed and nothing much will come from this.

[Zorral]

One thinks perhaps, particularly after seeing that video more than once, how frackin' performative Chauvin was being throughout the man dying under his knee.  He was performing his white cop might and privilege upon an African American man, about which no one could do anything.  He was enjoying flaunting his power to be cruel and needlessly cruel, in full reflection of the person who supposedly was the president of this nation.

Perhaps that was just too much for the jury to stomach.

This was my take on the video, anyway.

 

[Jaxom 1974]

11 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I dunno, this seems like their base wasn't exactly backing Chauvin at any point.  I have an unfortunate amount of contact with some people who supported the Jan 6th storm the capitol stuff but who have maintained since last summer that this guy was guilty of murder, but they should also lock up anyone who yelled at a cop or jaywalked while protesting.  Run them over even.  I'm not sure this is one Fox News can do much with.

Of course this is the rare case where police brutality actually is addressed in the judicial system but it's still the Bad Apple theory.  I predict this will be used as evidence system works and no reforms are needed and nothing much will come from this.

That's some kalbear level of cynicism there...

And maybe the base in question isn't standing up for Chauvin himself, but the idea of what he did... that's everything to these people.  And that, today at least, that ability to perform, as Zorral just suggested, was taken from them and that scares them.  

This should be a turning point. And until Kal's predicted freedom through acquittal, it is. 

[Spockydog]

41 minutes ago, Fez said:

Interesting that Republicans aren't trying to culture war this just yet...

Huh. Just wait til Tucker comes on. He'll be so angry he'll press his lips together so tightly that the pressure will cause a gravitational singularity. And all the libs and the blacks and anyone who doesn't look like Tucker will end up getting sucked off across the event horizon, before passing out of Tuckers slack, fetid anus, into a world where John Wayne is king, Donald Trump is his queen, and slavery never ended.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, Zorral said:

One thinks perhaps, particularly after seeing that video more than once, how frackin' performative Chauvin was being throughout the man dying under his knee.  He was performing his white cop might and privilege upon an African American man, about which no one could do anything.  He was enjoying flaunting his power to be cruel and needlessly cruel, in full reflection of the person who supposedly was the president of this nation.

Perhaps that was just too much for the jury to stomach.

This was my take on the video, anyway.

 

It certainly had to have played a role. It also didn't help that Chauvin showed no sympathy or remorse in the courtroom. Curious if that was a factor in him not testifying given he'd probably come across as indifferent and emotionless. 

[JGP]

10 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Huh. Just wait til Tucker comes on. He'll be so angry he'll press his lips together so tightly that the pressure will cause a gravitational singularity. All the libs will end up getting sucked off across the event horizon, before passing out of Tuckers slack, fetid anus, into a world where John Wayne is king, Donald Trump is his queen, and slavery never ended.

 

 

 

 

Dude in his Fuck John Wayne shirt is my twitter banner.

[Morpheus]

Conservatives have tended to denounce Chauvin (while of course, still harping on about Floyd’s past) as the one rare example of police misdeed by which they can deny any others and the overall systemic problems

 

 

Big yikes

 

 

[Kalbear]

56 minutes ago, Ser Reptitious said:

That is messed up. Admittedly I never practiced criminal law, but my recollection (from law school and elsewhere) is that in Canada jurors are sequestered throughout the trial, precisely to avoid undue influence!

I genuinely feel sorry for you. This was the best possible outcome we could hope for today, but instead of at least enjoying the moment, you already feel the need to rain on everyone’s (yours included) parade. 

Yes, there will undoubtedly be an appeal. That was probably going to be the case regardless of what Maxine Waters or anyone else said or did. An appeal may succeed... or it might fail. And even if it succeeds, it presumably would simply result in a re-trial (again, at least that’s how it would work in Canada - since a judge shouldn’t be able to singularly overturn a judgment by one’s peers). 

Bottomline: the best that this dipshit cop can hope for is to be cleared of these charges many years down the road. That should be a warning for his ilk to show at least a modicum of restraint. That alone makes this a good/great day!

I guess it's hard for me to feel that this is that amazing of a thing when we've had two more police murders in the last week including one in the same goddamn city, so the threat of police accountability? Not so threatening. 

I'm less angry given this verdict, but I'm still really fucking angry about it. 

[Zorral]

Partner says Twitter is a'fire with the recognition that without Darnella Frazier,  the 17-year-old girl who courageously videoed the whole of this dreadful act, Chauvin was unlikely to have been convicted.

[DanteGabriel]

36 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Even Rush Limbaugh, of all people, said he was sickened by the Floyd video. Some people were still trying to justify the actions of the officer based on prior...whatever, but I think the response of Limbaugh to me signaled there wouldnt be as much conservative pushback as normal.

