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After the killings in Minnesota I tried reaching out to a MAGA acquaintance I've tried to engage with to find any sort of common ground (so far without any succ

by pstuart 5mo ago

After the killings in Minnesota I tried reaching out to a MAGA acquaintance I've tried to engage with to find any sort of common ground (so far without any success). I was ignored, and I'm assuming that he's been taught that those were domestic terrorists and got what they deserved.

rayiner 5mo ago
[flagged]
- mindslight 5mo ago
  It would help if these fundamental disagreements were ever explained rather than just vaguely handwaved. Is this disagreement about whether governments should be subservient to the People, and the idea of Constitutional rights and the rule of law in general? Or is it more philosophical like the people who were killed are now in the afterlife so their deaths aren't really a big deal? Or is it less universal like the people who were killed are of a different tribe so their being killed is right and just? Those are the avenues I can think of. If I am missing one please volunteer it!
  - rayiner 5mo ago
    For example, if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy? And how should the predictable consequences of such confrontations be weighed against the state's legitimate interest in carrying out the law enforcement priorities of the democratically elected government? Similarly: Whether you think collateral risk is acceptable depends very heavily on your view of the urgency of the particular law enforcement mission. In a country the size of the U.S., fatalities are inevitable in any large-scale law enforcement operation. Civilians and officers are regularly killed when officers respond to domestic violence incidents. But hardly anybody argues we should stop responding to domestic violence calls because of that. If we had, for example, a large-scale gun confiscation in this country, lots of civilians would get killed. But I suspect many people would resist the argument that a few such deaths would be a reason to abandon the program.
    - mindslight 5mo ago
      > if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy? This is still not a strong enough "fundamental disagreement" to explain it. In order for this to be load-bearing, it would have to be something more like whether a law enforcement officer should be able to dole out a punishment of summary execution in response to such actions, which was covered in the first possibility I listed about Constitutional rights. If you were to openly champion this stance, then we could at least have a conversation! You could lay out your case for why it's time to go against some deep founding principles of this country, and at least we wouldn't be talking past one another! Whereas with weasel words like predictable consequences you're obscuring your fundamental political position. > the urgency of the particular law enforcement mission With this we're starting to get into the territory of "alternative facts", and it's disingenuous to call alternative facts a "fundamental disagreement" rather than say "disinformation". There is no "urgency" here - this is a problem that has been growing for decades. That growth is completely stopped by different mechanisms (border security, visa security, and reforming asylum). Whether it takes two years or ten years to accomplish auditing the entire US population does not matter if there is really a political mandate here. Narratives about Good's execution that start after her killer had already set up the pretext to execute her (in direct contradiction with ICE's own procedures, even!) fall in this same category. > Civilians and officers are regularly killed when officers respond to domestic violence incidents. But hardly anybody argues we should stop responding to domestic violence calls because of that Once again, I have not made an argument that the goal should be abandoned. It seems like you're just trying to go back to conflating the two separate issues rather than staying focused on criticism of the methods. And for what it's worth, clearly many people do criticize the methods of how police respond to calls. > If we had, for example, a large-scale gun confiscation in this country, lots of civilians would get killed My initial reaction was that you're trying to precipitate partisan strawmen here. But I would be arguing against the injustice of similar incidents happening under that as well! Also it makes for some quite tortured analogies - under the hypothetical, the pretext for executing Pretti would actually be bona fide illegal. But on reflection, I think this might be a good way to illustrate the highly anti-American dynamics here. Perhaps not to you, as you were previously a Democrat and I don't think you've since adopted a strong 2A stance (correct me if I'm wrong), but to any actual conservatives who are still holding their nose at what the Republican party has now become. Let's imagine the partisan mirror image here: Hillary Clinton is elected president, running on a central issue of gun control. She issues executive orders to the ATF/FBI to the effect that the 2A is to be interpreted as applying to only government-chartered militias, and summarily fires anyone who seems like they might resist her mandate. ATF declares that an unobtainable tax stamp is required for every firearm. ATF proceeds to create databases of suspected gun owners, pulling in in data from IRS about businesses, social media surveillance, transfer paperwork that had previously been legally off-limits, etc. Congress is silent, except for pushing through gobs of funding for ATF for its new operations. The Supreme Court is packed with Democrat partisans who might not agree with Clinton's methods, but agree that gun control has been an issue for a long time and are willing to let it ride by sandbagging any substantive cases. As one of their approaches, ATF goes house to house busting down doors in neighborhoods with a high concentration of suspected gun owners. When residents predictably respond by defending themselves in their homes from an unknown intruder, they are summarily executed. There is a whole political movement cheering this on, saying that it's right for those people to have died because they were "interfering with law enforcement". Would this be at home in a Free society based around individual Liberty and the subservience of the government to the People?

