Kyle Rittenhouse and the militia obligation

There’s an angle on the case of Kyle Rittenhouse that I haven’t seen even hinted at in the media.

Section 246 of US Code Title 10, entitled, “Militia: composition and classes” reads:

“(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are:

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.”

That is, all males of military age who are or intend to become citizens of the United States are under federal statute the “unorganized militia”, and have the duty of the militia to defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies foreign and domestic (as both naturalizing citizens and members of the armed forces swear to do).

Kyle Rittenhouse is a 17-year-old male and thus a member of the unorganized militia under black-letter Federal law. When he armed up to defend a friend’s business during a breakdown in civil order, he was acting precisely as all members of the unorganized militia have a legal and Constitutional duty to act in like circumstances.

And yes, shooting violent criminal insurrectionists is included in that duty. Rittenhouse would have been justified in doing so even if he had not been acting in self-defense against lethal threats to his person.

So let’s not hear any more nonsense about a teenager having no business being in that situation. Kyle Rittenhouse recognized one of his core duties as an American citizen and performed it with exceptional skill and courage.

838 comments

    1. >https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/award-kyle-rittenhouse-medal

      I could quibble with on the grounds that Rittenhouse doesn’t deserve a medal for doing the ordinary duty of every citizen. But damn, he was exceptionally skilled and cool under lethal threat, and he did shoot three Communists.

      So yeah, I signed it.

      1. ESR, I usually don’t get drawn into these discussions but does the prospect of potentially you being mistaken and condoning the deaths of several people who might not have deserved to die (regardless of whether they were in the right or wrong) worry you? Do you ever impose higher standards for your confidence in your beliefs when the damage that a mistake would cause increases in scale?

        It would be a very unusual circumstance normally to trigger anyone to not only condone but enthusiastically support the deaths of fellow citizens regardless of what the context was. So I wonder if you have considered how much of a part the emotion of scoring a point against a tribe you very much disagree with might shape your beliefs here. I personally would be pretty horrified to look back in the future and realise that, regardless of how much I disagreed with someone or wanted to see them locked away for what they had done, I had rubber stamped their murder.

        1. ESR, I usually don’t get drawn into these discussions but does the prospect of potentially you being mistaken and condoning the deaths of several people who might not have deserved to die (regardless of whether they were in the right or wrong) worry you?

          Not addressed to me, but I’ll give my answer…

          Why would it?

          This is just about the most open and shut self defense case that ever open and shutted. Despite the digging Kyle appears to be so clean you would think he was a plant. And the people he killed were:

          1. A guy who raped multiple 11 year old boys when he was ~18 and should have been in the ground long ago.

          2. A guy who amused himself by beating the shit out of his girlfriend and strangling her.

          1. I dug into this and they are definitely not spotless characters, however you dice their history. However, there’s not very much clear evidence as to the specific details here. It seems quite clear that they both were convicted on some rather eyebrow raising charges, but there’s precious little reliable evidence as to exactly what the content of those crimes was. The most I can find is an unverified presentencing report for Rosenbaum. Given that a number of the sites reporting this also seem to claim that the injured man was guilty of a burglary that he was fifteen years too young to commit, it would be nice to have some more reliable evidence. Do you know of anything more substantial out there on these two?

        2. >Do you ever impose higher standards for your confidence in your beliefs when the damage that a mistake would cause increases in scale?

          Of course I do. But in this case both the law and the facts are exceptionally clear.

      2. > he did shoot three Communists

        The only condition where one could possibly celebrate that would be if was open warfare going on against an enemy who can’t be reasoned with and who clearly intends to kill, colonize or enslave. Popular rhetoric notwithstanding, that just ain’t so. Doing it anyway is downright indecent. Worse, it normalizes the warfare mindset, unnecessarily inflames the other side, and makes conflict more likely to happen, especially when you have a public standing. Please, help unpolarize.

          1. Actually instead of being glib let me go through each point….

            The only condition where one could possibly celebrate that would be if was

            ….

            open warfare

            Check

            against an enemy who can’t be reasoned with

            Check

            and who clearly intends to kill,

            Check

            colonize

            Check

            or enslave.

            Check

            Popular [firey but mostly peaceful] rhetoric notwithstanding, that just ain’t so.

            False.

            Doing it anyway is downright indecent.

            There are reasons for rules like “Don’t speak ill of the dead”. It keeps cowards from being nice while a person is alive and then slandering them when they can no longer defend themselves just to name one feature.

            But a person does not achieve sainthood by croaking. They certainly don’t achieve sainthood by getting killed in the commission of a crime.

            And I never pretended that they were anything but scum before their deaths.

            Worse, it normalizes the warfare mindset,

            Several decades too late to be worrying about that.

            unnecessarily inflames the other side,

            They do quite enough self-inflamation. I refuse to be held hostage by the other side’s emotions.

            and makes conflict more likely to happen,

            Again: they are pushing this as hard as they can. Since submitting is not an acceptable option that leaves destroying them. If we are lucky this can happen on the cultural level before it gets too violent.

            especially when you have a public standing. Please, help unpolarize

            If someone has “public standing” they are in a position to name evil where it walks. No one is benefited by pretending that evil is good.

        1. >The only condition where one could possibly celebrate that would be if was open warfare going on against an enemy who can’t be reasoned with and who clearly intends to kill, colonize or enslave.

          Oh…you mean like every Communist, ever?

          >Please, help unpolarize.

          I will not. Cities are literally burning. We are now past the point where trying to “unpolarize” does anything but give aid and comfort to the enemies of civilization.

          1. > Oh…you mean like every Communist, ever?

            There is no communist invasion force openly posturing to invade and occupy the United States. Those “communists” are a bunch of misguided kids, and there aren’t even that many of them. Some of them are committing property crimes, and some are recklessly endangering people. Catching a people in the act of arson *might* justify violence, and being attacked by them very likely does. But this is crime, it simply does not meet any reasonable definition of war, let alone an all-out struggle. What happened is a tragedy, and celebrating those deaths is an act of barbarism. Woe the man who became what he abhors.

            1. >There is no communist invasion force openly posturing to invade and occupy the United States.

              No. Instead we have a violent Communist insurgency within our borders. They are determined, murderous totalitarians who will shoot you for wearing a MAGA hat. And it is time to end them.

            2. Your argument seems to rest on the enemy being open and at or above some arbitrary, yet unstated numerical threshold.

              Clearly you’re unaware of the level of destabilization a relative few can do to a country. When those few are setting up autonomous zones in major American cities with the express intent of throwing off the duly elected government, with the blessing of their local officials (and national political figures), you don’t even have to get into the billions in property damage and the hundreds of lives lost as a direct or indirect result of what has been openly stated to be an insurrectionist movement.

              A rag-tag band of misfits searching through the cushions for weed money doesn’t exactly have the means to execute major property damage and destabilization efforts throughout a country of this size.

              If these are all mostly communist/marxist revolutionaries, and I am wont to take them at their word, I get why you would carefully choose the words “openly” and “invade”.

              It is incumbent upon those who wreak violence upon the nation, and their political enablers who have been calling the other side a basket of deplorable racist, sexist, xenophobic Nazis who are bitterly clinging to their guns and religion to “unpolarize”.

              We’ve been trying it the liberal democratic way for decades. They are changing the rules. If you don’t like that, talk to them.

      1. This seems a bit too far, although I’m open to being mistaken. I could see charging anyone with murder when a homicide is in evidence and they appear to be involved, as a pro forma matter, expecting an investigation to run its course and absolve him (or, if something exceptional turns up, indicting him). If that charge is necessary to ignite that investigation, then this seems to me like necessary routine. If the investigation happens regardless, then the charge looks spurious.

        Thing is, I really don’t want to penalize DAs for doing their lawful jobs.

      1. >I mean 246, of course

        By the looks of the revision history these sections of Title 10 have been renumbered more than once, and my reference was formerly correct.

            1. I see buttons to up- and downvote. Perhaps you have some mod that’s concealing them.

              What -I- miss is the ability to be notified when a new post appears. That seems to have gone away on for me on multiple browsers.

    1. >However, I think the President has to specifically call upon the militia to act.

      That’s not the case.

      When the U.S. is in a state of war the President has the legal option to perform a militia callup, incorporating organized militia into the line military for the duration of the war only. However that is the only power the President has.

      The unorganized militia was explicitly intended to not be controlled by President or government, because one of its principal duties is to organize armed revolt against overreaching central power.

      1. > because one of [the unorganized militia’s] principal duties is to organize armed revolt against overreaching central power.

        Wait, you are saying that the Federal Code explicitly provisions an entity that could destroy it by force if necessary??

        <8-O

        1. >Wait, you are saying that the Federal Code explicitly provisions an entity that could destroy it by force if necessary??

          Yes, I am saying that. This was part of the design of the Constitution,and the Code reflects that.

        2. Yes, and the second amendment refers to this with the phrase “security of a free state”. That is, the security of a free state against insurrection, or a foreign invader, or a federal government usurping powers not granted to it by the constitution.

          You will also find that several of our states have constitutions that also explicitly acknowledge the right of the people to overthrow a tyrannical government by force of arms if needed.

      2. I disagree. U.S. Code Title 10 Sections 251 through 254 define the conditions under which the President can call up the militia to suppress insurrection and enforce the laws within the United States. They don’t distinguish between the organized and unorganized militia. Furthermore, without a Presidential call-up, any group (such as Antifa) could claim that laws are not being properly enforced and that they are legally entitled to organize and arm themselves to enforce the law “properly.”

        1. >Furthermore, without a Presidential call-up, any group (such as Antifa) could claim that laws are not being properly enforced and that they are legally entitled to organize and arm themselves to enforce the law “properly.”

          You are correct. That is the state of the law.

          1. Not surprisingly, this seems to me a rather anarchist interpretation of the law. Pretty much anybody is justified in taking arms against the citizenry and institutions under this reading. A group of armed Mexicans can come in and liberate ICE camps alleging themselves to be intending to become citizens and alleging that ICE are domestic enemies. Some nut can shoot up a Walgreens and say he’s part of the unorganized militia defending the community against Hispanic invaders, etc. It boils down to living at the mercy of whatever team has the largest group of armed dudes. Not sure how that is a desirable state.

            1. >Not surprisingly, this seems to me a rather anarchist interpretation of the law.

              It’s what the Founders intended, nevertheless.

              Your pathological scenarios are pretty well foreclosed by the requirement that the militia moves under just three circumstances:

              1. Under Presidential callup in time of war.

              2. In response to a local collapse in civil order (the Kenosha case).

              3. In revolt against tyrannical overreach by government (the Battle of Athens case).

              These constraints are part of the intended design. The Founders were not anarchists, but they did have a minarchistic distrust of centralized power and did not intend for the U.S. to have a standing army. They didn’t really have the concept of government-run civil police, either; the only model available to them was the Roman vigiles.

              1. Again, this is quite broad to my eyes. BLM can show up armed and try to burn down police stations, etc (as in Kenosha and Portland) by claiming they are an organized militia moving under #3 (assuming extrajudicial executions by police can be considered tyrannical government overreach)

                1. > burn down police stations, etc (as in Kenosha and Portland)

                  Functionaries of government could be legitimate objects of revolt, per #3, assuming all other avenues of redress are exhausted. See the Battle of Athens case, which culminated in election shenanigans by the tyrants. Also, “When in the course of human events,” and so forth.

                  In a BLM-type case, when there is a lack of avenue exhaustion, coupled with the etc (when etc looks like the burned-out private businesses and homes in Kenosha), any moral legitimacy such a movement has is completely lost.

                  If BLM looked like the Battle of Athens case, yes, they would be in the right to forcefully remove those in power preventing the will of the citizens from being enacted. Instead, it’s just a bunch of chanters by day, and AntiFa-posing-as-BLM violent commie agitators fomenting riots by night, demanding that all legal process not merely be elided, but actually destroyed.

                  1. The problem here is that the legal process is broken if you’re a Black family trying to get justice for police overreach. Combine “qualified immunity” with the general unwillingness* of DAs to charge the police,** the power of police unions to put murderous officers back on the street, the willingness of officers to cover for each other and the willingness of right-wing media to amply “he had a marijuana conviction” into “that n****r deserved to die!” I’d say the Black people probably have an awesome case for forming a militia on the basis that the government is doing a lousy job of vetting police officers, training police officers, disciplining police officers, removing police officers who have broken the rules, prosecuting police officers who deserve it, and treating Black people far worse than they treat police who kill unarmed Black folk…

                    If you believe that 50-100 million in property damage is adequate cause to form a militia, then you’d have zero cause to argue against Black people who do so, particularly in the absence of government action to reform the police. Of course, this would happen on a city-by-city or state-by-state basis… note that what I said about organizing a militia and being either a hero or a schmuck applies here as well – you’d have to make your case most carefully!

                    Or for that matter, what happens when a Black person gets pulled over by one of the officers who’s already shown up on video killing an unarmed Black person? It seems to me like a very legitimate case of self-defense – the officer being shot has already shown up on video shooting unarmed people and (possibly) demonstrated racist reasons for doing so!

                    * This seems to be changing, but only in the post 2-3 months.

                    ** They haven’t even charged the men who killed Breona Taylor!

                    1. Thank you for saying that. I’ve been warning that cops are dishonest
                      lazy greedy murderous thugs since long before most BLM members were
                      born. I certainly don’t support anyone burning down businesses and
                      killing innocent people, but if they only target police and their
                      property, if I’m on their jury I’m voting not guilty.
                      —–
                      Speaking of juries, has anyone interviewed jurors who acquitted killer
                      cops? I’m curious if they were intimidated into their verdict. “Nice
                      wife and kids you have at your home at 123 Main Street. It would be a
                      shame if they were killed in a wrong-address SWAT team raid.”

                    2. The problem here is that the legal process is broken if you’re a Black family

                      It’s even more broken if you’re a Black family trying to get justice for the much much more common case of a non-police, usual fellow Black, shooting.

                      The effect of the BLM movement tends to make Black-on-Black shootings even more common and make it even harder to get justice. And for some reason the lives of these victims don’t seem to matter to the self-proclaimed “Black Lives Matter” crowd.

                    3. > The problem here is that the legal process is broken if you’re a Black family trying to get justice for police overreach.

                      Gosh, by an astonishing coincidence, the legal process is _also_ broken if you’re a white family (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Justine_Damond) trying to get justice for police overreach, or a family of _any_ race trying to get justice for police overreach.

                      But by all means keep flogging the issue as purely and entirely racial. Maybe with enough support like that the rioters will succeed, and in a few decades whites will again be the slaves of blacks like it was a few centuries ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_slavery). Let’s keep that beautiful cycle of history going without trying to, y’know, improve anything.

                    4. Darrin, is there some reason why $20,000,000 and 12.5 years in jail for the police-officer who shot her, all happening in less than two years, don’t seem like a just outcome?

                    5. Brionna Taylor was killed in a shootout between her boyfriend and the cops. Even if the boyfriend genuinely thought he was fighting burglars, and so if he had killed any of the cops he would be innocent, that doesn’t change the fact that the cops *weren’t* burglars, and had the right to shoot back. So they can’t be charged for her death.

                    6. Eric, I had a reply to troutwaxer that seems to have been spammed? I couldn’t see it on friday, and when I tried to submit it again it said I already had and couldn’t submit the same comment more than once.

                      Key points were that it took over a year for anything to happen to Justine Diamond’s killer cop, but the BLM movement couldn’t wait even a week to start rioting. That long delay is broken, no matter the eventual result. There was a bit more to it.

                    7. >Eric, I had a reply to troutwaxer that seems to have been spammed?

                      I just looked in the spam folder. Didn’t see it. Sorry, I don’t know what happened.

                    8. @Troutwaxer
                      on 2020-09-05 at 20:28:54

                      It’s an entirely appropriate outcome. That’s what justice looks like. If it wasn’t for his union-negotiated health benefits and peer pressure, Noor’s partner wouldn’t have defended him. The evidence showed pretty clearly that Noor not only should never have been a police officer, but that it was affirmative action and diversity policies of the MPD that put him on the force despite many warning signs. This was mostly on the MPD and their poitical masters, but they can’t be held accountable except financially. Unfortunately, they don’t pay, their taxpayers do for electing such PC idiots.

                      Are you actually arguing that because other cops got off lightly or scot-free that Noor should also have been let off? Yes, the thin blue line often protects bad cops and it attempted to do so here, but failed. Do you have a problem with that? my problem is that too often the .gov’s defense of bad cops succeeds.

                    9. @Troutwaxer
                      on 2020-09-05 at 20:28:54

                      Had I been that dumb MFer’s partner, I’d have thrown under the bus for firing through the driver’s side window, directly in front of his partner’s face. At the very least, Noor permanently damaged his partner’s hearing. It’s quite likely he’s suffering tinnitus for life. Noor was a f***wit, as were the people who let him become a police officer in the first place.

                      Chauvin probably shouldn’t have been allowed to continue to serve as a police officer, but George Floyd killed himself with a massive overdose of fentanyl. His lungs weighed 2-3 times as much as they should’ve due to pulmonary edema. That’s why he was complaining of not being able to breathe before the cops ever laid a hand on him, and Chauvin was following department policy by restraining in that manner until the ambulance arrived. It’s unlikely George Floyd would’ve survived if he’d stumbled right into an ER at the moment before cops arrived on the scene. He was a dead man walking.

                    10. @ Larry – I hope this appears directly under your post

                      >>> Are you actually arguing that because other cops got off lightly or scot-free that Noor should also have been let off?

                      Of course not. Noor had clearly done exactly the wrong thing and deserved what he got.

                      As to whether he was an affirmative-action hire I’ve seen no evidence on that one way or another.

                2. >, etc

                  Militias (and regular Armies) never have carte blanche to, for example, purposely burn down homes or to loot businesses.

                  1. Nobody said that. The issue in question is, assuming that the killing of unarmed Black people represents inappropriate government overreach, can Black people form a militia for the purpose of addressing that issue by attacking police or police stations. Note that I’m not taking a position on that subject, just noting that your reply did not address the claims of the post you’re replying to.

                    1. Just police stations? Probably under some circumstances, though occasional “inappropriate…overreach” is *way* too low of a threshold…particularly when there are regularly enforced laws against it.

                      But it’s the “etc” part that was the big problem.

                    2. If BLM or even Antifa were self-aware enough to publicly present that as their stated justification and intended goal, I for one would have no problem with that _specific_ part of their theory.

                      In practice, all I have heard (http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8708#comment-2426332) are “FUCK CAPITALISM! BURN IT ALL DOWN!” and “we live in a society where goods and material items have more value than black lives. It’s a profound and legitimate form of protest.”

                      I don’t consider myself under any obligation to connect the dots for them from communist screeds like that to a more principled position.

                    3. If the best evidence against BLM you can find is some idiot cheesecake looter and the person who said they’re “profound” I’d say they’re doing pretty well.

                      The best evidence I can find against the Republican Party is 196,000 thousand people who died of COVID-19. Or should I point to what’s happening to the post office, or Trump’s relationship with Putin? I promise you I can play that game all day long! Shall we have a match?

                    4. > evidence I can find against the Republican Party

                      Except we weren’t discussing “evidence against either political party”, we were discussing justification for forming armed militias to resist either citizens destroying private property, or tyrannical government overreach. (In neither case is any militia so formed empowered to go destroy _private_ property, in case you thought this was merely an issue of a few scattered “idiot cheesecake looters”.) Are you capable of focusing on an actual argument in progress, or does everything need to devolve into a “but Republicans have done bad things so you lose, ha ha!” shit-flinging fest? (And yet again, since I’m not a Republican, why should their behavior reflect badly on my own political position any more than it does on your own?)

                      Show me a group of armed revolters storming the White House with the stated goal of putting an end to either Covid-19 complacency or insidious Russian influence, and _then_ see if I make any objections of the form “well they’re not a militia because blah blah backpedal”. THEN you get to call me a hypocrite, not before.
                      As long as it is still black-owned businesses getting burned down, and black children getting shot, there’s a pretty low limit on how seriously I’m gonna take accusations of hypocrisy directed at me.

                      > I promise you I can play that game all day long! Shall we have a match?

                      The fact that Leftists think of destruction and killing on a nation-wide scale as a “game” neatly explains their feigned horror when the proles finally muster the courage to put up what resistance they can.

                      But unlike Leftists, I have never felt a compunction to tell other people what they should or shouldn’t do with their lives, so by all means, knock yourself out.

              2. In time of actual or threatened war a state governor is also allowed to call up the militia and fight (Article I, Section 10).

  1. Thank you for saying!
    I’ve mentioned this in comments in a couple of places, but it hasn’t attracted much attention.

    I’ve also been waving §246 around for awhile now. Seventeen year olds are high school juniors. Raise your hand, everyone who thinks our public schools, and the bureaucracy that runs them, including the unconstitutional federal Dept. of Education, are adequately preparing students to accept the responsibilities and exercise the rights of militia membership.

    My hand, of course, remains down–because far to the contrary, school systems and teachers unions cannot even commit to allowing teachers to arm themselves in defense of their students–or even to defend themselves against young thugs who would not even be in attendance if not required to do so.

    Beyond that, teachers need to be exemplars of citizenship–including exercise of their right to arms. (Oh, you have a religious objction to being armed? Fine, but you cannot then be a public school teacher. Easy peasy, eh?)

  2. The way the country is currently divided, and using the unorganized militia law as a basis, and incorporating the recent media campaign promoting civil disobedience and violence in the streets after the November 3rd election; this could well be a catalyst that triggers the genesis of Civil War 2.0. Plan accordingly.

    1. Previously I had been assuming that Chicago’s restrictions on getting permission to own a handgun were onerous enough not to make it worth the effort of attempting. After my son and some friends of his were attacked a couple of weeks ago, I said fuck it, I will jump through whatever hoops they put in front of me.

      Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Chicago’s laws had relatively recently been pre-empted by substantially less restrictive state laws. I immediately applied for an Illinois FOID. Of course wiki says the waiting period is about ninety days due to “backlog”, which is pretty piss-poor for exercising a constitutional right. Gotta start somewhere though.

  3. I’d love to see this argument make it to SCOTUS.

    I think what he did wasn’t illegal, wasn’t immoral, but was possibly unwise because of the laws in his state. I think he’s likely to get the short end of the stick, both in the courts and in public opinion because of the media. Also, the wisdom of the militia for organizing on Facebook is not great.

    My personal thoughts — militia groups should hold back until it gets a bit worse. Like, police start quitting in large numbers. Let things get really bad in the worst run liberal cities, give the citizens in those areas an opportunity to cry uncle and re-establish law and order. Alternatively, have the idiots disband the police so milita + private carry becomes the de facto only solution for defense.

    BTW: the above are opinions weakly held. I can be convinced otherwise.

    1. My personal thoughts — militia groups should hold back until it gets a bit worse. Like, police start quitting in large numbers. Let things get really bad in the worst run liberal cities, give the citizens in those areas an opportunity to cry uncle and re-establish law and order. Alternatively, have the idiots disband the police so milita + private carry becomes the de facto only solution for defense.

      While I can certainly understand the appeal of this kind of accelerationism, I think you’re underestimating how bad things can get. For example, I don’t think the leftists in charge actually plan to disband the police, but rather replace them with British-style “woke” police who will enforce laws against thoughtcrime but not against rioting and arson.

      1. >British-style “woke” police who will enforce laws against thoughtcrime but not against rioting and arson.

        Oh, they’ll enforce laws against rioting and arson, all right. On all persons who are not protected client groups of the state.

        1. As long as we’re quibbling…
          Eugine knows this, so it should be phrased as, “You forgot to mention,” or something similar.

    2. “Unwise”? He shot two thugs who were trying to kill him. He tried to avoid them, they chased him down. It’s ludicrous to suggest that letting them kill him was a “wiser” course of action.

      1. You’re declaring a false binary. He had at least one more choice, which was to stay home, which means, BTW, that he would have been obeying the wishes of the Kenosha chief of police.

        Did anyone else notice that everyone Kyle shot was White?

        1. > He had at least one more choice, which was to stay home,

          And let petty thugs and Commie revolutionaries run roughshod over a friend’s hard-earned property? I don’t think so. But please, let’s all hide from these people and let them “burn themselves out,” destroy all our property, and never let anyone actually do anything. Millions of dollars in property will be lost, but hey, that can all be replaced, especially with insurance, right? And at least we still have our lives, right? A life not worth living, but we still have it, right?

          Here’s what you don’t seem to get about property. It’s not just “things that belong to people.” It represents investments of time, time which the people investing it will never get back. When one destroy’s property, that’s a part of people’s lives that he is destroying. By doing this, he is essentially committing a partial murder. A part of a person’s life–gone. Think about that.

          1. I’m betting that the “Rittenhouse came on ta friend’s request” thing will evaporate once the facts come out. But assuming it really happened that way, the proper reply to such a request goes something like this: “You want me to put real bullets in my gun, stand guard over your business, and shoot people who I think might be out to damage it? You want me to possibly execute people who haven’t been arrested or convicted of any crime, in a state where there is no exception in the statutes on self-defense for defense of property? So what you’re really saying is that you’d like me to take a fall for you, because you’re unwilling to take this risk yourself? I thought we were friends, but maybe you should ask someone else to be your patsy!”

            And if the friend said, “No, I need someone to stand outside with a can of pepper-spray and look tough, but not get in any fights,” then I might go for it, in which case I wouldn’t bring a gun.

            But I very much doubt that Kyle’s “friend” wanted him to kill anyone, except perhaps in the heat of an angry moment – and if Kyle agreed to use deadly force during that angry moment, maybe the DA could add a conspiracy charge.

            The proper response to such a request is probably, “The possibility of making things worse if I come out there is greater than the possibility of making things better. How about if I give you some money for a security guard from a legitimate company, that way if someone gets hurt you can sue the security company and neither of us gets in any trouble.” – One of the obligations to a friend is to help them be sensible.

            1. I’m betting that the “Rittenhouse came on ta friend’s request” thing will evaporate once the facts come out.

              They have. That’s where this is coming from.

              And if the friend said, “No, I need someone to stand outside with a can of pepper-spray and look tough, but not get in any fights,”

              Thanks for demonstrating that it’s impossible to underestimate your intelligence. The relevant rule here is “don’t make threats you aren’t prepared to carry out”. If you’re going to “stand around looking tough”, you need to be prepared to get in a fight in case the rioters aren’t suitably intimidated.

              in which case I wouldn’t bring a gun.

              In which case you probably would have been dead. On the plus side it would have spared us from having to listen to your “wisdom” about how to deal with rioters.

              1. If Trout was actually that dumb the posts would be littered with spelling and grammar errors. “You loosers need to take law course aswell, alot of this is cope. Learn teh propabilities.”

                This round of the [liar or idiot] game comes down firmly on liar. Reflexive lies because the folk Trout knows in meatspace would shun them for not telling these lies. Though I can’t explain why Trout is running around looking for opportunities to be intimidating into lying to strangers. That’s real weird, even compared to e.g. me.

            2. > But assuming it really happened that way,
              > the proper reply to such a request goes
              > something like this:

              The proper response during the opening stages of a civil war is to stand with your friend and protect his life and property.

              If this means killing someone (or several someones) who are trying to destroy civil order, then THEY made that choice. THEY chose to go into the streets and violate the lives and property of people who had NOTHING to do with their main grievance.

              And let’s also be clear that the *source* of their grievance was the Ministry Of Truth ONCE AGAIN failing to accurately report the events of a crime where someone was shot for *ATTEMPTING TO REACH A WEAPON*.

            3. > So what you’re really saying is that you’d like me to take a fall for you, because you’re unwilling to take this risk yourself?

              More like “you need extra _help_ defending your property, because single-handedly trying to defend it against gangs of marauding rioters is not really feasible?”

              Again, you have the _right_ to decline your friend’s request, and not exercise your _right_ to help them. You don’t have any “right” to forbid _others_ from exercising their rights in such a matter.

              1. Thinking about Troutwaxer’s post reminds me of Anonymous Conservative’s “amygdala theory”. Without getting into the neurology.

                Basically, Troutwaxer is extremely uncomfortable with conflict and thus has to denigrate anyone who engages in heroism to avoid feelings of inadequacy. My (soon to be ex) boss has a similar problem. Whenever anyone mentions an instance of a soldier doing something heroic in his presence, he has to reply with a snide remark about “testosterone poisoning”.

          1. I’ve been trying for a day and a half to figure out just what the heck Troutwaxer intended with that “snipe”, and I am still coming up blank.

            Was there _really_ a hope that a bunch of us would do a double take and say “Oh shit, I thought he was just shooting up some black dudes! You tellin me _whiteys_ got shot? This changes everything!” But that just seems too monumentally stupid for me to be able to believe.

            1. Based on the kinds of shit he’s said here in the past, Trout seems to genuinely believe we’re all a bunch of racist troglodytes.

              Which, you know, I don’t really get. If he actually thinks that, why would he even be here? Is he secretly a deeply bigoted racist ass, but he knows he’d be shunned by the losers he hangs out with, so he comes and chats here on the assumption we’re openly racist, hoping to find the first kind of acceptance he’s ever known in his sad, repressed and deranged life?

              What frustrating cognitive dissonance that must be for him, right? Like the loser kid who follows some group of teens around he assumes have drugs, and keeps talking about how much he, like, totally hates drugs guys, but he’s giving a big wink-wink-nudge-nudge to them indicating his coolness. But the teens are just regular boring sober young people hanging out, and they keep giving the annoying kid weird looks and tell him to piss off, but the little brain-damaged idiot never catches on; he just threatens to call the cops on them for having drugs when they won’t give him any.

              That or he’s just, yes, too monumentally stupid to be believed. Whichever tests strongest, I suppose.

              1. > Is he secretly a deeply bigoted racist ass,

                He’s at best a left-leaning liberal and at worst a progressive.

                Which means he *thinks* about people in terms of classes, be they economic, racial, educational etc.

        2. Fuck you, you leftard piece of shit. He chose not to sit by idly while your commie friends burned down his friends’ homes and businesses.

          1. What a brilliant reply! I’m astounded by your erudition. (You can look the word up on dictionary.com.)

        3. > he would have been obeying the wishes of the Kenosha chief of police

          The Chicago chief of police wouldn’t give a fuck if whitey me or my whitey family were killed. By rolling over and allowing the small subset of the current “Movement” to execute their stated goal of “we gotta kill _all_ the whiteys this time”, we would be “obeying the wishes” of that Movement subset and those (bluish) portions of our government that give them tacit support.

          The subtext of this entire thread, in a larger sense one of the themes of this blog (esr may forgive or correct me for speaking out of turn here), is the circumstances under which we should or should not be “obeying the wishes” of our “elected” overlords.

          And one last question before you stamp my straightjacket with “alt-right anarchist moonbat” and have me hauled off to the re-education camps: do you consider yourself bound and behold to obey each and every of Trump’s wishes? I sure don’t, and isn’t that a large fraction of what the Left as a whole (and its Three Musketeers here) claim to be about?

        4. Ah, the Kitty Genovese theory. Stay out of it and let the victims suffer because the police either can’t or refuse to protect them.

        5. His lack of wisdom was being there, and even moreso, being there without support. He crossed state lines borrowed a rifle, and did what can be perceived by the courts and the media as looking for trouble. Once he was attacked, yeah, he stopped his attackers, which is good.

          1. “Wisdom” these days is mostly showing itself to be folly.

            “Wisdom” says to let the mugger have your wallet, it’s only money. Let him rape you, once he is satisfied he’ll leave you alone and you wouldn’t want to anger him.

            A pox upon all of that noise.

            1. “Wisdom” says to let the mugger have your wallet, it’s only money. Let him rape you, once he is satisfied he’ll leave you alone and you wouldn’t want to anger him.

              It’s well known among people who lived through domestic break-ins that home defense with a firearm is toxically masculine folly that can leave you dead. If someone breaks into your house, you should let them steal your stuff because it’s better than them taking your life, which they won’t hesitate to do if you draw your piece on them. Besides which, if you keep your gun unloaded, you have almost zero chance of loading it before the thief notices and shoots or otherwise attacks you; and if you keep your gun loaded you are a danger to yourself and others in your home.

              It’s kinda like how you should never lock your car doors — because a thief stealing stuff from inside your car is better than the thief stealing your stuff and breaking your window.

              1. if you keep your gun loaded you are a danger to yourself and others in your home.

                Don’t do dumb, won’t have boom. It isn’t a hard concept.

                if you keep your gun unloaded, you have almost zero chance of loading it

                At least you got something right. This is completely correct; that is why any home defense or carry gun stays always loaded.

              2. Forgot:

                home defense with a firearm is toxically masculine folly that can leave you dead

                TIL: a pregnant woman defending her husband and children both born and unborn is “toxic masculinity”.

                Such a wonderful concept. Is there anything it can’t explain?

              3. “It’s kinda like how you should never lock your car doors — because a thief stealing stuff from inside your car is better than the thief stealing your stuff and breaking your window.”

                Right, and I shouldn’t lock up my house so the burglars don’t break down my door when they rob me.

                Bloody hell, that whole post is a canonical example of fractal wrongness. It is equally wrong from every direction and at every conceivable level of detail.

                1. I would give real money to find out from a reliable source if Jeff keeps his own doors unlocked or not.

                  Again, the same song from the Left; sauce for the proles is certainly not fit for the Politburo.

              4. > It’s well known

                Can I ask by whom exactly?

                After what I consider a reasonable amount of googling, the most recent study on the subject was from 1995:

                https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6853&context=jclc

                In which they reached pretty much the exact opposite conclusions, namely:

                ” Previous
                research has consistently indicated that victims who resist with a gun
                or other weapon are less likely than other victims to lose their property in robberies and in burglaries. Consistently, research also has indicated that victims who resist by using guns or other weapons are
                less likely to be injured compared to victims who do not resist or to
                those who resist without weapons.”

                and even more aptly:

                “victims who resisted with some kind of weapon were less
                likely to have the rape attempt completed against them.” (I’m certainly hoping you weren’t intending to characterize a woman defending herself from rape as exhibiting “toxically masculine folly”.

                You can take the sneering mockery of me for posting a 25-year old study as stipulated. If you have anything more recent, especially one that actually supports your contention, I would be very grateful.

              5. You and I are in partial agreement about the first point. If someone breaks into my home at night while I’m asleep, I barricade my family into my bedroom, camp out behind my mattress with my rifle, and hope they don’t come upstairs, while the wife calls the police. They try to break down to the door to my room, I have to assume they want to do me harm, and I have to fight back. But if they’re only going to steal my stuff and leave, yeah that sucks, but I’m not risking clearing my house over stuff that can be replaced.

                Not locking car doors — that’s crazy. I’ve never had a car “broken in to”, but my wife, who forgets to lock her car doors regularly, has had the contents of her glove compartment stolen multiple times. Maybe crazies who are dumb enough to live in places like San Francisco where people take such thefts as a given will make a different calculus, but maybe don’t live in a place where people breaking car windows is normal?

              6. How in the f*** do you know that in a home break-in, all they want is your “stuff”? Maybe they want some happy fun time with you and/or your wife before killing you? How do you know?

                Unless you’re a complete idiot, keeping a loaded gun readily accessible (but safe from children) is not a danger. Well, maybe it’s a danger for Jeff Read.

                1. In the case of a home break-in, if I have an ability to retreat or barricade my family in my room, I’m going to take that option, period. If they follow me, or try to kick down the door to my room, I must assume they wish me or my family harm, and I’ll act accordingly. But particularly in the “bump in the night” scenario, clearing your house is the tactically inferior option. You could turn a corner and get yourself killed.

                  Your assessment of who should have access to a loaded gun is a bit of an over-generalization. Keeping a loaded gun accessible isn’t always a great idea. Spouse with mental issues, unruly teenagers, living in a crowded apartment building, etc. can through a wrench in the works.

                  Being armed is an individual choice that requires a cost-benefit analysis. I tend to agree; I carry concealed in my home, and would do so outside of the home if my state allowed it. But I’ve also received a fair bit of training, invested quite a bit in equipment, and am confident of my ability to quickly determine what’s beyond my target in my suburban home. Much like I’d not want others to restrict me of such rights, I don’t want to force such responsibilities on others. I absolutely think it’s a man’s duty to defend his family at the potential cost of his own life, but the specific tools and tactics employed are up to the individual.

                  1. >But particularly in the “bump in the night” scenario, clearing your house is the tactically inferior option. You could turn a corner and get yourself killed.

                    True. Best to fort up in one room, armed, and call the police. You can’t count on them to come, but you should do it anyway in case you have to shoot the intruder – it will look good at trial if some asshole DA decides to prosecute.

                    1. T’is why self-defense insurance is highly desirable if not essential. DAs prefer easier prey than well-funded defendants whose war chest is out of reach.

                  2. “Being armed is an individual choice that requires a cost-benefit analysis.”

                    I had the opportunity to own several guns about three years ago, including a 1911 which looked like it was built an U.S. Army armory in 1912 and a Walther P-38 from 1963 which fit my hand perfectly and was a very good-looking gun, but at the time I had someone in my household who I could not trust around guns… I still regret not keeping the P-38, but I had to do that cost-benefit analysis, so I arranged for them to got elsewhere…

                    -sighs-

                    1. P38’s are pretty common, particularly if you’re looking at post-war samples. They were manufactured until 2000, if I recall correctly. You’ll likely have additional chances to get one. I’m a big fan of them, but they aren’t rare.

                      What I really wish I could get was a Luger. They’re just really neat; love that toggle-link action. They happen to be prohibitively expensive for me. Plus, I don’t like owning guns that are so valuable I wouldn’t want to shoot them.

                    2. >What I really wish I could get was a Luger.

                      Why I don’t want a Luger: they don’t tolerate field conditions well. Tolerances are too tight – if you get any grit at all in them they have a bad tendency to stop working. Or so I’m told. I don’t have direct experience.

                    3. You’re in luck.

                      https://lugerman.com/

                      These are reputed to be made like a Swiss watch and dead reliable. Unless you get any dirt in the works that is, but that’s true of any Luger.

                    4. You’re in luck.

                      https://lugerman.com/

                      Yeah, I’ve seen lots of videos. Those are super nice, but they are well outside my pricerange for a range toy. I have about $1000 into my AR-15, not including optics, and that’s the most expensive gun I own. The only other gun I’m looking to spend about that on is a Winchester ’92 in .357 magnum — I really want a classic lever gun. Plus, if the laws in NJ keep going the way they are, they’re going to ban semi-autos, and a lever gun is the next best thing for home defense.

                      No judgement on people that can afford to drop that on something cool — more power to you. But that just doesn’t make sense to me. I’d rather spend that money, frankly, on more training.

                  3. I agree, Aaron. Retreat and call 911. Fight only if necessary. I’d only been thinking of keeping a pistol safe from kids, I hadn’t considered others. Of course, “readily accessible” for me is on my person from the time I put on my pants in the morning until I take them off at night. And then it’s in the bedside drawer until morning. Everything else is locked up.

              7. > and if you keep your gun loaded you are
                > a danger to yourself and others in your home.

                That’s bullshit.

                Pure unmitigated bullshit.

                That shit is based on the Kellerman study, which even Kellerman admitted was crap science, but he was anti-gun and it made for good propaganda.

            2. You’re conflating the ordinary right to self-defense with some made-up right to do something really stupid without facing consequences. If, despite having done every reasonable thing you could to avoid action, you are in fact attacked there’s no reason to avoid defending yourself – assuming you have good reason to believe you can take your assailant(s.) YMMV, I guess – my tactical possibilities are different than Eric’s for example.

              But that’s a very different question than whether you should take stupid risks and show up in a place where law enforcement has made it very clear that you’re not wanted, with a loaded weapon in your hand, while claiming that you’re there to help solve a problem which your actions actually make much worse, when a moment’s consideration would have told you to stay away.

              1. You’re conflating the ordinary right to self-defense with some made-up right to do something really stupid without facing consequences.

                This is nonsense, even by your standards. Are you arguing that the business owner doesn’t have the right to defend his business? That he doesn’t have the right to call in his friends given that rioters have already spent two days burning the town? That they have the right to defend their business in the abstract, but have a duty to retreat and let the rioters burn it down if it comes to that?

                See, that’s how ridiculous your position sounds when spelled out clearly.

                1. I think this one depends on something something [all life is sacred] something. It would be okay to burn down every house in America as long as it’s to save one life. Right? Right.

                  Of course it’s a lie…even setting aside the fact that your life is a kind a property that you own, the “peaceful protests” kill about 7 unarmed blacks a month, and they don’t even cover the entire country. Compare 0.8-1.25 unarmed blacks killed by an entire country of police a month. I think I’ll call out Troutwaxer for being a mass-murdering psychopath now, further down though.

              2. >But that’s a very different question than whether you should take stupid risks and show up in a place where law enforcement has made it very clear that you’re not wanted, with a loaded weapon in your hand, while claiming that you’re there to help solve a problem which your actions actually make much worse, when a moment’s consideration would have told you to stay away.

                I am curious, have you watched the video footage from that night? Not just of Rittenhouse’s engagements, but before? Because having done so myself, I assure you that your paragraph above was most definitely not the case. There’s video of the riot police tossing the armed group some water bottles, and saying, “We appreciate you being out here.” There’s another of one of the men in the armed group relaying that the cops had told him, “We will push them your way, because you guys can handle them.” There’s video of Rittenhouse saying he was out there to render medical aid. There’s video of him offering medical aid to protestors and rioters that go by.

                So it was most definitely not the case that law enforcement made it clear that the armed men or Rittenhouse were not welcome for a risk of making the situation worse. Hell, I’ll argue that as much as it sucks that people were injured and died that night, Rittenhouse’s engagements had a positive effect on the riots, because the protests calmed right the hell down on the following days, with no further arson or assaults. When there is a clear risk of getting killed if you try to attack someone or set things on fire, it seems that attempts to attack people or burn things are far less frequent. Funny how that works.

                1. Both the county sheriff and the Kenosha police chief told the militia people not to come. Obviously the cops on the ground felt differently, which might just have something to do with how the whole business in Kenosha went down…

                  1. > Both the county sheriff and the Kenosha police chief told the militia people not to come.

                    [Citation Needed]

                    1. “We are mobilizing tonight and have about 3,000 RSVP’s. Our effort has made the national media. I ask that you do NOT have your officers tell us to go home under threat of arrest as you have in the past. We are willing to talk to KPD and open a discussion. It is evident, that no matter how many Officers, deputies and other law enforcement officers that are here, you will still be outnumbered.”

                      https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/28/after-kenosha-guns-militia-inject-chilling-dimension-into-protests/5642626002/

                    2. >There’s plenty on the wikipedia page…

                      LOL@citing Wikipedia nowadays, particularly for anything politically controversial.

                  2. Both the county sheriff and the Kenosha police chief told the militia people not to come. Obviously the cops on the ground felt differently

                    One group were on the ground concerned about their town being burned down. The other consists of political appointees.

