US Politics: The supply chain of hot takes remains robust

[A Horse Named Stranger]

4 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Or maybe it is that I know US history well enough that I deliberately avoid exaggerating the supposed craziness of the past, preferring instead to underline the well-documented craziness of the last few decades?

I strongly suggest you read -for example-  this Vox article on the topic before calling anyone ignorant.

Your wording suggested you not taking those lunacies not fully into account. And the current crazyness, has a historical root. Which in itself, has unsurprisingly a racist bend and so on and so forth. And the wild west/gun slinger romantic, life on the frontier shizzle, also preceded the school shootings, and is as much baked into all of it to some degree. Either way, not really in the mood to pick a fight with you. Monopoly of violence on this board rests with ran and his Board Rangers.

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Until he didn't

Yeah, when Rosebum and others continued to attack and pursue him. 
At what point is he allowed to defend himself? When one pulls a gun and shoots him? Or does he have to then proceed to try to crawl away?

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Almost as if Rittenhouse had enough self-control to neutralize Rosenbaum before executing him in cold blood...

Damn him for not putting more care for the well-being of the person assaulting him.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

But of course, that's probably just me being paranoid, uh?

If you say so I won’t disagree.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Sooo, just to be clear, you're saying the media are lying, then?

On when he became a proud boy sympathizer? Some people may, he definitely is now, though I suspect that’s largely due to them being one of the groups that are sympathetic to him.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Probably, yes (

Just yes.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Which basically entails that if you're one of two people carrying guns that get into a fight, better to be the first one to shoot, no? I mean, if there's guns everywhere, you'll always be able to claim you felt threatened.

Depends on how the fight starts out. If you accost someone or someone disengages from the fight, don’t shoot typically.

You get that your reasoning would make it so that people who shoot violent intruders in their home as being on the hook for murder right? Obviously they were prepared for violence so therefore murder.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Really? My main source for this is Robert Muchembled's A history of violence (I do believe he's considered to be one of the main historians on the topic), what's yours?

The actual laws. Point to one where bringing a gun to a protest precludes someone from claiming self-defense.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Your wording suggested you not taking those lunacies not fully into account. And the current crazyness, has a historical root. Which in itself, has unsurprisingly a racist bend and so on and so forth. And the wild west/gun slinger romantic, life on the frontier shizzle, also preceded the school shootings, and is as much baked into all of it to some degree.

I try to be careful (I don't always succeed). The argument that the US perspective on self-defense was always unique is one easily used by conservatives to argue for more lunacy. The historical record is a bit difficult. Early US laws were obviously based on English common law, and recent research traces back changes to Reconstruction in the South. The Supreme Court decision Brown v. US (1921) both reaffirms duty to retreat and provides for an exception when one believes they are in "immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant." Recent stand-your-ground laws (starting with Florida) can be at least partially attributed to NRA activism. So I dunno, it doesn't seem simple to me. Superficial research would suggest this may always have been a controversial issue, and that the facts (and geographical context) of a given case tended to take precedence over general country-wide principles. I would say the latest developments come in part from the individual right to bear arms for self-defense described in DC v. Heller. That's something that the principle of self-defense (necessary and proportional) has not had to contend with in most developed nations. My own perspective is of course informed by European culture, and French law is not kind to anyone wielding an illegal weapon. In the Rittenhouse case, it will come down to the jury, but I think it's clear to everyone that regardless of the decision, it will have far-reaching consequences for social unrest. There's just no escaping the fact that Rittenhouse was at least a Proud Boys sympathizer, and one can't rule out that he was -on some level or the other- manipulated to create this sorry outcome. In the end, I just don't want to equate a legal judgment with a moral one. If there are not clear limits to self-defense, then no one ends up a winner: it will always be better for justice to be meted out in a court of law rather than on the streets. I don't get how anyone would ever want to leave life-or-death decisions to any citizen (or police officer) with a gun. I'm no fan of Hobbes, but he made that case rather clearly:

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And because the condition of man (as hath been declared in the precedent chapter) is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is: to seek peace and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means we can to defend ourselves.

From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law: that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing anything he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right, as well as he, then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself of his: for that were to expose himself to prey, which no man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace. This is that law of the gospel: Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. And that law of all men, quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris.