by pstuart 5mo ago

rayiner 5mo ago

[flagged]

mindslight 5mo ago
It would help if these fundamental disagreements were ever explained rather than just vaguely handwaved. Is this disagreement about whether governments should be subservient to the People, and the idea of Constitutional rights and the rule of law in general? Or is it more philosophical like the people who were killed are now in the afterlife so their deaths aren't really a big deal? Or is it less universal like the people who were killed are of a different tribe so their being killed is right and just? Those are the avenues I can think of. If I am missing one please volunteer it!
- rayiner 5mo ago
  For example, if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy? And how should the predictable consequences of such confrontations be weighed against the state's legitimate interest in carrying out the law enforcement priorities of the democratically elected government? Similarly: Whether you think collateral risk is acceptable depends very heavily on your view of the urgency of the particular law enforcement mission. In a country the size of the U.S., fatalities are inevitable in any large-scale law enforcement operation. Civilians and officers are regularly killed when officers respond to domestic violence incidents. But hardly anybody argues we should stop responding to domestic violence calls because of that. If we had, for example, a large-scale gun confiscation in this country, lots of civilians would get killed. But I suspect many people would resist the argument that a few such deaths would be a reason to abandon the program.
  - mindslight 5mo ago
    > if citizens don't like a law enforcement policy, are they entitled to physically confront law enforcement to exercise a "heckler's veto" over the policy? This is still not a strong enough "fundamental disagreement" to explain it. In order for this to be load-bearing, it would have to be something more like whether a law enforcement officer should be able to dole out a punishment of summary execution in response to such actions, which was covered in the first possibility I listed about Constitutional rights. If you were to openly champion this stance, then we could at least have a conversation! You could lay out your case for why it's time to go against some deep founding principles of this country, and at least we wouldn't be talking past one another! Whereas with weasel words like predictable consequences you're obscuring your fundamental political position. > the urgency of the particular law enforcement mission With this we're starting to get into the territory of "alternative facts", and it's disingenuous to call alternative facts a "fundamental disagreement" rather than say "disinformation". There is no "urgency" here - this is a problem that has been growing for decades. That growth is completely stopped by different mechanisms (border security, visa security, and reforming asylum). Whether it takes two years or ten years to accomplish auditing the entire US population does not matter if there is really a political mandate here. Narratives about Good's execution that start after her killer had already set up the pretext to execute her (in direct contradiction with ICE's own procedures, even!) fall in this same category. > Civilians and officers are regularly killed when officers respond to domestic violence incidents. But hardly anybody argues we should stop responding to domestic violence calls because of that Once again, I have not made an argument that the goal should be abandoned. It seems like you're just trying to go back to conflating the two separate issues rather than staying focused on criticism of the methods. And for what it's worth, clearly many people do criticize the methods of how police respond to calls. > If we had, for example, a large-scale gun confiscation in this country, lots of civilians would get killed My initial reaction was that you're trying to precipitate partisan strawmen here. But I would be arguing against the injustice of similar incidents happening under that as well! Also it makes for some quite tortured analogies - under the hypothetical, the pretext for executing Pretti would actually be bona fide illegal. But on reflection, I think this might be a good way to illustrate the highly anti-American dynamics here. Perhaps not to you, as you were previously a Democrat and I don't think you've since adopted a strong 2A stance (correct me if I'm wrong), but to any actual conservatives who are still holding their nose at what the Republican party has now become. Let's imagine the partisan mirror image here: Hillary Clinton is elected president, running on a central issue of gun control. She issues executive orders to the ATF/FBI to the effect that the 2A is to be interpreted as applying to only government-chartered militias, and summarily fires anyone who seems like they might resist her mandate. ATF declares that an unobtainable tax stamp is required for every firearm. ATF proceeds to create databases of suspected gun owners, pulling in in data from IRS about businesses, social media surveillance, transfer paperwork that had previously been legally off-limits, etc. Congress is silent, except for pushing through gobs of funding for ATF for its new operations. The Supreme Court is packed with Democrat partisans who might not agree with Clinton's methods, but agree that gun control has been an issue for a long time and are willing to let it ride by sandbagging any substantive cases. As one of their approaches, ATF goes house to house busting down doors in neighborhoods with a high concentration of suspected gun owners. When residents predictably respond by defending themselves in their homes from an unknown intruder, they are summarily executed. There is a whole political movement cheering this on, saying that it's right for those people to have died because they were "interfering with law enforcement". Would this be at home in a Free society based around individual Liberty and the subservience of the government to the People?