            3. Let the mugger have my wallet rather than engage in violence? Yeah, that’s a no-brainer. If I shoot the mugger, I’m probably out $20K or more in legal defense in the best case, and I’d rather not kill if it can be avoided.

              Rape? No, he get’s two to the chest and one to the head. Those are not equivalent. If someone wants to do harm to me or my family, I will apply lethal force to stop it.

              1. That’s why anyone with more than a room temperature IQ buys insurance. Just like when driving a car, and you buy more than the minimum liability coverage. If someone has the drop on me with a gun, yeah, I give the wallet up. If they try to force me or my wife to get in a vehicle, no. I’ll draw and risk getting shot on the spot rather than being taken somewhere else and being disposed in possibly much worse ways. So would my wife.

                1. > If someone has the drop on
                  > me with a gun, yeah, I give the
                  > wallet up.

                  There’s this concept called “masking the draw” where you use misdirection to cover what you’re doing.

                  Since a lot of guys carry their wallets in their back pockets, this can be done with the off hand (eyes are drawn to more rapid/erratic motion).

              2. > Let the mugger have my wallet rather
                > than engage in violence?

                Now do you know that when he gets your wallet he’s not going to get mad because there’s only 20 bucks in there and decide to cut/shoot you anyway?

                > I’m probably out $20K or more in legal
                > defense in the best case

                “Best case” is that you spend 4 hours explaining your actions three or four times to the police, then go home and have a beer.

                While there are vast murky areas, there are also some very clear lines to that murkiness. Make sure that not only are you on the better side of that line, but that you can *clearly articulate* in plain (meaning not “terms of art”) language why you shot that person, and the physical facts of the case match more or less with what you said AND you’re not in some progressive shithole like Chicago you’re likely to lose a nights sleep, have some PTSD (unless you get your head right before hand) and get on with your life.

        1. To my understanding of WI law, and I admit I can be corrected on this, it is not, in fact, illegal for a 17 year old to carry a rifle.

          WI law section 948.60 “Possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18” in subsection (3), enumerates three exemptions to 948.60.

          (3)(c) This section only applies to a person under 18 years of age who possesses or is armed with a rifle or shotgun if the person is in violation of s 941.28 or is not in compliance with ss 29.304 and 29.593.

          Kyle was carrying a rifle, therefore, IF Kyle was not also in violation of ss 941.28, 29.304, or 29.593, THEN s 948.60 does not apply, and Kyle was legally carrying the rifle.

          Let’s look at those sections:

          941.28: Possession of a short-barreled shotgun or short-barreled rifle.

          The rifle was not short-barreled, therefore Kyle was not in violation of 941.28.

          29.304: Restrictions on hunting and use of firearms by persons under 16 years of age.

          Kyle is 17 years old, therefore he was not in violation of 29.304.

          29.593: Requirement for certificate of accomplishment to obtain hunting approval.

          This section relates to the issuing of hunting permits, and does not apply. Kyle was not in violation.

          Therefore, Kyle was legally carrying. I am open to being corrected on this, but have not yet heard a convincing case.

      1. He violated a WI law related to the age requirement for carrying a rifle….which is a BS law, of course.

        These absurd charges are likely going to result in him facing trial. That’s where jury nullification should take over.

        Kyle should walk scot free if there is any true justice left in America.

        1. > He violated a WI law related to the age requirement for carrying a rifle….which is a BS law, of course.

          Do you disagree with my read of the relevant WI law, above? If so, what am I missing?

          1. The WI law can be read so that “possession” of a weapon does not include borrowing one from a friend, which is what Kyle did. That is part of the case his lawyers have made.

      1. Excellent — I’d love tiers between $20 and $100 when you get a chance. I was at $25/mo on Patreon.

        1. >Excellent — I’d love tiers between $20 and $100 when you get a chance. I was at $25/mo on Patreon.

          I’ve created a $50 tier. I read somewhere that if they’re spaced too close together potential patrons tend to get a sort of analysis paralysis.

  4. But to do this duty, one requires appropriate equipment. It would seem then that federal law virtually requires military aged males to possess military grade rifles.

  5. I don’t think the idea that he’s part of the militia is going to go anywhere. First, (and leaving aside that Rittenhouse is being tried in a state court on state charges,) discussion of the President calling out the militia is all over sections 251, 252, and 253 of the same law you cited. Also, note that all the examples where the law has been used in the past 70 years were all when a state’s law enforcement argued against a federal judge’s order and refused to obey – clearly an insurrection, as a large body of armed people refused a Federal order and stated they would not allow it to be carried out.

    Second, what’s happening in Kenosha doesn’t meet the definition of an insurrection – it’s certainly a riot, or a series of riots, no arguments there, but unless there’s an organized group of people trying to kill all the local police or shoot up the city council it doesn’t qualify as an insurrection.

    Third, even if the idea that Kyle is a member of the militia is correct, it’s not a “get out of jail free card.” You can’t say “I’m a member of the militia and I was self-dispatching when I killed that guy.” The whole idea of that statement shits all over any credibility the idea of a militia has left in 2020. At the very least something has to be happening which justifies it – the idea that the Federal government has done something so horrible that a rebellion needs to take place, thus justifying self-dispatch doesn’t apply here – and I doubt a riot qualifies. Hypothetically, if this were being tried in federal court the judge might look at the circumstances of what’s happening in Kenosha and make a judgement call about whether there was an insurrection, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

    Fourth, who cares about the political affiliations of the people he killed? In the U.S. people may choose whatever politics they prefer, and are not executed for this. It’s a longstanding tradition and one you should appreciate, as your politics are so whacked I sometimes think you had a close encounter with Cthulhu!

    Fifth, in the absence of a (judged as) legitimate insurrection, people are entitled to a trial before they are executed.

    Sixth, note this from the Washington Post: “He (Kyle Rittenhouse) had attempted to join the Marine Corps in January, but was disqualified from serving after discussing his options with recruiters, said service spokeswoman Yvonne Carlock. She declined to specify why he was disqualified, citing the service’s privacy guidelines.” Arguably, he was disqualified from militia duties after being rejected from the armed forces, clearly for some fairly obvious reason – note the specific phrase “…was disqualified from serving after discussing his options with recruiters…” Things like a medical or psychiatric exam apparently didn’t need to happen.

    1. > Also, note that all the examples where the law has been used in the past 70 years were all when a state’s law enforcement argued against a federal judge’s order and refused to obey – clearly an insurrection, as a large body of armed people refused a Federal order and stated they would not allow it to be carried out.

      By your logic, declaring one’s city a Sanctuary City is an act of insurrection, since the city is refusing to enforce federal law. Trump would therefore be justified in calling up the National Guard and taking those cities by force, no?

      > Second, what’s happening in Kenosha doesn’t meet the definition of an insurrection – it’s certainly a riot, or a series of riots, no arguments there, but unless there’s an organized group of people trying to kill all the local police or shoot up the city council it doesn’t qualify as an insurrection.

      In many Democrat-controlled cities and states, the local government is refusing to enforce the law on Antifa and BLM–at least, as long as they leave their Rightful Rulers alone–while enforcing it with a vengeance on any opposed to those two. The US Constitution, meanwhile, guarantees a republican form of government. How can we even call them republican governments if they’re refusing to enforce the law–or worse, enforcing it arbitrarily? Would that not place them in a state of insurrection?

      > Third, even if the idea that Kyle is a member of the militia is correct, it’s not a “get out of jail free card.” You can’t say “I’m a member of the militia and I was self-dispatching when I killed that guy.”

      No, but you can say, “That guy was threatening to kill me when I killed him, and I didn’t even provoke him.”

      > In the U.S. people may choose whatever politics they prefer, and are not executed for this.

      That was true right up to the point Antifa and BLM decided that anyone to the right of Mao is irredeemably evil and must die. Seriously, try wearing a MAGA hat anywhere in a Blue city. Don’t be surprised when thugs in black masks show up to beat the crap out of you–or shoot you dead, as happened to one poor soul in Portland, OR.

      > Fifth, in the absence of a (judged as) legitimate insurrection, people are entitled to a trial before they are executed.

      Agreed, but again, those cities and states are refusing to enforce the law on Antifa and BLM. The fault, then, lies not with Rittenhouse but with the state of Wisconsin and the city of Kenosha.

      > Arguably, he was disqualified from militia duties after being rejected from the armed forces,

      I guess it depends on your definition of the words, “able-bodied.” He seems pretty able-bodied to me.

      1. By your logic, declaring one’s city a Sanctuary City is an act of insurrection, since the city is refusing to enforce federal law. Trump would therefore be justified in calling up the National Guard and taking those cities by force, no?

        Kenosha isn’t a sanctuary city.

        In many Democrat-controlled cities and states, the local government is refusing to enforce the law on Antifa and BLM–at least, as long as they leave their Rightful Rulers alone–while enforcing it with a vengeance on any opposed to those two.

        What is the law on Antifa and BLM? I don’t think they’re subject to special laws. If you mean laws against rioting and/or looting, the vast majority of protestors aren’t violating them.

        No, but you can say, “That guy was threatening to kill me when I killed him, and I didn’t even provoke him.”

        It’s possible Rittenhouse will get off on some charges, on self-defense – I’ve got no arguments there – but that doesn’t relate to Eric’s idea that he is a legitimate member of the militia. (Apparently his lawyer is very, very right-wing. The kid could get convicted when he should walk because his lawyer is politicizing the case when he should be depoliticizing it.)

        That was true right up to the point Antifa and BLM decided that anyone to the right of Mao is irredeemably evil and must die. Seriously, try wearing a MAGA hat anywhere in a Blue city. Don’t be surprised when thugs in black masks show up to beat the crap out of you–or shoot you dead, as happened to one poor soul in Portland, OR.

        Commies tend to show up at any protest, frequently against the wishes of the protestors – they’re very well organized in that sense. Also, most of the protestors are not members of antifa – that’s mainly a west-coast thing – and most are not commies.

        The idea that simply wearing a MAGA hat is enough to get you beat up or shot at in a Liberal city during times where there isn’t a riot is nonsense. (Remember that most places are really some shade of purple.) The guy in Portland who got shot – they shot his killer too, BTW, who was apparently a local criminal – was part of a 600 car caravan which showed up looking to “counter-protest” the BLM protest. Apparently they were firing paintballs, so it’s fairly obvious what happened and how – this is why non-violence training and leaving your stupid Colt-45 penis extensions at home is important regardless of your politics. Do I really have to comment on the appropriateness of showing up with items that could be mistaken for real guns while counter-protesting against people who took to the street over the George Floyd murders, in an environment which everyone seems determined to make worse?

        Agreed, but again, those cities and states are refusing to enforce the law on Antifa and BLM. The fault, then, lies not with Rittenhouse but with the state of Wisconsin and the city of Kenosha.

        So IF the officials of Kenosha aren’t enforcing the law THEN high-school kids get to bring guns and kill people without trial? Contemplate the morality of this for a little while before you reply.

        This kind of behavior doesn’t make the situation better. I’ll give you some logic for those people who think they’re a member of the militia and imagine that “helping the police” is a good idea: Recognize that Kenosha has a local, homegrown protest and the police don’t want a bunch of amateurs coming in from out-of-state and trying to “help,” because now the police have to deal with two misbehaving groups who are inclined to fight each other! Then do the sane, logical thing and STAY THE FUCK AWAY, so nobody else gets killed!

        I guess it depends on your definition of the words, “able-bodied.” He seems pretty able-bodied to me.

        I suspect that any notes the recruiter made will come out at the trial. We’ll see what happens. But if a branch of the military rejected him for some cause relating to his attitude you probably don’t want him running through a riot with a gun.

        1. > If you mean laws against rioting and/or looting, the vast majority of protestors aren’t violating them.

          What is with you dishonest fucking Commies talking like this? “Some people were actual protesters! Therefore, the riots don’t matter, shut up about the riots, la la la la!”

          Trout. Trout, my boy. Tell me. Did you watch any of the Kenosha riots? They were extensively live-streamed. I was watching Night Two (the night of the inferno) and Night Three (Night of the Kenosha Kid) as they happened.

          Did you watch the park in front of the court house filled with black-clad agitators, many of whom were throwing rocks and fireworks (read: explosives) at the police guarding that building? And those who weren’t doing that, were actively protecting (read: aiding and abetting those that were? For hours after an unlawful assembly had been declared and they had been ordered to disperse?

          Did you watch the wide-spread destruction and vandalism? The businesses being set on fire? The old man who was cracked in the skull for attempting to defend his business on Night One?

          When people like you make this bullshit excuse that “the vast majority of protesters” weren’t rioting, it reveals either fucking evil levels of dishonesty or destructive levels of ignorance.

          Given your history here, and the kinds of outright lies you have said about people here, I’m inclined towards the former.

          Nothing else you say after this matters, because it reveals that you aren’t even engaging in an discussion with the same ground truths. And I believe, at this point, that you are doing so deliberately.

          Say “hi” to Winter for me, because you’ve just been placed next to him in my box labeled “dangerously dishonest, do not bother to engage again.”

          1. What is with you dishonest fucking Commies talking like this? “Some people were actual protesters! Therefore, the riots don’t matter, shut up about the riots, la la la la!”

            You mean like how you hypocritical fucking conservatives say “Some cops are good people! Therefore, Rodney King and Mike Brown and George Floyd and Jacob Blake don’t matter, shut up about police brutality, la la la”?

            Lived experience has taught me that ACAB is a useful first approximation. The rule of law, and the legitimacy of law enforcement, has totally broken down in the USA. The government has utterly broken its compact with the people. In an environment like that, you can expect riots and looting, as those whose only commitment to abide by the law comes from fear of enforcement suddenly find themselves able to act without restraint. But this is a bed that your political kind made, so now you get to lie in it.

            1. You mean like how you hypocritical fucking conservatives say “Some cops are good people! Therefore, Rodney King and Mike Brown and George Floyd and Jacob Blake don’t matter, shut up about police brutality, la la la”?

              Yeah sort of, except the proportion of bad cops is like <0.001% rather then 20-70% as with the "protestors". And none examples you sited are actually examples. So really nothing like that. Also, you're either a liar or an idiot (possibly both).

              1. (The dashed lines are intended as paragraph
                breaks, as I haven’t been able to get normal
                paragraph breaks to work here. Sorry.)
                —–
                “The proportion of bad cops is like
                <0.001%"? Then it's an astonishing
                coincidence that four cops were present
                while one of them was slowly murdering
                George Floyd, and the other three did
                nothing to try to save him. The odds of all
                four being bad is one in a hundred million
                trillion by your numbers. —–
                Where do you get your facts? From high
                school civics class, Dragnet reruns, and
                Officer Friendly's visit to your First Grade
                Class? Well, so did I. Then I learned
                better the hard way. —–
                I've obviously never been murdered by cops,
                but I was severely gaslit by them. They
                lied to me about the evidence against me,
                and since I believed that cops were good
                guys who would never lie, and since there
                were five of them who all agreed, and since
                I had no recollection of committing the
                alleged crime or any other crime, I was half
                convinced that I was criminally insane, and
                came very close to suicide for the first and
                only time in my life. After all, the
                chances that five cops would all be bad
                would, by your numbers, be one in ten
                trillion trillion. The odds of my being
                criminally insane were obviously much
                higher than that.
                —–
                Today I know that that's called the Reid
                technique. It's a very bad way to gain
                knowledge of a crime, but a very good way to
                get confessions. It works on about a third
                of all guilty people and on about two thirds
                of all innocent people.
                —–
                Never again will I trust anything a cop
                says, or answer any police questions. I
                hate crime, and wish I could help fight it
                by cooperating with police, but I hate being
                falsely convicted even more. The cops are
                just another criminal gang, different from
                MS-13 only in that cops speak slightly
                better English. —–
                The real proportion of bad cops is somewhere
                around 95% to 98%. The other 2% to 5% are
                rookies who will soon quit or be forced out.

                1. Your calculations are assuming IID sampling, which doesn’t really apply here. Bad cops train bad cops, and bad cops congregate together.

                  I don’t want to be mistaken for a cop apologist (I have cop friends but also have been on the wrong side of the law more than once, so my position is N U A N C E D), but raising a small number to a power in IPython or whatever does not a rigorous analysis make.

                2. The proportion of bad cops is like
                  <0.001%"? Then it's an astonishing
                  coincidence that four cops were present
                  while one of them was slowly murdering
                  George Floyd, and the other three did
                  nothing to try to save him. The odds of all
                  four being bad is one in a hundred million
                  trillion by your numbers.

                  Agreed, it would be. Except that’s not what happened. Four cops were present while George Floyd died of a drug overdose. He was acting aggressively, so one of them tried to restrain him, they then rushed him to the hospital.

                  1. He died of a overdose? It’s just a
                    remarkable coincidence that this happened
                    when his windpipe was being crushed against
                    the pavement and while he was complaining
                    that he couldn’t breathe? Opioid overdoses
                    kill by knocking you out and supressing your
                    breathing reflex. People dying of an
                    overdose never complain that they can’t
                    breathe. Also, he was 46, so it’s very
                    unlikely he was using drugs for the first
                    time. What would be a lethal dose for you or
                    I is harmless to a chronic user. And I don’t
                    trust reports from police-aligned crime labs
                    anyway. Did an independent lab find any
                    drugs?

                    1. > It’s just a
                      remarkable coincidence that this happened
                      when his windpipe was being crushed against
                      the pavement and while he was complaining
                      that he couldn’t breathe?

                      He was complaining about not being able to breathe while he was in the cruiser before the police put him on the ground. This is proven by the bodycam footage that leaked.

                    2. >He died of a overdose?

                      Yes, Keith, it looks like he did.

                      I’ve changed my mind about this case. I no longer believe Chauvin killed him. The video evidence that he was already ODing and having respiratory trouble while upright is compelling.

                    3. Yeah, it’s nothing more than ordinary medical malpractice – Chauvin isn’t a doctor, how was he to know that he should have done CPR instead of the throat-crushing maneuver? The difference in symptoms is soooooo difficult for a layman to understand!

                      -Facepalms-

                      For your next move, Eric, how about you sell me a used Pinto, one with a gas tank that’s only slightly crushed…

                      -spits-
                      -sighs-

                    4. (This is a reply to esr, whose reply to my
                      post has no reply tag.) Look up the symptoms
                      of fentanyl overdose. Its victims don’t
                      complain of being unable to breathe, they
                      lose their desire to breathe. Before
                      that they lose consciousness. Again, it’s
                      an astonishing coincidence if someone died
                      when someone blocked his windpipe for eight
                      minutes, if he died for completely unrelated
                      reasons. Eight minutes is just a
                      three-millionth of his life. Do you think
                      you would survive for eight minutes with
                      your windpipe blocked, even though you’re
                      drug-free? (But then I also think that a
                      covid death counts as a covid death even
                      if the victim was overweight, so what do I
                      know?) Do you agree with me that killer
                      cops and cop killers should be treated
                      exactly the same? Do you doubt that if it
                      had been you who had been crushing his
                      windpipe you’d be serving a sentence of life
                      without parole today? (Had it been in
                      Virginia rather than Minnesota, you’d
                      instead get the death penalty.)

                    5. >Do you agree with me that killer cops and cop killers should be treated exactly the same?

                      Yes.

                      >Again, it’s an astonishing coincidence if someone died when someone blocked his windpipe for eight
                      minutes

                      But the Minneapolis medical examiner has said all along that there as no sign of the kind of crushing damage that would have killed Floyd by physical strangulation.

                      Which is a fact I knew before I changed my mind about this case. That fact troubled me, but I didn’t update my beliefs away from “Chauvin murdered him” until I saw the video of Floyd going into OD convulsions.

                      Bear in mind that Floyd was complaining of being unable to breathe while still upright, with no pressure applied to his neck.

                      The inference is clear; Floyd was already a dead man walking when the cops accosted him. Possibly he could have been saved by immediate heroic treatment for the fentanyl overdose, but I now think he was just minutes from death at the time the cops intervened and could not have been gotten to a hospital in time.

                      I can also tell you what would change my mind back: if it turns out there was in fact evidence if crush damage to Floyd’s throat that the ME missed or suppressed. I’ll follow the facts, whatever they are.

                    6. Also,

                      The 911 call was leaked. The police were called for an apparent counterfeit bill, AND that the guy passing the bill Appeared severely intoxicated an indicated he was going to drive intoxicated.

            2. > George Floyd and Jacob Blake

              Hypocritical is lumping people like Jacob Blake and Rayshard Brooks, who were aggressively resisting arrest (in Brooks’ case with a weapon wrested from one of the officers) in the same category as a man at best passively resisting an arrest on a non-violent accusation.

              Hypocritical is declaring by fiat that this is entirely a problem of “fucking conservatvies” when Minneapolis and Atlanta are both thoroughly Democratic cities (and Minneapolis in a thoroughly Democratic state).

              Hypocritical is sweeping under the carpet the brutal murder of eight-year-old Secoriea Turner at the hands of the very people claiming to be “peacefully protesting” the death of Brooks, because _her_ murder doesn’t quite fit the Black Lives Matter narrative the left needs to push right now.

              If you, like Winter, are too squeamish to tackle the issue of an eight-year-old girl being shot in the head in the name of your Movement, then how about another black adult male, Calvin Munerlyn? I asked about him _waaay_ back in your “Michiganers are fucking idiots!!!” tirade in the Final Warning thread, to complete silence. But apparently Black Lives only Matter when it’s a whitey, or better yet a white cop, doing the killing; a bunch of low-life criminal thugs killing a hard worker, dedicated family man, and upstanding member of his community just isn’t news, and certainly isn’t going to pull in the rioters — oops sorry “peaceful protesters”, in sufficient numbers, now is it?

              1. I must quibble a bit with your characterization of Minnesota as a thoroughly Democrat state. The balance between the hard-left inner Twin Cities metro and the conservative outstate is quite close; Clinton won the state but 30,000 votes in 2016, and there was a Republican governor as recently as 2010.

                The Twin Cities themselves, though…

                1. Thanks for the correction.

                  I think it was back in the Final Warning thread where there were a lot of leftist claims that George Floyd’s murder was yet another example of “racist redneck” violence, to which I responded by pointing out that Minnesota had gone democrat in nearly every presidential election in just about the past hundred years. But that’s obviously too one-dimensional to justify “thoroughly”; sorry for the over-generalization.

              2. Add David Dorn to that.

                He ran to the point of friction, and lost his life for it.

            3. > You mean like how you hypocritical fucking conservatives say […]

              Ah, Jeff. Verily, verily, I say you are the dumbest motherfucker who comments on this blog. You are but a souless clay doll, forever cursed to possession by false narratives and destructive ideology. So empty are you of logos that you live within a paranoid delusion merely because someone has told you that it is so. Verily, where the dog barks at the hand, you, Jeff, hump the ideological leg of whatever filthy beggar comes nearest; the master is but a mirage to you.

              I say unto you, Jeff, that you knowest not what you speak, nor do you know aught of me, and in so doing is your arrogant ignorance exposed, your clay facade torn asunder to reveal naught but that which is of the basic bitch.

              Therefore do I bestow upon thee, Jeff Read of the Blog, Dumbest and Most Hollow, the rank title of Trout’s White Knight, Resplendent in Dicksucking Vainglory.

              Blessed Be Our Bitchy Lady,
              Hail Eris
              All Hail Discordia
              fnord.

              1. All Hail Discordia.

                All Hail Disnomia (which is a much more correct description of a riot venue).

                1. Given the stupidity, BS, and just being an all around PoS you engage in while sober, you’re in no position to talk.

                2. > This is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t post when you’re drunk.

                  As Dr. Troutwaxer is now dispensing free diagnoses of alcoholism to us here, I am no doubt required and obliged to confess that I have for some time now been possessed of the belief that if I could somehow run the moral equivalent of

                  git log –author=”Jeff Read” -G”You don’t have the right to”

                  on this blog and charge a nickel a hit, I would be able to keep myself, ktk, and anyone else here so inclined supplied with enough booze to keep us blissfully indifferent to Leftist apologia for the remainder of our natural lives.

            4. > Rodney King

              If you’d watched the whole Rodney King video you will see Rodney King *LAUNCH* himself out of his car at the police officer nearest to him after a high speed chase. So right there are two felonies, one of them violent. He continued to resist arrest all the way down. Note that this video was NOT shown on TV until after the verdict was read.

              They also (and I only heard about this from a police friend) did not discuss how part of the training that the LAPD received was in these sorts of situations to beat the pavement/ground around the resistor to distract them. Most of the blows in the short clip shown before and during the trial were NOT aimed at King, they were an attempt to keep him from focusing on the people trying to arrest him.

              Yet another “win” for the Ministry of Truth.

              > Mike Brown

              Mike Brown as a violent thug who *attacked* Wilson. Wilson shot in self defense.

              The whole “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” thing was a *LIE*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_up,_don%27t_shoot

              > George Floyd

              Floyd, again, was resisting arrest, under a heavy (some say lethal) dose of Fentanyl, and was complaining about not being able to breath EVEN BEFORE he was put in a compliance position. The officer who was blamed for his death knew him from a job where they were both “security”, which is to say bouncers, which means he had a rough idea of how well Floyd fought.

              Note also that in this case the officer was *fired* within 72 hours, and arrested within 96, so he WAS being held accountable (even if he’ll walk after the jury sees the whole footage).

              > Jacob Blake

              Blake was violating a restraining order to “visit” a woman he was accused of sexually assaulting. Then he got into it with police when they showed up to prevent his “visit”. He was fighting his way (e.g. resisting arrest) back to his car WHERE HE HAD A KNIFE when the officer who was holding onto him AS HE REACHED IN shot him.

              Note that some members of the National Felons League have Blake’s name on their helmet.

              I guess #metoo has gone from “hashtag me too” to “pound me too”

              Why did you pick those four cases Jeff? You’re well connected and smart enough to know better.

              Atatiana Jefferson? Oh. Wait. Officer indicted on a murder charge.
              Abner Louima? Oh, wait. Officers *convicted*, and one serving a 30 year sentence.
              Rayshard Brooks? Oh, wait, Police chief resigns, officers charged EVEN THOUGH Brooks failed a breathalyzer, resisted arrest, jacked the officers taser AND attempted to use that taser on the officer.

              You, and the rest of your proggy fellow travelers have helped create these large areas of the inner city where drugs and violence are cultural norms. Then you demand the police expose themselves to these violent predators and get all upset when violence begets violence.

              50 years (2.5 generations, more in some areas) of *complete* Democrat control of the teachers unions, decades to generations of Democrat control of the largest[1] cities in the US–which means Democrat control of the police forces–training, budget etc. and this is what you get.

              And, like most Progressives, when the mess comes home to roost you blame it on Conservatives.

              White people are killed and beaten by police *all the time* (numerically more than blacks), and when you adjust for police contacts get killed/shot about as often.

              It’s just that blacks tend to get more police contacts.

              You, of course, will blame that on racism.

              I, of course, will blame that on 4 generations of the “War On Black Families” (aka “War on Poverty”) started by Johnson, as constant drumbeats of racial and cultural disharmony from the left, the constant refrain that rich “owe” the poor, and that it’s all the fault of the Republicans.

              [1] New York is the exception here, except no one things Guliana is a conservative. He’s just not a Progressive.

              1. >You, and the rest of your proggy fellow travelers have helped create these large areas of the inner city where drugs and violence are cultural norms. Then you demand the police expose themselves to these violent predators and get all upset when violence begets violence.

                You forgot one thing William, they “demand the police expose themselves to these violent predators” to keep them safely segregated in the parts of town where the latte liberal set doesn’t have to go. You’ll notice the local Leftwing Pols were content to let these riots happen until they started showing up on their own doorsteps.

            5. You mean like how you hypocritical fucking conservatives say “Some cops are good people! Therefore, Rodney King and Mike Brown and George Floyd and Jacob Blake don’t matter, shut up about police brutality, la la la”?

              You have it backwards. Some cops are bad people, but none of the four you named ran into those. The cops who dealt with them all did the right thing — except that in Rodney King’s case, after he had finally stopped resisting and the legitimate need to hit him was over, one cop failed to notice that for a few seconds, and landed six extra blows. According to the second jury, only those six final blows were wrongful. The entire beating until then was justified, because it was necessary in order to effect his arrest.

              Floyd died of a drug overdose. The cops were doing the best they could in restraining him until the ambulance they’d called would arrive.

              Brown was a vicious thug who finally attacked the wrong person. And Blake was a dangerous felon who was resisting arrest, and reached into the car; to all appearances he was either reaching for a weapon or planned to get in the car and drive off, neither of which were acceptable options.

              1. The problem here is that you’re cherry-picking names. Tamir Rice was a twelve-year-old child who didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey or Akai Gurley. Did I mention John Crawford III or Rumaine Brisbon?

                1. Cherry-picking names?! I quoted the four names that were in the comment I replied to. All four were incorrect. Now you give some more names. Who’s cherry-picking?

                  Tamir Rice didn’t do anything wrong, but the cop did nothing wrong either. Actually that’s not true. Rice did something very wrong, he was just too young and innocent to know it. He was just playing and didn’t mean to frighten anyone, but nobody else had any way to know that. The cop saw what appeared to be a mid-teenager pointing a gun at him and about to kill him. He can’t be expected to have known that Rice was only 12, or that the gun wasn’t real. Rice’s death was like that of a toddler who runs into traffic and is killed. Not his fault but not the driver’s fault either.

                  George Floyd died of a drug overdose. The police had nothing to do with it, and did everything exactly by the book.

                  The facts on Aubrey aren’t in yet, and will come out at trial. The video evidence is ambiguous. Experts such as Andrew Branca see Aubrey deviating from his path to deliberately confront McMichael the Younger and grab his weapon; if he did that then the shooting was justified. Others don’t see that. We will have to wait and see.

                  Akai Gurley’s death was simply a freak accident, due to a cop’s momentary carelessness. The cop was appropriately punished.

                  Crawford and Brisbon I had to look up. Crawford appears to have been the victim of a reckless 911 caller and a jumpy cop. And ultimately of the public hoplophobia deliberately pushed by the left, which leads people to panic and call 911 at the sight of someone in Walmart carrying a gun. Crawford also bears a small part of the blame, for waving the gun around in a careless manner, just because he knew it wasn’t real, without thinking that others weren’t to know that. But that’s the smallest part of the blame.

                  As for Brisbon I can’t see what you’re referring to. He refused the cop’s orders to put his hands up, ran from the cop, then wrestled with him, and put his hand in his pocket. What was the cop supposed to think, or to do? Brisbon had no right to act as he did, and he effectively committed suicide.

                  1. Obviously in your mind killing a Black person is always justified, even the children. Dude, you’re gonna burn!

                    1. Huh?
                      “Obviously” you are making sh*t up on the spot, and arguing in bad faith.

                    2. Maybe you need to be more convincing about your lack of hatred for Black people. Your posts read like a propaganist’s wet dream – except the one about sanctuary cities, I thought that was very intelligent.

                    3. > Maybe you need to be more convincing about your lack of hatred for Black people

                      Nothing Milhouse said made any reference to the race of those involved in the incidents.

                      Show me a case involving a white boy waving a toy gun in a park, a idiot (of any race) hoplophobe making a completely unnecessary 911 call, and a cop of any race having been fed a complaint of a white teenager threatening people in the park with a gun, and I can state with no hesitation I will have exactly the same reaction as to the case as it actually happened.

                      The problem is that despite your being wrong about this being “obviously” a racial issue (again this is frigging _Cleveland_, not some “redneck racist enclave), you are right in every other way about this case being a horrible tragedy.

                      A kid shouldn’t be shot for playing with a toy in a park. Except a kid shouldn’t be “threatening” other people with a toy gun in a park, unless they’re people he’s already playing with who are aware it’s just a toy and he’s just playing. Except an idiot shouldn’t be making a 911 call about an obvious toy (the way the kid is “waving” it should make it immediately obvious whether it’s plastic or actual metal). Except if a person actually _is_ ignorant about handgun appearances, and too panicked to think clearly about the weight issue, discouraging people from making such calls might reduce the rate at which actual crimes are reported. Except even if a call is made, the answering cop should at least evaluate the situation themselves instead of firing out the window while still driving up. Except in a large fraction of situations a cop has a fraction of a second to decide if an actual weapon is being drawn on them before reacting. Except a cop should be more sensitive than a civilian to the weight difference (and thus speed at which a kid can “wave” one around) between a toy a real gun.

                      One can go _very_ deep in this chain without any of the links _requiring_ racism as the relevant explanation. Speaking for myself, I believe that in an area with a strong gun culture, a) parents teach their children basic gun safety rules from a young age, including the one that you don’t point a gun (even a toy one) at a stranger except in self-defense; and b) there are fewer idiots around to drop a dime on some innocent kid carrying a toy.

                      My assumption when I started reading further was that Cleveland, being an urban area, has strong gun control. In fact wiki claims that Ohio law permitting carrying currently “pre-empts” whatever local laws used to exist (much like the situation I referred to much higher in the thread, that IL laws now pre-empt formerly very restrictive Chicago laws). My guess here is that the gun culture in Cleveland proper has not caught up with that of other parts of the state.

                    4. Milhouse is constantly quoting some very unpleasant statistics, of which I am very suspicious. He sounds like every other idiot who ever imagined that race, not poverty and 400 years of oppression, causes the problems he’s pointing at.

                    5. He sounds like every other idiot who ever imagined that race, not poverty and 400 years of oppression, causes the problems he’s pointing at.

                      You do realize it’s not hard to frame your “400 years of oppression” and “poverty” theories in such a way that they make falsifiable predictions. (Hint: Blacks aren’t the only people who were ever oppressed and there exist poor people who aren’t Black.) BTW, those predictions turn out to be false.

                2. There’s a large space between “Doing nothing wrong” and “Doing nothing illegal”.

                  > Tamir Rice

                  I’ll go half way with you here.
                  The cop that shot him was a real loser and shouldn’t have been on the force. His training officer was a nitwit, and shouldn’t have been in that position. Everything of consequence they did in that encounter was wrong.

                  But Tamir Rice was a *really* large (IIRC around 6′) 12 year old who was playing with an airsoft pistol (which are *really* exact replicas) that had the orange “this is not a gun” bit removed. He was doing this in a park, and had *allegedly* aimed it at people.

                  That’s not “nothing”.

                  > Akai Gurley

                  Was not *intentionally* shot, Liang was inadequately trained, and two “rookies” should never be working together, but it was not a deliberate shooting. This is in an entire different category.

                  The problem is that while both sides of this would agree that police need more training, my side says they need to get better–much better–at fighting in general and at shooting in particular (I would require all police to do *at least* 4 hours of martial arts a week in an art that focuses on grappling, and at least 2 hours of shooting a month) while your side would preach racial awareness training, LGB++ training, etc. etc. and then wonder why so many people are getting shot.

                  > Ahmaud Aubrey

                  Was not shot by police, and there was (apparently) no evidence to contradict the witnesses. When such evidence was produced they nailed the fuckers.

                  > Neither did George Floyd

                  Passing a counterfeit 20.
                  Attempting to drive while intoxicated.
                  Resisting arrest.

                  That’s not “nothing wrong”.

                  > John Crawford III

                  Wandering around a Walmart waving a rifle around randomly is not “nothing”. Yeah, it was an a bb gun or air rifle, but it was a move so STUPID that it beggars the imagination.

                  So again not “nothing wrong”.

                  > Rumaine Brisbon

                  Are you serious?

            6. “You mean like how you hypocritical fucking conservatives say “Some cops are good people! Therefore, Rodney King and Mike Brown and George Floyd and Jacob Blake don’t matter, shut up about police brutality, la la la”?”

              No, this is an example of vomiting out a strawman.

              Doesn’t that sort of creativity get tiring after awhile?

          2. “Say “hi” to Winter for me, because you’ve just been placed next to him in my box labeled “dangerously dishonest, do not bother to engage again.””

            Another example of commenters using Insults when they have run out of reasonable arguments.

            1. It’s not like a vending machine, you know. You guys refusing to engage in, or outright ignoring, arguments raised against you until someone gets fed up and realizes you’re not worth arguing with isn’t “running out” of arguments.

              If you’re _not_ “dangerously dishonest”, you’ll be willing and able to explain why lambasting the majority of participants here as “condoning” various atrocities you’ve declared by fiat (without any “reasonable arguments” supporting that accusation) is not an “insult”, while immediately getting your hackles up at any perceived “insult” to your special snowflake status.

              1. I’m gaining amusement at these folks’ seeming inability to just not respond. I’m not sure what “reasonable arguments” Winter is even referring to here, since I have rather deliberately not engaged with the Dutch Commie in quite some time. Very strange.

                1. @ktk
                  “what “reasonable arguments” Winter is even referring to here,”

                  Arguments based in fact or law, with evidence or witness accounts.
                  Most arguments here are very long on opinion and ideology and very, very short on facts.

                  For instance, I still remember the large number of arguments presented here on COVID-19 as a Hoax by the Democrats. We are now at 194,000 deaths from COVID-19 and still counting. This includes more than 1000 health care workers
                  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/26/us-health-workers-covid-19-deaths-lost-on-the-frontline

                  Arguments based on facts would have saved many lives in these cases.

                  1. COVID-19 is also known to spread through the air, and to cause long-term organ damage in 75% of those infected with it. So even if you don’t die from it, you’re in a shit ton of trouble — even if you’re young and healthy.

                    And Trump admitted to downplaying the dangers.

                    The blood of those 200,000 is on Trump’s hands! Once again, any result in November other than a landslide victory for Biden will throw the legitimacy of the U.S. government and/or the collective sanity of the American people very much into question. This is no longer a question of respectful disagreement between two opposing camps. Not when one camp is usually right and the other is wrong to the point of mental illness!

                    1. I’m sure Governor Cuomo placing covid patients in nursing homes, deliberately and explicitly rejecting federal assistance in the form of a naval medical cruiser and field hospital, had no impact whatsoever.

                      Seriously, dumbest person here. At least you used to provide some interesting insight on occasion, the rare moment of clarity. Now it’s just screeching emotion. Someone call Jesus, Jeff’s got a demon in him! Hurry!

                      Haah! Next he’ll start raving psychotically about the impending right-wing death squads.

                      Don’t worry, Jeff baby, I promise to let the RWDS’s know to leave you alone. You’re safe with me, dearie. Shush, shush…

                    2. @Inkstain
                      “1)”

                      The defining line in that piece is: First study of its kind has found that nearly half of hospital patients showed no damage at 12 weeks

                      That is the same as: More than half of the patients still show damage after 12 weeks. That is in line with other studies, e.g., in Italy:
                      https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351

                      And there are many reports of people who have persistent, cripling, symptoms months after a mild COVID infections.
                      https://inews.co.uk/news/coronavirus-post-viral-effects-after-covid-19-chronic-fatigue-long-term-health-440730

                      More than 6 million people have been infected in the USA. Even a fraction of 6 million is still a lot

                    3. Just this morning I heard a recording from Trump telling a journalist in February that he knew how dangerous and deadly COVID-19 was. But he did not want to tell the Americans to prevent panic.

                      It has to be admired how Trump played the gullibility of his supporters, the alt-right, and the lot of the A&D guys alike.

                      See it for yourself:
                      https://www.news.com.au/world/watch-the-tape-of-trump-admitting-to-playing-down-covid19-to-avoid-panic/video/001c1da9cd6dc5f2a9a6482b01b6dcb7

                    4. More fakery. There’s nothing secret or nefarious in that recording. Trump told Woodward exactly what he publicly told Jim Acosta at the press conference on March 30. That he was being responsible by not sensationalizing it and causing a panic. Do you not agree that that was his job?!

                      And if you listen to what he told Woodward about the facts as he understood them that day in February, they turn out to have been wrong. So if he’d panicked himself, and gone out and publicized them, he would have frightened people for no reason. He took the mistaken things he’d been told seriously, but didn’t lose his head about them, so when months later they turned out to be overly pessimistic he doesn’t look like an idiot.

                    5. Trump’s non-response to COVID19 has been debated previously here. Any idea that he did the right thing is 100 percent delusional. If you go back to the right thread (I forget which one) Trump’s mistakes have been done to death.

                    6. Trump has done as well with this disease as any president could be expected to do. We can’t ask any more than that.

                      If we’d known in advance how exaggerated the “experts'” fears were, and how limited the virus’s effect actually is, we would never have agreed to the vast overreaction that has been taken. Trump fell for those fears too, as we hear in the Woodward recording. Thankfully he didn’t lose his head, but he was persuaded to take measures that in hindsight were unnecessary and destructive, and he’s since been trying to rectify at least some of that damage.

                    7. @Milhouse
                      “Trump has done as well with this disease as any president could be expected to do. We can’t ask any more than that. ”

                      Delaying the response to COVID-19 has been shown to be the leading predictor of high death rates. That there are now close to 200,000 dead Americans from COVID-19 and not 50,000 0r 2,000 is purely the result of a delayed, or no, response.

                      Germany has a population of 80 million and only 10,000 COVID deaths. They acted fast and that had an effect.

                      That Trump told the Americans that he would stop COVID dead in its tracks in April was a public health disaster.

                      That he knew this was false already in February makes it a case of criminal misgovernment.

                    8. And just how many of those deaths are died from Covid19 and how many merely died with Covid19?

                    9. COVID-19 is also known to spread through the air, and to cause long-term organ damage in 75% of those infected with it.

                      Liar.

                2. “I have rather deliberately not engaged with the Dutch Commie in quite some time.”

                  Yeah, I know facts and reality are not welcome. When there is non-Political Correct speech uttered, names are called and insults fly, but mostly, ears are shut and eyes are closed.

                3. Note the Dutch Commie’s completely delusional assertion above that I made some kind of argumentation in some imaginary thread not in evidence.

                  Really, what do we make of this? These people are literally conjuring debates out of thin air, then using the lack of argument in said imaginary debates as proof of their victory. All because I simply mentioned his name! Deranged!

                  I guess it’s possible this is referring to some thread elsewhere I just don’t remember taking part in, but I find that rather unlikely.

                  I do encourage the DC to continue his lunacy though; it does a better job of undercutting any of his own rhetoric than anyone wasting real energy on him.

                  1. @ktk
                    “Note the Dutch Commie’s completely delusional assertion above that I made some kind of argumentation in some imaginary thread not in evidence.”

                    I was writing about the alt-right, or the right sec, in general.

                    However I seem to remember having had earlier conversations with someone with the handle ktk. However, if you say we did not conversed before, I take you on your word.

                    And again, ad hominem attacks are the mark of the loser.

              2. “You guys refusing to engage in, or outright ignoring, arguments raised against you”

                Pot, meet kettle. When arguments are raised against USA cops, e.g., 1000 people killed a year, fining black people as a source of income as in Ferguson, etc. you feign ignorance and reject all evidence.
                Reference:
                https://priceonomics.com/the-fining-of-black-america/

                When you accuse someone of lying or dishonesty, that is name calling unless you specify the lie or the dishonesty. And I see it happening whenever people run out of arguments.

                1. > you feign ignorance and reject all evidence.

                  Sorry when did I do that? Your link points to some external site, not a post I made on this blog.