 

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I'm no fan of Hobbes, but

I hate how many times I've had to say or write this qualifier.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

In Wisconsin it is not illegal to open carry, if someone tries to beat someone visibly armed as they flee, the armed person has a legal right to defend themselves.

But again, only if they can legally own the gun they're open carrying, which Rittenhouse could not do. He was an illegal vigilante that night and perhaps he should not be afforded such generous levels of self defense considering he broke multiple laws and inserted himself in a situation he should never have been in with a deadly weapon he had zero right to be in possession of. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

I hate how many times I've had to say or write this qualifier.

Clearly you're a Shaw guy then, right? 

[DMC]

I thought it just meant I hated tigers.

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

But again, only if they can legally own the gun they're open carrying, which Rittenhouse could not do.

But again you’ve expressed to not actually caring about that. If he legally owned the gun you’d Still be crying murder and demand life-time imprisonment.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

He was an illegal vigilante

Who did he shoot but the people that directly attacked him?

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

he broke multiple laws

That none of his attackers knew about.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

inserted himself in a situation he should never have been

“They should have been on the damn road!” This is what you’re sounding like.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

But again you’ve expressed to not actually caring about that. If he legally owned the gun you’d Still be crying murder and demand life-time imprisonment.

No, I've made arguments on a macro level, never specifically about this situation if Rittenhouse was a legal gun owner. The fact that he wasn't needs to matter. 

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Who did he shoot but the people that directly attacked him?

He went there to protect private property with a deadly weapon. That's both vigilantly behavior and illegal.

Quote

That none of his attackers knew about.

Look at him. He looks like he's 15. Any sane person should see him walking around with a giant gun and ask themselves why this is happening and call the police.

Quote

“They should have been on the damn road!” This is what you’re sounding like.

And you sound like someone who is giving a pass to a killer who broke several laws before he started killing people. Because he was scared after making everyone around him scared because again, he was a child walking around in public with a giant fucking gun. You seem to think that's okay.

[Varysblackfyre321]

35 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I've made arguments on a macro level, never specifically about this situation if Rittenhouse was a legal gun owner.

Ah.

36 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

He went there to protect private property with a deadly weapon. That's both vigilantly behavior and illegal.

Eh that seems a real stretch.  Hey maybe the protests would be completely peaceful.

42 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Look at him

Look at this 18 year old man right now?

Has the prosecution even claimed any of the attackers suspected Rittenhouse was underage?

43 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Any sane person should see him walking around with a giant gun and ask themselves why this is happening and call the police.

Wisconsin is an open carry state. Though if you think someone looks too young to hold a gun, I agree the only sane course of actions is to call the police.

45 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And you sound like someone who is giving a pass to a killer who broke several laws

I don’t think those 7 laws give license who are also in the process of breaking laws, to beat and potentially murder them no.

He fled. That could and should have been the end of the confrontation.

How far could these men have gone in your eyes before Rittenhouse can defend himself? Put a gun to his face? Break his teeth? 

50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Because he was scared after making everyone around him scared because again, he was a child walking around in public with a giant fucking gun.

I am waiting for evidence that anyone of the people shot actually thought that.

 

[Jaxom 1974]

17 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 

Eh that seems a real stretch.  Hey maybe the protests would be completely peaceful.

 

 

Seems that any individual looking to cross state lines into an already tense situation, using a gun that that was illegal to have, was going into said situation desperately wanting the protest to not be peaceful.  In fact, going along the route that he did, his presence certainly wasn't meant to do anything but encourage a lack of peace.

[Varysblackfyre321]

37 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

In fact, going along the route that he did, his presence certainly wasn't meant to do anything but encourage a lack of peace.

How? He was far from the only armed person there. Two of the people who chased him was armed for example.

39 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Seems that any individual looking to cross state lines into an already tense situation,

So, far can people go in response to this thing they had no idea about?

Stabbed him? Shot him? How far are they allowed to take it with a person who was trying to disengage with them?

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Quote

 

Look at him. He looks like he's 15. Any sane person should see him walking around with a giant gun and ask themselves why this is happening and call the police.

Okay you’ve been making this claim through multiple threads. Actually point to some bit of evidence that shows the men shot had a reasonable reason to think that Kyle was underage and that’s why they were pursuing him.

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

He went there to protect private property with a deadly weapon. That's both vigilantly behavior and illegal.