Maybe Limbaugh had a rare moment of empathy because he had an opioid problem too.

It's funny, the interesting right wing take on this that I've seen was an opinion column in the NY Post that a cousin of mine linked, which said "Chauvin is guilty but Waters and Biden have ensured the appeals will drag on."

Dastardly Democrats always screwing things up.

 

[Zorral]

This is an interesting take on the verdict, the prosecution and the defense; falls toward Karl's side of seeing it:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/the-chauvin-trial-guilty-verdict-is-police-self-preservation.html

Quote

 

The three-week criminal trial of Derek Chauvin ended on Tuesday with three guilty verdicts, forestalling mass protests of the sort Minnesota officials had spent weeks anticipating and deploying armed agents to suppress. More than a legal referendum on Chauvin’s conduct, the trial was a bilateral effort to defend the virtues of policing. The dishonesty this required from both prosecutors and the defense — and the workaday violence it obscured — should leave no doubt that justice for people like George Floyd has nothing to do with the rare officer an unjust institution chooses to rebuke.

The crux of the prosecution focused on whether Chauvin’s behavior was deviant enough to warrant consequences. Close to a dozen former and current police officials — mostly from Minneapolis, but elsewhere too — testified against the former officer, who last spring was video-recorded kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes until the 46-year-old Black man died. Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo said Chauvin had violated department policy by his actions. MPD inspector Katie Blackwell did the same, as did Lieutenants Richard Zimmerman and Johnny Mercil and Sergeant Jody Stiger of the Los Angeles Police Department, among others. Taken together, these officials composed a collective effort to draw a hard line between Chauvin’s conduct and policing by the book — what is permitted by department policy and, in Stiger’s case, national norms. “Totally unnecessary,” said Zimmerman in characteristic testimony. “If your knee is on a person’s neck, that can kill them.”

Killing people is not usually a problem for American police, who on average kill roughly 1,000 civilians a year, including fatally shooting more than 400 unarmed people total since 2015, according to the Washington Post. Thus, the rebuke of Chauvin by his fellow officers should not be interpreted as institutional opposition to needless death. It is a preservationist response to the questions of legitimacy that arise when an officer gets caught on camera torturing a handcuffed man to death, sparking some of the largest protests in U.S. history. These questions are compounded by growing public recognition that this behavior is not unusual. In the years since Eric Garner was video-recorded being choked to death by a police officer in Staten Island in 2014, the sentiment that police violence is a major problem in the U.S. has come to be shared by roughly half of American adults, while about two-thirds feel that the criminal-legal system treats police too leniently. Departments nationwide, and the Minneapolis Police Department in particular, face unprecedented threats to their primacy and local esteem in the form of budget cuts and even proposals to disband them.

Throwing Chauvin under the bus in court is a good way to reassure people that this system can and does work the way they want it to....

 

 

[karaddin]

I'm more than a bit thrown by the idea that this is something to take pleasure in. George Floyd is still murdered. He was just a man trying to live his life who had it cut short, he was not a sacrifice on the altar of justice even if this conviction is some big turning point the way Pelosi claimed and it seems really fucking offensive to frame his murder as one.

I'm glad this murderous fucker was convicted, but it feels like it brings closure and time for those impacted to stop and mourn without needing to keep themselves strong to demand justice.

[karaddin]

It's not full blown riots yet, but cops have already gone and killed another kid in the couple of hours after the verdict. 15 year old girl calls them for help and they shoot her. Columbus PD.

ETA: Exactly what happened still seems a bit jumbled, but an actual report with the early accounts is

https://www.thedailybeast.com/columbus-police-fatally-shoot-a-person-as-derek-chauvin-guilty-verdict-comes-down?ref=scroll

[JGP]

6 minutes ago, karaddin said:

It's not full blown riots yet, but cops have already gone and killed another kid in the couple of hours after the verdict. 15 year old girl calls them for help and they shoot her. Columbus PD.

I was just reading about this. Horrible, awful.

Witnesses are saying the cop who shot her didn’t try to deescalate at all, but at least there’s body cam footage already under review.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

40 minutes ago, Ephraim'sFruit said:

Big day for mob justice.

No, it was not.  A trial by a jury of your peers where you have defense counsel and an impartial judge is the very opposite of “mob justice”.  Chauvin was afforded every process he was due under the law and the State successfully obtained a conviction for murder.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Way to create such a horrible visual when many could be just sitting down for their 4/20 evening feast. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

if I were on a jury (which I would never be due to my undergrad degree in sociology)

I've always thought sociologists should be barred from jury duty too.

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

I've always thought sociologists should be barred from jury duty too.

Is this sarcasm?

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Is this sarcasm?

No.  Any discipline established by a bunch of French eggheads and Karl Marx is inherently evil.  And filthy.

Spoiler

Of course it's sarcasm.