                  Objecting to the injustices and excesses of the state, largely consequences of increasingly Leftist policies over the past several decades here, up to and including police brutality, are a large fraction, some might say the principal component, of the Libertarian position. You are doing far worse than preaching to the choir on this subject, because a brutal police force is the sine qua non of YOUR ideological precursors on the Left (Soviet secret police, Nazi brownshirts, etc etc ad nauseum).

                  But you’ll never acknowledge that, because it’s far easier to toss out a bunch of dubious claims, then dump the objections from posters with a _variety_ of political views here in one big can and slap a “see I told ya they wuz all racists” sticker on it.

                  Again, nobody has “run out of” arguments. They’re the exact same arguments you ignored the last bajiliion times you made your same claims. They don’t have “sell by” dates on them.

                  1. “Objecting to the injustices and excesses of the state, largely consequences of increasingly Leftist policies over the past several decades here, up to and including police brutality, are a large fraction, some might say the principal component, of the Libertarian position.”

                    The question is, do the Libertarians actually do anything to help the oppressed in their struggle for equal rights? Yes, they call for militia’s to use violence against them. See the OP.

                    They consider it much more important to kill “communists” than to stop violent fascists. That is clear.

                    1. >They consider it much more important to kill “communists” than to stop violent fascists.

                      Oh, we’d cheerfully kill violent fascists, too. If we could find any in the U.S.

                    2. @esr
                      “Oh, we’d cheerfully kill violent fascists, too. If we could find any in the U.S.”

                      You mean like James Fields who drove a car into marching demonstrators? Or all those admirers of Breivik, like Christopher Hasson and his breathren?
                      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/02/christopher-hasson-coast-guard-neo-nazi-far-right

                      Neo-Nazis are alive and kicking in the USA. Just read the daily stormer and their admiration of Brenton Tarrant and Anders Breivik.

                      And the KKK is still very much alive too.

                      Not to forget Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Theodore Kaczynski all the way back to Charles Manson and before.

                      I would say, you would be spoiled for choice. Although I would object to using violence against them.

                      I think “Kill all Fascists” is a self referential utterance.

                    3. @Ex
                      “George Orwell”

                      I do not really understand your reference. There will always be corner cases, but those who are called Communists on these pages are difficult to align with those that were called Communists in Orwell’s times. However, I do not see much differences between Old-style Nazi’s and Neo-Nazi’s.

                      But the dictionary says:

                      Fascism

                      a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

                      And Communism:

                      a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

                      Two differences are clear: Fascists are both Nationalists and Racists, Communists are not.

                      Now, if we look at the Democrats, including its left wings, they are staunch believers in Democracy, so would not fall under this definition of Communism. Neo-Nazi’s and the like are both Racists and Nationalists, and want to abolish Democracy. So they obviously fall under the Fascism definition.

                      Now, you might want to widen the definitions, but you should do so for both Fascists and Communists.

                      PS: If you now say that Stalin was a Fascist, I won’t object. Feel free to assume that Stalin believed in anything.

                    4. Winter, you’re delusional. The number of “violent fascists” in the USA is statistically equal to zero.

                      Fields was promptly arrested, and will be in prison for the rest of his life. And he’d just been attacked by a mob of violent communists, so he decided to take revenge. Now he’s paying for it. Had the communists not attacked him, their naive and peaceful ally would still be alive.

                      The KKK does not exist. At all. There are a handful of reenactors who like to play at being the KKK, and assuming grand titles, but they don’t do anything.

                      The panic-mongering piece of nonsense you linked to from the Grauniad gives no facts, just leftist fantasies.

                      The communists are out in the open now, visible and hurting people and property. Where are these supposed fascists? Nowhere. The left is resorting to making up narratives about people like this wonderful young man Rittenhouse, making him out to be some sort of fascist, out of whole cloth. They even tried pretending he was some sort of racist, but they gave that one up after about five minutes when everyone laughed at them. Or is that what you meant with your reference to racism.

                      Oh, and there aren’t any “oppressed” in the USA, so there’s nobody for libertarians to “do anything to help in their struggle for equal rights”. BLM is not about oppression, it’s about communist lies, and about overthrowing the USA by force.

                    5. “Winter, you’re delusional. The number of “violent fascists” in the USA is statistically equal to zero. ”

                      So they are still more prevalent than the number of violent Communists, which has been zero since 1985.

                      People have been killed by perpetrators that fall under the definition of “Fascist”. And quite a number of Fascists have tried to kill people or were preparing to do so in the USA.

                      On the other hand, anti-fascists have been responsible for zero murder during the last 25 years in the USA
                      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/us-rightwing-extremists-attacks-deaths-database-leftwing-antifa

                      Left wing terrorism has been absent in the USA since 1985.

                    6. >So they are still more prevalent than the number of violent Communists, which has been zero since 1985.

                      You know, trying to gaslight this way when violent Communists are literally burning down American cities is not likely to work very well.

                    7. Left wing terrorism has been absent in the USA since 1985.

                      Huh?! In what universe is that even close to true?

                      I mean, leaving everything else aside, Ted Kaczynski was active for ten years after your imaginary terminus date. Even if he were the last of the left-wing terrorists you’d still be ten years off. And of course he isn’t.

                    8. > Two differences are clear: Fascists are both Nationalists and Racists, Communists are not.

                      That seems difficult to reconcile with the USSR’s historical track record in a) treatment of other ethnicites and races, especially indigenous people within its borders; and b) slurping up as many states as possible into either fellow “SSR”s (e.g. the Baltics) or satellite states (eg Chekoslavakia, you know, the famous “defenestration”?) with the obvious goal of strengthening the “Soviet” nation.

                      Consider that the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia is nearly entirely (by Ukrainians’ admission) based in the treatment of Ukraine by Stalin.

                      I know someone will burble now that that doesn’t count because they’re the same “race” just different “ethnicities”. The behaviors being perpetrated are functionally identical to the various atrocities attributable to racism, however.

                      (For another example of Communist nationalism, would anyone really believe that the average Chinese citizen, let alone government leader, would put the interests of the Chinese nation secondary to “the promulgation of Socialist ideals” or the like?

                    9. “That seems difficult to reconcile with the USSR’s historical track record”

                      Even during the times of George Orwell it was clear that the USSR under Stalin was more like a fascist state than a Communist. See the link of the parent.

                      I think Stalin was mad (paranoid, psychopath, take your pick). He got in power and did what he had to do to stay there. The people who wanted Fascism, he gave Fascism. The people who wanted Communism, he gave Communism.

                    10. > do the Libertarians actually do anything to help the oppressed in their struggle for equal rights? Yes, they call for militia’s to use violence against them.

                      Except Rittenhouse, if you had actually “seen the OP”, didn’t “use violence against… oppressed people”, he defended his life against three dumbfuck whiteys who, to steal Troutwaxer’s unceasing refrain, “should have STAYED THE FUCK AWAY, so nobody else gets killed!!!one!”

                      Speaking as a dumbfuck whitey myself, good riddance. Get rid of a few more flame-fanners like that and maybe we can _actually_ get down to trying to “do anything to help the oppressed in their struggle for equal rights”.

                    11. >So they are still more prevalent than the number of violent Communists, which has been zero since 1985.

                      I see James Hodgkinson was unavailable for comment.

                  2. “You know, trying to gaslight this way when violent Communists are literally burning down American cities is not likely to work very well.”

                    You are one of the Gullibles the GOP loves. You drank Trump’s cool aid when he told you COVID was just a flu. You drink it again when he feeds you horror stories about the Left.

                    Prove these BLM arsonists are Communists and not simply enraged poor people who enact the urban version of the peasant uprises we know from all over history.

                    Then show me the Communists who committed political murders, or even tried to do so. Compare that to the Oklahoma bombing and Cesar Sayoc who send pipe bombs to political opponents of Trump.

                    Trump and his bogeymen personally interfered with the security forces to change the facts on antifa and white supremacists. The intelligence agencies know perfectly well that it is the violent Right that a danger to the Republic, not the Left. But Trump and the Republicans turn a blind I at that side.

                    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-other-plague-trump-has-downplayed-white-supremacist-violence/ar-BB18UDpc

                    https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/a-trump-security-chief-acknowledges-role-of-white-supremacist-extremists-in-us-urban-violence-13096794

                    1. >Prove these BLM arsonists are Communists

                      “We are trained Marxists” – trained by one of the Weather Underground leaders, a violent Communist terrorist.

                      And I have news for you: Trump has not denounced BLM as a Communist organization. I’ve been listening carefully for him to do so, because I wish he would in fact do that.

                    2. From your point of view this is obviously an old-school “break the US along it’s already-existing fracture lines” type of Marxism.

                      So why do we allow the fracture lines to exist? Obviously in the U.S. our racism is more valuable to us than any anti-racist, and thus anti-fracture-lines and thus anti-Marxist activity we could engage in… If you’re really anti-Marxist, why do you come down on the side of the fracture lines with this ridiculous “militia” rhetoric.

                    3. So why do we allow the fracture lines to exist?

                      Because the Democrats need Black anger to get elected and are thus constantly lying to Blacks about how they are being kept down by “White oppression”.

                    4. ““We are trained Marxists” – trained by one of the Weather Underground leaders, a violent Communist terrorist.”

                      That was not the cliam, the claim was that the arson, looting, and violence was perpetrated by Communists.

                      Was Patrisse Cullors involved in the arson and looting? Did she organize them? Did she call for people to be violent?

                      I cannot find any information about her being involved in any way with the violence. But you might have better information.

                      Or is the fact that she is a cofounder of BLM enough reason to claim those who did the crimes were “Trained Marxists”?

                      ” I’ve been listening carefully for him to do so, because I wish he would in fact do that.”

                      He did call Antifa a terrorist organization, with no evidence they actually committed terrorist attacks.

                      But your claim of BLM being Communist is rather hollow. The Civil Rights Movement was not a Baptist movement just because MLK was a “Trained Baptist”.

                      For the BLM to be a Communist organization, its “members” (does it have members) and supporters must support Communism as an ideology or political system. I have yet to see any indication of that.

                      Racism affects black people irrespective of their ideologies.

                      And even if BLM would be a Communist organization, last I saw, the US constitution still allows freedom of political views and expression. The only legal reason to attack BLM is when it organizes violence.

                    5. >Was Patrisse Cullors involved in the arson and looting? Did she organize them? Did she call for people to be violent?

                      The answer to the second two questions are certainly “yes” and “yes”. Whether she was directly hands on is unknown.

                      Note that she said “we”, clearly referring to the entire BLM leadership. But this was not news. It was already known, to those of us paying attention, that BLM was incubated by BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), which was in turn an offshoot of the Socialist Worker’s Party.

                      >Or is the fact that she is a cofounder of BLM enough reason to claim those who did the crimes were “Trained Marxists”?

                      BLM has Communist leadership, uses Communist propaganda techniques, employs classic Communist insurrectionary tactics, and uses the Communist salute. Whether every single one of its footsoldiers is up on their Marxist theory is not an interesting question; I’m sure not all of Ernst Rohm’s bully-boys were ideological Nazis either. Every totalitarian movement recruits thugs who are in it for the destruction and looting.

                      They should all be shot, every single fucking one of them. Or go on one-way helicopter rides. I wouldn’t have said that a year ago, but they are now violent criminal insurrectionists and deserve to be treated accordingly.

                  3. @esr
                    “The answer to the second two questions are certainly “yes” and “yes”. Whether she was directly hands on is unknown.”

                    Eh, could you be more specific? I can find some BLM local chapter organizers who call for looting (e.g., Chicago and New York), and who are duly investigated by the police about it. But not for “Patrisse Cullors” or any support for this nation wide.

                    However, my search did turn up a Republican Representative that called for looting BLM homes.

                    https://www.dailydot.com/debug/james-spillane-burning-black-lives-matter-homes/

                    If sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, we should now call the GOP a violent organization?

                    @esr
                    “BLM has Communist leadership, uses Communist propaganda techniques, and employs classic Communist insurrectionary tactics. ”

                    I can find no evidence that Alicia Garzia or Opal Tometi, the other two co-founders are “Trained Marxists”, or even Communists. But I assume that you consider all Unionisers to be Communists.

                    And “Communist Propaganda techniques and insurrection tactics” are well known and widely practices by anyone, from left to right. People learn, you know.

                    1. >I can find no evidence that Alicia Garzia or Opal Tometi, the other two co-founders are “Trained Marxists”, or even Communists.

                      You’re ignoring Patrisse Cullors’s own statement to that effect. Generally when I hear people tell me they are Communists or Nazis I find it is wise to believe them. We also know BLM’s organizational DNA is Trotskyite.

                      >If sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, we should now call the GOP a violent organization?

                      Spillane’s remark is what is commonly called “sarcasm”. I don’t think Cullors was being sarcastic.

      2. We do not know when Kyle spoke to the Marine Corp recruiter. He may have been 16 at that time, and thus ineligible.
        But more likely he was ineligible because he did not have a high school graduation certificate. There are reports that he had dropped out of school, although his status is unclear.

        1. The word was not “ineligible,” it was “disqualified.” Not having a high-school diploma means the recruiter says, “We don’t accept anyone without a high-school diploma, so come see me when you graduate.”

          I suspect the conversation with the recruiter will become evidence in the trial, so in a year or two we’ll know for sure.

      3. Would wearing a MAGA hat whilst carrying concealed be considered “hunting over bait”?

      4. By your logic, declaring one’s city a Sanctuary City is an act of insurrection, since the city is refusing to enforce federal law. Trump would therefore be justified in calling up the National Guard and taking those cities by force, no?

        No. Sanctuary cities are not preventing the federal authorities from enforcing federal law. They are simply standing on their constitutional right to refuse to assist the feds in that endeavor. Congress has no authority to make them. That’s the anti-commandeering principle. That judge who actively helped a fugitive evade arrest crossed that line and is being prosecuted.

      5. >By your logic, declaring one’s city a Sanctuary City is an act of insurrection, since the city is refusing to enforce federal law. Trump would therefore be justified in calling up the National Guard and taking those cities by force, no?

        No. States (and cities) are under no obligation to help enforce federal law (but also can’t interfere with enforcement).

        However, the feds do have an obligations to protect their citizens’ basic civil rights (14A: “…life, liberty, or property…”). The feds are allowed to use their own people to protect those rights (and have done so in the past), despite the general rule that policing is a state government power.

    2. >I don’t think the idea that he’s part of the militia is going to go anywhere.

      Where did you think I needed it to go? Rittenhouse is almost certainly going to skate on self-defense grounds; even the New York Times is admitting that. What I was refuting was the canard that Rittenhouse was too young to have any business being where he was.

      A Random Xoogler has already written most of the reply to you that I would have so I won’t except to emphasize that a Presidential callup is not required for the militia to act in the event of a breakdown in civil order.

      Much of the point of the “unorganized militia” is that the people in arms have the right and duty to respond to local threats of which the President may be completely unaware until long after the fact. Remember that the U.S.’s militia system evolved from the ancestral British one in response to Indian raiding and brigandage.

      >I sometimes think you had a close encounter with Cthulhu!

      That’s actually pretty close to what happened to me, psychologically, after I read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and multiple sources on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the Great Terror.

      I have looked full in the face of totalitarian evil. It frightened me to my core, and I see its tentacles everywhere, including the three worthless turds Rittenhouse shot.

      1. > That’s actually pretty close to what happened to me, psychologically, after I read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and multiple sources on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the Great Terror.

        I went through this the day I learned about the concept of democide and the 20th century numbers related to it. Everything else I learned after that day merely increased my assessment of the threat’s imminence.

      2. What I was refuting was the canard that Rittenhouse was too young to have any business being where he was.

        Everyone who came in from out of town should have stayed away, as the local officials requested. As I wrote above: I’ll give you some logic for those people who think they’re a member of the militia and imagine that “helping the police” is a good idea: Recognize that Kenosha has a local, homegrown protest and the police don’t want a bunch of amateurs coming in from out-of-state and trying to “help,” because now the police have to deal with two misbehaving groups who are inclined to fight each other! Then do the sane, logical thing and STAY THE FUCK AWAY, so nobody else gets killed!

        A Random Xoogler has already written most of the reply to you that I would have so I won’t except to emphasize that a Presidential callup is not required for the militia to act in the event of a breakdown in civil order.

        Here’s the hard, cold reality of that. Self-organize a militia-style response and get it right, you’re a hero. Make things worse and you’re a schmuck. Also, keep in mind that the militia law is federal, which means that if local law-enforcement thinks you’re a schmuck you get tried in state court, then make your appeals in state court, then get to go into the Federal system and argue that you were a legally-constituted militia. Get it wrong and you’re out a bare-minimum of a hundred-thousand dollars and you still wind up in jail.

        I don’t object to the idea of self-organizing a militia to deal with some threat. I hate the idea that people get caught up in these very ideological positions, don’t understand the legal system or the difference between federal and state court, and try to organize something like, “let’s be a militia and help the Kenosha cops because they’re overwhelmed” without a clear understanding about what happens if they’re judged to be schmucks.

        If Rittenhouse couldn’t appropriately assess this risk he shouldn’t have been there.

        That’s actually pretty close to what happened to me, psychologically, after I read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” and multiple sources on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the Great Terror.

        I’m going to have to think about that for a little while – my current response isn’t helpful.

        1. Everyone who came in from out of town should have stayed away,

          Does that also apply to the antifa rioters and arsonists or only to the people protecting local businesses from said rioters and arsonists. Also, by the way Kyle lives 20 minutes away and was protecting a friend’s business.

          as the local officials requested.

          Well said officials hadn’t done anything about the previous three nights of riots and arson.

          As I wrote above: I’ll give you some logic for those people who think they’re a member of the militia and imagine that “helping the police” is a good idea: Recognize that Kenosha has a local, homegrown protest

          Except most of the protestors were also from out of town.

          and the police don’t want a bunch of amateurs coming in from out-of-state and trying to “help,”

          The behavior of the rank and file officers suggests otherwise.

          Then do the sane, logical thing and STAY THE FUCK AWAY, so nobody else gets killed!

          But having antifa including out-of-town antifa engage in riots and arson is perfectly safe.

          Now I realize truth isn’t you leftists’ strong point, but that paragraph had one of the highest density of lies and BS I’ve ever seen.

          1. Recognize that Kenosha has a local, homegrown protest

            Except most of the protestors were also from out of town.

            I don’t see how that makes any difference. Supposing the “protesters” had all been local, how would that have made it any better? How would it have reduced the victims’ need for protection, which the police were not giving?

        2. Everyone who came in from out of town should have stayed away, as the local officials requested.

          Why should they? They didn’t come to “help the police”, they came to do the job the police either couldn’t or refused to do, of protecting the victims.

          This is the first I’m hearing that Rittenhouse knew the car dealer he was protecting. But it doesn’t matter whether he knew him or not, whether he was a friend or a stranger. He was an innocent person in need of help, and Rittenhouse is a responsible young man with strong sense of civic duty, so he came to the man’s rescue. What the police thought of it was completely irrelevant to him and it should be completely irrelevant to us.

          By definition protecting the victims of violence cannot possibly make a situation worse. It can either make it better or make no difference.

          1. I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you go to Kenosha and discuss your ideas with the families of the dead and injured people there? I’m sure they’ll set you straight very quickly on any number of your delusional beliefs!

            1. Which families would those be? Those of the three violent criminals who attempted to murder Rittenhouse? Why would I want to discuss anything with them? Shooting those three didn’t make things worse, it made things better. Tell me how Rittenhouse and his friends protecting those people’s victims could possibly have made anything worse.

            2. > Why don’t you go to Kenosha

              Unless you’re also planning to go to Kenosha to talk to the people who had property destroyed or sustained injuries from the rioters, this is yet another example of Leftist hypocrisy, Rules imposed on others that the Rulemaker would never deign to accept for himself.

                1. Uh yeah, I did, meaning “come see what it’s really like instead of just issuing diktats from whatever preserve you live in”.

                  Since I actually do live here myself, I fail to see what you are finding in common between the two requests. You’re sitting on your high horse demanding Milhouse go somewhere you have no intention of going.

    3. > Third, even if the idea that Kyle is a member of the militia is correct, it’s not a “get out of jail free card.” You can’t say “I’m a member of the militia and I was self-dispatching when I killed that guy.”

      > In the U.S. people may choose whatever politics they prefer, and are not executed for this.

      > Fifth, in the absence of a (judged as) legitimate insurrection, people are entitled to a trial before they are executed.

      Its clear you have to lie Trout. I don’t expect this to be a cause for introspection, given your past posting.

      All available evidence shows people chasing and attacking Kyle, in situations where Kyle is actively retreating, before Kyle shoots anyone. Any mention of the militia has been in context of why he might or might not be breaking the law by being present in Kenosha with a rifle.

      Kyle didn’t execute anyone for their politics, or for having judged anyone as an insurrectionist, or because he ‘felt like it’ and wants to use federal militia law as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

      1. Or he could have stayed home. The effect of “we’re a militia” is two deaths and an injury wouldn’t have happened if the idiots had stayed home. Maybe “execution” isn’t the best word, but English doesn’t have a “dead because an idiot, who opposed the politics of the people he shot and had been egged on by a president who likes raising a mob, couldn’t be arsed to think through the implications of running around a riot with a gun.”

        Maybe we could create such a word. I propose that anyone killed by an idiot who shouldn’t have been there in the first place should now be referred to as “rittenhoused.” We could say “The poor guy went to a protest which turned violent when the right-wing militia showed up and got rittenhoused.”

        1. “Or he could have stayed home. The effect of “we’re a militia” is two deaths and an injury wouldn’t have happened if the idiots had stayed home.”

          So… why are they the effect of “we’re a militia”? Why isn’t it an effect of “let’s chase this armed guy who’s trying to avoid shooting us”? Or an effect of “let’s go to Kenosha and mess up people/places”?
          (note: I’m not sure if any of the other men involved in the Rittenhouse incident were local or not)

          Rittenhouse made a decision to inject himself into a violent situation, yes. But so did the people he shot. At minimum, there would appear to be equal culpability on both sides. And given the evidence to date of who was being aggressive vs who was being defensive, it would seem (barring conflicting evidence) that the “bell curve of culpability” was skewed *away* from Rittenhouse, rather than towards.

          1. Because the guys Rittenhouse shot were common criminals – looters or idiots with some kind of “property damage” ideology – whatever they were, they were ordinary scofflaws, which unfortunately is not uncommon.

            What concerns me in my replies is always Eric’s top post. Let the idea that some kid with a gun can self-dispatch as a member of the militia become common and accepted and now you’ve got mob rule. You can kiss the idea of a fair trial or of being arrested and still having rights completely out the window – if you’re suspected of something the mob will do as it will, without even the barest nodd towards justice. (Not that our system is great at “justice,” – don’t get me started – but at least we try.)

            1. Justice went out the window when the authorities said that mobs could loot and burn if they used the barest fig leaf or “racial justice” as an excuse. And fellow travelers like yourself sprung up to support the idea.

        2. > Or he could have stayed home.

          Sure, he could have ignored the call from a friend begging him to come help defend said friend’s property in the midst of a rapidly escalating riot that had already resulted in $50 milliion in damages. Maybe you don’t consider yourself to have an obligation to a friend in such a circumstance; that’s fine, it’s your choice. Maybe you don’t consider anyone else to have a right to try to help a friend in such a circumstance; that’s tough shit, because they’re not asking you.

          > two deaths and an injury wouldn’t have happened if the idiots had stayed home

          And who knows how much more property damage and violence would have been perpetrated not against police but private citizens, if nobody made any attempt to resist?

          > Maybe we could create such a word.

          Ooh, have we descended into the “utterly tasteless” portion of tonight’s program?

          To Rosenbaum: to join in an angry mob attempting to kill an individual who had the temerity to attempt to defend “private” property, instead of dropping his trousers, bending over, and taking the “FUCK CAPITALISM!!! WOO!!!” stick all the way up his ass.

          1. Whether the car dealer was a friend or a stranger makes no difference. The point is that Rittenhouse and his friends were there in a purely defensive capacity, and thus could not possibly have caused any violence.

            1. “Rittenhouse… could not possibly have caused any violence?” Next you’re going to tell me he didn’t shoot anyone!

              I respect your right to take a pro-Rittenhouse position, however awful I might find it, but you don’t get to use an alternate set of very delusional facts. Defensively or otherwise, There Was Violence and Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two of them. Don’t pretend there wasn’t violence, or that Rittenhouse being there made things any better.

              And don’t give me any shit about the word “caused” being the crucial word here. It’s not like anyone (such as the local leaders of law-enforcement) didn’t see that one coming, or that anyone with a brain couldn’t see that a bunch of armed yahoos showing up at a politically, racially fraught protest/riot was a very high-risk proposition!

              1. If showing up armed at a riot was a high risk proposition, then the rioters should have stayed home, and Rittenhouse could have cleaned graffiti in peace, and felt foolish about having to carry an unneeded firearm all night.

                You keep acting like the riot was an inevitable force of nature and the rioters had no moral agency. Thus, the only person who had an onus to change their behavior was Rittenhouse. But you’re absolutely wrong, and it was the rioters that caused the violence and should have not done so. Either by not going to Kenosha or not rioting or at the very least, not assaulting the armed man.

                1. I’m assuming that everyone knows (including me) that rioters shouldn’t riot. What happens after the riots start is the question we’re debating here.

                  And you might consider an important question as we debate all this: If an official person, such as a police officer, kills or injures a member of my community, am I obligated to avoid protesting due to the possibility that someone might use that protest as a cover for their violent tendencies? That person might be a so-called ally with a philosophy of property destruction, an agent provocateur working for the other side, a looter or criminal who’s simply being opportunistic about the possibilities that a protest is happening, a cointelpro-type operative, or even someone who might get mad and start breaking things because the police handle the protest inappropriately…

                  Regardless, do I have an obligation to avoid organizing a protest on this kind of basis? Or do I just start my perfectly legal, First Amendment protected protest and let the police handle the fallout if someone else breaks the law?

                  What’s being at least implied throughout the course of this discussion is that Black people shouldn’t protest because a riot might break out – and once the riot does break out we’re just going to declare that everyone involved is a commie and shoot them! So what’s everyone’s position here?

                  1. Nobody has ever suggested that people have no right to protest peacefully, even if the cause in whose name they’re doing so is a lie. And nobody is shooting anyone who is protesting peacefully. There has been absolutely no violence, by police or by anti-communist private people, against peaceful protesters. There has been no threat of such violence.

                    Rittenhouse and his fellows were there for one purpose only: To protect the victims of commie rioters. Anyone who was not a commie rioter was in absolutely no danger from them. And even commie rioters who were in the act of attacking Rittenhouse were in no danger from him unless they left him with no choice but to shoot them.

                    1. “There has been absolutely no violence, by police or by anti-communist private people, against peaceful protesters. There has been no threat of such violence.”

                      That’s nonsense. If you’re interested in the details, you might read Part IV of Wikipedia’s article on the George Floyd protests – I’m not a huge fan of Wikipedia, but it’s a good source of links and provides much fodder for further research:

                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests

                      Also note that more than 90 percent of all the protests have been nonviolent. Note that the CNN link I’ve provided below has a link to the full report. The notes on counter-protests turning violent and aggressive police responses are very interesting if you want to further educate yourself:

                      https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/04/us/blm-protests-peaceful-report-trnd/index.html

                    2. Also note that more than 90 percent of all the protests have been nonviolent. Note that the CNN link I’ve provided below has a link to the full report. The notes on counter-protests turning violent and aggressive police responses are very interesting if you want to further educate yourself:

                      This reads like the usual type of statistical flim-flam I’ve come to associate with these kinds of activist social “scientific” report. Here are some of the tricks I’ve noticed:

                      1) Using all statistics based on number of protests without reference to size.

                      2) No mention of what methodology was used to determine what counts as a protest or what counts as distinct protests, versus one big protests. This gives a great deal of leeway to fudge the numbers.

                      3) Frequent use of passive voice to confuse causal readers about who was responsible for violence.

                      4) My favorite example of blatenlty deceptive framing compare the following quotes:

                      The vast majority of demonstration events associated with the BLM movement are non-violent (see map below). In more than 93% of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators have not engaged in violence or destructive activity.

                      and

                      A Violent Government Response

                      (..)

                      Despite the fact that demonstrations associated with the BLM movement have been overwhelmingly peaceful, more than 9% — or nearly one in 10 — have been met with government intervention, compared to 3% of all other demonstrations.

                      So according to there methodology ~10% of protests have been violent and ~10% of protests have been met with government intervention. (Gee, almost as if violence gets met with a government response.) The former is deemed “overwhelmingly peaceful”, the latter a “violent response”.

                    3. Nobody has ever suggested that people have no right to protest peacefully

                      I can do that for you. Protesting is irresponsible and you shouldn’t be able to do it. Also, however many locks the porn is behind, newspapers should be behind two more and require at least 15 years more seniority.

                  2. I’m assuming that everyone knows (including me) that rioters shouldn’t riot. What happens after the riots start is the question we’re debating here.

                    Unfortunately not.

                    Regardless, do I have an obligation to avoid organizing a protest on this kind of basis? Or do I just start my perfectly legal, First Amendment protected protest and let the police handle the fallout if someone else breaks the law?

                    Why is it that leftists always claim it is impossible to organize a protest without it turning into a riot, while conservatives never seem to have any trouble doing so? Also, why is this something like the fifth time I have to ask you that question?

                    1. Why is it that leftists always claim it is impossible to organize a protest without it turning into a riot…

                      This is a perfect example why I despise you. At no point did I say “…it is impossible to organize a protest without it turning into a riot…” – and you know that and you have put words in my mouth. (You might Google “What is the failure mode of clever?” since you’re currently engaging in a public display of that particular failure mode.)

                      In fact, over 90 percent of the protests following George Floyd’s death have been peaceful, and the BLM counter-protestors have been violent far more often than BLM. (The CNN link contains a link to the full report.)

                      https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/04/us/blm-protests-peaceful-report-trnd/index.html

                      If you want to be respected, try posting real data rather than twisting my words around.

                    2. This is a perfect example why I despise you. At no point did I say “…it is impossible to organize a protest without it turning into a riot…”

                      True you did not say those exact words “it is impossible to organize a protest without it turning into a riot”, but you did spend a paragraph engaging in self-pity about how hard it is to do.

                    3. I explain what’s wrong with the study you linked to here. Bascially, it’s almost a textbook exercise in statistical flim-flam.

                      If you want to be respected, try posting real data

                      Care to explain why you tried to pass of such a BS study as “real data”?

                  3. Anyone trying to stop violent rioters from further assaulting people or destroying property is a good guy (in the gender neutral sense). Anyone effectively blaming good people from defending themselves against bad people intent on harming them for merely being in the way of harming people and destroying things, is well, Wormtongue. Therefore, Wormtongue is now thy name.

                    1. I’d been trying to decide on the best appellation for Trout, and you, sir, have found it. Adopted. Thank you.

                    2. Sorry, I already called Wormtongue for Eugine – do have to look over my shoulder and copy me all day long? Jeez!

                      You can call me Sauron if you’d like. Or Lord Vader, or maybe Kang or Koloth if you’d like. I’d be fine with Morgoth as well, or maybe Ming the Merciless – that’s got a nice ring to it. Or if you’d prefer we could go with Baron Harkonnen or Agent Smith, or even Chuck Denomolos, but I’ve already reserved Wormtongue for Eugine – who still hasn’t told us whether he’s the same Eugine Nier who was kicked off of Less Wrong for up/downvote abuse!

                    3. I didn’t see that, Troutwaxer. Sorry. I honestly didn’t see it.
                      That’s one problem with this site — it’s damnably hard to keep track of what’s been read and what’s new.

                      That said, are you sure your invocation of it wasn’t a case of psychological projection?

                    4. No prob.

                      If I were to liken myself to a character in Lord of the Rings, it would probably be – not for his heroic qualities, but for his don’t-give-two-fucks willingness to tell someone they’re full of shit – Gandalf. He wasn’t exactly the most diplomatic person in the world, and I’m not either.

                      I really don’t get how I can repeat the same message over and over again, telling the same people they got it wrong, for the same reasons – mob rule, inflammatory language, practical-effect in a real court, blah-blah and have them insist that I’m continually changing my story and engaging in gaslighting. It’s not like my message to the world is any different than it was when I first told Eric I thought he was being pretty clueless on the whole militia thing!

                      Or is it some kind of I’m-rubber-you’re-glue thing from second grade going on? I don’t get it!

                      -Laughs!-

                    5. @Troutwaxer (why do you wax your trout, anyway?)

                      I agree with you the militia argument is a bit out there (I have doubts it has much validity unless there’s a chain of command and it’s called out by the governor or POTUS unless it’s local citizens protecting their own neighborhood in case of natural catastrophe or civil unrest), but what Rittenhouse and his buddies did seems only to have been protecting a specific private business against depredations by the lawless. How Kyle got separated from them isn’t clear to me, but from the point video coverage starts (and the NYT timeline covers), Kyle was pretty clearly trying to avoid confrontation. It’s quite clear he didn’t fire the first shot, and I doubt any impartial jury would find that when he shot at Rosenbaum the pedophile who was chasing him (and catching up with him), that his life was in danger and the man directly behind him who’d been screaming threats and obscenities not long before wasn’t a direct threat to his life (I’m assuming you’ve actually followed links provided by others previously and seen that for yourself). Rittenhouse clearly wasn’t spoiling for a fight, unlike many others. Mostly, if not entirely, on the rioters’ side (self-defense against convicted felons, including one with a pistol in hand who admitted in the hospital that his only regret was that he hadn’t been able to empty his pistol into Rittenhouse first).

                    6. It’s nice to see at least some agreement. I’ve been through some self-defense training and one of the things I really internalized was the “don’t get in situations where you might have to fight” rule.

                      Also, if you treat Kenosha and the Portland counter-protests as experiments, they aren’t very successful, with 4 deaths and a very serious injury between them, including one guy who was on the Republican side.

              2. Rittenhouse didn’t commit any violence, he responded appropriately to violence. Are you seriously claiming that his presence caused those three animals, and all their packmates who are still unharmed due to his extreme discipline, to attack him?!

                If he hadn’t been there, would there have been less violence?! No, there would have been more, because the people he was protecting would have been attacked.

              3. And don’t give me any shit about the word “caused” being the crucial word here. It’s not like anyone (such as the local leaders of law-enforcement) didn’t see that one coming, or that anyone with a brain couldn’t see that a bunch of armed yahoos showing up at a politically, racially fraught protest/riot was a very high-risk proposition!

                The “protestors” burning down the town for two days prior couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it.

                Seriously if you’re going to keep lying could you at least vary the lies you tell.

                  1. We’re discussing your weird claim that Rittenhouse somehow caused the violence two days before he came to defend the victims of that violence!

                    1. Where did I make that claim? I’ve said, more-or-less endless that Rittenhouse should have stayed home, but I don’t recall ever making the claim that he traveled two days backwards in time and somehow touched off a riot!

                  2. Yes and the fact that the “protestors” had been rioting and burning down the town for two days prior is the reason why he showed up and thus very relevant to his case. This should be obvious, but you appear to be an idiot.

    1. >https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/The-Kenosha-Shootings-Kyle-Rittenhouse-A-Tactical-and-Legal-Analysis-UPDATED-1st-Shooter-ID-d-/5-2362796/

      Endorsed, The ARFCOM guy did a spectacularly good job of tactical analysis based on the videos.

  6. “Rottenhouse is almost certainly going to skate”

    The misspelling and verb choice are oddly incongruent with the overall tone of your reaction to the event.

    Young Mr Rittenhouse is almost certainly going to suffer much the same way George Zimmermann has suffered, even when the certainly-deserved acquittal by jury trial restores his theoretical freedom.

    1. Rittenhouse might successfully claim self-defense on the murder and attempted murder charges, but I’d predict that he’ll be found guilty of those charges which include the word “reckless.”.

    2. I suspect the game plan is for L. Wood to sue the pants off the press after acquittal for the “white supremacist” bullshit they were printing. That’s his business model after all.

      1. And he’ll be fully justified. I only wish the Kenosha DA were not immune from suit for malicious prosecution.

        1. Alas, my calls to strip prosecutors and judges of their self-granted immunity are falling on deaf ears.

          1. I heard you. I think it’s a good idea. Maybe not remove it entirely, because bullshit suits against the cops or a DA could certainly become a thing, but it should be much easier to sue over an injustice.

            1. Maybe not remove it entirely, because bullshit suits against the cops or a DA could certainly become a thing

              Sort of like all the bullshit complaints you’ve been making against cops in this discussion.

              1. What have I said about cops in this discussion? Are you sure you aren’t confusing me with some other poster?

          2. To be tried by whom? Other judges?

            One solution to this problem has been to make DA’s and judges elected positions answerable to voters. Which probably worked at some point, unfortunately no one pays attention to down-ticket races these days.

            1. County prosecutors (state’s attorney or district attorney) are elected in every state I know about. One of the roots of the current problem is that George Soros has spent ten of millions of dollars to get leftist prosecutors elected wherever possible. For instance Kimesha Foxx in Cook County Illinois (i.e. Chicago). Under Foxx, violent felony charges are routinely dropped or reduced to misdemeanors at a much higher rate than under any previous prosecutor. Foxx has also announced a policy of not prosecuting retail theft under $800 value, and her office wouldn’t press charges against arrested looters and rioters.

              Similar policies have been established by Soros-funded prosecutors in Saint Louis, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

              As to judges: here in Illinois, judges are elected. In Cook County, the only contested judicial elections are Democrat primaries. Judges are subject to retention votes every few years, but no judge has lost a retention vote in at least a decade, and only a tiny number ever have.

  7. He violated a WI law related to the age requirement for carrying a rifle….which is a BS law, of course.

    These absurd charges are likely going to result in him facing trial. That’s where jury nullification should take over.

    Kyle should walk scot free if there is any true justice left in America.

    1. > He violated a WI law related to the age requirement for carrying a rifle….which is a BS law, of course.

      Again, analysis kdk posted above, and which is nearly identical to analysis at the http://www.ar15.com link Reziac posted above, strongly suggests he wasn’t even doing that much. (Actual violators of the relevant clauses would have to be not just under 18, but under 16.)

  8. He should, but the DA is doing everything to make sure he doesn’t – bail is set at $2 million.

    Eric, are you going to vote Trump in this election?

    1. >Eric, are you going to vote Trump in this election?

      I’m not sure yet. Normally I vote Libertarian, but with an actual violent Communist insurgency going down not voting for Trump may have become a luxury I can no longer afford.

      1. Um, have you been paying attention to what captial-L Libertarian party has become lately?

        1. You mean out of touch, strategically inept, and entirely ineffective?

          Doesn’t sound like they’ve really changed much, to me.

          1. Also, trying to out-Democrat the Democrats. I suppose that falls under ‘strategically inept’, but also ‘pozzed’ as well.

            1. I like this guy. Deliberately attempting to split the proggie vote to get Trump elected is a good thing. Wouldn’t vote for him as that would act against his strategy, but I like him.

      2. Also bear in mind that the Democrats are attempting to nullify the electoral college with their so-called compact. A number of states have bound themselves to cast electoral votes for the purported winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the vote in their own state. Thus it becomes possible for vote fraud in a state controlled by one party to control the outcome in other states.

        So “throwaway voting” in a lopsided state is no longer cost-free.

        1. The “National Popular Vote” (.com) bill, as written, does not take effect until states totaling 270 electoral votes have enacted it. That has not happened yet, though it may by election day.

          It also may be subject to challenge as being an interstate compact not approved by Congress.

          1. An improbable but delightful future would have (a) the national popular vote agreement go into effect in those states, and (b) Trump win the popular vote but an unquestionable margin, giving him a huge landslide in the Electoral College.

          2. On July 5, 2020, SCOTUS released a unanimous decision in the three ‘faithless elector’ cases, and held (quoting the NY Post): The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that states can require presidential electors to back their states’ popular vote winner in the Electoral College.
            In passing, this decision also held that a state requiring an elector to vote in accordance with any other formula, such as the total votes of *other* states, is unconstitutional.
            So the National Popular Vote Act is unconstitutional, unless embodied as an Amendment to the Constitution, 270 electoral votes or not.

            1. I assume you’re referring to Chiafalo v. Washington, and actually many legal scholars read that decision as going the other way — that it would permit the National Popular Vote bills. Well, except that as written such state laws are also in violation of Article 1, Section 10 (3rd clause) of the Constitution, which says that an interstate agreement requires the consent of Congress. [Per linked annotations: “The word ‘agreement,’ does not necessarily import any direct and express stipulation; nor is it necessary that it should be in writing. If there is a verbal understanding, to which both parties have assented, and upon which both are acting, it is an ‘agreement.'” Since the popular vote laws in states only take effect after sufficient other states ratify such laws, they form by law an “agreement” between states forbidden by A1S10.] And this is VERY long-settled case law — the core decision being Florida v. Georgia in 1854 (Quote from the decision: “By the 10th section of the 1st Article of the Constitution, no state can enter into any agreement or compact with another state, without the consent of Congress. …. This provision is obviously intended to guard the rights and interests of the other states, and to prevent any compact or agreement between any two states, which might affect injuriously the interest of the others. And the right and the duty to protect these interests is vested in the general government.”)

              So: given the assured and swift court case which would ensure to block any changes, the National Popular Vote will definitely not take effect this year and (short of an act of Congress) not ever.

            2. In passing, this decision also held that a state requiring an elector to vote in accordance with any other formula, such as the total votes of *other* states, is unconstitutional.

              Really?! Where in the decision does it say that? And on what grounds could it be unconstitutional? The constitution itself is clear that the legislature can choose any method it likes for selecting the electors. It can choose them by lottery, or it can simply pass a statute delegating their selection to the DNC. Now that the court says it can also tell them how to vote, why can’t it tell them to always vote for the Democrat, or to vote for the candidate whose name comes first in the alphabet, or whatever other crazy rule it comes up with?

      3. I consider it, in cases like this, a luxury that I’m in a state where my vote doesn’t matter (NJ – solidly blue). I get to be lazy and not have to make any kind of hard decision.

        The way I see it, if Trump wins, the riots get worse, and the military will have to be called in. And the military taking actions against Americans is bad, and might be used for worse things by future regimes.

        If Harris wins, the riots probably stop, but the lessons learned are “if you don’t like things, riot until you get what you want.

        Both are terrible outcomes.

        Me, I get to vote for either Vermin Supreme if I want my vote to be “the system is a joke, fuck this shit” or Brian Carroll if my vote is “I’m taking the moral high ground and voting for something closer to the ideal”. Or just stay home, because write-in votes aren’t reported by my state, so it’s a meaningless exercise.

        1. If Harris wins, the riots probably stop, but the lessons learned are “if you don’t like things, riot until you get what you want.

          The left has made crystal clear that them getting back into power means a campaign of revenge to ensure they never leave power again.

          So no, it is doubtful that the riots will stop. They will know that they are invulnerable.