And thus when he tries to flee from the situation some people are allowed to beat him? And he’s obliged to put his life in the hands of his attackers? 

[Ran]

7 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Sooo, just to be clear, you're saying the media are lying, then?

If you took out of media reports that Rittenhouse was affiliated with or a member of the Proud Boys on the night of the Kenosha shooting, then the media is indeed lying to you or you have been mislead.

This report notes that the photos he took with alleged Proud Boys was in January, five months after the event when Kyle Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre among the right.

7 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Or is it that you don't know that it has been reported that Rittenhouse traveled to Miami to meet the Proud Boys' national president?

The same report alleges that that happened three days after the photos at the bar, again, five months after Kenosha.

If I'm accused of commiting violent crime, and five months later while I'm pending trial I convert to Islam, no judge would or should allow a prosecutor to suggest my violent crime was an act of religious terrorism because of something that happened after I committed the crime. If they can prove that I was some sort of cryptoislamist at the time of the crime and was motivated by that, then they can try to do that -- but using something that happens months after, no, that would be wrong.

Ditto with this repetition that he's a Proud Boy, or was affiliated with them on the night of the shootings. The reason it was rightly disallowed at court was that the prosecutors had no evidence that he was connected to the group prior to the events of that night. Some may want to claim it strikes to a characterization of Rittenhouse, but there are rules regarding how you can do that, just as there are rules regarding what you can use to show a prior propensity towards illicit activity.

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 11/12/2021 at 2:42 PM, Altherion said:

It's hard to say whether Manchin will see it this way -- at least not for the entire thing. It's certainly less than what was already done, but it's in addition to the latter. It also includes quite a few outright cash handouts and it's hard to see how these will not add to inflation (they just give money to people without producing any goods). I guess they're waiting for the CBO score so we won't know how Manchin sees it until after Thanksgiving.

At this point in time, a actually passing a trillion dollar bill probably would hurt Biden and democrats more than the bickering about it 

In other news https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-announces-big-hike-in-medicare-premiums/ar-AAQEhHa?ocid=uxbndlbing
 

 

[Rippounet]

7 hours ago, Ran said:

If I'm accused of commiting violent crime, and five months later while I'm pending trial I convert to Islam, no judge would or should allow a prosecutor to suggest my violent crime was an act of religious terrorism because of something that happened after I committed the crime.

That's probably fair from a purely legal perspective. That's just not the perspective I'm adopting.

Your example is more than misleading. Instead of talking of a conversion to Islam, a much more accurate comparison would be to meet the leader of ISIS or Al-Qaeda. The Proud Boys organization is classified as a terrorist organization in Canada after all, and we all know what they stand for.
And the question becomes: why would anyone accused of a form of murder want to be associated with a terrorist organization if they weren't sympathetic to their "cause" and "values" in the first place?
If it were you, accused of a serious crime, would you want to meet with such a leader? Would you want to be associated with their values?
Of course not. Most people here would want to distance themselves from such a group. Anyone sane would not take the smallest risk that their actions could be viewed as political and deliberate.
To meet with the national leader of a neo-fascist group is basically being endorsed, and it basically proclaims to the world what your actions were about. Only a very dumb person would not realize that, and I think Rittenhouse is far from dumb.

I might have given Rittenhouse the benefit of the doubt if he'd met Trump. A former president brings a lot of prestige and may be able to offer (directly or indirectly) legal support. Ditto with any major conservative organization.
I could even understanding meeting a noxious media celebrity like Ann Coulter.
But the leader of the Proud Boys? You actually want to argue that it doesn't tell us anything about Rittenhouse and his ideas? Come on Ran.

Honestly, call me paranoid, but the Rittenhouse case is a bit too perfect in some respects. It really feels as if this kid had advice prior to traveling to Kenosha. The modus operandi feels very familiar, I just can't quite put my finger on it.
My guess is, it was all done through the internet and Rittenhouse knew how to cover his tracks. But most of his actions rely a bit too much on plausible deniability for it to be accidental.
So yeah, the judge could legitimately exclude Rittenhouse's link to the Proud Boys, because we can't be certain beyond a doubt that Rittenhouse's actions were tied to his political convictions, and criminal cases in the US operate under the highest standard of proof.
But the board is not a criminal court and I'm not a judge or lawyer. So I'll claim that any reasonable person knows exactly what Rittenhouse is.
Again, a legal judgment is not a moral one, and vice-versa.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

13 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I don’t think those 7 laws give license who are also in the process of breaking laws, to beat and potentially murder them no.