          1. And if that happens, it means the militia must mobilize immediately, before the police can come around and take their guns one by one under red-flag laws.

        2. I don’t think the military will need to be called in to quell most of the riots. Places like Kenosha have shown that local and federal law enforcement is sufficient to restore order, if the local political structure is willing to use them.

          As for the places where the local politicians aren’t willing to put a stop to the riots, assuming there are any after the riots outlive any political usefulness, you’re now talking about a group that calls itself a government abdicating its responsibilities and terrorizing the population. If that’s not a situation where military force is acceptable then military force is never acceptable.

        3. My situation (south side of Chicago) is similar, with the added concern of “do I want to risk physical violence against me or, worse yet, my wife for being ‘suspected Trump supporters’, given that our votes don’t count for anything here (solidly blue as you say) anyway?”

            1. But what do the national totals count for, other than the losing party being able to shriek “but we won the popular vote!” (conveniently forgetting all the years they were perfectly content to win the electoral vote)

              It’s the electoral vote that determines who’s elected president, isn’t it?

        4. Why do you think the riots stop if Harris wins? You think the Democrats can put that genie back in the bottle?

          1. I don’t think either party has much influence over these kinds of protests (which then turn into riots.) I don’t think anyone but the police can make it go away. From approximately 2015 forward any police officer must assume that whatever they do will be on video, whether it be cellphone video, a security camera, or body-cams. And every police officer must assume that whatever they do will make it’s way to the public somehow. They must assume that the public will react to what they see on video, as in Kenosha, rather than all the criminal/victim issues involved with the deep history of the case.

            This is not necessarily a bad thing on the part of the public, as the negotiations on a plea deal with Breonna Taylor’s former boyfriend show:

            https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/lawyer-plea-offer-implicated-breonna-taylor-drug-ring-72753654

            It’s been a long time since I read anything as ugly or cynical.

            What I can imagine Biden doing, that Trump won’t do, is that he’ll be willing to do things like send the FBI out to investigate a police-shooting which looks bad, find some way to impose Federal penalties on people who show up uninvited to “keep order” in cities which are having troubles, and make speeches which don’t pander to white fright!

            1. I don’t think either party has much influence over these kinds of protests (which then turn into riots.)

              Yet somehow we only get riots only happen when Democrat officials order the police to stand down.

              What I can imagine Biden doing, that Trump won’t do, is that he’ll be willing to do things like send the FBI out to investigate a police-shooting which looks bad, find some way to impose Federal penalties on people who show up uninvited to “keep order” in cities which are having troubles, and make speeches which don’t pander to white fright!

              In other words Biden will force the police and local militia to stand down so that rioters can loot and burn without opposition. Also get more Blacks killed in disorganized violence due to Ferguson effect.

              1. Umm… who’s been president during the last six months when order has broken down so badly in our cities? Was his name Biden? Was he a Democrat? Did the current president succeed in calming things down? How well have the current president’s strategies and tactics worked for calming things down? Once again, is the current president named Biden?

                And please don’t insult my intelligence by claiming that Democratic mayors are letting their downtowns burn to make the president look bad. Let’s be real here – if you’re a mayor of any political party in the U.S. and rioters are lighting things on fire in your city, you’re going to accept useful help if it’s offered, even if that help comes from someone of a different political party. If I was the mayor of Someplace and rioters were setting things on fire, and I thought bringing in an untrained militia from out of state would help, I’d certainly do it. But nobody is that stupid! (Which is why the Mayor of Kenosha asked the Governor to send in the National Guard, and told the militias to stay away!)

                1. And please don’t insult my intelligence

                  Don’t be ridiculous, one can’t insult that which doesn’t exist.

                  by claiming that Democratic mayors are letting their downtowns burn to make the president look bad. Let’s be real here – if you’re a mayor of any political party in the U.S. and rioters are lighting things on fire in your city, you’re going to accept useful help if it’s offered, even if that help comes from someone of a different political party.

                  Empirical observation suggests otherwise.

                  1. Say his name. Who’s been the president while law and order are breaking down across the country. Say his name. It’s not Biden, is it? He’s not a Democrat, is he? What’s his name? Show a little respect for decency and truth by typing his name in the reply box below, or forever earn my disrespect! Say. His. Name.

                    1. Are you implying the president is responsible for every little thing that happens in America? Especially when it’s bad? Seriously, it’s like you have no idea what Federalism is. I somehow doubt, though, that you have absolutely no idea.

                      I’m starting to agree with some of the other commenters here that, like Winter, you’re being deliberately obtuse. Given your repeated insistence that you are not left-liberal, just a centrist who caucuses with them, I have to wonder if you’re actually a shill.

                    2. Did you read the comment you replied to? Discussions with you tend to have the following pattern:

                      1) You state some BS.

                      2) Someone else points out why what you wrote is BS.

                      3) You ignore the reply and repeat the same BS.

                      If I didn’t know better, I might conclude Troutwaxer is a bot and an extremely primitive bot at that.

                    3. @ Random Xoogler

                      Of course not. But I keep hearing about how bad Biden is going to be, and how bad the Democrats will be, and my question is “bad compared to whom?” Compared to the guy who’s the president right now while order is breaking down and millions of people are sick with COVID-19? Bad compared to him? What party currently occupies the the White House and Senate? If you’ve got any respect for the truth, answer the goddam questions. Before you or any other ignoramus calls me a liar again, answer two simple questions. Who’s the current president? Which party currently occupies the White House.

                    4. Of course not. But I keep hearing about how bad Biden is going to be, and how bad the Democrats will be, and my question is “bad compared to whom?” Compared to the guy who’s the president right now while order is breaking down

                      Ah the “nice country you have there, be a shame if someone were to burn it down argument”.

                2. > And please don’t insult my intelligence by claiming that Democratic mayors are letting their downtowns burn to make the president look bad.

                  When the rioting in Chicago got to its worst (targeting some of the most expensive stores on Magnificent Mile), I was actually surprised Mayor Lightfoot took as much action as she did — nightly closing of all highway entrances and exits in the downtown and surrounding areas, including I-90/94.

                  But it’s certainly true (https://herald-review.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/chicago-mayor-we-do-not-need-federal-troops-in-chicago/article_f0d825ec-cc39-586d-ab6b-40d6b95de7b6.html) that she repeatedly refused any assistance from Trump or other federal sources.

                  Once again I love how the Left makes all the definitions and calls all the shots in these “debates”. When Federal troops _are_ sent in (Portland) Trump must be a fascist dictator. When local authorities refuse “outside interference” Trump must not be doing enough.

            2. I have three words for anyone silly enough to think Biden will bring about law enforcement accountability.

              “Fast And Furious”

              Joe Biden is the epitome of the modern Democrat politician. A savagely corrupt sexual predator, driven by no principles beyond avarice and cupidity, instantly ready to descend to the lowest depths of perfidy. A man with all the vices of a Kennedy with none of the virtues.

              1. You mean to tell me that there actually was/is a Kennedy* who had virtues? I prefer to believe my lying eyes!
                *(The Massachusetts Kennedy’s not John Kennedy of Louisiana)

                1. The Kennedys in general have social graces and some have displayed physical courage. The Bidens, on the contrary, have no redeeming qualities *at all* that I can discern. None.

                  1. Jill Biden has an Ed.D. and has spent much of her life teaching, including remedial teaching and teaching the developmentally disabled. She taught at community college while serving as Second Lady.

                    Let that sink in for a second.

                    Joe Biden’s wife is more qualified in matters of education than Trump’s Secretary of Education!

                    And she has social grace out the wazoo. Melania Trump, by contrast, has removed Jacqueline Kennedy’s crabapple trees from the White House rose garden — establishing a perfect metaphor for the Trump Presidency. Historians in the future will remark that instead of “draining the swamp”, the effect of the Trump administration was to “rip up the rose garden”.

                    1. Well Jeff, at least we know what Trumps doing instead of “draining the swamp.” He’s “ripping up the rose garden.”

                    2. Joe Biden’s wife is more qualified in matters of education than Trump’s Secretary of Education!

                      Given the kind of BS they teach in Ed. schools, I find this rather doubtful.

                    3. Is there some reason that the renovations to the Rose Garden made during the Kennedy administration are sacred and must never be changed? Kennedy renovated the garden, replacing designs made by Roosevelt and Wilson. What’s the actual rule which First Lady can change the garden design of a previous First Lady?

                    4. Is there some reason that the renovations to the Rose Garden made during the Kennedy administration are sacred and must never be changed?

                      Because Orange Man Bad.

              2. In any case, given his evident Senility what if anything Joe Biden thinks is irrelevant. If he wins the country will be de facto run by an informal backroom committee of his handlers. That’s not a recipe for the kind of decisive action necessary to restore law and order.

            3. > he’ll be willing to do things like send the FBI out to investigate a police-shooting which looks bad,

              This would be the same FBI that whitewashed Hillary’s handling of classified information?

              This would be the same FBI that *tried to stage a coup* with a document that the DNC and Hillary campaign paid for?

              Really?

          2. The riots are greatly helped by “stand down” policing and “catch and release” DAs. The police senior leadership and the district attorneys are all Party members, who will do what is required.

          3. Have you heard the shrieking of the looniest of the left since Trump entered office? That’s what most of this is ultimately about. They are angry at the Orange Man. I dislike him pretty strongly myself, but he doesn’t live rent-free in my head 24/7.

            I think if Harris gets into office, they get to declare victory. Also, the political usefulness of destroying the economy will be over, so people can get back to work and/or school.

            1. I dislike him pretty strongly myself

              Do you have an actual reason besides “all my leftist friends think he’s icky and I want to fit in with them”.

              I think if Harris gets into office, they get to declare victory.

              This is giving me “peace in our time” vibes. “If we give the all-consuming monster what it wants, maybe it’ll declare victory and leave us alone.”

              Seriously, we the Democrats win they’ll use their power to keep marching through the institutions without pushback. We can then look forward to such joys as a leftist SCOTUS declaring “hate speech” isn’t covered by the first amendment and UK-style thought police.

              1. My political leanings don’t make me friends with many people. Maybe 0.1% of Americans have political opinions similar to mine. I don’t dislike Trump to make anyone happy.

                Too many reasons to list why I don’t like Trump. He’s a sleazy, dishonest asshole (no more than most politicians, but still bad). As Inkstain mentioned, the bump stock ban — he passed more bona fide gun control than Obama. He’s fully willing to screw those who got him in to office the second it’s expedient to do so. He has done nothing to “drain the swamp” or similar. He is willing to arbitrarily wield the power of his office without even paying lip service to constitutional limits. He’s not conservative, he’s not liberal, he has no ideology other than win and stroke his own ego at all costs.

                Foreign policy wise, I don’t find too much objectionable. Not sure about the trade war with China… macroeconomics isn’t a field I feel competent on. He has reduced our presence in the middle east, which is good.

                I also dislike his rhetoric and style; he’s a boorish lout who makes me wince when I hear him try to explain anything.

                On balance, he’s no worse than most other politicians on the national stage. But I dislike virtually all of them too.

      4. Right now, there are only two major political outcomes of the 2020 election:

        1) a landslide victory for Biden

        2) more riots, violence, and civil unrest, to such a degree that, together with a protracted election-result contestation process that will make Bush v. Gore look like spit in a hurricane, the powers that be are forced to re-evaluate critical parts of the Constitution (including, but not limited to, the electoral college)

        1. Or 3) a major victory for Trump that also gives Republicans control of both houses of Congress even not counting the RINOs, plus replacing many of the Antifa-supporting mayors and governors with Republicans.

          Get there and we’re in the drivers seat to purge crooked police forces and put the patriotic majority of police back to the work they ought to be doing now. That is the only way to keep the civil war (which is already going) short and not very destructive.

          1. That’s the only outcome that doesn’t lead to more riots. If Biden wins the factions on the Left will learn that rioting is an effective political tactic now and will use it to advance their specific agenda.

            If Trump barely wins, especially if the Democrats keep the House, the Left will decide that they could have won if they had just rioted harder, so we’ll see more violence in the run up to the midterms and in 2024.

            Only if there’s a repudiation of Democrats so total that the surviving ones learn that tolerating civic violence is a sure way to electoral Armageddon will we stand a chance of restoring peace to our political process.

          2. I must note, by the way, that E.E. Smith described an electoral situation very similar to this one at the climax of First Lensman, with Boskone controlling one of North America’s two major political parties and expecting to win through massive corruption.

        2. If Biden wins, I would expect the tantrums to increase, since the blackshirts will not expect federal law enforcement to move against them. It will be like having Ted Wheeler’s incompetent ass in the White House.

          Biden JUST got around to saying “rioting is bad m’kay”, after whoever’s spoon feeding him these days noticed that he’s taking a hit in the polls over his campaign staffers paying to bail the brats out of jail.

          These riots aren’t about George Floyd anymore, if indeed they ever were. The rioters are acting out their rage at the fathers who failed them, either by their absence or their failure to teach them right from wrong.

        3. It i clear that the Republicans are in a minority now in the USA. They will lose any election with “One-American-One-Vote”. So they are going for “One-White-Man-One-Vote” with massive voter suppression. Or, if that fails, for a civil war.

          It is no accident that the Conservatives here at A&D are all Anti-Democracy. They know their 19th century ideas are shared by only a minority of Americans.

          Another point is that the police in the USA have been used since its inception to suppress poor people. Whether it is unionizing, civil rights movements, or any other social movements to emancipate minority groups, the police were used to “keep them under control”. Black people have been at the receiving end of this oppression from the very start of the Republic. Even today, or black men the police is their number one threat model.

          1. > Republicans are in a minority now in the USA

            Ooh, that gets them special protected status then, doesn’t it? The SJWs will be out in force to protect them from the ideological assaults of the dominant Left Supremacist State? Us Libertarians are an even _smaller_ minority_, so we’re entitled to an even _bigger_ cut of the grievance pie, n’est ce pas?

            > They will lose any election with “One-American-One-Vote”

            I know you were ignoring all the discussion of the electoral college up above, but the soundbite summary is that the electoral college process only hurts non-democrat schmucks (like me) living in democratic urban enclaves (like Chicago). Unless you’d like to claim that the hinterlands of Montana (say) are peppered with latte-sipping left liberals in amongst the cattle ranchers. Don’t count your tulips before they hatch (or whatever the hell it is tulips do).

            > Or, if that fails, for a civil war.

            Oh, you mean the one already started, where the White Lives Matter movement and Anticom, backed by the Republican, Libertarian, and Marx only knows what other disgusting dissenters, have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in cities across the nation? Or did you have something else in mind?

            > It is no accident that the Conservatives here at A&D are all Anti-Democracy.

            If by that you mean against anachronistic bullshit like the electoral college, then again, way ahead of you Sparky. If by that you mean something else, then it’s also no accident that cows can be traded for magic beans, since most false claims can’t really be classified as “accidents”.

            > Another point is that the police in the USA have been used since its inception to suppress poor people.

            Oh my gawd no, is it true??? Say it isn’t so Ethel??? Oh how you wound us, because yes, it was totally the Union of Soviet Libertarian Republics that taught us how to deploy and implement a secret police force that sent who knows how many thousands of their own citizens to the gulags, and the National Libertarians that deployed their militarized police Brownshirts to exterminate entire ethnic groups within their own borders. Who else’s fault could it be therefore that the increasingly Leftist controlled cities are deploying their police forces to do increasingly shitty things other than ours?

            Let me guess, if I again ask you if you still condone shooting eight year old black girls in the head in the name of the Movement, you will consider that an “insult”, despite that having as much factual basis as your nonsense above.

            1. “Let me guess, if I again ask you if you still condone shooting eight year old black girls in the head in the name of the Movement,”

              Then name those in the BLM movement who condone shooting children? I have not seen a single one, but I might have missed it. You bring up this argument so often, you must have these names.

              For the record, I abhor all killings and I am against the death penalty.

              1. Who in the BLM leadership called out the “mostly peaceful protests” which seem to keep “intensifying” and the resultant collateral damage? Offered a genuine condemnation and pointed out the black lives and livelihoods lost to the riots? Empty platitudes don’t count.

                1. This is not related to the shooting of children. Tell me who in the movement condones shooting children.

                  1. YOU set the standard for “condoning” in the (http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8708#comment-2437210) Rules for Rioters thread, where we were all declared to have “condoned” whatever violations you claimed were going on in Portland due to our insufficient enthusiasm (again by your metric) for stopping them. (The fact that the “violations” — “anonymous unidentified troops”, “undisclosed locations” — vanished in the harsh light of day was also deemed irrelevant by you, the only Authorized Deemer on A&D.)

                    By THAT standard… they all do.

                    Don’t like that? Feel free to a) alter your definition of “condone” or b) admit that you were smoke-blowing and name-calling (“out of arguments”, wasn’t that the corollary?) when you declared us all to be “condoning” this that and the other.

                  2. The new crop of dead children is the direct result of the massive spike in crime that came in the footsteps of the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of the riots and looting. If the BLM leaders condone the “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests that keep “intensifying”, it is entirely right and proper to hold them accountable for the second order effects.

              2. I’m supposed to _name_ them? The Atlanta fucking police haven’t even made _arrests_ in this case, they don’t even have any fucking SUSPECTS (https://www.ajc.com/news/2-months-later-police-still-searching-for-who-killed-8-year-old-secoriea-turner/ZCNPQAFQOJCY3PYCOHXJOUN2QQ/)

                and *I* am supposed to somehow go out and find them?

                I’ve been doing a lot of objecting lately to the deck-stacking leftists typically do in these conversations around here, but holy SHIT that is beyond the pale.

                1. Not who performed the murders, but who condoned them? If you can’t give us a name of someone who said, “Oh yeah, the murder of ________ _______ was totally in service to the movement” then you need to withdraw from this portion of the discussion.

                  1. > but who condoned them? If you can’t give us a name of someone who said, “Oh yeah

                    Sorry, but that’s not how condoning works, at least by Winter’s standard. Again, you guys can back off from that definition of “condone” established against myself and a large number of posters in the other thread, or you can keep it and have it applied in this case as well.

                    > you need to withdraw from this portion of the discussion.

                    If esr asks that, I will immediately do so.

                    1. So we must conclude you cannot name anyone who said these murders were justified. Or anyone who said they should repeated, or nothing should be done to prevent a repeat.

                    2. I say, “Rittenhouse should have stayed home.”

                      You say, “But you’re condoning all these Black on Black murders, just like the bad Black people did!”

                      Not one single person is condoning any goddamn murders. You are making ludicrous accusations and lying through your teeth, and you can’t prove the assertions you’ve made. You have no credibility.

                    3. > You are making ludicrous accusations and lying through your teeth, and you can’t prove the assertions you’ve made.

                      You must agree then that Winter was “making ludicrous accusations, lying through his teeth, and could not prove the assertions he made” when accusing everyone here of “condoning” various alleged civil rites violations in Portland.

                      I’ve said three times now that that’s the binary you have to deal with. Either we’re applying Winter’s definition of condoning in _both_ cases or in _neither_. I don’t give a shit how little credibility you alot me, that’s still the choice you have to make.

                    4. “You must agree then that Winter was “making ludicrous accusations, lying through his teeth, and could not prove the assertions he made” when accusing everyone here of “condoning” various alleged civil rites violations in Portland.”

                      Various people on this blog supported the federal troops when they fired tear gas at the major when he was talking to protesters. Which is a violation of many constitutional rights. These people also fully supported the use of violence against protesters, even when it was against a “wall of moms”.

                      No one, absolutely no one, supported the people who killed the children. No one said these killings were justified. Nothing but horror about these murders.

                      But I see here the Trump effect.

                      You lot claim all kind of outrageous things, COVID is just a flu, Antifa are terrorists, BLM wants to kill children, while you know perfectly well that none of these are true.

                      And when Trump himself tells us that he knew they were not true, you shrug and sprout the same propaganda again.

                      You really do not care what is true or not. The only thing that counts is your opinion, and your ideology.

                      In this, Trumpians are nothing different from the Stalinist of yore.

                    5. You lot claim all kind of outrageous things, COVID is just a flu, Antifa are terrorists, BLM wants to kill children, while you know perfectly well that none of these are true.

                      Meh. Right-wingers and Libertarians lie all the time, but they can’t help it because their leaders lie to them all the time. They swim in lies like a fish swims in water.

                      As to their violent natures, it’s like Jay Gould said, “I can hire one half the working class to kill the other half.” Except that with modern propaganda techniques half the working class will do it for free – they’ll even pay for the bullets.

                    6. > Meh. [Left]-wingers and [Communists] lie all the time, but they can’t help it because their leaders lie to them all the time. They swim in lies like a fish swims in water.

                      FTFY, Trout.

                    7. > > Various people on this blog supported the federal troops

                      Utter bullshit. Multiple posters pointed out it was an easily _anticipatable_ response given the prolonged rioting and destruction taking place across the country. As I said at the time, someone pointing out that whacking a hornet’s nest with a stick is likely to get you stung is not “condoning” or “supporting” hornets.

                    8. Various people on this blog supported the federal troops when they fired tear gas at the major when he was talking to protesters. Which is a violation of many constitutional rights. These people also fully supported the use of violence against protesters, even when it was against a “wall of moms”.

                      Sorry you don’t get to redefine rioters as “protestors” and then claim your rights are being violated. And no getting a “wall of moms” to act as human shields doesn’t help you. If you don’t want to get teargassed, don’t riot and don’t volunteer to serve as a human shield for rioters.

          2. >It i clear that the Republicans are in a minority now in the USA.

            The thing to remember is that American political parties are coalitions of factions, and the exact makeup of each coalition changes from time to time. The stronger factions in each parties will accommodate the weaker factions only to the extent necessary to get 51% (plus margin for error) After that, the weaker factions must either out-compete the other weaker factions, accept being ignored, or switch sides.

            Worse, the coalitions have much better information nowadays, so the stronger factions’ margins for error can be quite small.

            tl;dr: we’ll be at 51%-49%, “everything turned up to 11” forever.

        4. Please explain how (to chose one scenario) a landslide Trump victory will lead to “more riots, violence, and civil unrest”; extra points if your explanation somehow makes this the fault of Bad Orange Man.

      5. It’s not a communist insurgency. Yes, there are commies on the left, just like there are nazis on the right. But nobody is going to let the communists take over. It’s just not going to happen!

        1. But nobody is going to let the communists take over.

          Well hardly anyone on the left is willing to stand up to them, and those that do tend to get cancelled.

          1. I think about 95% of the people with a high-school education will have noticed that communism has always historically been a failure. In fact, I would go a step further and say that communism is the ultimate failure mode of capitalism. Allow two things to happen; first that educational standards weaken, and second that the gap between rich and poor becomes large-enough and common-enough, then communism will start to seem like an appropriate response, mainly due to the lack of education – the sole advantage of communism is that it can be explained to a barefoot peasant in under five minutes.

            My dislike of communism is one of the reasons I prefer a well-enforced, well-regulated capitalism with high progressive tax rates.* Well-enforced, well-regulated capitalism means that everyone can see that the rules are fair and that they are enforced, and this means the system is seen as legitimate by the ordinary person.

            Progressive tax rates keep the gap between the rich and the poor from becoming too large.

            * Progressive in the mathematical sense, not the political sense.

            1. Back when I was decided which state to move to when we left California, I came upon a table of the Gini indices of income inequality for the American states (and the District of Columbia). Now, as a libertarian, I have no ethical problem with income inequality, as long as it’s the product of the market and not of government redistribution or regulatory favor. But I found it striking that the states with the greatest inequality were, first, the most progressive states, such as New York, New Jersey, and California (and the District of Columbia was at the most extreme point), and second, states in the deeper South. In contrast, the states with the least inequality tended to be those with conservative governments, with Utah and Alaska being the two most equal. That rather suggests that standard progressive policies may not be effective even in their stated goal of reducing inequality; indeed, they may actually be a way of producing greater inequality than the market would support.

              If you want to base your policy preferences on empirical data, I think you need to take this pattern into account, rather than just calling for progressive policies because they sound good to you.

              1. I think you’re missing something important here: Where do people with money want to live? Certainly not Alaska, and probably not Utah, and none of the flyover states… But California, New York, and DC would be very popular if you had a lot of money.

                Your “empirical data” is not driven by the local red-vs-blue politics, but by the desirability of real-estate. If you had a billion dollars in the bank would you choose to live in Alabama, or would you move to someplace with lots of culture, good restaurants and nice beaches?

                I’m sorry, but I must categorize your argument as non-applicable to the question at hand.

            2. I think about 95% of the people with a high-school education will have noticed that communism has always historically been a failure.

              I wish. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s being “taught” in high school these days.

              1. This is [real communism has never been tried] from the other direction. Real communism has been tried, therefore my communism isn’t real communism.

                1. Well put. This is a phenomenon I’ve seen with a lot of recent movements, some of which *cough*singularitarianism*cough* don’t even consider themselves left-wing.

        2. Talking about “the right” is largely meaningless in the United States. There is an identifiable left. But the “right” includes all the points of view that the left opposes: libertarians (including libertarian anarchists like ESR), Main Street Republicans, constitutionalist conservatives, king/church/land/arm conservatives, nationalists, racists, and fascists. And those groups really have essentially nothing in common with each other; in particular, saying that Nazis are on “the right” reduces to saying that (a) the left opposes Nazis and (b) the left likes to call anyone who disagrees with them “Nazi” or “racist” regardless of their actual beliefs.

          In the history of taxonomy, it used to be customary to divide animals into “vertebrates” and “invertebrates.” But there are many phyla of invertebrates, as different from each other as any of them is from chordates (the phylum that includes vertebrates). Any positive trait whatever that you could attribute to “invertebrates” would be so general that it would be true of vertebrates as well. Cuvier figured that out in zoology more than two centuries ago, but political taxonomy is not yet so scientific.

          1. And there are as many categories of different concerns on the left; feminists, anti-racists, left-leaning-libertarians, pro-queer activists, people like me who’s main concerns are economic justice, environmentalists, and so on, all making common cause (or hating each other and working together because the alternatives are worse) just like on the right.

            Your argument fails because you imagine the opposition as monolithic when in fact it is not.

            1. That would be more convincing if we did not have the spectacle of tight ideological conformity on American college campuses, and eagerness to suppress any viewpoint that dissents from it.

            2. people like me who’s main concerns are economic justice

              So care to explain how burning down small businesses advances economic justice?

              Also, in case you haven’t noticed the Democrats have abandoned the working class, which is why they’re defecting en mass to Trump.

              1. In fairness, there is the Bernie faction right now.

                That said, I predict the economic justice / labor / worker wing will switch over to the Republican side. They fit better with Trumpism than the currently-dominate Identarian/Tribalist Left.

                1. Dude, there is nothing the neocoms hate more than the “workers”.

                  They were promised that as long as they got degrees they could be part of the elite and look down on the labor class while pretending to Care, as is tradition.

                  That promise didn’t come about, so they have to be in the slice of the economy they hate more than any other.

                  1. This is one place where you and I agree wholeheartedly. The Democrats have definitely left the lower-middle class to fend for themselves – Obama’s very quiet stance against unions made that very clear.

                    The only reason I would support Democrats over Republicans (if I were lower-middle class) is because the Democrats are merely indifferent, as opposed the Republicans who actively attempt to mislead the lower class.

            3. > left-leaning-libertarians

              I missed this the first few times around, sorry.

              What the heck is that, and what would it even mean? A leftist wants more government control at all levels of society (nation, economic, individual). A libertarian wants less government control in those areas.

              Is this cognitive dissonance, or is blood _supposed_ to be dripping out of my ears?

              1. I’ve seen a few self-proclaimed “left-libertarians”.

                My working hypothesis is that they want the freedom to do whatever they want while having someone else pay for it and dealing with the consequences.

                When you think about it, this position does have a certain amount of psychological internal logic. Specifically, they expect the world to work like it did when they were kids: their parents would feed them, let them play all the time, and clean up any messes they made, and possibly even buy them any toy they wanted.

                1. > My working hypothesis is that they want the freedom to do whatever they want while having someone else pay for it and dealing with the consequences.

                  Ah, so Leftist rank-and-file who aspire to the privileges of Leftist Elite (while co-opting the word “libertarian” the way they did “liberal” so many decades ago). Ugh.

                  1. It’s not so much that they aspire to the privileges of Leftist Elite (I suspect most of them are children of Elites) as they don’t understand why everyone in the world can’t enjoy those privileges.

                    1. Not quite. “Let them watch Netflix” implies an implicit belief that everyone has access to the same goods you do and are only complaining to be perverse.

                      What I’m talking about is more an alief that all the goods of modern prosperity are made from magic pixie dust and that the patriarchy/government/evil council of racist white men is sitting on an infinite supply. But rather than freely giving out this bounty they’re forcing everybody else to work for it because they’re evil bastards.

                    2. Classic rebellion against God. “How dare you make food require work.”

                      Only they don’t believe in God, which makes their resentment free-floating. Instead of deciding nobody is to blame, they preserve the resentment by attaching it to the government or whatever. “You’re Symbolically God therefore you must be to blame.”

                      I mean, they’re not wrong about the government being saturated with evil bastards.

                2. My working hypothesis is that they want the freedom to do whatever they want while having someone else pay for it and dealing with the consequences.

                  Correct. Leftism is irresponsibility. Don’t pay for what you own and someone else cleans up after your mistakes.

        3. > Yes, there are commies on the left, just like there are nazis on the right

          You do realize that until 23 June 1941 Nazies and Fascists were considered “left”, right?

          The difference between them is very, very small.

          1. No, they weren’t. They were considered “right”. And to a large sector of the left communists were considered “right” too. I just recently read Homage to Catalonia. It was startling to see communists and Stalin attacked from the left.

            1. I think the confusion stems from the differing meanings of left- and right-wing in America vs. Europe. In America, left-wing means “economically authoritarian/collectivist and/or socially liberal,” while right-wing means “economically libertarian and/or socially conservative.” But in Europe, left-wing means “internationalist/globalist” while right-wing means “nationalist.” So by the American definition, the Nazis were left-wing, because they favored socialism and central planning; but by European standards, they were right-wing, because they were nationalists. (And yes, I’m aware that businesses in Nazi Germany were nominally private. In practice, the state decided who produced how much of what; hence, the Nazi economy was centrally planned.)

              1. That was true for the U.S. too in World War II – during wartime central planning is usually a very good idea, (as long as there’s a return to proper capitalism after the war) otherwise you might end up with plenty of guns but without proper boots for your troops – pick your shortage, I suppose…

            2. The question is not what “left” and “right” mean now, it’s what they meant in the 1930s. The claim is that until Hitler turned on Stalin the Nazis were considered to be on the “left”, and that just isn’t true. They were considered to be on the “right”, and the pact with Stalin just meant that leftists like Orwell considered him and his communist zombies to be on the “right” too. As I wrote, Orwell considered them to be on the “right” even before the pact, based on what he saw as their attempt to kill the Spanish revolution.

            3. That date has a very, very specific reason for being chosen.

              Prior to that date Stalin was a big fan of the Nazis–at least publicly.

              Prior to that date the head of the American Communist party was attempting foment a strike on the east coast to prevent ships from being loaded with war material for England.

              IMMEDIATELY after that date the American Communist party changed their tune.

  9. Missed your posting Sensei Eric. Glad you posted this.

    The left has now said clearly and repeatedly they won’t accept any election they loose. I believe them. I’m wondering what the rest of us should be doing.

    1. I’m stocking up on ammunition.

      And I, for one, will not accept any Biden victory delivered through vote-fraud-by-junk-mail.

          1. You found an example of Democratic voter fraud to counter my Republican example of voter fraud. That’s cute, but I’m not impressed, because anecdotes are not data.

            What does impress me, as data, is the Heritage Foundation’s collection of voter fraud cases.

            https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

            This database, hosted by a conservative think-tank, shows 1296 cases of voter fraud covering 41 years, which gives us approximately 32 cases of voter fraud every year, or if we go by elections, 64 cases of voter fraud nationwide in every election since 1979. Given the number of votes which are cast and how hard Republicans have been trying to prove that voter fraud is a major problem, that’s a very small number – essentially 2.22 cases per state per year.

            Breaking it down by 20 national elections since 1979, the exact statistics are as follows – note that these are averages and don’t track exact numbers per state or per election cycle:

            191 cases of False Registration over 41 years, which means 9.55 cases nationally every two-year election cycle, and something like .191 cases per state per election cycle. Note than an election cycle includes two elections, the primary election and the general election

            268 cases of Inelgible Voting over 41 years, or 13.4 cases in every election, 0.268 per state per election.

            4 cases of Altering The Vote Count over 41 years, or something like 0.2 per election and 0.004 per state per election.

            73 cases of Ballot Petition Fraud cases over 41 years, or 3.65 per election, 0.073 per state per election.

            68 Buying Votes cases over 41 years, or 3.4 per election and 0.068 per state per election.

            115 cases of Duplicate Voting over 41 years, or 5.75 per election, and 0.115 per state per year.

            20 Elections Overturned in 41 years, exactly 1 per election, or 0.02 per state per election. Note that this includes every national, state, county or city election, of which there must be tens of thousands during each cycle.

            208 cases of Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots, or 10.04 per election, and 0.208 per state per election

            12 cases of Illegal “Assistance” At The Polls, or 0.6 per election and 0.013 per state per election

            14 cases of Impersonation Fraud, or 0.7 per election and 0.014 per state per year.

            So in 2016, 137 million votes were cast in the general election and 48 million in the primaries, of which 64 were fraudulent, giving us a total of 185 million votes, vs 64 fraudulent votes, which means that 0.0000346 percent of the votes were fraudulent, or approximately 1 fraudulent vote out of 2,890,625.

            1. because anecdotes are not data

              A implied claim of “No X exists” is demolished with a single anecdote.

            2. The existence of Pacific Islands that are the tops of very tall undersea volcanic mountains proves that undersea volcanoes exist, but the number of such islands does not even approximately indicate how common such volcanoes are. The ones we can see on the surface are the rare exceptions, not the rule.

              1. The problem is this: voting is a very fundamental right. Before you can take away someone’s vote, you need proof according to the highest possible standard. The horrible irony of this is that Republicans are screaming about voter fraud while frantically trying to make sure Democrats don’t have the ability to vote. This is one of those things where you need to do your homework.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Voter_Registration_Crosscheck_Program

                This will give you a good start. You might also look up Georgia voter suppression or Kris Kobach.

                1. Actually no, voting is not a right at all. Nowhere in the constitution is there a right to vote. All it says is that when a state does grant a right to vote it can’t restrict that right in certain ways (but it can restrict it in any other way).

                2. @Troutwaxer “The problem is this: voting is a very fundamental right. Before you can take away someone’s vote, you need proof according to the highest possible standard”

                  You are conflating what is needed to prosecute a specific criminal case with what would be needed to show evidence of widespread wrongdoing. Voter fraud is notoriously difficult to prosecute and difficult to prove, and that actually _increases_ the incentive to engage in it.

                  There is no (rational) question that Al Franken used voter fraud to steal a Senate seat from Norm Coleman, but of course it could not be _proven_. But statistically, the idea that all “found” ballots after the election (which were all “found” by Democrats) would have such a different -proportion- of votes than the previous paper ballots and general election results is simply not realistic. But those ballots, some “found” in a freezer somewhere and some in the “back of a car”, could not be easily -proven- fraudulent, though -everyone knows they were-.

                  I get tired of all this gaslighting from dishonest chaps from the hard Left.

                  1. The problem is that every solution Republicans come up with for addressing voter fraud works out to be voter suppression. Because of this Republicans talking about voter fraud have all the credibility of Kang talking about how the lesser races appreciate Klingon rule – in short, none.

                    See my post about Operation Interstate Crosscheck below for more, as I’m getting really tired of repeating myself.

                    1. The problem is that every solution Republicans come up with for addressing voter fraud works out to be voter suppression.

                      So requiring the people showing up at a polling place to present a ID to show that they’re how they say they are and are allowed to vote in this election is voter suppression?

                      Well your ability to write the most obvious BS with a straight face is certainly impressive.

        1. So basically you quote the Ministry Of Truth to prove we’ve always been at war with EastAsia.

          Outright fraud:
          https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots/

          https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/nyregion/nj-election-mail-voting-fraud.html

          Poor handling that probably lead to fraud:
          https://www.businessinsider.com/clark-county-nevada-las-vegas-mail-in-primary-ballots-undeliverable-2020-8

          Academic paper:
          https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3666259

          Forty-seven percent ban
          absentee voting unless the citizen is living abroad, and 30% require a photo-ID to obtain a
          absentee ballot. Fourteen percent of the countries ban absentee mail voting even for those
          living abroad.

          France banned absentee voting in 1975 because of massive fraud in Corsica, where postal ballots were stolen or bought and voters cast multiple votes. Mail-in ballots were used to cast the votes of dead people. Examples for other countries are provided.

          1. Taking them bit-by-bit, the New York Post is a well-known right-wing rag, with an article – note the date – obviously published in support of Trump’s contention that postal voting is inherently fraudulent. I noticed with interest that “The city Board of Elections declined to answer Post questions on ballot security.” This says to me that they didn’t try too hard to find anyone who actually knew the system’s strength’s and could answer their questions. Possible other sources they could have consulted include the County Board of Elections, the New York/New Jersey Secretary of State, independent experts, etc. The kindest thing I could say about this article is that they’re only telling half the story.

            As to the paper, “Why Do Most Countries Ban Mail-In Ballots?: They Have Seen Massive Vote Fraud Problems” I noticed something every interesting, which was that none of the cites in the abstract mentioned the U.S. at all, which probably means he didn’t actually examine mail-in voting in our country – not a surprise, I’m afraid.

            From the story “A Nevada county mailed out 1.3 million ballots…” I was struck by this paragraph:

            “These numbers show how vote by mail fails. New proponents of mail balloting don’t often understand how it actually works,” Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams said in a statement. “States like Oregon and Washington spent many years building their mail voting systems and are notably aggressive with voter list maintenance efforts. Pride in their own systems does not somehow transfer across state lines. Nevada, New York, and others are not and will not be ready for November.”

            So according to the expert it is possible to build a safe mail-in voting system. In the U.S. we started talking about mail-in voting in April. If you’re against fraud (as everyone should be) and you want people to be able to vote without risking illness (as everyone should want) and you’re the president of the United States, maybe over the course of six months you can mount a big effort to get more states to use the best practices and provide some money for them to do so.

            Instead, Trump’s people are ripping out mail-sorting machines and the president is telling everyone that mail-in voting is automatically fraudulent. Meanwhile, his allies are doing everything they can to suppress the vote:

            https://rantt.com/top-five-voter-suppression-tactics

            https://time.com/5852837/voter-suppression-obstacles-just-america/

            (There are lots of links about voter suppression on the second article.)

            I think that many right-wingers are astounded that Democrats can be “against anti-voter-fraud efforts.: The reason for this is that Democrats see “anti-voter-fraud efforts” as right-wing code for “suppress the vote.” The problem is much easier to understand if you do some research about voter suppression – some of what’s happening is really, really ugly – google the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, for example and you’ll get an eyeful! (Any programmer will instantly see the problems with Crosscheck.)

            1. Voter fraud is not rare. It gave us Obamacare, for one thing. (Al Franken, the 60th vote that put it over the top, won by just over 300 votes – and over 200 felons were accused of voting fraudulently in that election. If you think there were only 200 fraudulent votes, I’ve got a Trabant luxury car to sell you.)

              There’s a name for a mail sorting machine that malfunctions: paper shredder. The Postal Service just isnt’ handling as much first-class mail as it sued to, and the sorting machines are liabilities.

              And the real risk there isn’t the lack of machines, it’s the postal workers unions that have endorsed Biden. When Trump supporters have BLM written on their mail and postal workers are repeatedly caught on surveillance cameras dumping mail, why should I believe mail ballots are secure?

              1. Jay, I’m sorry, but you (and by extension, the rest of the right wing) are not even remotely convincing. The problem is this: Every Republican effort to get people who shouldn’t be voting off the rolls ends up with a ridiculous number of false positives, making it clear that voter suppression is the real objective.

                Operation CrossCheck, for example, showed double-registrations for anyone who had the same name and was born on the same day, even if their social security numbers didn’t match! At the height of CrossCheck’s use, 29 different states had subscribed, which means that the pool of people it was checking against would have numbered somewhere around 150 million. The false-positive rate was around 75 percent!

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Voter_Registration_Crosscheck_Program

                Assuming you’ve read the article, think like a programmer for a minute or two… how easy would it have been to avoid a 75 percent false-positive rate? Simply differentiating on the basis of social security numbers would have solved most of the problem. Adding one more factor, like mother’s maiden name, city of birth, driver’s license number, or any number of other publicly available statistics would have brought the error rate down to acceptable levels.

                On my part, I’m very much against anyone voting who shouldn’t do so. I’m against any kind of voter fraud, and I’d applaud a real, sincere attempt to solve the problem. But bullshit like Operation CrossCheck doesn’t pass the sniff test!

                In fact, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is: If anyone wants to start an Open-Source project with a good design and useful security for eliminating improperly registered people from the voter rolls, I’ll write the documentation!

        2. Yes.

          https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/absentee-minded-6391500

          This is from the year 2000 and it had been going on for years prior and has continued to this day. Note it is rich people hiring fraud artists to abuse the trust of the poor, elderly, most-often-Black, and home bound.

          And this is while mail in and absentee voting is a minor “edge case” process. Where the safeguards, involving such theoretical skills as verifying the authenticity of signatures and trusting specific courier companies and the US Postal service, are NOT stretched to an unsustainable and un-scalable degree.

          One might have good reasons to scrap the idea of specific polling places; and replace the current process with some sort of remote voting technology. But the current mail process is highly fragile, has been proven susceptible to fraud, does not scale well, and can’t be “upgraded” in the time available with any hope of validity.

          I note as I go that the party most in favor of a new voting process was the party that created the debacle at the Iowa Caucuses.

          1. I actually read the whole thing last night, and found it to be quite intelligently written. However, I think I noticed something that you did not, which is that all the practices described in the story seem to be legal under the laws of Texas. My guess, based on reading the story (I don’t have infinite time to research) is that the legal system as written exists precisely to facilitate machine voting – note particularly the “72-hour rule.”

            So it’s not fraud. According to that particular set of laws everything in the story is legal.

            It’s a despicable set of laws, and those laws should definitely be changed, but it’s not fraud as the law is written.

            And in terms of Democrat vs. Republican this is very significant: “Fraud” is a violation of law, and an accusation that someone is voting fraudulently is a pointed finger saying, “You don’t deserve to be elected because you broke the law. In fact, you should be in jail!” On the other hand, “You were able to get away with that because the law was written poorly” doesn’t have nearly the same force. It points to the law, not the person, and it doesn’t contain an accusation of criminality.

            Taking the two statements together, I think our U.S. politics is broken enough – it doesn’t need false criminal accusations to make it even broker!

      1. HOW? Where are you finding ammunition? Forget ammunition. Powder? Primers? Anything?

        Everywhere I look it’s all sold out. No ammo. No components. No guns. No parts.

  10. Thank you, sir. My respect for you has risen. I am sure you are taking flak for recognizing the worthiness of this young man.

    On an unrelated note, are you aware the Google seems to have dropped your blog from its search results? I’ve tried searching for material I *know* is here using the “site” limiter with your address and gotten *nothing*.

    1. >On an unrelated note, are you aware the Google seems to have dropped your blog from its search results?

      Wan’t aware. Not surprised.

    2. I typed “Eric Raymond Blog” into google and it was the first hit. I also copied “In software, “Lassie error” is a diagnostic message” and it was also the first hit. I suspect you made a typo or remembered something incorrectly.

      1. Using Google through TOR with the Brave browser exiting with an IP address that Google thinks is in a country that uses Cyrillic I get links to ESRs blog with:

        “ESR Blog”
        “Lassie Error”
        “Armed and Dangerous blog”

  11. I don’t think of this as accelerationism. I actually think in rural/suburban areas, dissolution of the police and return to use of a sheriff that can deputize citizens and militia would be good for liberty. I see it as a kind of reaction; returning to an older, better way. But I am an unabashed reactionary, so that’s the lens I look at things through.

    I’m actually quite surprised that most police haven’t quit. They’ve essentially been told they cannot protect their community from the worst crimes, and if they dare to, the loons in the community will burn it down. I would have quit myself in that position; my thought process would be “I can do no good here; every outcome of my actions is worse than if I did nothing, no matter the merit of the action.” But maybe that’s why I’m not in law enforcement.

    I also have mixed experience with the police. Those in my town are mostly good, except that many of them are against private gun ownership. My experiences with the NYPD are uniformly bad; they are arrogant, thuggish goons that have poor muzzle discipline that love putting people in jail because of pocketknives. The police I’ve met from freer states tend to read as decent human beings that want to protect and serve, but my sample is limited, as I’ve typically met them at various firearms training events, so they’re probably going to be the good ones.

    1. I don’t think of this as accelerationism. I actually think in rural/suburban areas, dissolution of the police and return to use of a sheriff that can deputize citizens and militia would be good for liberty.

      Which is why the leftists pushing “defund the police” will never allow that to happen on their watch.

      I’m actually quite surprised that most police haven’t quit. They’ve essentially been told they cannot protect their community from the worst crimes, and if they dare to, the loons in the community will burn it down. I would have quit myself in that position; my thought process would be “I can do no good here; every outcome of my actions is worse than if I did nothing, no matter the merit of the action.” But maybe that’s why I’m not in law enforcement.

      Um:

      1) They get paid.

      2) “Eventually the local politicians will have to consent to a restoration of order at which point I can go back to doing my job”.

    2. A lot of them are leaving – by early retirememt. In Chcago, “59 police officers are retiring in August, with another 51 retirements set for next month. … ‘The average is about 24 a month.””

      And a lot of them are cutting back on activity – fewer arrests, pursuits, interventions. “Stay fetal” – that’s the catchphrase – avoid anything that risks getting in the news.

      1. ““Stay fetal” – that’s the catchphrase – avoid anything that risks getting in the news.”

        That’s not a bad strategy in the short term. It makes your city a lot less likely to host a protest.

        1. That’s not a bad strategy in the short term. It makes your city a lot less likely to host a protest.

          Do you ever get tired of lying?

            1. Well the fact that he’s wrong has been explained to him numerous times. If he was simply mistaken, he would either stop repeating it or reply to defend his position. Instead he simply ignores the replies and keeps repeating the same lies.

        2. If the priority is to avoid Antifa and BLM holding riots in the city, then inaction is the best policy.

          It will certainly avoid “getting in the news”, Because crimes by black criminals are not news. Swarms of black teenagers smashing store windows and carrying off carloads of luxury goods as loot isn’t news. Black gangbangers shooting up a restaurant where a rival is eating isn’t news. A black man shooting his white neighbor’s five year old son in the head (point blank, not a stray shot) isn’t news.

          Oh, there may be a report in the newspaper – in the back pages, with minimal description. (And absolutely no mention of the perpetrator’s race: I’ve seen news outlets publish many warnings about a mugger or rapist, in which the criminal’s height, weight, age, and clothing are described – but not his skin.)

          But no screaming headlines. No “demonstrations”. No riots. Even if the victim is black.

          It’s hard on law-abiding citizens, but it is safer for police – thanks to BLM and Antifa, and the resolutely anti-police news media.

    3. > I’m actually quite surprised that most police haven’t quit.

      Many of those eligible are retiring. An appreciable set are a couple years from retiring, and this is jacking up their overtime hours/pay (which play into their retirement pay).

      The rest haven’t had the time to find better jobs.

      Oh, and police ARE quitting, it’s just that the Ministry of Truth isn’t interested in that right now.

    4. > my thought process would be “I can do no good here; every outcome of my actions is worse than if I did nothing, no matter the merit of the action.”

      You get paid the same either way. And you want to stay long enough to hit the steep part of your pension’s PV curve.

  12. I wanted to add a general note here. There are, in fact, best practices for police handling protests, and I wanted to throw out some URLs so people can read them. I haven’t read all of them myself – some are more than fifty-plus pages long – but I thought they might inform our debate a little, so here they are.

    I should also note that I don’t know how well the Kenosha police handled the issues per any of these documents – questions of “what happened during the protests” have been lost in the furor over Kyle Rittenhouse, but hopefully these will be informative, once Eric takes the post out of moderation:

    https://sfbos.org/police-facilitation-mass-protests

    https://www.pilotonline.com/news/vp-nw-protest-police-response-20200611-jphpxvvdkzc4ppimmj4j2mybsi-story.html

    https://www.forwardlookout.com/2020/08/recommendations-for-madison-police-department-protest-policies/33271

    https://www.policeforum.org/assets/PoliceResponseMassDemonstrations.pdf

    https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2020/09/police-need-to-keep-opposing-protest-groups-separated-experts-say-after-proud-boys-rally.html

    https://civicus.org/protest-resilience-toolkit/best-practice/

  13. I should note one other reason why Rittenhouse might not qualify as a member of the militia: By August 25th, per the Wikipedia article, there were at least 375 National Guard personal in the city, and another 1500 had been requested. (They arrived on the 28th.) As the “organized militia” was already dispatched to the area, this may invalidate any possibility that the “unorganized militia” had a legally-acceptable reason to self-dispatch.

    1. > As the “organized militia” was already dispatched to the area, this may invalidate any possibility that the “unorganized militia” had a legally-acceptable reason to self-dispatch.

      That is a deeply silly argument. The presence of the “organised militia” has no bearing whatsoever on Rittenhouse’s duty or rights, if only because it failed to suppress the riots.

      By your argument, if an arsonist tried to burn down my house, I’d have no right to fight back if there’s a policeman in the same city. No sale

      1. “By your argument, if an arsonist tried to burn down my house, I’d have no right to fight back if there’s a policeman in the same city. No sale”

        Sighs… If you shoot a person who’s lighting your house on fire you’re covered by ordinary self-defense exceptions to the laws on assault/murder/etc. Shooting someone committing arson of a building you or someone else might be inside of is ordinary self-defense/defense of others – you don’t need some kind of weird militia exemption to win that case. In fact, claiming that you’d been a “militia” while defending your house from an arsonist would come under the heading of “did something stupid in court so the case wasn’t dismissed.”

        As for the “militia” that went to Kenosha, I don’t think any sane person would say they helped. I count two extra deaths, a nasty injury, and a kid who might have grown out of his simplistic thinking if he’d had a little help, who instead is now going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

        1. I count two extra deaths, a nasty injury

          Of people who were engaged in rioting and violence and frankly deserved it.

          who instead is now going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

          Not if the justice system works like its supposed to.

          1. The justice system is working like it’s supposed to. Rittenhouse will go to jail for the murders he committed.

            1. Footnote: The justice system is working like it’s supposed to in this case. As a heavily armed white kid he has been arrested and will face trial for his crimes… you know, as opposed to the unarmed black men who are simply gunned down in the street, while A&D regulars tell us how justified it was based on their prior drug convictions.

              1. @Jeff
                I see a remarkable parallel with A&D opinions about shooting communists by armed vigilantes in the street and the rise of fascism in the early 1900s in Europe.
                (The Italian movie “1900” does give a nice impression of how this went)

                TL;DR: Everything is allowed to stop “Communists”, defined as everyone who fights the current oligarchy, or wants to enforce “One person, One vote”.

                It is quite a spectacle to see US “Libertarians” echo Il Duce in support of his American apprentice.

                1. > “Communists”, defined as everyone who fights the current oligarchy, or wants to enforce “One person, One vote”.

                  I’m a Libertarian, very much not a Communist, and I would LOVE to see “one person, one vote” implemented. I would also love to see a bunch of upper-echelon oligarchs get a nice thick mud-covered flyover boot right up their ass.

                  You claimed yourself above that Republicans are a _minority_, so which oligarchs are you imagining need ousting here, if not the Leftist Elite stranglehold on our media, educational system, and the government of nearly every urban area in the nation?

                  > It is quite a spectacle to see US “Libertarians” echo Il Duce in support of his American apprentice.

                  Almost as nice (and equally based in actual fact) a spectacle as seeing Dutch “Armchair Political Supergeniuses” support killing eight year old black girls in support of “racial justice”.

                  1. “so which oligarchs are you imagining need ousting here, if not the Leftist Elite stranglehold on our media, ”

                    Are you calling Fox News, Breitbart and America One Leftist media?

                    1. “Three out of… what? What’s the denominator of that fraction there?”

                      These three are the propaganda arm of Trump/GOP, one of them is nation wide the BIGGEST in viewers.

                      So, how is the MSM left extremist?

                      There is also never evidence given to support the claim that, e.g., the Washington Post is a Leftist Elite outpost. The only criterion seems to be that they write things you do not agree with.

                      Your problem seems not to be that the MSM are Left Elite, but that alternative opinions are expressed at all.

                    2. > These three are the propaganda arm blah blah blee bloob

                      Yes yes we already know your opinion of the NUMERATOR. I asked a question about the DENOMINATOR. Is the Dutch educational system even shittier than the American, that you don’t seem to know the difference?

                      If you discount the ones with cutesie nicknames like “Faux News” and “NoSoBrightBart” then the numerator is zero anyway, so in a sense you’re right to agree that there’s not much bloody point coming up with a denominator.

                      > the claim that, e.g., the Washington Post is a Leftist Elite outpost. The only criterion seems to be that they write things you do not agree with.

                      Since I have NEVER said a single word about the Washington Post in my entire LIFE, here or anywhere else, you are deliberately lying.

                2. TL;DR: Everything is allowed to stop “Communists”, defined as everyone who fights the current oligarchy, or wants to enforce “One person, One vote”.

                  Winter, you are the literal last person on Earth I would have expected to see repeating Trump’s “one person, one vote” talking point regarding mail-in ballots.

                  1. “Trump’s “one person, one vote” talking point regarding mail-in ballots.”

                    Trump says one thing and ensures the opposite. Trump has zero evidence mail-in ballots lead to fraud, or that there is a sizeable amount of voting fraud at all. But Trump wants to make it impossible for all but the military.

                    But what the GOP is really good at is making voting hard for Democrats. Voter suppression is real in the USA:
                    One Person No Vote
                    https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/one-person-no-vote-9781635571387/

                    Get more from the book:
                    https://books.google.nl/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=KLlHDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT10&dq=one+person+no+vote&ots=gvl5iLwI-H&sig=xNoIgDkzMd_dCaCG9MaKnmW1ehg

                    1. > But what the GOP is really good at is making voting hard for Democrats.

                      The city of Chicago wants to point and laugh at you.

                    2. Trump says one thing and ensures the opposite. …. But Trump wants to make [mail-in voting] impossible for all but the military.

                      First: I had made this point in the “Rules for Rioters” thread, but it bears repeating: good political slogans are both prima facie true or desirable platitudes, but which also are sufficiently vacuous to serve as a “dog-whistle” for the politician’s real agenda. So when Trump says “one person, one vote” I believe he means that — that each voter should vote once and only once — and that statement is only the better politically for having a completely different meaning in other mouths and other contexts. Trump isn’t switching meanings, the phrase “one person, one vote” itself is.

                      Second: Trump is only blowing hot air anyway. The US Constitution states that Congress has oversight (Article 1 Section 4) but the many states have primary control over the manner of conducting elections. So no matter what Trump wants, he doesn’t have the legal authority to make those changes, anyway.

              2. heavily armed

                Hmmm, t-shirt, medkit, rifle.

                No reloads, no armor (hell not even a plate carrier!), no helmet, no sidearm, no night vision.

                Your idea of “heavily armed” needs an update. If anything Kyle showed that even the lightest of armament can still be effective in the right circumstances.

              3. So according to you self-defense isn’t acceptable, but going for a police officers gun after you’ve just robbed a convenience store, or beating the head of a neighborhood watchman into the pavement is perfectly fine. There a word to describe people like you, that word is “evil”.

              4. , as opposed to the unarmed black men who are simply gunned down in the street, while A&D regulars tell us how justified it was based on their prior drug convictions.

                Liar. The only people simply gunning unarmed men (of any color) down in the street are criminals, often black. Police are not doing that, anywhere.

                And no A&D regular, or anyone else, has ever told you that a police shooting was justified by the person’s prior convictions of any kind. The overwhelming majority of police shootings (which happen without any regard for the person’s color) are justified based on what the person was doing at the time.

                The fact that such people often have prior convictions is only mentioned in order to show what sort of people they were, which helps explain why they acted the way they did in the cases that got them shot.

            2. >The justice system is working like it’s supposed to. Rittenhouse will go to jail for the murders he committed.
              >as opposed to the unarmed black men who are simply gunned down in the street

              I’m having flashbacks to the George Zimmerman – Trayvon Martin case.

              As the trial progressed, medical evidence indicated Zimmerman had suffered multiple head injuries, eyewitness evidence indicated Martin was on top of Zimmerman and beating Zimmerman’s head against the ground, ballistic forensics evidence indicated Martin was shot from below and in front while leaning forwards.

              Justice system concluded that Zimmerman probably shot Martin in justified self-defense.

              Progressive presstitutes and urinalists concluded that they should report this with phrases like “the murder of an unarmed black teenager”.

              Get bent, Jeff.

              1. Or maybe Zimmerman shouldn’t have been driving around in his truck playing cop. It might be “justified self-defense” but that doesn’t mean that Zimmerman is a hero. He’s an idiot who got into an unnecessary fight.

                1. > Zimmerman shouldn’t have been driving around in his

                  own neighborhood, where he was a member of the neighborhood watch? And you have the authority to tell people where they should and shouldn’t drive based on… ?

                  > an idiot who got into an unnecessary fight

                  Everyone who is forced to exercise their right to self-defense is in “an unnecessary fight”. I fail to see the justification in calling them, as opposed to their attackers, “idiots”.

                  1. Everyone who is forced to exercise their right to self-defense is in “an unnecessary fight”. I fail to see the justification in calling them, as opposed to their attackers, “idiots”.

                    Isn’t it funny how “wisdom” always seems to cash out as a requirement for innocents/civilized/non-aggressors to cede all of the territory to the guilty/barbarian/aggressor.

                    1. It might be funny if it weren’t so disgustingly hypocritical. I have no doubt that if I were to walk up to Troutwaxer in his _own_ neighborhood and tell him that for one reason or other he “shouldn’t be driving/walking there” and would have to turn around immediately, the _least_ I could expect to receive in response would be sputtering indignation.

                      As usual the Left demands obedience from the little people for “rules” they would immediately declare absurd and improper if applied to themselves.

            3. Except he didn’t commit murders. He defended himself against rioters and a pedophile attacking and quite possibly trying to kill him.

            4. > Rittenhouse will go to jail for the murders he committed.

              Have you gone to the link at ar15.com that Rezlac posted above? Have you watched the videos?

              Most important, have you looked at all the people (including ones bearing makeshift weapons) in the video that Rittenhouse does NOT shoot?

              I don’t know anything about gun discipline or combat tactics than the bits I’ve read here (and occasionally at sites linked to from here). But even with that complete lack of knowledge, I am watching these videos and following the ar15.com analysis with dropped jaw, looking at a desperate kid only three years older than my own son, looking like a forty-year-old veteran with experience in combat situations involving non-uniformed combatants mixed amongst non-combatant civilians (again to my completely untrained eye; probably actual military personnel are even better trained).

              In multiple cases he rolls back to a sitting or kneeling position after fighting off one attacker, takes aim at the next nearest person, and DOES NOT PULL THE TRIGGER. That person chooses to attack, then yes, Rittenhouse defends himself again. Those who don’t attack, who withdraw or even just hold position, Rittenhouse holds as well, and gets back to the business of trying to _escape_ the mob that is bent on killing him.

              Is there a chance Rittenhouse initiated the first conflict between himself and Rosenbaum? Mathematically there must be, but since that initial conflict isn’t in any of the videos, you’re speculating just as much as anybody else if you claim that’s certain. Given Rosenbaum’s behavior in the early videos before encountering Rittenhouse, that’s not the way I’d be betting, myself. (If you’re willing to actually follow Rezlac’s link, there is a section including the phrase “The privilege lost by provocation may be regained if the actor in good faith withdraws from the fight and gives adequate notice thereof to his or her assailant.” about 2/3 of the way down that addresses the legal situation even if Rittenhouse did “provoke” Rosenbaum but initially fled instead of engaging.)

              1. >(again to my completely untrained eye; probably actual military personnel are even better trained).

                Alas, would that it were so. But most line troops are trained for battlefield conditions in which anyone who is (a) looking threatening at a firefight and (b) not wearing your uniform is a target to be serviced. Somebody with those reflexes and that mindset would at the very least have put a finishing shot into third-guy-with-a-pistol instead of (heh) disarming him.

                No, Kyle fights like very elite military – Special Operations, or like FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. Clearing a malf so fast you could barely make out he was doing it when he’d just fallen to the ground? Such excellent shoot/no-shoot judgment? My first reaction when I saw the video was that several different unit commanders at SOCOM probably have a bit set to try to pull this kid into service when he turns 18.

        2. As for the “militia” that went to Kenosha, I don’t think any sane person would say they helped.

          They helped the car dealership and the other people and property they protected. The two dead thugs and one injured are a bonus. Those deaths and injuries are good things.

  14. Hey Eric,
    What do you think the odds are that people like Trout, Jeff, and Winter are actively engaging in some kind of stochastic Commie/useful-idiot psy-op with the shared intent of driving readers and commentators from the blog? I’m increasingly of the opinion that none of them are attempting a discussion in good faith, intentionally riling everyone up, lying about people, gaslighting about said lies, etc. Hanlon’s Razor, of course, but there’s a point where I just have to wonder. Memetic demoralization virus running its preset program? Will it wear itself out, or continue being amplified by the insurrectionists?

    It’s frustrating. Siege feeling. Very frightening. Just some idle thoughts.

    1. You sound to me like a sore loser doing their best to manipulate the referee! I point out that Trump is currently president, and that he’s a Republican, and that the situation is getting worse, not better – all of these obvious truths wherein the arguments against them are outright fantasy – so I must be a communist. Don’t be an ass!

      I point out that Eric’s idea that Rittenhouse is a member of the militia fails at both legal and practical reality – so I must be a communist. Once again, please don’t be an ass!

      I point out that two deaths and an injury would have been avoided if Rittenhouse had simply stayed home – so I must be a communist. You sound like a whiny little child who didn’t get their ice cream!

      And so on. Your transparent attempt to manipulate the referee – it’s well-known that Eric isn’t exactly rational about commies – says that you don’t feel you can win with any argument a rational person would accept.

      -Shrugs- I think the argument is over.

      1. Yes and we reply to you to point out why your “argument” is BS. You then proceed to ignore the replies and proceed ignore and repeat the same BS.

      2. > I point out that Eric’s idea that Rittenhouse is a member of the militia fails at both legal and practical reality

        How do you imagine you’re going to do that?

        You do get that the unorganized militia is “anyone who shows up willing to help”?

        You do get that “able-bodied males between 17 and 45” describes those who are expected to show up? (I hesitate to say “required” to show up, since I haven’t seen any links pointing to specific penalties for folks in this category who fail to show up.)

        You do get that people not in this “able-bodied males between 17 and 45” category are nowhere excluded or forbidden from showing up?

        You do get (since it’s been pointed out above by multiple posters) that Rittenhouse is still an “able-bodied male between 17 and 45” regardless of what other categories he may or may not belong to (e.g. being allegedly qualified for Marine recruitment or not)?

      3. > I point out that two deaths and an injury would have been avoided if Rittenhouse had simply stayed home

        And over $50 million in property damage (shit, a week ago I wouldn’t have guessed there was $50 million of stuff in Kenosha to begin with =:O) and countless injuries, plus yes, a number of deaths, would have been avoided if a bunch of _other_ fucktards had simply stayed home.

        Better yet, Jacob Blake could have simply stayed the fuck home instead of going to steal the car from a woman he’d previously sexually assaulted, and then going for a knife to attack the police officers who came in response to that woman’s call.

        Another possibility is that you could maybe get out and see some of what the hell is actually going on in the country instead of “simply staying home” all the time. I can recommend a few places here on the south side of Chicago for example if you are as bored as you seem to be.

        1. Agreed. Blake should have stayed home too rather than harassing his ex. Lots of people should stay home! I think the big problem here was the “shot in the back” thing. It’s never a good look, and usually indicates that the person shot was an unarmed person who was running away.

          1. Right, the officer should have waited politely for Blake to turn around and stab him a couple times before he was “allowed” to defend himself.

            Again, rules imposed on the proles that no Lefty would _ever_ accept for himself.

    2. The above is a case in point. I ask a question, then I am lied about.

      I think I must be hitting very close to the mark. Maybe I should persist?

      1. I mean I suppose it’s more probable that these people are living in a paranoid delusion fantasy that causes them to hallucinate things that never happened. It’s weird. I mean, just look at the thing above. One comment reply to one thread, and yet the person imagines that he has been arguing solely with me, attributing threads to me that I was not engaged in!

        What do we make of this?

        I think it’s additionally very telling that the person thinks I’m unprincipled enough not to stand by my declared intention to no longer engage. Sure I’ll talk about people, but to imagine I would willingly walk into a Cluster-B type trap of dishonesty and abusive gaslighting through direct engagement? Hilarity.

      2. I suspect Troutwaxer at least has some kind of helplessness complex WRT physical confrontation. Among other things this causes him to lash out at anyone who physically stands up for himself to keep from feeling like a total looser.

        1. What you said basically amounts to calling Troutwaxer a soyboy, which leads me to believe you have a helplessness complex w.r.t. losing every argument with him you get into.

          1. One reason soyboys prefer “arguments” to fights is that its hard to claim you won a fight you lost, whereas it’s easy to “win” an argument by using Troutwaxer’s technique of ignoring the other side’s refutations and repeating the same claims.

            1. Eugine, I frequently ignore your arguments because they’re utterly delusional, because you persist in ad-hominem attacks, because you clearly haven’t read my cites, (or those of anyone else) because you don’t accept the obvious preconditions for the discussion (Troutwaxer/Winter/Jeff/etc. is a decent person who does not condone rioting – why would we condone rioting? Hello? Are you stupid?) because your style of disputation is in itself dishonest, and because you’ve got a nasty tendency to ignore the obvious meaning of someone’s words and twist them as far as possible away from what was actually meant.

              You probably think you’re very intelligent to do all this, but I do notice all your bad habits and generally feel enormous contempt towards you, even as I pity your intellectual inability to punch your way out of a paper bag… Why would you use such tactics if you had anything worthwhile to say? – and I feel sad for Eric that you’re lowering the tone around his place. (Pardon my mixed paper-bag-metaphor, but while I do find you annoying you’re not enough of a villain to inspire my best work – at best, you’re Wormtongue to someone else’s Saruman – and you’re certainly not worth my taking the time to work up a really original insult. (When you have time, reread Cyrano’s discussion of Valvert’s poor insult technique and assume that level of contempt has been applied to you. Or you could watch the scene on YouTube – Jose Ferrer did an excellent job with the material.)

              https://youtu.be/nFiLIsMieiQ?t=83

              Also, despite my asking the question previously, you’ve never answered the question about whether you’re the same Eugine Nier who was kicked off Less Wrong for abuse of the up/downvoting system? Are you ever going to comment on that one? Was it you?

              https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NGc3Yjecg9pDMznWq/moderator-action-eugine_nier-is-now-banned-for-mass-downvote

              Anyway, it would be nice if every time I stepped into Eric’s place I didn’t discover that you were stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

              1. Eugine, I frequently ignore your arguments because they’re utterly delusional,

                Example? Also, I’m not just referring to my arguments.

                because you persist in ad-hominem attacks,

                I only switched to using social pressure after it became clear rational argument wasn’t working.

                  1. You’ve demonstrated that you’re not subject to logic, the next step is social pressure.

                    how Orwellian.

                    Ok, now your just throwing around words that you saw someone once use in a successful argument without having any idea what they mean.

    3. You know, the comment section here on political matters tends to be a cesspool of conservative namecalling and gun-nut dickwaving, with two major exceptions: two people who consistently accompany their arguments with facts and data to support them.

      Those two people are Winter and Troutwaxer.

      The fact that the typical response to this is to call them liars, Communist agents provocateurs, and whatever else… well, it says much, much more about you than it does about them.

      1. The fact that the typical response to this is to call them liars

        No the reason the typical response is to call them liars is because they lie and keep repeating the same lies after having said lies repeatedly pointed out to them. For example, after several weeks of repeatedly correcting Troutwaxer’s attempts to get away with referring to rioters, looters, and arsonists as “peaceful protestors” and doing his best to pretend the rioting, looting, and arson didn’t happen, I realized Troutwaxer was simply impervious to reason and logic, and that I was wasting my time attempting to use them to argue with him.

        1. Every organizer of any protest ever hopes and prays that nobody will show up and turn their First Amendment-sanctioned activities into fertilizer (for the roots of propaganda.) Protests turn into riots for multiple reasons – “fellow travelers” who have a different opinion about property damage than the protest organizers, poor policing decisions, agent provocateurs, ordinary looters and criminals who use the protest as cover for their own activities, etc. But nobody ever says, “I’m going to organize a protest, I hope arson happens!” To imagine that anyone thinks that way is to imagine that nothing can ever be settled through negotiation – which is obviously part of your racist, genocidal agenda.

          Note in using the words “racist, genocidal agenda” that I’m playing your game – twisting someone else’s words around to mean something they never did say… except that I’m better at that game than you are, when I choose to play. I generally make my points via cites and discussion of statistics, and avoid ugly arguments in part because that’s the right way to do things, in part because I like to contribute more than rhetorical tricks to the discourse, -stares at Eugine- and in part because while Eric and I have many, many political differences I have great respect for his work in software and prefer to take a classy approach when I’m in his space. Unfortunately – and Eric, I do apologize – I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to step forward and let you know exactly how much contempt I feel for you and your crappy tactics. (“You” in this case being Eugine, not Eric.) I’m sure that now that you’ve been put on notice you’ll avoid such behavior in the future. -Laughs- Not going to happen, I’m afraid, Eugine – I very much doubt that you have either the self-respect or self-control to upgrade your own behavior, but I suppose it’s vaguely possible that you’ll surprise me.

          1. Every organizer of any protest ever hopes and prays that nobody will show up and turn their First Amendment-sanctioned activities into fertilizer

            BS. Some organizers do that. Some do not. BLM and Antifa certainly do not.

            But nobody ever says, “I’m going to organize a protest, I hope arson happens!”

            They don’t just hope it happens, they organize it.

            To imagine that anyone thinks that way is to imagine that nothing can ever be settled through negotiation

            No, it isn’t. Things often can be settled through negotiation, provided that what the other side wants is reasonable. But not with these people. You can’t negotiate with someone whose purpose is to kill you, or take your property. What these people want is chaos and destruction, and ultimately a Marxist dictatorship (with race replacing class), so any negotiation with them would be mere appeasement, and Chamberlain found out how that works.

          2. Why is it that right wing protests are either 100% peaceful, or if an agitator is discovered they are quickly suppressed, while every single left wing protest rapidly turns into a complete clusterfuck of rapes, muggings, and general trashing up the place in even the most well behaved case?

            Lobby Day had the local government actively trying to antagonize the people attending. Nearly everyone going there was armed, and had the very real fear that they might have to shoot their way out.

            No fighting. No accidents. No damage to the surrounding area at all. One or two infiltrators trying to cause trouble were quickly isolated and handed over to the police.

            Is it just that leftists are incompatible with civilization? Because you are running out of alternative explanations.

              1. “About 93% of racial justice protests in the US since the death of George Floyd have been peaceful and nondestructive, according to a new report.”

                Do you genuinely think this helps your argument?

                Would you fly an airline that had a 93% safety record?

                Better yet, would you be down with a protest in your neighborhood at these odds?

                1. >More than ninety-percent of the racial-justice protests have been peaceful.

                  How about a police force that harassed or killed the wrong person 10% of the time. What would the appropriate response be?

      2. Jeff,

        This is dumb, even by your standards. Have you read this or any other thread? Here Trout has repeated several times the lie that the militia statutes are being cited as a defense against a murder charge. He has repeated this lie after I corrected him upthread, and after he acknowledged his lie.

        Winter has repeated misstated and misrepresented statistics about firearm ownership and firearm deaths and when I provided more accurate statistics he said he “didn’t want to get hung up on numbers” .

        Classic cases of having made up their minds, and not wishing to be confused by the facts.

        1. > Classic cases of having made up their minds, and not wishing to be confused by the facts.

          Well, given Trout’s attempt to outright normalize rioting somewhere on this page, I’m starting to pretty heavily lean on a hypothesis that he is, in fact, an old-school Soviet sleeper engaging in active measures with a dash of Alinsky. The Dutch Commie is a standard useful idiot with (stunning) language comprehension issues, and Jeff isn’t even useful, he’s just a soulless husk of a human rubbing his clay face against the keyboard, occasionally making comprehensible (but still hilariously wrong) statements. I can just about guarantee that when the winds change he’ll go right on flying whatever flag gives him the greatest sense of unearned moral righteousness with which he can attempt to bludgeon whoever he perceives as his lessers.

          1. If you think that I’m in favor of rioting, or even that I’m willing to accept it as a normal state of affairs you have an extraordinary imagination. Unfortunately, accepting that rioting happened and then moving forward is a precondition for discussing what’s going on with Kyle Rittenhouse. No rioting, no Kyle. ‘Nuf said.

            1. >If you believe that 50-100 million in property damage is adequate cause to form a militia, then you’d have zero cause to argue against Black people who do so, particularly in the absence of government action to reform the police. Of course, this would happen on a city-by-city or state-by-state basis…

              Just upthread

        2. “Here Trout has repeated several times the lie that the militia statutes are being cited as a defense against a murder charge. He has repeated this lie after I corrected him upthread, and after he acknowledged his lie.”

          I don’t think the militia statues are being cited as defense against a murder charge. Nothing I’ve read would indicate that Rittenhouse’s lawyer has any intention of doing so. But I have expanded on Eric’s original comments, which read to me as clearly intended to be a legal defense for Kyle and others like him, and done my best to clearly lay out why I don’t think such a legal strategy is a good idea. I don’t see any lies; Eric and I and others are speculating together about possible legal practicalities, and the only way to see which of us is right would be to watch such a legal case work it’s way through the courts – and I devoutly wish for our situation in the U.S. to calm down before anyone feels the need to lay such a case before any court.

          Eric and others have several times clearly stated that the rioters are communists and should be killed. If it isn’t their intention to propose the militia statutes as legal cover for such an imagined activity they’ve certainly not made that clear.

          1. I can’t speak for ESR, but my understanding is that a milita is trying to either enforce, preserve, enforce or reinstate law and order upholding a regime that the populous already agrees is legitimate. A mob of rioters is just a mob causing chaos, possibly with the goal of regime change, possibly with the goal of causing chaos. Intent matters.

            Think of the Boston Tea Party vs. Lexington and Concord. If I’m interpreting the events correctly, the Sons of Liberty and other people there did not consider themselves a militia. They did an act of vandalism, and even if it’s justifiable, it’s not milita action.

            The battles of Lexington and Concord, however, can be radically oversimplified to colonial milita saying, “no, you will not take our munitions” and drawing a line in the sand. They were, in effect, defending the status quo of the colony being self governing.

            My understanding in this area isn’t strong. I welcome corrections.

            1. >My understanding in this area isn’t strong. I welcome corrections.

              Your understanding correctly captures the Constitutionally intended function of the unorganized militia.

              If I were to change your summary, I would only emphasize that legitimacy flows from the militia upwards – that is, it is only by the unorganized militia’s choice to uphold a government that it acquires legitimacy in the first place. “Consent of the governed”, with civilian arms as teeth.

            2. I think you’ve boxed yourself into a corner here: IF the government IS legitimate and they are giving a “militia” made up of outsiders orders to stay away, then those orders are legitimate. (And, by the way, orders to disperse or even arrests are also legitimately aimed at local/outside agitators who are currently rioting.) Also, if the goverment of Kenosha is legitimate, they may certainly ask Federal or State officials for help, or have mutual aid agreements with other local governments.

              Those are the options if you consider the government of Kenosha to be a government which has legitimacy. Lest someone claim I’m condoning violence, I will say clearly that this much-less-violent option is the version of reality I prefer.

              However…

              IF the government of Kenosha is NOT legitimate, then naturally they can’t give a “militia” an order and reasonably expect it to be obeyed – they have forfeited their legitimacy. (and Kyle Rittenhouse has as much legitimacy declaring himself judge, jury, and executioner as any rioter on the street, who might also have declared themselves to be a member of the militia!)

              But if the government of Kenosha is not legitimate – perhaps because they use too much force or engage in prejudicial behavior towards a particular segment of their population – then the protestors/rioters should also claim to be a militia, engaged in legitimate attacks on local businesses who support the government with their taxes. And if the “outside agitators” aren’t local, the protesters are certainly local, and you’ll notice that the protestors/rioters started by attacking the legitimate offices of Kenosha’s government; the local jail, the courthouse, etc., and didn’t start attacking businesses until they were driven out of the park by tear gas. The idea that protestors did not believe the government was legitimate is justified by graffiti such as “2 many cops, 2 little justice” and the fact that they started out by attacking government-owned property. These symptoms of an unorganized militia declaring a government to be illegitimate would be well-understood under this system.

              But if you believe that militias are legitimized by a lack of perceived government legitimacy, then we have two militias with conflicting ideals, both desiring to impose different solutions on Kenosha. How do we settle this problem? Should the two militias go to war, right there in Kenosha? Should the militia made up of outsiders withdraw and allow the local militia to settle their issues with the local (illegitimate) government by force? This would at least be courteous… Or do we have some kind of adjudication about which militia has superior rights? I suspect that the consequence of this version of reality is that we end up a three-way militarized battle for supremacy over Kenosha.

              Or maybe the government of Kenosha should not be allowed to bring in outsiders like the National Guard or agents of the Federal Government until they have settled things with the various militia(s). After all the local protestors/rioters are clearly of the view that the government is not legitimate, and this must be settled – through violence – before anyone can ask the State or Feds for help – how else would those entities know which government was legitimate before the militia either won or lost the battles and attained full-control over the city?

              What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Even if people get killed or injured, or businesses are destroyed, if there’s an illegitimate government their war with the local militia needs to be settled first!

              Note that I’m not in favor of this option. I’m simply pointing it out. But if you believe that any group of people, should they dislike their government – or even someone else’s government – can declare themselves to be a militia then you have to live with the very logical consequences I’ve described above.

              There’s probably a middle ground here – some kind of requirement that citizens be able to prove that they have used other means to solve their issues before declaring a local government to be illegitimate and using force… but I’ll let someone else explore those. Eric’s position is a maximalist position, and that’s the position a critic must investigate!

              1. perhaps because they use too much force or engage in prejudicial behavior towards a particular segment of their population

                That is a falsifiable claim, which is logically independent of the question of legitimacy. It is also empirically false.

                1. The protestors have at least as good a case as the “militia” that showed up in Kenosha, if nothing else because they live there and the “militia” does not.

                  But you’re missing something about the pro-militia arguments. The pro-militia argument inherently says that nothing can take away the right of a group of people to declare their argument against a government and attack it. A group of people merely has to decide to take back their inherent political power from the government and attack that now non-legitimate government. According to the pro-militia argument, it doesn’t have to make sense to an outside observer. (How do we know that the outside observer isn’t pretending to misunderstand our ideas?)

                  If I did something ridiculous and declared an anti-Argon militia it would be perfectly legitimate, and all my followers could kill any member of the government who dared to accept Argon into their sacred lung-brains in our presence, or who don’t sufficiently vilify William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh. Because power flows from the people, and if the people choose to use guns and take back their political power from the evil pro-Argon governments that’s perfectly legitimate. We have the right under Section 246 and the Second Amendment!

                  I don’t agree, but that’s the pro-militia argument in a nutshell.

                  1. The protestors have at least as good a case as the “militia” that showed up in Kenosha,

                    The “protesters”‘ cause appears to be the rights of any black who feels like it to refuse to be arrested.

                    if nothing else because they live there and the “militia” does not.

                    Kyle lives 20 minutes away and works in Kenosha. A lot of the rioters at these events tend to be from out of town.

                    The pro-militia argument inherently says that nothing can take away the right of a group of people to declare their argument against a government and attack it.

                    It appears you don’t understand the argument. Probably since you imbibed the post-modern BS about there being no objective truths. Thus all you have left are conflicting narratives.

    4. I think Troutwaxer is at least arguing in good faith — attempting to define terms and define what people mean when they say things, and attempting to argue fairly. I disagree with at least half of what he’s saying, but he’s attempting to be fair. Jeff and Winter don’t appear to be doing the same.

      1. > I think Troutwaxer is at least arguing in good faith

        Yeah, you may think that, but spend some time trying to have a debate with the weasel. He sounds real nice and reasonable, but after the fourth or fifth time you make a point, and then he twists it, imagines what he thinks you said, writes extensive texts responding to that (causing you to waste your time playing catch-up or trying to bring it back on topic), and implies or outright claims racism on your part because he’s incapable of understanding how anyone can disagree with him without being racist… well, there comes a point when you have to cut your losses.

        Hell, just try to get him to define his terms, and watch how he squirms. His favorite tactic is to pretend you said something you didn’t and arguing against that straw-man, then pretending he won. If he actually had enough of a spine to set the terms of debate and stick to them, he wouldn’t be able to writhe out of the holes he keeps worming himself into.

        Don’t let the fancy speakin’ fool you; he is not attempting to be fair. He’s a snake.

        1. “Hell, just try to get him to define his terms, and watch how he squirms. His favorite tactic is to pretend you said something you didn’t and arguing against that straw-man, then pretending he won.”

          And then, when you show him you did not say that, he apologizes.
          http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8708#comment-2439389

          At least, when I can actually find that you did not write that.

        2. I was talking in the context of this discussion. I don’t have the time to read everything the dude writes.

          I also trust ESR to oust the real trolls. I’ve seen him ban people before, and the three you mention are long-time commenters. I assume ESR believes that there is value in having them here.

          1. Winter and Jeff are long-time, Trout is more recent but, yes, not really new.

            As it happens, I have neither requested nor (Trout’s paranoid behavior notwithstanding) even implied any of them should be banned. Not my style. I find their behavior interesting, often frustrating, and worthy of highlight as they represent a certain kind of insidious pathology.

  15. Again with the frank lies. Zimmerman was monitoring Martin as part of the Neighborhood Watch. Martin attacked Zimmerman and started the ground-and-pound MMA attack he fantasized about on Facebook. The idiot was Martin.

    1. I can never keep the names straight.

      Just because the black guy committed a crime doesn’t mean the brown guy wasn’t at fault. In reality two aggressive assholes met, and guess what, aggression resulted. Shocking.

      In similar positions I’ve been able to make the aggressive guy reconsider his options by standing in a particular way and saying nothing. The brown guy escalated instead of de-escalating; the black guy was provoked. (Zimmy probably doesn’t know any de-escalation.) Again: being provoked doesn’t make battery a not-crime, but the idea is to not have to defend yourself in the first place.

      1. This is my read of that situation as well. Zimmerman didn’t actually commit a crime, but he also didn’t appear to do anything to minimize a violent encounter. I think it’s right and good that he was acquitted, but that doesn’t mean a better course of action couldn’t have been taken prior to the conflict.

        The worst actions, however, were by the media, who tried to spin the whole thing into a race-motivated assassination in order to stir things into a frenzy. That’s truly evil. Observing the media doing such things, and getting worse and worse with time, makes me question what the correct thing to do about a media that is so hell-bent on destroying order should be. The media is supposed to protect us from the worst abuses; instead, it creates national controversy out of thin air.

        My pet theory now (weakly held beliefs) is that the best course of action is to let all of the legacy media die (NYT, CNN, Fox News, etc.) and be replaced by much smaller de-centralized reporting. That’s happening, but not nearly fast enough. I don’t think there can be effective regulation of the press to quash such behaviors, but we can possibly hope that more speech from more sources is a better approach that will allow truth to drown out the falsehoods.

        Then again, more people are getting their news from social media, and their algorithmic timelines will skew what generates the most engagement, and that will lead to more sensationalism?

        Is there a path out of this dystopia?

      2. That’s my take on the situation as well. “The idea is not to have to defend yourself in the first place.”

        Where we might not agree is that I’d also apply that Kyle Rittenhouse. There’s a riot? Stay the fuck home. Pay attention to the fact that the National Guard is mobilizing, the feds are coming in, and that the local police/sheriffs are making arrests even if they’re outnumbered and will round up the bad actors soon enough.

        Ignore the inflammatory language about how the local authorities are “letting the city burn,” and realize that the protests/riots are large, that local law-enforcement might be overwhelmed, but they’re not “letting the city burn,” and that the local city-council has already requested a couple thousand national guards, some of whom have already arrived.

        1. > There’s a riot? Stay the fuck home.

          When your friend calls you and asks for your help, you can hang up on him. That’s your right. Nobody is telling you you can’t do this.

          You do _not_ have the authority to prevent someone else from exercising their right to _not_ hang up on their friend, and to take the risk of going to stand beside that friend in need.

          This exact same point has been made to you literally dozens of times this thread. This is not an argument we’re going to “run out of” until you STOP FUCKING IGNORING it and actually respond.