He fled. That could and should have been the end of the confrontation.

How far could these men have gone in your eyes before Rittenhouse can defend himself? Put a gun to his face? Break his teeth? 

What you continously ignore or brush aside in your defense of the heroic Kyle Rittenhouse is, that him breaking those 7 laws (just accepting the numbers) has directly lead him into the situation, in which he shot 3 people and is now claiming self-defense. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

14 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

What you continously ignore or brush aside in your defense of the heroic Kyle Rittenhouse is, that him breaking those 7 laws (just accepting the numbers) has directly lead him into the situation, in which he shot 3 people and is now claiming self-defense. 

It is sort of weird to look at how certain crimes / charges can pile into "metacharges (I dunno the real word) in some jurisdictions in the US.  Like, I remember HST writing about the Lisl Auman felony murder case, where a person was convicted of a murder that took place while they were handcuffed in a police car.  Or three strikes laws.

As others have shown with the Wisconsin statutes there are many factors that determine at what point self defense does or doesn't apply, and it is easy to see how the reasonable conclusion would be that if you are armed in public and there is any kind of physical confrontation, shoot everyone while running away and hope none of them are alive to testify.  Which is horrible.

[Ran]

9 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

What you continously ignore or brush aside in your defense of the heroic Kyle Rittenhouse is, that him breaking those 7 laws (just accepting the numbers) has directly lead him into the situation, in which he shot 3 people and is now claiming self-defense. 

None of this is relevant to the legal case, which is why Varys ignores it. Breaking a law or many laws does not mean you lose the right to self defense if you have not provoked your aggressors or, alternatively, having provoked them attempted to retreat.

 

That's it. That's the sum total of how the relevant laws work.

4 minutes ago, 1066 Larry said:

it is easy to see how the reasonable conclusion would be that if you are armed in public and there is any kind of physical confrontation, shoot everyone while running away and hope none of them are alive to testify.  Which is horrible.

"Shoot everyone" in public, without witnesses, is probably easier said than done. I don't think we need give any attention to this sort of fantastical scenario.

This case is not some magical litmus test. It's not even unique. There are pending cases in Texas and Colorado regarding shootings at protests with self-defense claims being made. And the Arbrey case going on right now seems to be much more significant, to my mind, regarding self-defense doctrine given that it's specifically coupled to an attempted citizen's arrest and the situation was so egregious that Georgia actually repealed its citizen's arrest law. IMO, that's a lot more impactful than whatever comes out of the Rittenhouse case.

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

None of this is relevant to the legal case, which is why Varys ignores it. Breaking a law or many laws does not mean you lose the right to self defense if you have not provoked your aggressors or, alternatively, having provoked them attempted to retreat.

 

That's it. That's the sum total of how the relevant laws work.

"Shoot everyone" in public, without witnesses, is probably easier said than done. I don't think we need give any attention to this sort of fantastical scenario.

This case is not some magical litmus test. It's not even unique. There are pending cases in Texas and Colorado regarding shootings at protests with self-defense claims being made. And the Arbrey case going on right now seems to be much more significant, to my mind, regarding self-defense doctrine given that it's specifically coupled to an attempted citizen's arrest and the situation was so egregious that Georgia actually repealed its citizen's arrest law. IMO, that's a lot more impactful than whatever comes out of the Rittenhouse case.

100% the Arbery lynching was more impactful in terms of changing the law, so far - there's been legislation enacted before the trial. 

I was more musing on the practical effects of "self defense" in WI post-Kenosha.  Maybe the law will change there, but who knows.  I doubt anyone had anticipated a bunch of people openly carrying and wandering around protesting and counter protesting police brutality during a pandemic.  I suppose though that they might want to reconsider now that we know armed groups with opposing views openly carrying is a thing that can happen.  

 I also think there is waaaaaay more legal gray area in Rittenhouse's case and grounds for a self-defense claim than in the Arbery lynching, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people draw some conclusions about how the WI laws actually function, they could actually end up creating quite this disaster the next time there's some sort of armed protest/counter protest, which certainly seems much more possible after the last year and a half.

Will have to take a look at the other cases you mentioned.