          1. First of all, what friend? Per Rittenhouse’s attorney:

            “Pierce argues that when Rittenhouse finished his shift as a lifeguard in Kenosha last Tuesday, he decided he wanted to help clean up damage in Kenosha left amid unrest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

            He and a friend went to a local high school to remove graffiti, according to Pierce. Later that day, they received information about a call for help from a local business owner, whose downtown Kenosha auto dealership was largely destroyed, Pierce says. The business owner said he needed help defending his business.”

            https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/attorneys-representing-kyle-rittenhouse-say-he-was-wrongfully-charged-after-acting-in-self-defense

            But just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that there was a friend…

            For starters, I don’t ask seventeen-year-olds to come to my house or business with a loaded gun and guard it against a possible riot. It’s not good for me, (Rittenhouse’s friend is in for one hell of a lawsuit, if s/he exists) it’s not good for the friend who’s help I requested, (Rittenhouse is probably going to jail for many years – the poor kid might have had a life!) and it’s not good for my community, (Kenosha will also spend – barest possible minimum – a million dollars on this issue, and possibly much more, not to mention that several otherwise-competent people who are going to lose their jobs over this, deservedly or not.)

            Remember that the word for people who get this stuff wrong is not “militia” but “vigilante.”

            Keep in mind that Kyle’s friend owns a large used car lot. He certainly had the cash on hand to hire security guards – who, by the way, carry their own insurance with responsibility heading up their own chain of command. So WTF is with the blue-light-special bring in a seventeen-year-old high-school dropout with a gun shit? I don’t buy it for a second!

            What you do for a friend in such circumstances is to talk them down: “Bob, you listen to me. The worst thing you can do is sit out there with a gun defending your business. If you either kill or injure someone or you get killed or injured your family is in much more trouble than they are now. There’s going to be insurance money, you’ll probably get an interest-free loan from the government, some of your creditors are going to take a haircut so you can stay in business (and remain a customer) and if you have to do a bankruptcy it will happen under the kindest terms a judge will allow and probably save your business as well.

            “But if you get killed, or kill someone, or someone you hire kills someone, it’s game over for you and your family. I know it hurts and I know it’s scary, but sit tight and things will start looking up in a couple days.”

            If you don’t believe that I’m telling the truth here, follow the Rittenhouse story for the next year. Every family, business, official, or individual who was involved in bringing Rittenhouse to Kenosha, or letting him walk through police lines, (all those cops are on video) or asking him to guard their store, or waving the car carrying him to Kenosha past instead of searching it and sending it away… they’re going to see their lives go to shit. There is nothing worse Kyle could have done for those people than show up in Kenosha.

            The people who didn’t hire Kyle Rittenhouse will move on. They’ll get insurance money, they’ll get interest-free loans from the government, which might very well be forgiven, they’ll work things out with their creditors, etc. Whatever happens to them will be over much more quickly and much more advantageously than what happens to anyone involved with Kyle.

            1. If you don’t believe that I’m telling the truth here, follow the Rittenhouse story for the next year. Every family, business, official, or individual who was involved in bringing Rittenhouse to Kenosha, or letting him walk through police lines, (all those cops are on video) or asking him to guard their store, or waving the car carrying him to Kenosha past instead of searching it and sending it away… they’re going to see their lives go to shit. There is nothing worse Kyle could have done for those people than show up in Kenosha.

              If this is true, it’s a huge flaw in our justice system that should be fixed.

              1. “Huge flaw” is a massive understatement if that happens.

                Distilled to fundamentals, that would be a case where a legal system saw someone do the right thing and not only miscarriaged justice for them, but them went on to destroy anyone it could find who had even the faintest contact with them.

                At that point the only reason to not burn down the entire Wisconsin government immediately would be to make sure the logistics were in place. Running out of nooses is embarrassing.

              2. Crime rates have exploded over the last century or so. In most neighbourhoods, the cops protect the criminals from the innocent. As public choice theory predicts.

                Burglary rates in England and Wales increased 171 times. That’s 17,100%, between 1898 and 2002. Most crimes are up ~40 times. Defunding the police (haha, motte and bailey btw) is a good idea because even no police cannot possibly be worse than this. For reference, removing all signs and lights from intersections tends to make the lethality of that intersection collapse and increase throughput, as predicted by public choice theory.

                America isn’t quite so bad only because it was excessively criminal to begin with. By contrast, Singapore’s crime rates are more 1900, with shopkeepers finding locks are overkill, just in case anyone was still giving any credibility to the [cities have high crime] nonsense.

                It is not at all surprising to see that some feature of the “justice” system is broken. Rather, it would be more surprising if some feature were -not- broken.

        2. There’s a riot? Stay the fuck home.

          Just out of curiosity do you also apply the above logic to the Portland mayor and “wall of moms” you were defending in another thread? Or does it not apply to the people defending the rioters, just the people defending property from the rioters?

              1. “In your mind killing a Black person is always justified, even the children. Dude, you’re gonna burn!” — Troutwaxer

  16. Pingback: Strange Daze
  17. > $20,000,000 and 12.5 years in jail for the police-officer who shot her

    when she ran out of her house in her bathrobe to check if the cops, who were supposed to be responding to her call made in fear that a female neighbor was being raped, had made sure everything was ok or not.

    Given her husband and children had to bury her with a hole blown out of her chest, I’d say “not”, but maybe that’s just me.

    From the wiki article:
    No mention of “$20,000,000”, not sure where that’s coming from.

    It does say:
    “The Sxmali-American Police Association issued a statement after the verdict claiming that racial bias contributed to Nxxr’s conviction.”

    Right, because otherwise killing an unarmed housewife would be nothing to make a fuss over, it’s gotta be racism alright.

    “In May 2019, Nxxr’s attorneys lodged a motion for acquittal on both charges, arguing that the evidence was insufficient.”

    Yeah, other than the housewife’s dead body, there sure wasn’t much evidence.

    We’ll see how many of those 12 and a half years Nxxr actually serves, given what a raw deal everyone thinks he got. Then we can ask Justine if she feels it was a “just outcome”. Oh no we can’t she’ll still be dead.

    1. I thought I was done with this discussion, but I should note that if you’d done your research before complaining you’d know that both the sentence and the settlement are on the high side for a police shooting of an unarmed person. I did not do an exhaustive search, but I did find a website which recorded 26 cases of unarmed Black people killed by police officers. The author of the website had included the killing of Trayvon Martin in the total, so I threw that out because Zimmerman was not a sworn officer, leaving me with 25 cases to examine. The highest award I found for an unarmed Black person killed by police was 6.5 million for Walter Scott’s death. The average award, though I didn’t do the math, was probably in the range of 3-4 million. The highest sentence I found for a police officer was 20 years, though that included a Federal hate-crime enhancement, and it is definitely an extreme outlier, as in most cases where an unarmed Black person is killed by police the officer(s) involved are often neither charged nor prosecuted, and frequently return to the police force.

      Of the 25 cases I looked into, in 17 cases the officers were not charged at all. Four of the officers were charged, found guilty, and sentenced, with average sentences of 10.125 years (that is, 40.5 / 4.) However I don’t think this gives a good understanding of the real picture, due to the 17 cases where officers were not charged at all. (The discrepancy in the numbers is because in some cases officers were charged and found not guilty, or had their cases dismissed.)

      However, if you include the officers which were not found guilty or not charged at all, the average is a 1.62 year prison sentence for killing an unarmed Black person. (40.5 / 25.) Note that “not charged at all” includes several cases in which the officer’s behavior was egregious and probably would have been charged, such as the Tamir Rice case, where a 12-year-old child with a toy gun was killed, or a case in which the chief of the LAPD requested that the officer be charged and the DA refused.

      In short, if you actually look at the numbers, Justine Damond’s family did very, very well. The officer’s sentence was above average by any measure and the monetary award was three times as high as any Black person’s family has gotten and 4-5 times the average award to a Black family. Maybe you need to get your facts straight before whining about the injustice to White people…

      -Sighs.- I’d really recommend that before you post again about politics that you do your research and learn a few things…

      The website where I found the information is here. It’s current up to July 20th of this year:

      https://theblacksphere.net/2020/07/shocking-list-of-unarmed-blacks-killed-by-police/

      1. > In short, if you actually look at the numbers, Justine Damond’s family did very, very well.

        Wow, you really are a horrible person after all. Thanks for clarifying.

        1. You’re very deliberately misinterpreting me.

          Obviously I’m not “happy” in any way for the money Justine’s family got – I’m sure they would much rather have their daughter back. And I’m not happy that some frightened officer with poor judgement went to jail either. Justine Damond’s death was obviously a terrible thing, it should not have happened and it diminishes all of us.

          I suppose it’s a matter of me not understanding that your game is to vilify the non-Right-winger by any means necessary, no matter how unfair. What a fool I was! I’d somehow imagined that a shared understanding of Justine’s death as a horrible event was the very solid base on which we could build a larger conversation about justice. I’d never imagined that I would have to play this stupid game of making it clear that I’m horrified by an obviously horrible event. But since those are the rules you’ve chosen, let me note that you’re a nazi racist scumbag who thinks White lives are more valuable than Black lives, and that your entire discussion of the matter is proof of your utterly depraved and subhuman disregard for anyone who isn’t blond-haired and blue-eyed.

          I take it my point did not go unnoticed – and for the moment I’ll take back all the accusations I made in the paragraph above – but do you really want to play by those rules? Do you really want to start with a baseline assumption that a non-right-winger is a terrible person? Because I can go there for the rest of our conversation – force you to justify your decency on the smallest points if that’s how you believe the conversation should go, and unload on you at every opportunity!

          Or we can make the mutual assumption that we’re talking to other decent people here even if there’s enormous disagreement about how to make the world better. I like that better. It leads to a far more interesting and useful conversation.

          In a much calmer mode, nobody can bring the dead back to life, so we measure justice in terms of sentences and compensation, which I would readily admit are probably not the best measurements… Do you have better measurements to suggest? If so I’d be very interested. Maybe the authorities can magically heal someone’s brokenness after their children/farther/mother/sibling is unnecessarily killed by the police? Unfortunately, It doesn’t work that way.

          But comparatively speaking, by the only measure of justice I’m aware of… No matter how egregious the death, Black families are getting a lot less, both in terms sentences and compensation – so why are you pointing to the White lady? Did you know her? Or maybe you think I’m a horrible person because I don’t recognize how much more precious and important a White Lady’s life is? If so, you might want to reflect on that a little.

          Or is it just that I seem cold-blooded in my frequent use of statistics?

          1. I already pointed out that the wiki article on the case doesn’t say anything about “$20,000,000”, and you didn’t respond with a cite elsewhere. In any case, Noor certainly doesn’t have $20,000,000, so comparing one set of pie-in-the-sky numbers with another seems remarkably pointless to me.

            Your original contention was that the legal process “is broken if you’re a Black family” specifically. When presented with cases of non-Blacks also not faring particularly “very, very well” from an _objective_ standpoint (yes yes he was “sentenced”, and as I also pointed out to no response, both the Police and his attorneys are working hard to get that reduced or thrown out because “racism”), you were the one who began nit-picking down into time and money values.

            > so why are you pointing to the White lady?

            Because I was curious where you would draw the line between a “broken legal process” and doing “very, very well” downstream of having a family member murdered by a government agent. _You_ chose to draw it squarely down the racial divide, not me. Of course I didn’t know her, in fact I would never have heard of her if kdk (I believe?) hadn’t linked to her story a few threads back in a similar discussion. Because instead of causing a national uproar of any kind, the story was buried; and while there were certainly loud cries of “racism!” raised, they were on behalf of the poor beleaguered “frightened officer”, and against the murdered housewife and her family, once again merely because of the respective colors of their skins, and without regard to the facts of the incident.

            Personally I’d rather live in a world where _no_ innocent civilians are brutally murdered by government agents without cause, independent of the skin color of any of the participants. But as usual that makes me the Nazi racist, and those on the Left fanning the literal flames of cities burning down through racial division are the Noble Heroes.

            And of course you and Jeff and Winter can keep scurrying away in frantic silence every time I bring up the names of Secoriea Turner or Calvin Munerlyn or (thanks William O. B’Livion) David Dorn, while continuing to pat each other on the backs about how quickly me and my ilk “run out of arguments”. And by all means keep painting me as a blond blue-eyed Nazi, that was a real hoot — and of course insults _from_ the Left never seem to mean that the _Left_ has run out of arguments, so I’m sure you guys are fine there.

            1. That was more intelligent than I expected. A couple of points:

              First, I agree with you. I too would rather “live in world where _no_ innocent civilians are brutally murdered by government agents without cause, regardless… etc.”

              Second, Noor won’t be paying the 20 million. The city of Minneapolis will (and has, as far as I know.) As for a cite for this number is concerned, it’s in the Wikipedia article on the Justine Damond shooting.

              Third, Damond isn’t a great argument for “white people don’t have it easy either.” Compared to what Tamir Rice’s family is going through, with the child’s killer still uncharged (and the dispatcher who withheld relevant information uncharged as well) years later… if you think Damond’s family had it bad – everything wrapped up in less than two years – read all the way through the link in my post above.

              I’m kind of torn on how to respond to you about the Damond issue. On one hand it would do everyone, black or otherwise, a great deal of good if the judicial system could dial back the whole “qualified immunity” thing – there are a lot of unjust happenings that could be fixed if “qualified immunity” was much easier to overcome than it is now, or if failure to meet the Brady obligations resulted in an automatic dismissal of the case – I think we’d find lots of room for agreement on how to fix these issues.

              As to the other side of feeling torn on the Damond issue, “What about the horrors the pretty White lady endured? Why aren’t you talking about her?” is a classic dick move when issues of race prejudice are being discussed. Frequently it’s an unconscious dick move, which gives me a little hope where you’re concerned. Hopefully I don’t have to explain why. (Once again, read all the way through the link at the post above.)

              As to Secoriea Turner, Calvin Munerlyn or David Dorn… I’d have to accuse you of picking them very carefully – which is why I’ve been ignoring that discussion. Lots of people have been killed or hurt at protests for lots of reasons, with deaths numbering somewhere around thirty at this point, and injuries in the hundreds. The Wikipedia article seems to be pretty even-handed, and it includes lots of useful links:

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests

              The fact that you can find some examples where Black people behaved badly doesn’t impress me – the whole thing is a gigantic shit-show, made worse by looters, arsonists, agents-provocateur, and white racists who think that mob action will help solve the various problems… you can find examples of any given group behaving badly in all this if you look hard enough – White, Black, Cop, Protestor, Politician, Man, Woman, Racist, Antifa, Cardiologists… etc. That kind of looking at the bad things done by one particular group always has an ideological foundation – instead, read the article and try to see the whole picture.

              And no, I don’t want to vilify you if I can possibly avoid it – but if you can’t make a useful comparison between what Tamir Rice’s family is going through and what happened to the pretty White lady’s family, or if you can only focus on the bad things Black people did at the protests without looking at the bad things done by White people or the police I don’t know what to do other than call you out for some very serious thoughtlessness and insensitivity.

              1. > “What about the horrors the pretty White lady endured? Why aren’t you talking about her?” is a classic dick move

                Again, Libertarian. My goal is the removal of the state’s ability to unjustly murder its _citizens_. Not just white. Not just black. _Citizens_. _You_ made the claim that police brutality was a problem specifically for black people, and yes, being honest? I was not thinking in terms of money paid afterward or punishments meted out or not to the state agent responsible, but mainly thinking of the dead family member. I was imagining myself in that position, what I would do downstream of losing my wife, daughter, or son in such a brutal senseless fashion. (As I posted upthread, my son was attacked a couple weeks ago triggering my decision to finally apply for a FOID, so there but for grace this could have been an even more real issue for me. Of course he wasn’t actually attacked by a police officer, so that’s going to be dismissed as irrelevant white privilege or something, not that I care much at this point.)

                If the reparations after the fact of the murder are more important to you, and presumably would be in the murder of one of your family members, then by all means continue calling me a nazi racist dick.

                > As to Secoriea Turner, Calvin Munerlyn or David Dorn… I’d have to accuse you of picking them very carefully

                Another one-way rule imposed by the Left: I am required to pick my references _less_ carefully than you. David Dorn I just heard about above from William O. B’Livion’s post above, so you got me there. Jeff Read was the one who brought up Rayshard Brooks’s name a few threads back; sorry I can’t be arsed at the moment to figure out which, but believe it or not, Secoreia’s name came up VERY early in the search I did to educate myself about the good Mr. Brooks. Similarly, in the Final Warning thread, there was much talk from Jeff Read and others about the gun violence those “fucking idiots” in Michigan were in the process of committing, and in the process of random googling trying to find out whether any actual gun violence had actually been perpetrated, the Calvin Munerlyn incident in Flint came up _very_ quickly. You guys can blame yourselves for the majority of references brought to my attention.

                > The fact that you can find some examples where Black people behaved badly

                I am trying to imaging what kind of sick and twisted world could portray the examples I brought up in this fashion. Secoriea was a _child_, she was riding along in the car when her mother needed to go the store. Calvin Munerlyn was murdered by thugs in the performance of his job, in defense of private property. David Dorn was seventy years old, had retired from a lifetime of protecting people, but immediately responded to a call for help when it was given. You are taking people I would never hesitate to call innocents or heroes and putting horrible, disgusting things in my mouth regarding them.

                > what happened to the pretty White lady’s family

                I am imagining the reaction from you and others on the Left if someone less principled here described one of the above three instances, or any of the others you’d rather were discussed instead of the “carefully picked” ones, as something that just “happened to the pretty black people”. Personally I would consider anyone saying anything like that to be a horrible person, but of course I can’t say that to _you_ because “name-calling” gives you the vapors (except “nazi racist scumbag depraved subhuman dick thoughtless insensitive”, I guess those are ok).

                > And here’s the quote from Wikipedia

                Thanks, that one is on me for missing it up in the header (as opposed to a more explicit mention in the body where I would have expected it).

                1. Darrin,

                  The other black teenager killed in Seattle’s Antifastan was named
                  Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr, after his father, Horace Lorenzo Anderson Sr.

                  https://www.foxnews.com/media/horace-lorenzo-anderson-father-chop-shooting-victim

                  It is worth noting which black lives matter, and to whom.

                  Also remember the decision to abandon the police station in that neighborhood to the mob, and the decision withdraw law enforcement entirely from that area that permitted this violence, was a local one, made by elected Leftists.

                  Upthread they want to ask who was President when this murder happened, but it wasn’t Trump who made these decisions, and it certainly isn’t Trump who is responsible for the clearly foreseeable lawlessness that this permitted.

                  1. > Horace Lorenzo Anderson

                    Thanks very much for that. My heart goes out to that family as with all the others that have been discussed here. I will remember that name too, regardless of future accusations that I am “picking my examples too carefully”.

            2. And here’s the quote from Wikipedia

              “Damond’s family brought a civil lawsuit against the City of Minneapolis alleging violation of Damond’s civil rights, which the city settled for $US20 million,[7] one of the largest-ever settlements in a suit involving a police killing.[6]”

  18. Please provide a basis for the notion that the unorganized militia in fact has the duties you have assigned to them.

      1. Was unaware that English Common Law specified specific duties to the Constitution of the United States, Defence Of. This is fascinating.

        Get serious.

        1. Looks like I’m gonna have to use simple language here.

          The notion of a “militia” predates the Constitution by quite a bit. As a matter of fact, the reason why the Constitution could afford to be as short as it was, was because it was built on an existing foundation of law and tradition. Which is why, for example, there are no definitions in the Constitution of what’s a militia or a jury; everyone was already on the same page. Just like it was clearly understood that one of the roles of the militia was the suppression or insurrections and the defense of law of the land. If this is somehow in doubt, take a look at the Militia Acts of 1792.

          1. You’re not wrong about the legal issues. But where you’ve gone off the deep end lies in a very important understanding; the difference between a militia and an angry (or coldly prejudiced) mob. After thinking about it for a couple days the main thing that’s wrong with Eric’s top post isn’t the legalities, it’s his willingness to throw out the rule of law and put his trust in angry, racist Trump-worshippers with guns.

            Let me say it again. If you call out the militia and get it right you’re a hero. If you call out the militia and get it wrong you’re a schmuck! Is the possible salvation of Kenosha’s downtown, far less than a billion in all, a fair trade for life-or-death decisions being made by highly-partisan seventeen-year-olds with guns?

            1. Is the possible salvation of Kenosha’s downtown, far less than a billion in all, a fair trade for life-or-death decisions being made by highly-partisan seventeen-year-olds with guns?

              Yes. Especially considering his decisions appear to have been rather good.

              1. Rittenhouse’s decisions were good in the tactical sense, and that’s a fair interpretation, but it only gets you so far. In the larger, strategic sense of “what do we want from our democracy?” Rittenhouse’s decisions were just plain awful!

                1. No. This is exactly what we want from our democracy republic.

                  When mobs are rampaging through the streets and the official systems either refuse to reign them in, or even actively cheer them on, yes, we want the average citizen to take up arms and put down the riot.

                  Ideally they would then continue on and put down the enablers who rejected their responsibilities, while lounging in the perks of their positions.

                2. >Rittenhouse’s decisions were just plain awful!

                  Personally, I admire people who are willing to protect others’ basic civil rights.

            2. angry, racist Trump-worshippers with guns.

              For someone who claims his main concern is economic justice you sure seem to have a low opinion of the average member of the working class.

              1. “Deplorables”, as Hitlery so aptly showed her dirty, rotten character. And the dirty, rotten character a certain political party has developed.
                A certain rumbling can be detected in Arlington near the grave of one Kennedy, John F.

            3. I must have misunderstood something. Are you seriously suggesting we should let a mob of racist Marx-worshippers carry out a progrom through a town’s business center we should just let them??? Do you seriously not comprehend that it’s people livelihood going up in flames? Do you genuinely hold the “little people” in so much contempt?

              1. Nah, it’s not about the “little people” I think. It’s more about… Trout’s the type of person who wouldn’t lift a finger to stop a woman being raped because he might have to kill the rapist. And he would hold everyone else to the same standard, shaming anyone who would actually do something to save the woman. He’d certainly scold the rapist, of course; that rapist shouldn’t have been raping. Very bad rapist! Very bad! Don’t do that! But you know, the woman shouldn’t have been there, and neither should anyone else who could help her. Preventing one woman’s rape isn’t worth the loss of one life, you know. It’s not like she’d be dead. She could… rebuild?

                1. Oh, and if anyone defended a person who did kill such a rapist, he’d condescendingly explain that male-female liaisons aren’t rapes, so there was no need for such violence.

              2. No. And No. And also no, just in case I forgot to say “no” to something you wrote. But imagine a protest by Black people, called because they feel that they receive a lot of racism from the local police department. Due to a lot of factors – agitators from both parties, looters, possibly poor crowd-management decisions from the local police department* – the protests turn into a riot and things start getting broken.

                Do you call out a second angry mob, composed of White people with guns, to oppose the Black angry mob? As we can see from the couple experiments in Kenosha and Portland, that doesn’t work very well. And it doesn’t work very well because it’s a stupid idea.

                I hate the idea that anyone’s business is getting burned down, or that rioters are starting fights – that isn’t how our democracy is supposed to work. But bringing in a second angry mob and expecting that to work? Maybe you should spend a little more time thinking things out!

                * I recall reading somewhere that the protests were originally confined to a large park near Kenosha’s court house. The police declared a curfew and decided to disperse the crowd with tear gas. What the fuck did they expect to happen?

                1. There was no “second angry mob”.

                  This can all be solved very quickly and simply: If someone is seen smashing up a business or home they are shot on sight. If someone is seen lighting a molotov or throwing it they are shot on sight. If a mob knocks someone out and starts beating them to death, you guessed it; the mob is shot on sight.

                  These are rules of engagement that even a child can understand, and they carry a near zero chance of accidentally killing innocents.

                  1. If someone is seen smashing up a business or home … or … a mob knocks someone out and starts beating them to death, you guessed it; the mob is shot on sight

                    And it matters not at all if the mob is wearing blue uniforms and shiny badges, or black “uniforms” and masks.

                    A Mob Is A Mob.

                2. Strangely that’s not how things went down in places like, I don’t know, Coeur d’Alene.

                  People protecting their families and livelihoods from rampaging looters don’t as a general rule act like rampaging looters. No, sir. I categorically reject your assumption of the moral equivalency between the fire brigade and the fire.

              3. Do you genuinely hold the “little people” in so much contempt?

                Look man, cows need pens. And you certainly don’t let them have guns.

            4. Let me say it again. If you call out the militia and get it right you’re a hero. If you call out the militia and get it wrong you’re a schmuck!

              Hey Trout, what is the person (or people) who calls out the violent, arsenous, murderous riots in a hundred cities for three months and makes it even slightly plausible that the militia needs to show up?

              I ask because your comments seem to have a running theme of silently treating the riots as a force of nature that just sort of happens, rather than an organized criminal band verging on a hostile insurrection that deserves to be forcibly suppressed, possibly with a whiff of grapeshot.

              1. Mob rule might very well be a short-term solution to some of the problems you describe. But once the mob gets in the habit of ruling, restoring law and order is a very difficult task. In the long run it’s better not to go there, even if it costs money and lives. You’ll spend less money and lives in the long term by not allowing mob rule.

                The other big problem is that you’ve provided a false-binary. There are other solutions to riots than bringing in an armed mob. Governors could put the national guard on standby so they can deploy faster. The U.S. government could do something to make quick National Guard deployments possible from a central location. Make agreements with other local police/sheriff departments. Review best practices for handling protests and protestors and put a couple days aside to practice them. It might be possible to find military retirees who could be deputized on short notice rather than advertising on Facebook for people with issues… and so on.

                In the long term, address racism. Find ways to not reward it. Get some national legislation passed to make it easier to identify, prosecute and fire bad cops. You can find useful information on long-term solutions in lots of places both on and offline.

                So the choice is not a stark binary between “scary riots” and “let the militia/mob show up and kill people.” The choice is between “scary riots,” a dozen other short-term alternatives, a dozen other long-term alternatives, and “let the militia/mob show up and kill people.”

                With that in mind, why let the militia/mob show up at all?

                And for God’s sake, read something other than right-wing blogs. You might start with the wikipedia article I posted earlier. It’s evenhanded and contains lots of useful links:

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests

                1. In the long run it’s better not to go there, even if it costs money and lives. You’ll spend less money and lives in the long term by not allowing mob rule.

                  Tell that to the mayors and governors who refused to stop the mob despite weeks of chances.

                  Fortunately Americans haven’t forgotten that their employees are just that: someone hired to to a job. If they refuse to do that job it will be done by someone else, and the deadbeat employee will be tossed out on their ass.

                2. I asked you a question, and you proceeded to not only dodge it but squirt a thousand words of squid ink, mischaracterise my post, and lie about me.

                  Most retardedly, you continued in the same sort of error I was calling out: being dismissive about the evils of the riots, but extremely attentive to the evils of the reaction to the riots.

                  So the choice is not a stark binary between “scary riots” and “let the militia/mob show up and kill people.”

                  Indeed, because one of the things the “scary riots” is doing is precisely being a mob that shows up and kills people. Quite unary there.

                  With that in mind, why let the militia/mob show up at all?

                  Indeed. Why were the riots allowed to continue?

                  And for God’s sake, read something other than right-wing blogs.

                  Don’t make assumptions, it puts umptions in your ass. Or something. I’m not sure how the phrase goes but you are certainly an ass. The primary blog I read is by a gay European left-libertarian.

                  In the long term, address racism. Find ways to not reward it.

                  Stop being a useful idiot. Stop poisoning the well and using poisoned language. Stop spouting meaningless propaganda. You ought to know by now that the word “racism” is a rotating canvas of bait-and-switch, a social engineering job that tries to glue the sort of connotation ‘Klansmen are coming to lynch all the niggers’ onto the sort of denotation ‘blacks 13% of general population but 34% of jail population’.
                  (While ignoring ‘blacks commit 52% of murders’, too.)

                  1. I’ll try answering you one more time. You seem to believe that a state of non-rioting is normal. It’s not normal. Non-rioting is an unstable equilibrium which requires a lot of effort on all sides. It seems normal because the equilibrium gets maintained for long periods of time, but it really isn’t normal. Note that I strongly prefer the non-rioting equilibrium – I’m certainly not arguing against for riots.

                    Maintaining this equilibrium, which is more fragile than it looks, is very complex. The maintenance requires constant effort and constant shows of faith on all sides. It requires constant dialogue and clear understandings of what each side wants, needs, and can actually provide.

                    I think what’s obvious to the Black person who looks at the killing of George Floyd, Tamir Rice, or Breonna Taylor, such killings almost always followed by a lack of arrests or prosecutions, is that one side isn’t doing their part to keep that equilibrium – that is, the “official” side isn’t providing real justice or any brake on the brutality of law enforcement.

                    Take ten minutes to watch the George Floyd killing again. Ask yourself why there wouldn’t be a riot.

                    All that being said, I’m not pro-riot – far from it. But I also recognize that nobody is entitled to a riot-free country, which is something you earn through work, communication and honest efforts to solve the problems with all the various relationships involved.

                    It takes a very spoiled person to imagine that no matter how badly one side treats another that everything should be peaceful.

                    1. I’ll try answering you one more time. You seem to believe that a state of non-rioting is normal. It’s not normal. Non-rioting is an unstable equilibrium which requires a lot of effort on all sides. It seems normal because the equilibrium gets maintained for long periods of time, but it really isn’t normal. Note that I strongly prefer the non-rioting equilibrium – I’m certainly not arguing against for riots.

                      Rioting is a far more unstable equilibrium. Ongoing rioting requires maintenance, otherwise it tends to end either as supplies and enthusiasm run out, or with a brief escalation to intense violence and then both sides retreating to lick wounds or one side mostly shot dead depending on how closely they are matched. From a functional perspective, the US state apparatus is encouraging violence at Floyd riots while suppressing counter-riots or other violent responses.

                      Take ten minutes to watch the George Floyd killing again. Ask yourself why there wouldn’t be a riot.

                      Because he’s saying “I can’t breathe” before the cops pin him, and because an autopsy showed him to be high as fuck on fentanyl. Breathing difficulties are one of the symptoms of fentanyl poisoning. To say ‘killing’ is begging the question – it seems likely Floyd’s own decision to take fentanyl was the major factor in his death.

                      I think what’s obvious to the Black person who looks at the killing of George Floyd, Tamir Rice, or Breonna Taylor, such killings almost always followed by a lack of arrests or prosecutions, is that one side isn’t doing their part to keep that equilibrium

                      This is almost entirely a function of selective reporting, tabloid headlines and a clickbait press.
                      What’s obvious to a person looking at the rates rather than the screamsheet anecdotes is that blacks are about eight times as murderous as whites. I’m not sure what the “sides” are here but that suggests to me some side certainly isn’t doing their part.

                      The last major BJS summary (there isn’t a 1990-2018 out yet that I could find) estimated that blacks, at 13% of the population, commit a majority of the killings in the US. (I can see two probable skews in opposite directions – blacks have a stricter ‘no snitching’ code and are less likely to get caught, blacks are less intelligent and so more likely to get caught.)

                      – that is, the “official” side isn’t providing real justice or any brake on the brutality of law enforcement.

                      It’s apparently providing much less of a brake on the brutality of blacks.

                      Blacks murdered about 7000 people in the US last year. Nobody can know all their names.

                      To give a sense of perspective:

                      If the US police hypothetically decided to patrol blacks far more often and more harshly, such that they tripled their overall rate of killing blacks, in exchange for a 10% decrease in number of killings committed by blacks, all else being equal-

                      that would be a net win on lives saved.

                      Maybe one could think of it as a form of “police riot”. ?

            5. angry, racist Trump-worshippers with guns.

              Hang on a second. Whom exactly are you accusing of racism?

            6. “put his trust in angry, racist Trump-worshippers”

              Noteable for the lack of citation,

              Who’s lying again?

          2. Has anyone organized these theories together into a coherent citable narrative somewhere, or is all I am likely to find vague gestures at various acts, bodies of law, and so on?

            Is there’s some MilitiasAreGreat.com web site that this is collected and organized on, that would be great.

            TIA!

            1. >Has anyone organized these theories together into a coherent citable narrative somewhere, or is all I am likely to find vague gestures at various acts, bodies of law, and so on?

              Study some freaking history, man. Or read the Heller decision yourself and check that the Supreme Court of the United States, in 2008, really did cite the 1770 Blackstone’s Commentaries, incorporating by reference English common law doctrine on the right to bear arms.

              Here, I’ll make it easy for you:

              The phrase “keep arms” was not prevalent in the written documents of the founding period that we have found, but there are a few examples, all of which favor viewing
              the right to “keep Arms” as an individual right unconnected with militia service. William Blackstone, for example, wrote that Catholics convicted of not attending service in the Church of England suffered certain penalties, one of which was that they were not permitted to “keep arms in their houses.” 4 Commentaries on the Laws
              of England 55 (1769) (hereinafter Blackstone);

              No, I don’t why their edition was dated 1769. But this is more than some “vague gesture”, this is SCOTUS establishing the intent of the Second Amendment by quoting a summary of English common law from before the Revolution.

                  1. I am interested in whether Eric is the only person to have connected these particular dots in this particular way, or if they “all men between 17 and 45 have speciifc Constitutional duties as part of the unorganized militia” is in fact a thing of some sort.

                    Frankly, if it’s just Eric, it’s not very interesting. If this is a theory that’s bandied about more widely, though, it becomes more socially relevant and interesting.

                    I’m only peripherally interested in single bloggers, I’m rather more interested in social movements and the ideas that drive them.

                    1. If you think it is “just Eric” that says more about how tiny the bubble you live in is.

                      Go read gun owner forums for a few hours. Think of it as studying a strange alien species if you have to.

                    2. Yeah, I could go read gun owner forums, and I’d get more “uh, there’s a SCOTUS decision over here that includes the word “militia”” and whatnot. If nobody’s connected these particular dots in this particular way, and actually written down the argument, then I simply don’t care. It’s just chatter. Saying “well, it’s obvious if you… ” is not interesting.

                      No offense, I’m sure it’s interesting to you chaps, and that’s fine. My gossip is equally fascinating to me, and surely of no interest whatever to you.

                    3. Yet Another Attack of the 50 mile per hour Goalposts.

                      First you claimed that you didn’t care about single bloggers, but were interested in more widespread social movements.

                      Then I told you where you could find that from people not in your bubble and now you want an academic paper.

                    4. Oh come on, you’re just trotting out the usual rebuttals from the “wahhh you’re wrong” grab bag. Goal Posts! No! strawman! No! Modus Ponens! Reductio! HalP! HAlP!

                      I’ve made it clear that I am interested in whether someone has connected the dots coherently, and whether this theory is “a thing” or not, The two are related, but not the same.

                      After some searching, I see that it is.. kind of.. a “thing” but that there is no coherent theory behind it because it’s been thoroughly debunked. Even the gun nut forums are stuck with vague “Dick Act!” gestures, because if you actually start doing the work and connecting the dots the whole thing disintegrates.

                    5. >if you actually start doing the work and connecting the dots the whole thing disintegrates.

                      The Supreme Court of the United States begs to differ with this assessment.

                    6. I am interested in whether Eric is the only person to have connected these particular dots in this particular way, or if they “all men between 17 and 45 have speciifc Constitutional duties as part of the unorganized militia” is in fact a thing of some sort.

                      Hang on a second. That all men between 17 and 45 have specific Constitutional duties as part of the unorganized militia is not just “a thing of some sort”, it’s US law, which Eric quoted right up top. Not the specific duties, but that they are in the unorganized militia, which obviously must have some sort of duties or role, or what would be the point of mentioning it and defining who’s in it? And the constitution has several references to the militia.

                1. Since I’m in a generous mood tonight, I’ll give you a hint. Start with the first volume of “The History of England” by David Hume. Pay particular attention to the parts about Alfred the Great and the militia system he created.

                  Hint #2: In United States v. Miller (1939) the US Supreme Court unanimously acknowledged that the militia as described in the 2nd Amendment is in fact the very institution that Alfred founded.

                  Hint #3: Oh, what the hell. I’ll be really generous. There’s an article published in “Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology” entitled “The Posse Comitatus And The Office Of Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned To The Aid Of Law Enforcement”. It talks about some related topics, but more importantly has a generous pool of references you ought to investigate.

              1. The germ of this idea seems to arise in a chain letter that circulated in 2013, which promotes the idea that the phrase “unorganized militia” is not merely a label for a group of people, but actually imbues that group with certain rights and duties because the word “militia” appears. This corresponds to a (very local), fairly brief) rise in interest in the phrase “unorganized militia” in early 2014.

                Notably, way back then, even the gun nuts were generally having none of it and felt that the claims were basically unfounded.

                1. >which promotes the idea that the phrase “unorganized militia” is not merely a label for a group of people, but actually imbues that group with certain rights and duties because the word “militia” appears.

                  That’s…weirdly backwards. The word “militia” isn’t some kind of magic spell that creates rights out of nowhere.

                  Rather, in the theory of English Republicanism and the Constitution, the phrase “unorganized militia” gives a label and a legal form to rights and duties which are inherent in all citizens able to exercise them. The rights pre-exist the word.

                  Those rights of self- and collective defense are not granted by the Constitution any more than they were granted by English common law. They are natural rights, preceding the law and on which the law is itself founded.

                  It’s pretty easy to trace this conception back to Germanic tribal law, one important version of which was recorded in Iceland around 1000 CE.

                  1. I think the idea that common law evolved in a decentralized way via some kind of spontaneous-order discovery of natural law is largely a myth. It was created by kings, most importantly probably Henry II.

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_King%27s_Bench_(England)

                    The very reason it was called *common* law that Henry II created a legal system common to the whole realm, as opposed to various local customs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_de_legibus_et_consuetudinibus_regni_Anglie

                    You can make a point that it was a royal codification of such spontaneous customs. But it was a royal codification, and making it common for the whole realm and not local was that would not have happened without the sovereign saying so.

                    1. >It was created by kings, most importantly probably Henry II.

                      Regularized, perhaps – Henry probably did in the remnants of the old Anglo-Saxon folkright system. But if Henry had created “common” law out of whole cloth it wouldn’t resemble as strongly as it does early written codifications derived from Germanic tribal law such as the roughly contemporary Icelandic Grey Goose laws.

                      >The very reason it was called *common* law that Henry II created a legal system common to the whole realm, as opposed to various local customs

                      Yes. On the other hand, one of the most consistent themes of English jurisprudence during the next 500 years was that the common law was a source of authority independent of royal decree, even when the Crown found that highly inconvenient.

                      One of the achievements of British Republican theorists was to show how “natural law” constrained the set of human laws that could lead to a stable and orderly society. I think the right way to think about Anglo-American common law is that it was worn into a shape resembling a game-theoretical optimum under adaptive pressure.

                      A king llke Henry II could pull it one way or another but there were larger forces in the system. Wise kings respected this reality.

            2. If you want a specific study curriculum, I’ll be willing to help you out. Unfortunately, that will take work on my part. Let me know when you’re ready to discuss rates and terms. Understand that this will not be cheap. I’ll need to start by figuring out how much remedial education is required, and I can already sense a vast, untapped pool of ignorance.

        2. >Get serious.

          So you don’t know that the Constitution is rooted in English republicanism. You don’t know that the framers of the Constitution accepted most English common law as authoritative. And you don’t know that the conception of “militia” referenced in the Second Amendment was directly, intentionally derived from the theory and practice of the insurrectionary civil militias that fought against King James during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (aka the second English Civil War).

          So, yes, the English common law did in fact prescribe a set of militia duties which were assumed into the nascent American system by the founders of the U.S.

          Only the Founders actually took that theory a bit further, because they were ideologically descended from a group of English Civil War factions who tried to reinvent the English political compact on a set of republican/egalitarian premises that included a valorization of the right to bear arms as the foundation of liberty.

          The radicals lost that argument in England twice; once during the Restoration and again after the Glorious Revolution. But in many ways the American Revolution was a successful revolt on the same premises. Third time was the charm.

          You shouldn’t even find this even a little odd. The Constitution wasn’t some kind of zero-axiom proof written in sentential calculus; the political/legal assumptions of the framers had to come from somewhere. Now you should have a clue where.

          P.S.: This also explains, by the way, why the American Revolution had remarkably broad popular support in contemporary Britain. The Brits had their own descendant faction of the radical republicans of 1642 and 1688, and those people understood perfectly well what the American revolutionaries were doing. A few decades later these British tendencies would coalesce into 19th-century classical liberalism.

          P.P.S.: And even in the 21st century the Supreme Court cites Blackstone’s magisterial 1770 Commentaries on the common law of England as an authority on the intentions of the authors of the Constitution, notably in the 2008 Heller decision on the force of the Second Amendment.

            1. High School Civics is remarkably light on “the weird contortions 2A guys come up with” yes. If we let that in, though, you’d have to let everyone else’s weird contortions in, though, and it would get very confusing.

                1. Clearly y’all are just bolting together random selections from anywhere to produce a sort of Human Centipede of a legal theory.

                  If you’re willing to just haul out any random bits and pieces of stuff and stick them together from the grab bag of: English Common Law, The Constitution, and The Federal Code, you can produce any result you like. This material may not have the wonderful flexibility of the bible, but it’s at least close.

                  Happily, that’s not how law actually works. There’s a reason nobody except Eric is trying this idea out.

                  1. These folks are not wrong about the law. They’re wrong in imagining that the law will be applied as they fantasize.

                    What will happen in the case of Kenosha will go something like this: A report will be put together by experts in crowd control, legal/illegal protests, policing, etc. And that report will probably show multiple things. The first will be a long-standing grudge by the Black community against the police dept., the DA’s office, and probably the local judges, together with a lot of stories about how all of the above behaved with prejudice and ruined lives in the course of doing so, such that Black Kenosha was a ready to go up at the slightest spark and nobody in the town’s power structure was paying attention.

                    Second, I’d guess they’re going to find that a lot of policing mistakes were made in how the initial protest was handled – this is fairly typical of such reports. I could be wrong about some or all of this, but it’s what I predict.

                    Third, the report will also discuss very clearly that the local police chief and sheriff both requested that everyone who was planning to show up to “help” would please stay home instead. The report will discuss how many national guardsmen were on site and when each complement arrived. It will do this specifically with one eye on a later possible federal case wherein it will be useful to refute the idea that an unorganized militia was necessary.

                    Fourth, the report will discuss the arrests which were made each day in great detail. It will discuss in great detail how the arrival of armed outsiders resulted in two extra deaths and an extra injury, not to mention any other crimes that can be attributed to people outside Kenosha and it will seize upon every weakness possible to show that a mob of armed people showing up was the very worst thing that could possibly happen. It will be very clear about how the arrival of outsiders made the rioting generally worse, even if this requires a selective view of the facts.

                    Then, (or possibly even earlier) without invoking federal law AT ALL, Kenosha law enforcement will start arresting those armed outsiders with whatever charges apply – incitement to riot, impersonating a police officer, assault for those who pointed guns, even if they didn’t fire them, battery upon anyone who got into a fight, failure to obey a law-enforcement officer’s lawful order (to stay away) – whatever the state laws of Wisconson allow. Remember that there is an enormous amount of cell-phone and security-camera video available, and I’m guessing that the cell phones of the people in the “militia” will show very detailed records of their locations.

                    A decent percentage of the people from outside Kenosha – 5-10 percent, I’d guess – will find themselves in legal trouble, and most won’t be able to afford appeals, particularly the long set of appeals which would be necessary to allow them to get into Federal court and try out their militia theory – which will likely be quickly and forcefully rejected, because judges generally don’t like mobs! A fair number of the people being arrested will simply plead out because they won’t be able to afford anything else.

                    And that’s how it will all play out, because no responsible person wants to add an armed fucking mob to a riot!

                    The laws about unorganized militias are for those very rare times when someone actually gets it right – which didn’t happen in this case.

                    1. These folks are not wrong about the law. They’re wrong in imagining that the law will be applied as they fantasize.

                      So you admit the law may very well be misapplied due to political pressure, but still defend the misapplication?

                    2. Neither the Kenoshan Chief of Policy nor the local county sheriff could possibly have given a legal order to tell Rittenhouse not to come to Kenosha. They may have requested that people not come to Kenosha, but it was not a legal order and refusing to heed it could have no legal consequences.

                      What kind of cockamie BS is this? And if such an order legally existed and is going to be used against Rittenhouse and like minded people, why isn’t in being used against the protesters and rioters that were the proximate cause of the problem?

                    3. @ Eugine.

                      I’m saying the militia law covers those who get it right. It doesn’t shield those who get it wrong. This isn’t a hard concept and I’ve said it several times.

                      It should be completely obvious that after the perceived need for a militia is over someone will charge/sue the organizer/ participants and a judge will decide whether the militia was legally constituted or not, with input from everyone who has an axe to grind – exactly the process I’ve described above. It should also be obvious that the process is much more likely to begin in the state courts than the Federal courts.

                      The idea that you can declare yourself a militia then be consequence-free by the simple fact of having done so is complete, ridiculous bullshit.

                    4. > any other crimes that can be attributed to people outside Kenosha

                      I wouldn’t pull that thread, Troutwaxer.

                  2. Holy shit. Literally the perfect dictionary example of “sealioning”. I’m impressed. Keep it up.

                    1. Yeah, I know, and even though Molitor is theoretically on my side, I’m getting tired of the dude!

              1. “the weird contortions 2A guys come up with”

                Fortunately for us the people who built this country’s government left behind a metric crapton of documents detailing their thoughts on such matters.

                Turns out they were contortionists as well.

            2. To do that you’d have to completely rewrite the history curriculum starting in about third grade… not a bad idea, probably.

            3. You would think that. If you thought that Schools existed to teach.

              But no one is actually that naive outside of badly written bedtime stories.

          1. This is generally accurate, just use proper terminology: the Revolutionary War was a conflict between American and British Whigs against American and British Tories, an armed conflict in America and a political conflict in Britain. And indeed a replay of former Whig-Tory conflicts.

            For me the most interesting part is that once Whigs win, they stop being Whigs. In America it happened nearly instantly: the suppression of the Whiskey Revolution. In Britain it took a bit longer: the “constructionist” path Gladstone took, that was heavily criticized in Spencer’s 1884 The Man Versus The State.

  19. Replying to Alex K.:

    I believe he means that — that each voter should vote once and only once — and that statement is only the better politically for having a completely different meaning in other mouths and other contexts. Trump isn’t switching meanings, the phrase “one person, one vote” itself is.

    I believe that the explanation you are looking for is a motte and bailey argument.

    I strongly suspect* that Trump does only want each legitimately registered voter to vote exactly once. (That’s the bailey.) The motte – the “devil in the details” – amounts to making sure that every vote cast corresponds to exactly one legitimately registered voter, and that no such voter who wants to vote is denied or ignored, and that each vote cast is tallied accurately and quickly.

    Those details are disputable in (at least some parts of) the US this November.

    * – Of course, I can’t prove Trump’s state of mind. But it’s the most charitable/least implausible explanation of his utterances.

    1. I strongly suspect* that Trump does only want each legitimately registered voter to vote exactly once.

      Not every legitimately registered voter. Trump would rather those voters likely to vote Democrat not vote at all.

      Once again, we have ample evidence for vote suppression benefiting Republicans — and zero evidence for vote fraud benefiting Democrats.

    2. I believe that the explanation you are looking for is a motte and bailey argument.

      Not quite, I was aiming for something a bit more subtle than that — originally [in the referenced thread] I was speaking in terms of political slogans in general, where they may have no bailey to speak of (or at least, to quote Patsy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “It’s only a model.”). Two excellent examples of this are “Change we can believe in”, or “Morning in America” — neither slogan can be objectionable on their face, simply because the literal phrases carry so little direct meaning. [To quote the current election slogans — even “Keep America Great” or “No More Malarky” are more meaningful, yet still represent a broader, unspoken agenda.] What I see as significant here is not as much the shift between two meanings, but that the supposed “bailey” is so lacking as to be virtually absent — many political slogans could theoretically be uttered by either political party! This is definitely occurring with “one person, one vote” — which is being used by both sides for different purposes.

      …the “devil in the details” – amounts to making sure that every vote cast corresponds to exactly one legitimately registered voter, and that no such voter who wants to vote is denied or ignored, and that each vote cast is tallied accurately and quickly.

      Umm, yes and no. Yes in that I cannot deny that is what Trump has presented as the concern, and is the prima facie meaning of “one person, one vote”. No in that Trump’s actions appear more directed toward antagonizing Democrats than actual concern over electoral validity, and [speaking only for myself] the root problem is really the sudden, last-minute shift in electoral policy — for which the risks are not so much deliberate fraud or disenfranchisement, but inducing such errors through voter ignorance of the new / alternate systems being used.

  20. Just this morning I heard a recording from Trump telling a journalist in February that he knew how dangerous and deadly COVID-19 was. But he did not want to tell the Americans to prevent panic.

    Are you sure you want to pull this thread? Because while I’ll agree it is scummy behavior, this is standard operating procedure for governments.

    To borrow a quote:

    “preventing panic” is a lie that really means “denial of information in order to prevent rational self-interested behavior on the part of the correctly informed”.

    1. There’s a difference between “preventing a panic” and lying, particularly when those lies cause people not to take appropriate precautions. Trump’s failures on this matter are very well known – the current death toll is around 195,000 deaths, most of them unnecessary, most of them due to Trump’s multiple failures, all of which I thoroughly documented on another thread. The facts are absolutely not in Trump’s favor here!

      https://www.vox.com/2020/6/8/21242003/trump-failed-coronavirus-response

      As a matter of basic respect for the intelligence of others, don’t whine about the Liberal Media, because the record of Trump’s failures on COVID-19 is unimpeachable. Any response other than “I recognize Trump’s complete failure on COVID-19” is complete, utter, delusional bullshit.

      1. It can be impeached quite handily.

        The question is whether the collection of details is persuasive to moderates, assuming that there are any moderates remaining.

        Processing the huge aggregate of smaller claims about the COVID situation to form a coherent picture is basically a skilled art. Of the people actually trying, it looks like most have been polarized into a few camps by some deeper assumption/attachment or another. Some folks are partisan, of course, but I’m seeing some weird alignments that aren’t conventionally political. There are definitely camps that are compatible with enthusiastic Trump support, but it isn’t clear to me that those camps have much ability to convert the unpersuaded.

        It may come down to purely partisan lines.

        Take that Schiff quote about Barr’s claim of Chinese interference.

        “That’s just a plain false statement by the attorney general. A flat-out false statement,” “What Bill Barr just did in that statement was just flat out mislead the American people with a blatantly false statement.”

        A right winger might well ask “How does Schiff know the level of Chinese interference for certain that he can be clearly confident of what Barr might reasonably conclude?” From there, they may conclude that Schiff might personally know that he is working for the Chinese, and that may give him the certainty that he needs to make a strong denial.

        I would guess that a left winger starts from the assumption that Barr is political and partisan, and hence Schiff’s intensity might be coming from personal frustration with dealing with Trump, Barr, and Trump’s other cronies.

        I have no idea how a moderate might process it. I presume most moderates have not heard of it, and will never hear of it.

        It would probably be stupid to assume that one knows how the general public is going to process the political things this cycle. It may also be quite stupid to assume that one knows how the covid stuff will be processed. Anything where emotions are this high may be hugely unpredictable.

        Impeaching can mean as little as ‘providing evidence that decreases the credibility of a claim’. You don’t have any better idea than I do how the undecided will wind up assessing all of the apparently conflicting evidence.

        1. Because Adam Schiff is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and he probably has a pretty good idea of what’s going on in China – better than Barr, I’d guess.

          1. Just like he had seen incontrovertible proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, right? Except, well, there was none. Did Russia try to influence US politics? Of course, just like they have for going on 90 years. And what did Obama-Biden do about it in 2016? Apparently diddly-squat. Anyone who thinks China isn’t doing the same with their vastly greater amounts of available cash is living in a fool’s paradise. China’s been at it since at least 1992 that I know of, and surely long before that. There isn’t one credible shred of evidence to indicate they’ve suddenly decided to stop in 2020. Any more than we’ve suddenly decided to stop covert support for movements or parties in other nations where it’s in our interest.

            1. Nah. Sorry. If you think Trump did a good job on COVID, you’re either delusional or deliberately ignorant.

              As for Barr, I can just about guarantee Schiff knows stuff Barr doesn’t. I don’t say this isn’t on the basis of political preference, but because the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee is one of the top-ten most powerful and coveted jobs in Washington, and Schiff has been there for a couple decades. From the time in office alone he knows more than Barr.

              Where China is concerned I suspect they prefer Biden, but they’re too smart to make contact with Biden’s people before the inaugaration – why take that particular risk if you don’t have to when simply having Trump go away will make their lives much, much easier.

              1. Sorry, that should have read “I don’t say this on the basis of political preference…”

              2. Nah, said nothing here about Trump and COVID. But since Dems opposed pretty much everything Trump did until mid-March or later, you’re simply wrong. Just because Orange Man Bad.

                1. Nope. Every president gets some things right. Dubya Bush got it right a couple times, and Trump was right in banning H1B visas – he probably saved a lot of American jobs that way – but Trump was definitely not right on COVID – read some of the links I’ve posted above. “Orange man bad” just isn’t my style. I’m convinced by facts and cites, I try to convince others via facts and cites, and I have a critical eye even for opinions from my own side.

  21. It might be funny if it weren’t so disgustingly hypocritical.

    @darrin

    That is the “wisdom” I was hearing initially from conservatives. At least until enough analysis had been done that there was simply no way they could find fault and throw Kyle under the bus.

  22. Trump has done as well with this disease as any president could be expected to do. We can’t ask any more than that.

    BULL ROAR.

    The fact that literally every other developed country has much lower infection and death rates than the USA indicates that Trump’s response approaches pessimal. The fact that he knew the dangers back in February and deliberately lied about them, causing many tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, is grounds for impeachment — and it’ll stick this time!

    If we’d known in advance how exaggerated the “experts’” fears were, and how limited the virus’s effect actually is, we would never have agreed to the vast overreaction that has been taken. Trump fell for those fears too, as we hear in the Woodward recording. Thankfully he didn’t lose his head, but he was persuaded to take measures that in hindsight were unnecessary and destructive, and he’s since been trying to rectify at least some of that damage.

    I wouldn’t call a cold-like virus that kills close to 10% of those it infects, and leaves most of those it infects with long-term organ damage, “limited in effect”!

    1. I suggest you revisit your numbers. In Austria, dead vs. healed has roughly a 3 % rate, and the “healed” are counted only from those officially tested positive for the virus. Since there is a large number of people infected that never developed symptoms and were never tested, the fatality rate is well below those 3 percent.

    2. Dude. CDC seems to say that the yearly homicide rate is 20k. What BLM alleges to address would probably have to be a subset of that.

      Either the public health experts saying ‘BLM is more important that the COVID lockdown’ are wrong to be supporting rioting during a period of immense crisis or they are expecting a savings from the lockdown sufficiently lower than a year’s homicides of blacks.

      You can’t compare the alleged savings to several years of black deaths, because the purported improvement in those might be achieved instead by taking action after the covid lockdown ceased. Unless the purported improvement is by the mechanism of winning the 2020 election.

      Beyond that, the Feds have no force structure for compelling obedience from the whole American population. Either you make a persuasive case, and Americans more or less implement it voluntarily, or you make a persuasive case, and rely on the unorganized militia to compel obedience. There aren’t enough active duty, or active duty combined with national guard, for Trump to have controlled the situation relying on force. (And the bureaucracy of officers and NCOs could not be restructured to effectively support imposing his will by force. So, even if we bring in the unorganized militia, it would be messy at worst, and a bunch of fiefdoms disconnected from presidential control at best.)

      The only tools Trump had/has at hand for lockdown are mostly or entirely dependent on persuasion. What would it look like if he did a ‘good’ job with his persuasion? Well, the people (Republicans) most likely to go along, would have better outcomes, and the people most likely to do the opposite out of spite (Democrats), would have worse outcomes. Frankly, the nursing home matter probably can not be fairly described as the latter.

      Possibly something could be done by force at the federal level, going forward, by stopping international travel, but that has serious challenges.

    3. The most polite thing I can say is that you’ve gone full retard. The case fatality rate of the Wuhan coronavirus less than 1%. A large plurality of infected are completely asymptomatic.

      1. Just a reveal of the dishonesty typical for political agitators. That’s why I absolutely revile such scum.

    4. “The fact that literally every other developed country has much lower infection and death rates”

      Of the five most populous [Western] European Nations, UK, Spain, Italy, France and Germany

      The US has a lower fatality per 1M pop than.
      UK
      Spain
      and nearly the same as Italy.

      and significantly lower confirmed case fatality rate than all three.

      https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/

      Comparing the five most populous European Nations has problems, but that is the Framing Biden has been using, and been unchallenged. I’ll append Western, as the numbers Biden is mumbling off the teleprompter can’t work if you include Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

      1. In terms of cases/100,000 the United States is in the bottom 8 percent of the nations in the world. That’s “bottom” as in worst, not best. Trumps role in causing this has been unimpeachably proven, any other view is – I’ll be very kind here – a poorly-educated view. I’d guess that we’ll hit 200,000 deaths sometime on Tuesday and Trump’s poor behavior is to blame for at least 90 percent of them. There’s no other viewpoint which remotely agrees with reality.

        1. You’re right. Trump told Cuomo to send the infected elderly back to their nursing homes, instead of isolating them in hospitals. He insisted de Blaiso cut back on the number of subway cars running each day and forbade him from disinfecting them on a daily basis until early May.

          Oh, wait, those were decisions that the caused New York State to have the worst COVID-19 numbers in the world, and they were made by Cuomo and de Blasio without any input from Trump. Unless you’re blaming Trump for not having those two idiots arrested for mass murder – which isn’t a Federal offense and not something he could do – it’s hard to assign 90% of the deaths to Trump.

          1. How did so many elderly get infected in the first place? Answer: The virus was allowed to spread relatively unchecked because of lax containment and inadequate testing. This is unimpeachable fact.

            What Trump should have done is “taken one for the team”: realized he was going to be presiding over a severe recession, if not a depression, and therefore lose the election, nevertheless acting in the best interests of the American people because that’s his fucking job. He should have closed the borders, implemented strict lockdown procedures, and called upon the CDC to formulate and implement a plan to test as many Americans as possible and to quarantine the infected — at the first sign of the virus landing on our shores. He should have signed an executive order restricting interstate travel. He should have urged Congress to pass a bill withholding federal funding for highways, schools, etc. from any state that does not implement similar lockdown, testing, and quarantining practices, and that does not implement fines — or possible felony risking catastrophe or reckless endangerment charges — for citizens who refuse to follow shelter-in-place and mask-wearing guidelines.

            If this had happened, the lockdown would not have lasted long and we might be back to near-normal by now.

            Instead, he fucked up. He fumbled the ball, and as a result millions were infected, most of whom must deal with long-term organ damage. Hundreds of thousands have died. And, according to Dr. Fauci, the rest of us won’t be back to near normal until late 2021.

            Once again, all this has been unimpeachably proven, and any response other than “I admit Trump fucked up” is mental illness.

            1. > How did so many elderly get infected in the first place?

              It wasn’t just elderly sent to nursing homes, you ignoramus. They sent anybody to them. Some nursing home residents were harassed by the young people being forced to live among them.

            2. Agreed. The evidence is overwhelmingly against Trump.

              https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/rolling-stone-timeline-coronavirus-america-982944/

              https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/trump-coronavirus-deaths-timeline.html

              Any timeline favorable to Trump would leave out 95 percent of the facts. I would go so far as to say that understanding this is a baseline measure of either political sanity – for those who have seen the facts – or a baseline measure of political ignorance for those who have not seen the facts. It’s all there in the public record.

            3. Trump got severe pushback from the Democrats for partially closing the border to China, and you think he should have closed down the entire country at that time.

              Alternately, Cuomo and de Blasio could have done a moderately less incompetent job – I’m not asking for them to have done as well as Florida or Arizona, but failing as well as DC or Michigan should have been within their ability – and saved the country several tens of thousands of deaths.

              But no, Trump should have sealed the border in January or February, back when the sainted(tm) Fauci was telling people that that COVID-19 wasn’t going to be as bad as a severe flu season. And Trump’s failure to overrule the sainted(tm) Fauci at that time is Trump’s fault, even though the rest of the responsibility for America’s COVID-19 deaths can be laid at Trump’s feet for not obeying the dictates of the sainted(tm) Fauci.

              That’s not a particularly coherent argument you’ve got going there.

              1. But no, Trump should have sealed the border in January or February, back when the sainted(tm) Fauci was telling people that that COVID-19 wasn’t going to be as bad as a severe flu season.

                He should have closed down the border in March, when it was obvious to all and sundry that it was going to be much worse than the flu.

                Once again, we can look to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the government of New Zealand as a sterling example of leadership in this crisis. New Zealand closed its border in mid-March and locked down completely immediately thereafter. Extensive testing and quarantine measures were rolled out. They went for months without a single new coronavirus case; and a recent outbreak of thirty cases (note: cases, not deaths) was cause for national panic and a reversion to total lockdown.

                New Zealand is back down to a level of close to zero new cases per day, and restrictions have been eased (albeit not totally). This is what a government that looks out for the safety and well-being of its citizens looks like. The actions of the American government, by contrast, only make sense if American lives are expendable.

                Once again — unimpeachable proof that Trump fucked up. Your failure to admit such indicates that you are delusional.

                  1. Kinda difficult at the moment; the Kiwis currently don’t want any Yanks darkening their doorstep (who don’t have a few million or billion to spend, anyway; Peter Thiel and Gabe Newell are of course still welcome). A lot of that has to do with the fact that Trump fucked up the coronavirus response and to the rest of the developed world, the USA looks like a diseased no man’s land.

                1. Now watch as cases go back up after New Zealand attempts to open up again. And, oh look, in Europe, after they opened up from their lockdowns, new cases started spiking again! At what point will you admit you were wrong?

                  Oh that’s right, you’ll never admit it, because you can’t handle the truth!

                2. Double facepalm.

                  Repeat after me:

                  A lockdown in the presence of external sources of contagion is just a reset. You are kicking the can down the road.

                  Just what exactly is New Zealand planning to do if the magical vaccine doesn’t materialize next year?

                  1. But if you can kick the can down the road far enough you can save a huge number of lives. I can’t imagine that you’ve never read an explanation of such ideas as “flatten the curve” or “test and trace.”

                    If, given the amount of information available on COVID-19 and how badly Trump screwed up, you still believe Republican messaging on this issue, you are either delusional or deliberately ignorant.

                    1. We have flattened the curve. Flatter than a pancake that’s had a 16-ton-weight dropped on it. It was flattened by the beginning of May.

                      Why are we still destroying our economy? Oh right, Trump delenda est. It’ll all go away on November 4. Just ask the teachers in LA.

                    2. You’ve had plenty of chances to review the material, including the fact that I posted some stuff her special for you because you wouldn’t follow links.

                      Judgement made.

                    3. Or you make the problem worse when the second order effects you haven’t even thought of come out and fuck you, hard. Case in point. By mid-May, the number of people I personally know whose cancer treatments were delayed by weeks got *embarrassing*.

                      Every mitigation strategy aimed at minimizing infection is banking on getting an effective and safe vaccine within a year or two. That’s some remarkable optimism, given that a novel vaccine traditionally takes at least half a decade.

                      What I view as the biggest problem is that some safety issues can take several years to manifest, and *no amount of parallel testing will overcome that*. Nine women can’t make a baby in a month.

                      P.S. I’d love to know how “test and trace” is supposed to work in a country without anything resembling a secure border.

                    4. Troutwaxer, you judged me a long time ago. I really have no fucks to give any more about what a leftist thinks of me.

                      The simple truth is that the Wuhan Flu panic was blown far out of proportion to push the Left’s narrative. Nothing more. We didn’t kill the worlds’ economies over the 1968 Hong Kong flu, and that killed more people!

                      Sweden is showing the way to deal with it: no lockdowns, no mandates, herd immunity. Anything else is political theater.

                      We are in a cold civil war that is rapidly heating up. It’s time to pick a side. I’ve picked mine, and you’ve picked yours. I hope your Antifa buddies will defend you, even though you are probably not simon-pure on this evening’s Marxist doctrine in all of its putrid glory and therfore irredeemably raaaacisss!.

                    5. Actually Jay, other than your politics you seem like a decent guy and I really admired the way you handled the Sad Puppies thing by shepherding a DragonCon award through whatever their process was – it makes perfect sense for the Baen-style fan to have their own awards…

                      But yesterday I did judge that nothing could induce you to look at the evidence and you were either delusional or deliberately ignorant. Your ideas about COVID-19 are so primitive that you’re still telling people that Sweden got it right. They’re in the bottom 17 percent worldwide, measured in cases per 100,000, “bottom” in this case, means “worst.” You swim like a fish through the fake news.

                3. > He should have closed down the border in March, when it was obvious to all and sundry that it was going to be much worse than the flu.

                  Disturbingly, I have to agree with Troutwaxer about this. He might want to read his own citations, though. Trump started restricting travel to Europe in March. And as late as February 28th the New England Journal of Medicine was publishing this editorial:

                  >If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2

                  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

                  Perhaps you mean all travel in an out of the country? Perhaps you mean quarantines on New York State and New York City, which were floated and there was a lot of pushback. I wonder what you would think of Trump using the national guard to police the borders of NYC.

                  Democrat Leaders rejected and fought everything Trump suggested along these lines, reflexively and politically. It is instructive who you think needs to take One, and for which Team.

                  In any case, while there is value in identifying policy failures, the only political question is if elected Democrats, or specifically an incoming Biden administration, could have been expected to do better.

                  That answer is No

                  https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/14/these-joe-biden-flip-flops-on-covid-19-prove-hes-incapable-of-leading-during-the-pandemic-n929594

                  1. We’re not talking about Biden’s fuckups, which never actually happened because he’s not the president. We’re talking about Trump’s fuckups, which did happen because he was in the hot seat and made terrible decisions!

                    1. That’s Feb. 1st, BTW. I can find others, in case your shifting goalposts decide Biden’s not an actual Democrat because he’s actually a rutabaga by now. Which I would argue with, BTW.

                    2. I’m not a huge fan of Biden, mainly due to his ties to the financial services industry – Senator from Delaware, right? I probably don’t have to draw a map on this one.

                      As for Kamala Harris the less said the better – Biden had 6-7 better candidates for VP than her.

                      But I’m gonna hold my nose and vote for them because Trump is such a fuckup.

                      What we’re looking at here is two parties with primary systems that tend to pick their candidates from the bottom of the barrel, resulting in presidential elections that from a distance look like Satan fighting Cthulhu…

                4. In March, it was already far too late. It was probably too late to shut down the borders by February 1st. And I do have a memory, as do others. Gaslighting will not work and you should ashamed of yourself, either for assuming everyone else is so ignorant, or for being so ignorant yourself.

                  1. Then post a cite. Nobody else has been able to find any reliable report of a Democrat going after Trump for being prejudiced/racist – everything everyone else found was utterly unremarkable – but maybe you’ll be the one to convince me!

                  2. That is, calling Trump prejudiced/racist about closing borders over COVID-19. (We have lots of reasons for thinking Trump is a racist, but the COVID-19 thing isn’t one of them.)

          2. I would agree with you that Cuomo was no hero – why he’s been lionized by the media for his actions on COVID-19 is a mystery to me. But Cuomo’s problems don’t excuse Trump, who should have let the CDC do their fucking job instead of interfering in countless stupid ways.

            Any view which excuses Trump for COVID-19 does so in express contradiction of the facts, and only someone who’s deliberately shielding themselves from the obvious would believe otherwise. (Do they issue right-wing types with technology similar to Zaphod Beeblebrox’s peril-sensitive sunglasses?)

            1. who should have let the CDC do their fucking job

              You mean the CDC (and FDA) which were busily crapping the bed by the numbers until Trump ordered them to stop pissing in the soup.

              1. Better be careful with those comparisons.

                Zaphod was the Only Sane Man in galactic politics.

            2. In all fairness, Trump was way ahead of the curve on COVID compared to everyone else.. The D’s and Major Media’s response to shutting down flights from Wuhan (an obviously sensible response) was to denounce it as racist and to accuse the President of fear-mongering. They then actively encouraged people to dine out in Chinatowns, party for Mardi Gras, etc.

              1. Do you have a cite for your claims about Democrats? I’m all over Democratic media and don’t recall seeing such a thing.

                1. Honest question: Who do you think you’re fooling with this “Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia” shtick?

                  1. To be helpful: NBC Bay Area report, Feb 24

                    So there’s one claim that holds up. But I have no doubt Trout will just make up some reason it isn’t real, or proves some other point, or whatever other dishonest fucking dodge he decides to pull out of his disinfo-spewing ass.

                    1. Pelosi visited San Francisco’s Chinatown to remind people that the virus’s spread was geographical – that is, the Wuhan region of China – and not racial, involving American citizens of Chinese descent. From your link:

                      “She downplayed the racism issue, saying she understands people are concerned about China – the epicenter of the novel coronavirus.

                      “But that shouldn’t be carried over to Chinatown in San Francisco,” she said.”

                      You will note that she didn’t discuss the issue of shutting down travel to/from mainland China at all, which is what you’re insisting this cite proves. Instead, she was doing exactly what she should do as member of the House – using her newsworthiness to help her constituents, the U.S. citizens who own businesses in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

                      While there may be other cites that prove your point – I haven’t gotten there yet – in this case you completely misinterpreted what you read.

                      Also, note something else. I’m not lying. I didn’t say “that didn’t happen.” I said “I don’t recall seeing…” I have no intention on making an assertion without data, and you had the opportunity to provide that data, and you failed. I’ll continue reading and we’ll see if someone else did better.

                    2. To be helpful

                      I don’t think playing along with Trout’s blatant exercise in historical revisionism is helpful as if it were a case of legitimate confusion is helpful.

                    3. > I don’t think playing along with Trout […] is helpful.

                      I dunno, providing Trout an opportunity to show how he is both dishonest and not engaging in good faith is kind of helpful.

                      It’s nice when he provides a worked example on demand. And he actually thinks he comes out looking good in all this!

                  1. Here’s an article from the Federalist collating left-wing media downplaying the virus. Posted March 24.

                    I wonder how many more nails we can collect to nail Trout’s ass to the wall on this one?

                    1. But none of these articles, some of them dating from January of this year, prove that Democrats have complained that travel restrictions are racist. The one CNN report does mention racism, but only in the context of Asian residents of the U.S. being attacked in response to Coronavirus, which is, as CNN noted, a very irrational thing to do!

                      But note that all these articles are from January or February of this year, and the latest of these articles is from eight days before our first Coronavirus death.

                      Also, what’s the problem with an American Democrat encouraging people to eat in an American Chinatown? It shows enormous confusion between the word “Chinese” as denoting the ancestry of an American Citizen, and “Chinese” as denoting a particularly country or geographical location – surely you’re all smarter than that!

                  2. de Blasio clearly gave bad advice, but you didn’t prove what you were trying to prove, which was that Democratic officials critiqued Trump for shutting down flights to/from Wuhan (or anywhere else in the world.)

                    Also, note something else about the story you’ve pushed as evidence, which is that it date from March 11th of 2020, which was three days before California proclaimed a state of emergency and locked down. This was before the idea that mask-wearing is healthy was scientifically confirmed. So while it was bad advice, it was also early advice, which is frequently bad regardless of which part of the political spectrum it comes from.

                    New York locked down very hard (though not as early as they should have.) I don’t think Cuomo’s response was nearly as good as anyone believes, but he did change his stance as the evidence piled up – this might be why he’s so often compared as the good guy to Trump’s bad guy, as Trump has let 200,000 people die without changing his stance on the virus.) Cuomo also has the advantage that his brother works for a major news network, which probably does have something to do with the way he’s lionized!

                    I’ve posted two links to timelines proving what Trump did wrong, and unlike your links, mine are both accurate!

                    We’ll see whether ktk’s link is any better than yours, but I’m not anticipating that he’ll have much success. In fact, I’ll make a guess prior to reading his link which is that most of the Democratic responses the Federalists have cataloged all come from before April 1st of 2020, and that most of those Democrats have changed their tune (or closed their mouths) as more evidence came in.

                    1. I ain’t talking about Trump. I’m talking about:

                      “Do you have a cite for your claims about Democrats? I’m all over Democratic media and don’t recall seeing such a thing.”

                      Democrat politicians gave obviously stupid advice. It was already obvious on the first day of March which way the wind was blowing.

                      And on this note:

                      “This was before the idea that mask-wearing is healthy was scientifically confirmed.”

                      They didn’t confirm dick. We might, and I say might, have some useful answers on that front next year.

                2. How about from January 31 (day of / after the China travel restrictions went into place): Health experts warn China travel ban will hinder coronavirus response? That mainly cites the WHO, who hadn’t recommended any travel restrictions (and to my knowledge, never did — by the time they should have, SARS-CoV-2 was far too widespread).

                  More direct to the point of the original claim, there is this Feb. 4 Politico article on the same topic where “On a call with reporters Friday, CDC officials acknowledged the policies could “induce fear and stigma,” but argued the public health benefits outweighed the downsides.” And the same story on CNN (with a hair more detail in what negative effects are claimed).

                  1. I have to say that your research is head-and-shoulders above the research anyone else did. But what you found was that medical experts opposed the travel ban on the basis that it did more harm than good to international cooperation, and because it might stigmatize people. None of these are Democratic politicians making claims of racism – they’re epidemiologists giving professional opinions.

                    The one tiny little thing you (or anyone else) has found is the case of Ami Bera, a California Democratic representative who used to be an emergency-room physician. He made some very mild critiques of the travel ban, most of which were on the same medical grounds as those of the other health experts – nothing Bera said was remotely outrageous or phrased in anything but very calm language.

                    To sum up your “proofs” you’ve collectively proved that Pelosi and de Blasio encouraged people to avoid prejudice against U.S. citizens of Asian descent – hardly a cause for alarm, that one Congressman, who has a medical background, opposed the travel bans, and that a lot of public health experts expressed professional concerns about travel bans. (Expressing professional concerns is what we pay them for!)

                    I’m not seeing anything which would indicate that any Democrats has made outright claims of racism regarding travel bans – certainly there has been no organized messaging from even the smallest faction within the party – and no Democrats have engaged in the large-scale denial of best practices or scientific evidence which seem to be very, very normal for Republicans.

                    I’m really, really, really not impressed.

  23. The anti-2A bobble-heads commenting here remind me of “you can’t triple stamp a double stamp! Lloyd! LLOYD!”

    I’ll triple stamp your double stamp.

    Let’s dance.

  24. I just found these two stories, both of which contain material showing that Eric’s contention about the “unorganized militia” is incorrect:

    “As for those private paramilitaries that took to the streets in Wisconsin, McCord points to Article I, Section 20 of the state constitution, which succinctly states, “The military shall be in strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.””

    Also: “So, does being part of an unorganized militia give you and your buddies the right to sling AR-15s across your chest, don cammies and patrol the streets of Kenosha and other cities as the self-declared Super-Patriot Constitutional Militia for Liberty and Tricorn Hats? No, because a militia is not an armed gang; it operates under orders from a legal authority that a self-governed group does not.

    David Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute, does note that in the early and mid-1800s, there were privately organized militias: They were “like the Elks Club.” But they had to be organized like the regular militia, and even when they served as an intact unit, they did so under federal control. They also had to have state charters.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/kyle-rittenhouse-his-militia-defense-ignores-private-paramilitaries-are-illegal-ncna1239397
    .

    The 17-year-old was a member of a self-proclaimed militia. But what are militias allowed to do? And what lines were crossed in the confusing and deadly night that led to Rittenhouse facing murder charges and potentially life in prison?

    Every state in the country prohibits paramilitary activity — private militias like the one in Kenosha this week. And when these groups pretend to have legal authority, decide for themselves when to use deadly force — all while answering to no one — they’re breaking the very law they claim to be defending.”

    https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/08/28/kenosha-shooting-what-the-law-says-about-militias/

    In short, there’s no right to form a militia in Wisconsin, then self-dispatch.

    1. And here’s one more, and NPR radio story:

      MCCORD: It does vary state by state. But one thing is consistent – all 50 states have some provision in their state law, whether it’s their state constitution or their state statutes, that prohibits private militia, private paramilitary activity. And that’s also the case in Wisconsin. In addition, many states, including Wisconsin, prohibit private individuals, untrained, unaccountable to civilian authority from taking on official functions – functions of an official public officer like a police officer without any authority.

      https://www.npr.org/2020/08/30/907720068/are-citizen-militias-legal

      1. Did those douchebags get the proper permits and use union labor for those giant strawmen they’ve erected? There was no paramilitary activity taking place. Nobody is claiming any new authority to use deadly force. The journalist scum are doing what they do best; lie and spread confusion.

        In case it somehow missed your attention: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/minneapolis-residents-are-forming-armed-neighborhood-watches-as-shootings-triple-after-george-floyd-s-death/ar-BB17eTDd

        Throughout this great nation the people are doing their part to keep their neighborhoods and municipalities safe from rioters, looters, rapists, murderers, and socialists.

    2. None of that is actual executable law….therefore utterly irrelevant.

      We have the authority to form unorganized militia by virtue of our inalienable right to keep and bear arms.

      No magical hand-waving can usurp that right.

      We are in the right, you are in the wrong.

      It will prove very costly to you to challenge our ultimate authority.

      1. PS. Of course, you’re going to do no such thing, because like all anti-2A intertube fags, you’re pathetic cowards that expect other people – with guns – to do your dirty work.

        We know who you are, and – if the balloon goes up – we won’t forget you.

        Nor forgive.

        1. You’re obviously new here. I’m not anti 2A and would be quite happy to purchase a few guns – people like you might just talk me into it!

          A saner way of describing the issue might be to say that there is a contradiction between Federal law and various state laws. The problem for someone who wants to shoot other people under cover of being a militia is that if you’re arrested the legal action will almost certainly start in state court, with state charges, and involve a multi-year, multi-appeal delay before you get into a Federal court where the militia aspects of the law might be considered. You might read my comments on this above – I promise you that they are the path of good sense.

          1. Trouts’ not anti-2A.* Thinks you should be able to carry whatever kind of gun you want. It’s just that any -particular- instance of defending yourself is wrong. There’s no pattern! It’s just a coincidence that no American has ever had a valid case! Unlikely perhaps, but as you can see from these scientific studies…

            *(Because that doesn’t even work as FUD here.)

            1. I think it’s more likely that only contentions cases even earn a mention here, so that even someone who is broadly pro 2A can find exception with those cases. It’s a form of selection bias.

            2. I’d probably draw the line at carrying a heavy-machine gun, and I don’t like people who “open carry” during protests – too many ways for that to go very badly wrong – but generally I’m good with guns and will probably purchase my first gun soon.

              I also don’t have a problem with defending yourself. Did anyone see the footage from the police shooting in Pennsylvania? Definitely a good shoot – the officer was being chased by a guy with a kitchen knife after responding to a domestic-disturbance call and shot the man. Note the guy wasn’t waving the knife around while standing still or something like that, but running after the cop with his knife held high. I’ve got no problem with that particular incident.

              The problems in Kenosha had more to do with the use of inflammatory language than anything else: “They’re letting the city burn, we have to save them!” and the consequences of not telling the truth about Kenosha on Facebook.

              How may people would have armed themselves and come to Kenosha if the Facebook page had said – exactly reflecting the truth, “Kenosha police and sheriffs are doing their best, but there are too many rioters and protestors for them to meet their responsibilities. Therefore the governor has sent 325 members of the national guard to Kenosha and the president is sending Federal law enforcement to the city. The city of Kenosha has in turn requested another thousand guardsmen. The Kenosha sheriff’s department has requested that armed civilians stay away from Kenosha, but let’s go there anyway, because we’re a militia.”

              Crickets, right?

              If anyone believes that stand-down orders were being issued, cites please?

      2. None of that is actual executable law….therefore utterly irrelevant.

        We have the authority to form unorganized militia by virtue of our inalienable right to keep and bear arms.

        Actually getting that argument before a judge will cost many hundreds of thousands in legal fees, enough to break the bank of a guy like Rittenhouse.

        It’s much better bet to just plead guilty.

        1. Realistically, he’ll be getting a lot of help over gofundme and similar enterprises, possibly enough to pay the entirety of his legal fees. But he’ll have a good legal team with excellent credentials. If there’s a self-defense argument to be made they’ll make it credibly – and IANAL but it does sound like there is a valid self-defense argument (aside from the “I’m with the militia” bullshit.)

          But it may not be enough to keep him out of jail, and I’m sure a creative DA can find lots of other charges; rioting, assault, manslaughter, conspiracy (if he discussed his plans to come to Kenosha with someone else,) etc., so even if he skates on the murder charges I think he’ll go to jail for something else.

          1. Gofundme already banned fundraising for Rittenhouse. Facebook has banned any postings in support of him.

            He did get free help from Nick Sandman’s lawyer apparently.

            1. Whether he gets the money via Gofundme or someplace else is not really the point. He’ll get it. The problem will come with any civil suits – he may not get enough money to both pay his lawyer and pay off any debts relating to civil verdicts. If that’s the case, he was seventeen when he shot those people, so his parents are liable, as well as possibly (IANAL) the people who organized the militia on Facebook, and (IANAL) the friend who asked Kyle to defend his business.

              When I talk about downside risk, it’s not just for the people Kyle shot. It’s for Kyle, his parents, the organizers of the militia and Kyle’s friend the business-owner.

            2. > Gofundme already banned fundraising for Rittenhouse.

              That Trout was ignorant of this says a lot. Willful, blind ignorance.

              They allow fundraising for the surviving thug who attacked him, though, last I understood. Figure that out.

              1. I know this sounds strange to you, but many of us are not ready for mob rule. Further, I don’t think you’d like mob rule nearly as much as you think you would. The principle of mob rule is much easier to establish, and much harder to get rid of than the question of “who gets to be the ruling mob.”

                Essentially, you’re arguing that (the National Guard already having been sent for) the problem of Kenosha’s riots be settled sooner rather than later, by a factor of two or three days, and – worst case scenario – maybe another hundred-million dollars.

                The price you’re willing to pay for that is allowing a group of armed people who aren’t official in any way, and have no training in either civil rights or the laws/rules regarding law enforcement, to self-dispatch. I see the problems inherent in allowing the mob to rule as larger than the problems of allowing people to riot.

                What I’d grant you without the slightest argument is that any riot is a big fucking problem – expensive in terms of money and ruined lives as businesses burn down, hard to stop once it gets going – but mob rule… think Revolutionary France, Communists taking Russia over without winning the vote, or closer to home, the Tulsa Race Riots.

                The principle that we don’t allow the mob to rule is why we’re arguing semi-amiably online rather than shooting each other – do I really have educate you in these ordinary basics of civilization?

                I won’t say the rule of law is worth preserving at any price – I’m neither stupid nor naive – but you’re willing to let it go for pennies on the dollar, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

                1. I know this sounds strange to you, but many of us are not ready for mob rule.

                  And that’s precisely what the rioters are trying to establish.

                  The price you’re willing to pay for that is allowing a group of armed people who aren’t official in any way, and have no training in either civil rights or the laws/rules regarding law enforcement, to self-dispatch.

                  Aren’t you also trying to argue that the Police are a bunch of “racist bastards”? Or is your real objective to shut down anyone standing up to your Marxist thugs?

                1. Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re proposing. I’m not even sure which post you’re replying to. Can you be a little clearer please?

                  1. Given the observational data, I propose as hypothesis a new term of measurement: the trout (trt). One (1) trout being equivalent to approximately 23 words of inane sophistry, dishonesty, and bullshit.

                    I shall leave it to the Society to do further experiments along these lines. Thank you, Gentlemen.

    3. Three Bylines, two are so called “Journalists” and the third is a Georgetown Law prof that says “laws vary” and quotes no laws. So, three unsupported editorials pretending to be news.

      When civil order breaks down, because to the deliberate negligence of officials, the power must revert to the citizenry.

      Maybe you should re-familiarize yourself with the Declaration of Independence:

      “whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.”

      Also, this was the argument for may-issue carry laws where authorities had no intention of issuing permits to the public. Many self motivated reasoners were surprised when this was found unconstitutional.

      Now, your going to argue that the local authorities haven’t properly assembled the militia, therefore all militias are illegal paramilitary forces.

      Troutwaxer proves how strong self-delusion can be.

      1. First, the Declaration of Independence has no force of law, never having been a declaration which laid out a legal system of any kind, and having been superseded by the Constitution, which lays out exactly how, the Revolutionary War won, the Articles of Confederation having been found wanting, legislation would work from then into the future (subject to amendment, of course.) Here’s a hint: claiming that the Declaration of Independence creates any affirmative laws is the mark of an inexperienced disputant. Note the Quora thread, particularly the answer from the actual attorney, Matt Howell:

        https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Declaration-of-Independence-have-any-legal-authority-in-the-US?share=1

        Essentially, the Declaration of Independence is our “Dear John” letter to George III.

        Second, Mary McCord is a lawyer with DOJ experience who specifically has studied this issue. She’s also a law professor. I’ll take her word over yours, thanks.

        Third, follow the links, particularly to the Wisconson Constitution.

        Fourth, note the practical issues which I’ve pointed out multiple times above. TL:DR, the “unorganized militia” portion of the law is for those rare times when someone gets it right, not for those who self-dispatch despite having been not only rejected, but threatened with arrest by the local law-enforcement. (You’ll find a cite to that above.)

        Fifth, there was no “deliberate negligence of officials.” By the time Rittenhouse did his thing there were 325 members of the National Guard on site, with more requested/being dispatched, plus the local sheriffs and police department, and once again, the “militia” had been rejected with some force by both the Kenosha police chief and the local sheriff. The deaths caused by Rittenhouse made it clear that the police chief and sheriff were correct.

        1. the “militia” had been rejected with some force by both the Kenosha police chief and the local sheriff.

          Who had let the rioters burn the city for two days at that point, seems like a textbook case of “deliberate negligence of officials” to me.

          The deaths caused by Rittenhouse made it clear that the police chief and sheriff were correct.

          They “make clear” no such thing, as has been explained to you repeatedly elsewhere in this thread.

          1. The problem here is that you’re only seeing the “upside” of letting a bunch of untrained people with guns lose in the area of a riot. There’s downside risk also, as Rittenhouse proves. For example, imagine that prior to Rittenhouse shooting people the county Sheriff had encouraged militias to come help defend Kenosha. The county and city of Kenosha would now share in the liability for everything Rittenhouse did while in the city… millions in legal fees at the very least, and possible legal liability for his actions…I know that you see Kyle’s actions as an unmitigated good, but it’s very possible that the law will not, and that costs a ton of money.

            I’m sorry to bust up your fantasy here, but good administrators get paid to keep an eye on both the upside and downside risks.

            1. There’s downside risk also,

              Well you haven’t presented it.

              millions in legal fees at the very least, and possible legal liability for his actions

              The only reason Kyle is having to deal with legal fees is because the state officials decided to prosecute him for political reasons. There’s a very easy way they could avoid said legal fees: not prosecuting the people acting in self-defense.

              I also note that you appear to be excessively concerned with legal fees but not with property damage. Even if we accept your claim that the local officials would have to spend money defending against frivolous lawsuits, I have a hard time seeing that its more than the damage the rioters committed, not to mention the long term damage to Kenosha’s economy caused by a demonstration of unwillingness to maintain order.

              I’m sorry to bust up your fantasy here, but good administrators get paid to keep an eye on both the upside and downside risks.

              Oh I understand. You’re a despicable blackshirt. While you’re not willing to personally participate in their riots, you are willing to encourage people to submit to them.

            2. >There’s downside risk also, as Rittenhouse proves.

              Oh? Three criminal shitstains attacked him with clubs and guns; two died, one is maimed for life. I’m not seeing any “downside” there, unless you count the third one surviving.

              1. PSA in case any of Trout/Fred’s FUD worked. The riots are State-subsidized.

                We know they’re shitstains because they had been arrested before, but they were still out on the streets bothering innocent people. That’s utter dereliction of duty. The one job of even a libertarian night-watchman State is to keep criminals from committing crime, and these were known criminals. I don’t have to even approach going [Minority Report] on this.

                The Cathedral spends a lot of time just one step beyond the average voter’s inferential horizon. Such as letting criminals out for ‘mercy’ so they can have the criminals bulk up and harden their paramilitary demonstrations.

                1. Or maybe because the Kenosha jail has a limited number of cells. It’s a city of a hundred-thousand people – how many people can fit inside their jail?

                  A big part of the problem here is that law enforcement is still feeling their way into how they can best handle issues like this; how do you make sure that you’ve got enough holding cells, national guard backup, help from other local law-enforcement, etc. during a time of general unrest when a large portion of the population is watching live shootings on national media and becoming very unhappy with the police, and at the same time you’ve got rabble-rousers on Facebook telling people to grab their guns and “counter” the protestors/rioters, using the inflammatory language of “the authorities are letting the city burn!”

                  What you’re observing is that these are not easy problems to solve, and that some kinds of cooperative agreements are probably necessary – the city next door to Kenosha probably needs to rent them some jail cells or something.

                  And FYI, I firmly believe that if you’ve caught someone breaking windows and arrested them, and the riot is ongoing, releasing them because you don’t have the jail-space IS NOT something you should do! (Though I have no idea about exactly what options were available to the cops in Kenosha.)

                  I’d say that at this point any governor should be talking with their national guard commanders about this – there are probably ways to speed up national guard deployments – and encouraging cities to make jail-sharing and manpower-sharing agreements with each other in anticipation of possible problems.

        2. This is a illustrative example of Trouts dishonesty.

          Someone posed something earlier about Goalposts moving at 50 mph, I’ll borrow that here.

          >Second, Mary McCord is a lawyer with DOJ experience who specifically has studied this issue. She’s also a law professor. I’ll take her word over yours, thanks.

          >First, the Declaration of Independence has no force of law,

          Neither do the citation-free opinions of a Georgetown Professor, no matter how illustrious, and two Journalists. I’ll take the principles laid out in Declaration of Independence as a better guide to how our Government is and ought to be organized.

          >Fifth, there was no “deliberate negligence of officials.” By the time Rittenhouse did his thing there were 325 members of the National Guard on site, with more requested/being dispatched, plus the local sheriffs and police department, and once again, the “militia” had been rejected with some force by both the Kenosha police chief and the local sheriff. The deaths caused by Rittenhouse made it clear that the police chief and sheriff were correct.

          Wisconsin Mayor described the Shooting of Jacob Blake thus:

          “While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country.” and “”In the coming days, we will demand just that of elected officials in our state who have failed to recognize the racism in our state and our country for far too long.”

          Its at least Deliberate Negligence to describe the shooting this way, in the absence of evidence. Its an inflammatory attempt to curry favor with these rioters because they are the Democrats voting base.

          >The deaths caused by Rittenhouse made it clear that the police chief and sheriff were correct.

          And days of rioting after bringing on these forces, and The Kenosha County Board request for 1,500 additional National Guard troops, that these earlier actions were insufficient.

          https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/08/27/jacob-blake-kenosha-police-shooting-two-killed/3442878001/

          https://www.newsweek.com/milwaukee-police-association-accuses-governor-pushing-false-ideology-jacob-blake-shooting-1527284

    4. They weren’t “patrolling the streets”, dumbass. They were defending a car lot (IIRC). They were on private property the whole time, except when Kyle somehow got separated from the rest. I haven’t read how. Maybe he went out back to take a leak and got chased from there. It’s obvious he did not want to shoot anybody, or he wouldn’t have been running, either from the pedophile who got shot first (and Rittenhouse didn’t fire the first shot, that came from someone unknown and not from Rittenhouse’s buddies). I agree that they have no authority to patrol the streets, but defending private property? Hell, yes!

      1. I didn’t say they were patrolling the streets. The article I quoted used the phrase with reference to the whole militia group, not Rittenhouse. The quote was “So, does being part of an unorganized militia give you and your buddies the right to sling AR-15s across your chest, don cammies and patrol the streets of Kenosha and other cities as the self-declared Super-Patriot Constitutional Militia for Liberty and Tricorn Hats?”

        Forest for the trees, dude! “Patrol the streets” was aimed at a whole class of activities, not Rittenhouse in particular!

  25. I believe the Lawyer for Rittenhouse has set up a donation channel for his defense, since Gofundme took down one that had been opened there.

    Gofundme has not taken down the donations for Huber or Rosenbaum.

    Another reason not to support Gofundme.

  26. Do you have a cite for the idea that they “let the city burn?” I very much doubt that anyone said “Hey, the rioters are setting fires and looting stores, we’ll just let it happen! Why don’t we steer our police car own the road a mile or two and we’ll have a couple burgers and talk about the game last night!”

    That’s utter bullshit.

    I’d buy the idea that the police/sheriff were outnumbered or had deployed their assets to the wrong places or otherwise didn’t handle the situation well – I’ve got no trouble with that one, but “let the city burn?”

    A big part of this dispute involves inflammatory language. Nobody “let the city burn.” Do you have any doubt that every police, fire, and sheriff’s department official did everything they could to make sure the city didn’t burn?”

    If you say “Did their best to keep the city from burning but had deployed their people incorrectly to suppress attempts at property damage” or something similar a lot of the upset goes away. With that language the Kenosha officials then become objects of sympathy rather than objects of contempt. So look at how the phrasing is being used to inflame the emotions. You do know that Wisconson’s governor called out the National Guard on August 24th, which was the day immediately after Blake was shot, right?

    Nobody “let the city burn.”

    1. I’d buy the idea that the police/sheriff were outnumbered or had deployed their assets to the wrong places or otherwise didn’t handle the situation well

      If that was the case, they would have been happy to accept assistance as indeed the rank and file officers were.

      Do you have any doubt that every police, fire, and sheriff’s department official did everything they could to make sure the city didn’t burn?”

      Given the long history of left-wing political officials issuing stand down orders in the face of left-wing rioters, yes very much so.

      1. > Given the long history of left-wing political officials issuing stand down orders in the face of left-wing rioters, yes very much so.

        Yes. If the government authorities had done the correct thing, which would have been to arrest everyone in the park in front of the city hall once curfew was passed, unlawful assembly – and then riot – declared, fires started and explosives thrown, and sort it all out later, men like Kyle would not have been required to stand up to protect the city.

        Instead, the authorities merely pushed the violent rioting agitators, into the city on consecutive nights, all but ensuring a continuing inferno.

        Given Trout’s constant crying that those authorities didn’t want civilian help protecting the city, and given that the government did this repeatedly, the only possible explanation is that Trout believes the government deliberately wanted the city to burn, and he supports that happening either explicitly or implicitly through condemnation of anyone trying to stop it.

        The Bayesian probability that Trout really is engaging in Soviet-style active measures increases every time he posts…

        1. “Yes. If the government authorities had done the correct thing, which would have been to arrest everyone in the park in front of the city hall once curfew was passed, unlawful assembly – and then riot – declared, fires started and explosives thrown, and sort it all out later, men like Kyle would not have been required to stand up to protect the city.”

          And how would the authorities have done that? Before the paywall closed the LA Times told me that there were over a thousand protestors the first night – which blew up out of nowhere on the same day Blake was shot, with nothing like coordination between police and protestors (which is one of the main things that helps keep protests calm.) Per Redstate there are 185 members of the Kenosha police department,

          https://www.redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/08/25/blm-burns-down-kenosha-a-city-of-100000-with-police-and-national-guard-deployed/

          and Redstate also numbered the protestors as “several thousand” after watching videos released on Twitter, etc. I think that’s probably exaggerated, but if we assume two thousand protestor/rioters and 185 Kenosha police on the first night, plus whatever sheriff’s deputies they could get to the site on that first night, maybe 3-400 people at most, some of them quite properly tasked to defend the courthouse and city jail, some of them running command centers, some of them assigned to stay in vehicles… how would the authorities have done what you recommend on that first night?*

          (One of the big questions here is going to be when/how the sheriff’s dept implemented their emergency plan and how well that worked…)

          Apparently 106 of the 175 people arrested (find your own cite, it’s all over the web) were from outside Kenosha. How do you keep those outsiders from coming into town, setting a couple fires well-away from the park where the protests have been taking place, then going home, particularly on the first night?

          Much of the rightwing argument here ignores a whole host of practical questions. One of the primary questions is “Why would a police or sheriff’s department allow a militia into town?” If a high-enough official says “yes, please come to town,” now the city is liable for anything the untrained people with guns do while in the city.

          Regardless of whether you’re on the left or right, I think it’s undeniable that what Rittenhouse did will generate a ton of very expensive lawyering, including the possibility of a guilty verdict in a civil suit, which might easily require up to 10 million in liability payments alone. As a city official, would you take that risk for couple-hundred untrained civilians with AR-15s and Hawaiian shirts?

          The big problem with the rightwing arguments under Eric’s top post is that they’re very simplistic. There’s not room for complications or ambiguity in your worldview, but the world is irredeemably complicated – do you start throwing tear gas at a bunch of angry people or do you let them burn themselves out and go home, even if it means being up all night? (Which probably would have been the smartest possible thing to do.) You seem to think that it’s very easy, that a bunch of BLM protestors will just go home if you arrest enough of them… when arresting them will just make them hate you more and increase your problems the next day, because you don’t have anyplace to put them – how many people will fit into the Kenosha jail?

          We’re talking about a very complicated problem with a thousand variables, and you can’t think your way past “duh… they should have arrested everybody” or “a White militia with guns would solve the problem.” (While all the while refusing to consider the downside risk – how would a White Militia with guns make things worse? (Have you studied the Tulsa Race Riots or any of the similar historical happenings?))

          As for your really wild accusation, I’m beginning to wish I was paid to post here – volunteering to help you guys see past your bubble is very expensive in terms of time – inwardly I actually define reading Eric’s political posts as one of my bad habits! Maybe I should set up a GoFundMe or something – how much would you guys pay me to stay away so you can have your rightwing-circle-jerk in peace?

          Yes, that last line is a joke.

        2. As an addendum, I absolutely adore how much energy the Evil Trout is wasting while being goaded into revealing the depths of his dishonesty and bad faith.

          But, I suppose that’s what you’d expect from an idiot who implicitly supports the burning of businesses for political purposes and condemns any citizen who stands up and tries to stop it, even celebrates such citizens being pilloried. Really, really evil shit.

          This is a man who would not try stop a rapist in the act of rape if the government told him not to. This is a man who would let a woman get raped because he thinks trying to help will only make the problem worse. The Evil Trout is an immoral coward who will laugh joyously as the people he believes are his inferiors get destroyed by lawless mobs. Trout is the type of person who would have happily given his own mother over to the gulags or pushed her into the gas chambers, and say it is because he thinks that is logically the best action.

          And when someone calls this Evil, Evil human out, he starts spinning like a top and implying that his detractors are racists or harbor racist thoughts, putting words in their mouths they never said.

          Do not trust this man, do not engage with this man. This person is evil, with evil motives, and is trying his best to convince you to be evil just like him.

          1. Dude, too many beers before you post is always a bad idea. I promise you this won’t be nearly as intelligent and well-written as you imagine when you reread it tomorrow morning.

            Don’t forget to have some orange juice and a couple aspirin before you go to bed!

              1. BLM is of course its own opposite day mirror, Black Lives Ended. Or, Black Lives Matter (to Black Murderers). Not sure about the correct wording here.

                Troutwaxer is a racially-motivated mass-murdering psychopath who is putting the KKK to shame, complicit in over 4000 black murders already – probably more like 5000. I’m sure everyone is shocked to see a Marxist is in it for the bloodthirst.

                The “peaceful protests” are killing roughly 7 unarmed blacks a month, and my understanding is nearly half of major American cities don’t have them. (Killing whites too, but not as often.) BLM: Black Life-ending Murderers?

                CHAZ killed five blacks, mostly teens. One month. One city block. Still rookie numbers compared to Stalin, but I’m sure you can bump those up, Trouty!

                Every time police and BLM are compared apples-to-apples, BLM comes out on top assuming you want mourning black mothers.

                We already know Trout is impervious to evidence. Why? You can’t convince a liar of the truth – they already know. For Trout getting as many blacks in pain and dead as possible is the entire point.

                1. >>> complicit in over 4000 black murders already – probably more like 5000.

                  5000 murders? Really?

                  Cites? That’s an extraordinary claim. Where are your cites?

                  >>> The “peaceful protests” are killing roughly 7 unarmed blacks a month, and my understanding is nearly half of major American cities don’t have them.

                  Cites? Excluding Black people killed by cops during protests? And during what time period? I assume we’re counting from the day after George Floyd’s death?

                  >>> CHAZ killed five blacks, mostly teens. One month. One city block.

                  If you’re saying that Seattle handled the protests/riots particularly badly, I’d agree. In particularly, abandoning the 23rd precinct and allowing CHAZ/CHOP to take over six city blocks was a horrible decision. I hope the local business owners who are suing the city get a metric shit-ton of money, and the survivors of the shootings should also sue. I’d also agree that trying to form an “alternate government” isn’t nearly as easy as it looks – and that’s a lesson for everyone regardless of their politics.

                  >>> Every time police and BLM are compared apples-to-apples, BLM comes out on top assuming you want mourning black mothers.

                  Once again, cites? According to this approximately 67 unarmed Black or Hispanic people are killed every year by police.

                  https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends

                  I have no idea how you show BLM having higher numbers. Cites please. For obvious reasons, I’d particularly like to see cites showing BLM protesters killed by someone other than police.

                  What’s sad about all this is that most of your other posts on the subject were very reasonable. You’ve managed to destroy all that credibility in just six paragraphs of feverish ranting. Clueless much?

                2. Prole-intuition hypothesis: “If you remove police from a high crime neighbourhood, crime will go up.”
                  Troutwaxer: “That’s an extraordinary claim!”

                  Hypothesis: the sun rises in the morning.
                  Troutwaxer: “That’s an extraordinary claim!”

                  Ferguson: Remove police. Result: murder quadrupled. It did go down again later, but I figure that’s because murder demand was satisfied. The murderers had already killed everyone they wanted dead.

                  Troutwaxer wants this repeated over the entire country, because he hates black people and wants them to suffer. As a bonus, it destroys a bunch of white businesses. Fuck proles, right guys?

                  The alternative is that Troutwaxer is too stupid to live. As in, actually can’t conceive of the idea that police may, in certain circumstances, lower crime. However, I expect Troutwaxer can tie his own shoes, so that’s out…

                  1. Dude, you’re very whacky! Can you send me some of what you’re smoking?

                    Mockery done with, I certainly don’t believe that police shouldn’t patrol the streets in a bad neighborhood – that’s just ludicrous. The problem in Ferguson was that the city relied on fining people for revenue, to the point where they were funding 20 percent of their city’s budget on the backs of Black people:

                    https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-ferguson-missouri-court-fines-budget.html

                    I suspect the idea was “less policing, less inappropriate fines.”

                    Your posts read as nuttier and nuttier. I propose that instead of increasing the whackiness quotient that you should learn something! If you’re Libertarian the despising the policies of a place like Ferguson should be well-within your politics!

                    Here’s another one:

                    https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/tns-st-louis-court-lawsuit.html

                    Together they should give you some picture of the deeper nature of problems in that city!

                  2. In 1900 the black bastardy rate was 10% or so. Then the NAACP was formed, and got it up to 20% by the 1950s.

                    Every time America moves further left, blacks get fucked.

                    When you are motivated by genuine charity, and your charitable efforts backfire and actually harm the recipient of your help, you feel guilt and sorrow like nothing else.

                    Thus we can see, very clearly, that folk like Troutwaxer and the NAACP are not motivated by charity.

                    In 1950, despite the best efforts of the NAACP, blacks by and large grew up with fathers, who by and large had jobs instead of prison sentences, and the greatest preventable threat to their lives was not homicide.

                    Got that fixed right up, though. It’s okay now, because single moms, welfare bums and criminals all vote left. Follow the money.

                    You’re a witness to a horrific motorcycle accident. You run over to the man on the ground, pull his helmet off, hug him and give him CPR. Unfortunately, he would have been fine, except that you just severed his spinal cord. How do you feel? Is your reaction: “Oh well, at least I tried?”

      2. “Given the long history of left-wing political officials issuing stand down orders in the face of left-wing rioters, yes very much so.”

        Cites? Particularly cites for Kenosha?

          1. Your gaslighting is humiliatingly awful and obvious to everyone watching reality unfold.

            What on earth do you think you’re hoping to accomplish?

            The violent, fascistic depravity of the left is bared for all to see.

            There’s no worthwhile debate left to engage in.

            You are scum. We hate you and your ilk. You are evil peasants.

            Let’s dance and get this over with.

            1. P.S. I still haven’t seen any cites, either from you or Eugine. Get a move on there pardner – your credibility is on the line!

              1. Troutwaxer the Grandiloquent declared:

                I still haven’t seen any cites… – your credibility is on the line!

                Also Trouty, one day prior:

                Apparently 106 of the 175 people arrested (find your own cite, it’s all over the web)…

                I consider your credibility dead after this patently obvious “rules for thee but not for me” bull. If you fear your search-fu is lacking, here’s a helpful tip: using “after:YYYY-MM-DD” in Google will filter results by date (only works in Google proper). I won’t insult your intelligence further with a link because “find your own cite, it’s all over the web”….

                1. I’m not going to find you cites for you. You want credibility? Find your own goddamn cites!

            2. CITES CITES CITES!!!
              BRAAAAAKKKK!
              CITES CITES CITES!!!

              Clearly truth only comes from other people, not from our own lyin’ eyes….

              We’ve got you.

              1. It is cargo cult science: they know that Science Good, but don’t know why or what problems science is intended to solve. So they mouth random words of power and don’t understand why the meanies won’t conform.

  27. Referencing this thread: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8752&cpage=1#comment-2449242

    It turns out Fascism does have a consistent definition: an egalitarianism theocracy. However, America is already Fascist. Communism is merely a kind of Fascism, as per Nick Land.

    The reason there are no “violent fascists” in America is due in fact there are violent Fascists in America, so that niche is already filled. (A stereotypical Fascist rhetorical move.) This looks like narcissism of small differences – ESR is talking about masculine Fascism, as opposed to America-style feminine Fascism.

    For those who didn’t read the referenced link: if egalitarianism is dogma, then either everyone must be a man or everyone must be a woman. Fascism is gendered. Soviet women were not very attractive, whereas American women have lots of pretty dresses and instead the men are offputting.

  28. BLM has Communist leadership, uses Communist propaganda techniques, and employs classic Communist insurrectionary tactics. Whether every single one of its footsoldiers is up on their Marxist theory is not an interesting question; I’m sure not all of Ernst Rohm’s bully-boys were ideological Nazis either. Every totalitarian movement recruits thugs who are in it for the destruction and looting.

    This is something Jordan Peterson pointed out with respect to avatars* of post-modernism. In a group of college brainwashed it is unlikely that any given individual has the whole package, but they will have pieces. And for the group as a whole you will have a complete post-modernism.

    * “avatar”, because you aren’t dealing the the person; only the ideological headcrab.

  29. (This is a reply to ESR, where he says, of
    BLM, “They should all be shot, every single
    fucking one of them. Or go on one-way
    helicopter rides.”) What’s your opinion of
    XKCD and its author, Randall Munroe?
    If you regularly read it, you know that for
    the past month or two he has a “how to help”
    link to BLM above every cartoon. If you
    have a good argument as to why BLM is bad,
    he may listen to you, given that he’s
    mentioned you in some of his comics.

    1. Randall proved himself compromised when he came out against the principle of freedom of expression. Fuck Randall.

      1. >Randall proved himself compromised when he came out against the principle of freedom of expression. Fuck Randall.

        Alas, I must agree. He’s been captured by the SJWs.

        1. “The analysis, based on 2014 data, found that nationally, colleges and universities had a six to one ratio of liberal to conservative professors. In New England, the figure was 28 to one.”

          “But among scientists, there were considerably more Democrats (55%) than independents (32%) and Republicans (6%) put together.”

          It’s slightly less bad among particularly physics majors, but only very slightly.
          On any topic except the subject of Conquest #1, humans adopt the opinions of the majority of those they socially see, with a slight bias for the higher-status members such as bosses and deans. Universities are carefully cultivated such that the majority is Democrat at all times.

    2. He’s probably not being open to being convinced, especially considering what a reputation Eric has, even among hackers, for his “batshit insane” politics.

      1. He may go too far sometimes, IMHO, or in directions I disagree with, but you’re far nuttier than Eric ever has been.

    3. I only noticed the BLM banner on XKCD the other day. Very sad but not surprising, given he’s already made a comic with the usual SJW equation of “freedom of speech = racism”. I bought an XKCD book many years ago but he’ll never get any financial support from me again.

      On the other hand I’ve been greatly cheered by Sinfest going in hard against the woke.

      1. > On the other hand I’ve been greatly cheered by Sinfest going in hard against the woke.

        That’s good to hear. It’s been many years since I read it regularly, or at all, but it was first in my to-check list for over a decade.

  30. It’s hard to get much nuttier than denying decades of peer-reviewed climate science, or repeating “white-shoe racist”, and thoroughly debunked, tropes about race and IQ — not without veering into Terry Davis territory.

    (Oh, by the way, who was it that first provided extensive cites suggesting that the race-IQ research was not only fatally flawed, but that it came from A Very Bad Place, ideologically speaking? That’s right — Troutwaxer.)

    1. It’s hard to get much nuttier than blindly believing shitty GIGO models that always show runaway warming no matter what, solely Because Science Says So, And One Must Never Go Against Science; or insisting that the only solution to all problems in the world is a single totalitarian communist global government run by our “betters” (by which you of course mean yourself and your cronies); or repeating utterly stupid tropes about how race and IQ are completely and totally unrelated–nope, no genetic component to IQ here; it’s all environment, everyone is exactly equal, and any and all differences must be due to racism!

      1. The trick is overfitting, by the way.

        An overfit curve almost always goes ballistic the instant it goes outside the training data. To get ‘global warming’ all you do is throw out the models that go ballistic downward and publish the ones that go ballistic upward.

    2. Thanks, but as I recall you made your own contributions to that discussion, which I hope we’ve left behind us.

  31. This is a response to Eugine Nier where he wrote, “So requiring the
    people showing up at a polling place to present a ID to show that
    they’re how [sic] they say they are and are allowed to vote in this
    election is voter suppression?” (There is no reply tag on his post.)
    Yes it is. Millions of Americans don’t have and can’t get a
    government-issued picture ID. We don’t have the papers to get the
    papers. Especially since the government keeps making ID harder to
    get. I live a simple life. I don’t drive. I don’t travel overseas.
    I live in a room I’m renting from a friend without paperwork. I
    have no utility bills. I do have an expired state ID and an expired
    passport, but thanks to Obama expired documents no longer have any
    value, not even in getting new documents. Fortunately, Virginia
    recently abolished the ID requirement for voting. Does it really make
    sense to disenfranchise tens of thousands of innocent people for every
    one fraudulent voter it stops? If so, would you also favor executing
    tens of thousands of innocent people if there might be one guilty
    murderer hiding among them?

    1. You need to sort your life out, son.

      It is trivial for any lawfully present individual to obtain ID.

      It SHOULD be difficult for the undocumented.

      Millions of illegals SHOULD be prevented from fraudulently obtaining ID. They SHOULD be rounded up and kicked out.

      1. I’ve got to agree with the first line. Having proper ID is not that hard. Disagree with the rest, however – the right has no credibility on voter fraud.

        1. Disagree with the rest, however – the right has no credibility on voter fraud.

          Why? Because we’re pointing out the left’s blatant examples of it?

          1. See my discussion of Interstate Crosscheck and the Republican’s complete lack of credibility above.

    2. You want to claim the privileges of citizenship…. without any reason to believe you are a citizen?

    3. I live a simple life. I don’t drive. I don’t travel overseas. I live in a room I’m renting from a friend without paperwork. I have no utility bills. I do have an expired state ID and an expired passport, but thanks to Obama expired documents no longer have any value, not even in getting new documents.

      I have been very close to where you describe myself in the recent past, having experienced a housefire about 6-7 years ago in which both myself and then-roommate needed to replace most of our vital records — and my state had just implemented the Real ID requirements. I therefore speak from experience when I say that this should not be an insurmountable problem. Before I begin, let me explicitly state the three assumptions I am making: first, that you are a natural born American (since you mentioned an expired passport). Second, that you filed 2019 tax paperwork–from either a W2 or 1099 form–which will show your full SSN and current address, and/or will do so for 2020. [Not filing taxes — or having zero income — raises a whole other set of legal questions unrelated to citizenship which I don’t intend to address.] Finally, to more completely answers your objection that ID might be unobtainable for some citizens in a similar situation, I’m also going to assume/pretend that you have literally zero official paperwork [excluding only the tax documentation mentioned], not just expired IDs.

      Somewhat logically, the path to replacing all official documents starts with directly planning out how to obtain new photo ID. Thanks to the Obama legislation you ignorantly decry, the DHS’ “FAQ on Real ID” page, the requirements for this should be standardized across all states: full legal name, date of birth, SSN, two proofs of address, and lawful resident status. In addition, the next question shows tax forms (W2 / 1099s) are acceptable alternate verification documents to an official SSN card — since I’m assuming you have those tax forms already, that’s one of the five requirements satisfied immediately.

      The first step should therefore be contacting a [direct] relative to get their assistance in obtaining an official (state or State department issued) birth certificate. All issuing authorities for a replacement birth certificate require current photo ID from the requester, and that they be a relative of the named person — if possible, start with a (step-)parent / guardian, spouse, or (step-)child as all states should allow requests from those [naturally, check websites as appropriate — advice which applies, yet I will not repeat, for each other step below]. This will cover the requirements for date of birth and legal residency — and for a very large portion of the population, legal name. If you are in the population for whom birth name is no longer their legal name, the same vital paperwork office should also handle official marriage certificates (or other name-change paperwork) — the same close relative may be able to request this for you as well.

      Simultaneously, your roommate will need to shift at least one bill to arrive in your name — even if the payment duty does not get similarly altered. For the second copy you will be able to use the address on your 2020 W2/1099 tax paperwork when that arrives [the state may or may not still accept 2019 tax papers this late in the year]. If you use some “core” (read: immobile) utility — that is: water, sewer (where applicable), gas/heating (where applicable), or electricity — for the shifted bill, then coupled with tax documents is guaranteed to satisfy the requirement of current address.

      With this documentation in hand, you should be able to obtain a photo ID from your state of residence. [Not necessarily a “drivers license”, if you are worried about that test, although you likely still go to a DMV office. Check website, yada yada.] With official photo ID in hand, “completing the circle” and obtaining or replacing any other missing paperwork should be a far simpler process.

      Millions of Americans don’t have and can’t get a government-issued picture ID. We don’t have the papers to get the papers.

      [Looks at instructions provided] I absolutely must call bull on that; I just outlined the instructions for doing so going from literally the only paperwork [income taxes] it isn’t possible to legally avoid having every year. If you can’t even reach that bar — or get the assistance required — then you are either flagrantly breaking the law, or I can only conclude you are choosing to withdraw from society and your objection of not getting official papers is therefore invalid.

      1. or I can only conclude you are choosing to withdraw from society and your objection of not getting official papers is therefore invalid.

        A choice which is his to make. But the idea that you can both completely withdraw from society and exert political power through the official channels of that society is one of the most bloody stupid ideas imaginable.

          1. >When reading Keith’s posts in this thread its good to remember that people sometimes lie on the internet

            Your link markup didn’t contain a link.

            I’ve known Keith for a very long time, can confirm much of what he says about his personal situation, and do not suspect him of intentionally lying about matters of fact. I actually think he’s as rigidly truthful as I am, which is pretty extreme.

            I do, on the other hand, sometimes wonder what planet he lives on. Here in PA getting a valid photo ID is entirely trivial for anyone with a fixed residence – all you have to do is show one of the clerks at the Chester County courthouse a heating or electrical bill with your name on it.

            Everything I’ve specifically heard about other states tells me it’s not more difficult elsewhere. So I basically don’t believe his claim that it’s impossible for millions of people, and have been unable to construct any theory about why he believes this that I find even remotely plausible.

            1. Thanks for vouching for my honesty. I live
              on “planet” Virginia. The only things the
              Keystone State has in common with The Old
              Dominion is they were both among the
              original 13 colonies and they both
              officially style themselves commonwealths
              rather than states. As I said, I have
              no utility bills; my landlord/housemate pays
              them. You can ask your lawyer wife if you
              doubt that state laws vary widely. Or just
              read the official list of what’s required to
              get ID where I live:
              https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/webdoc/pdf/dmv1
              41.pdf
              Never mind why *I* believe that millions
              can’t get ID, ask why the Washington Post
              and other major newspapers believe this. I
              tried Googling “undocumented citizen” in an
              attempt to find estimates, from a source you
              trust, of how many of us there are. (I
              assume you’ll reflexively denounce the Post
              as “fake news.”) But I discovered that
              language has been so corrupted that all the
              links seem to be about illegal immigrants,
              not about US citizens who can’t get ID.
              Sigh. That’s like the recent replacement of
              “ex-convict” with “ex-offender” to
              implicitly define out of existence the
              wrongly convicted.

              1. From what you’ve said, you are living as a dependent of someone else, with all your expenses paid by them instead of you. That generally means that you appeared on their income tax report, which may be legal evidence that you exist and have lived where you are for some time.

                More to the point, however, US citizens in such situations as yours – people with neither income nor property, but who have a fixed address and are qualified to vote – are quite rare. I would be astonished if there were millions of them, and surprised if there were hundreds of thousands. Don’t assume that your own case is in any way typical.

                Finally, major US newspapers pretend that obtaining an official photo ID is difficult for those entitled to one because they are in favor of fraudulent elections. If you check, you’ll find that the media doesn’t say anything against requiring photo ID for any purpose other than receiving a ballot. It’s just asking voters to prove they are who they claim to be that’s supposed to be a horrible imposition.

                1. No, I am not “living as a dependent of
                  someone else.” I pay rent. My utilities
                  are included in my rent. That’s an
                  extremely common living arrangement. I also
                  spend plenty of money on food, clothing,
                  books, conventions, etc.
                  My landlord/housemate presumably reports
                  income from me on his tax return, but that’s
                  not one of the allowable documents for me to
                  submit (see
                  https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/webdoc/pdf/dmv1
                  41.pdf) and I don’t
                  have copies of his tax returns anyway.
                  No, Americans without ID are *not* “quite
                  rare.” I can easily find reports that more
                  than 20 million American citizens don’t have
                  and can’t get ID, for instance:
                  https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-l
                  egislation-fact-sheet
                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppress
                  ion_in_the_United_States#Identification_requ
                  irements
                  https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.ph
                  p?storyId=17942818
                  But if you’re just going to mindlessly
                  parrot Trump’s claim that everything that
                  disagrees with your prejudices is “fake
                  news” and the absurd claim that the news
                  media favor fraudulent elections, what’s the
                  point in my finding sources that agree with
                  me? Do you believe there’s an objective
                  reality? Is there no way to choose
                  between trusting the Washington Post and
                  trusting Alex Jones? If it’s all arbitrary,
                  then you have no principled arguments
                  against believers in Karl Marx, Osama bin
                  Laden, or Joseph Goebbels.

                  1. >the absurd claim that the news media favor fraudulent elections,

                    To be fair, nobody thinks the news media favor fraudulent elections per se. What they do favor is the Democrats, and they pretty much refuse to examine any dirty trick that helps Democrats win (illegal donations from foreign sources are another one). Republican vote fraud they come down on like a ton of bricks, on the rare occasions they can find any.

                    I don’t believe ACLU or NPR on the numbers of citizens who can’t get ID because I think they too both willingly tell big lies to protect the Democratic vote-fraud machine. Which we occasionally get glimpses of when it gets so blatant that an election has to be invalidated after they got caught, as happened just weeks ago in New Jersey.

                    It didn’t take Trump to persuade me of any of this.

                    1. I’d get behind a good solution to voter fraud in a heartbeat. But read, if you haven’t done so already, about Kris Kobach’s Interstate Crosscheck program, and ask yourself whether Republicans have any more credibility on the subject than the Democrats. The thing had a 75% failure rate and didn’t differentiate between people with different social security numbers. Even a crappy programmer like me can think of half-a-dozen ways to make the program better! But it was in use across thirty states!

                    2. “Everything I’ve specifically heard about other states tells me it’s
                      not more difficult elsewhere. So I basically don’t believe his claim
                      that it’s impossible for millions of people, and have been unable to
                      construct any theory about why he believes this that I find even
                      remotely plausible.”
                      Not only is it more difficult in Virginia, as I have already showed
                      with a link,
                      ,
                      but it’s more difficult in today’s Pennsylvania too,

                      Here’s a (correct) “theory about why” I believe that millions of adult
                      US citizens don’t have and can’t get ID:
                      1) Lots of reputable news sources make this claim. They’re not all
                      left-wing or pro-Democrat. There have been several anti-Biden
                      editorials in the Washington Post since his nomination. There have
                      been pro-Trump editorials there too.
                      2) Lots of other reputable organizations make this claim, and they’re
                      not all left-wing or pro-Democrat. ACLU defended the right of literal
                      Nazis to march. Wikipedia was founded by an Objectivist, Jimbo Wales,
                      who is still a board member.
                      3) Given the ID requirements given by various states’ own websites, it
                      would be astonishing if even 95% could get ID.
                      4) In large rural states the nearest DMV is often more than a hundred
                      miles away, lots of people don’t have cars, and getting ID may require
                      multiple DMV visits.
                      5) It happened to several people I know and trust.
                      6) It happened to me, twice.
                      If that’s not adequate reason for a belief, what would be? If God
                      handed it to me on stone tablets, signed with His PGP key?
                      Turn it around: What’s your reason for thinking it’s easy for everyone
                      go get ID? Just because it was easy for one person in one state
                      decades ago? Name a reputable unbiased source that gives evidence
                      that it’s always easy.
                      There has long been disagreement within the US about policy. But
                      never before have I seen such disagreement about *facts*. There seems
                      to no longer be anything resembling a consensus reality in the US.
                      Large numbers of otherwise sane Americans firmly believe: The virus
                      is harmless, doesn’t exist, is a plot to make Trump look bad. The
                      vaccine is deadly, is a placebo, contains microchips to trace us
                      or to control our thoughts, will be available next month. QAnon.
                      Pizzagate. Socialism has never been tried; the USSR had “state
                      capitalism.” Sweden is a socialist utopia. The 9/11 attacks were
                      done by the US government. The moon landings never happened.
                      The Holocaust never happened. The Sandy Hook shooting never happened,
                      but was a fake to promote gun control; its victims never existed and
                      were seen alive and well years later. Slavery was invented in 1619.
                      There’s never been a transcontinental railroad in the US. Alex Jones
                      is the only reliable news source. I could go on and on.
                      What’s your theory of epistemology? Is knowledge impossible unless
                      one gathers it directly? I probably come closer to that than most
                      people. I’ve tasted the Atlantic and Pacific to confirm than they’re
                      salty, and Lake Michigan to confirm that it isn’t. I’ve measured the
                      speeds of sound and light, and the distances to the planets. I’ve
                      proven most of 19th century and earlier mathematics, and some newer.
                      I’m working on a computer program which, given lots of single-location
                      brightnesses of the earthlit part of the moon can construct a rough
                      picture of Earth. But I can’t interview everyone in the US to ask
                      whether they have ID, and even if I could, how could I be sure those
                      who claimed they couldn’t get one were telling the truth?

                    3. >Just because it was easy for one person in one state decades ago?

                      Try “three years ago” – I had to recertify after RealID came in. I’m looking at PA’s procedure now, and I see that utility bills are still accepted as proof of residency. It’s almost silly how easy the process is. Hell, they’d even take my CCW license if I had nothing else.

                      And yet you claim it’s crazy difficult in PA. That’s not helping your credibility on this issue.

                      >4) In large rural states the nearest DMV is often more than a hundred
                      miles away, lots of people don’t have cars, and getting ID may require
                      multiple DMV visits.

                      *blink* In what part of the U.S. outside of New York City do lots of people not have cars? It really does seem like you’re reporting from a different planet about this.

                  2. I also spend plenty of money on food, clothing, books, conventions, etc. My landlord/housemate presumably reports income from me on his tax return, but that’s not one of the allowable documents for me to submit (see VA DMV141 publication)

                    While my original post talked about this in terms of taxes, I never said you would use the IRS Form 1040 (or equivalent) as proof of anything — but only your copy of income reporting documents. In your case as a retiree, that income would almost certainly be shown on a SSA-1099 or 1099-R, which are both acceptable as either proof of address. or to substitute in absence of an official social security number card — as shown on pages 3-4 of the VA publication you linked.

                    [emphasis mine]

                    No, Americans without ID are not “quite rare.” I can easily find reports that more than 20 million American citizens don’t have and can’t get ID, for instance: [ACLU link excerpted]

                    That is most certainly not what that ACLU link says. Yes, they say approximately 20-21 million Americans lack (current) photo ID– but if you follow the citation to the original survey, it says they asked (1) if they had ID, and (2) if their current legal name and address appeared on it. So if you don’t update your ID the instant after moving residences, or getting married [or any other changed which would invalidate your current ID] means you can’t ever again get valid ID? That’s some grade-A pungent fertilizer you’re trying to sling.

      2. Yes, I was born in the US, as were both my
        parents and two of my four grandparents.
        I’ve never lived anywhere else. No, I
        haven’t filed taxes in recent years, as I’m
        retired and have negligible income. My
        parents died years ago. I don’t know where
        you live, but don’t assume the rules are the
        same in every state. I live in Virginia.
        The Washington Post estimates that 400,000
        Virginians don’t have and can’t get ID. I
        haven’t had a fire, and I still have my
        expired passport and expired state ID, but
        as I said those are worthless, being
        expired. If it’s true that ICE assumes
        everyone is an illegal alien unless they can
        prove otherwise, I’m curious where they’d
        deport me to. Canada? What if Canada won’t
        accept me? Would ICE just force me
        to march into the nearest ocean until my hat
        floats? At least they can’t give me an
        involuntary hysterectomy, as they have so
        many of their prisoners recently, since I’m
        cis-male.

        1. It’s 2020. Being ‘male’ has nothing to do with hysterectomies any more, even if the allegations turn out to be true (which you seem to have assumed).

          1. That’s why I said I’m *cis*-male. That’s
            the currently approved term for someone
            “assigned male at birth” who identifies as
            male, i.e. someone born without a uterus and
            other lady parts.

            1. The ‘cis’ prefix has long since stopped having anything to do with physical reality and is, as far as I can see, dropping out of use in queer circles.

                  1. Not just chemistry of either sort. They’re
                    standard Latin prefixes, and have been for a
                    rather long time. Hence cisalpine Gaul,
                    cislunar space, transistors, and
                    Transylvania. DC’s dysfunctional mass
                    transit system should instead be called a
                    mass cisit system. In our next lesson we’ll
                    cover ortho-, meta- and para-.

  32. I always find it interesting when 2 or 3 people (and it’s ALWAYS the same 2 or 3 people) virtually walk around an environment filled with exceptionally high IQ individuals with metric cap-tons of life experience and try to convince the crowd that they, the tiny minority, are the sain ones who know all (or most) of the answers of the day.

    Occam’s razor would suggest a completely different conclusion, but I mostly gave up shaving months ago, so I’ll continue to sit here with my popcorn and watch the intellectual bloodbath.

    Thank you all for the entertainment.

  33. It hasn’t been said explicitly, so let’s make sure we’re on the same page.

    It’s about votes. Cops vote right. Criminals vote left. Follow the money and it’s real simple.

    Democrats understand per capita when it comes to votes. When a black is murdered that’s one less Dem voter, but felons typically can’t vote either, and Dems can see they gain more in non-arrests than they lose in buried black bodies.

    Jobless bums vote left too. Best to throw the cops out of work. See also: lockdowns good.

    Further Demobrat policies left as an exercise for the reader.

    1. Cops vote right? Since when? I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but the police union in my state always endorses the Democrat. That union members traditionally vote democrat is a pretty well known thing.

      1. How many police are union members?

        A claim I commonly hear about the police is that the rank and file are pro-gun rights while the commissioners and related higher-ups are pro-gun control. If the gun issue is a proxy for political views in general, then one would expect beat cops to tend to vote Republican.

        If they don’t, then that means the gun issue isn’t a proxy for general politics, or many police aren’t union members (perhaps there’s an urban / small town split), or I’ve misheard the claim about the gun issue. Or something else I didn’t think of.

        1. > Or something else I didn’t think of.

          Like the rank’n’file police listen to their union reps bleat out the Demmmokratic chant, then go vote their own consciences in the privacy of the voting booth.

          There is a reason we still have a secret ballot process.

        2. I guess I’m indexing pretty heavy on NJ cops, who are largely anti-gun. At least the ones in Essex, Hudson, and Union counties — basically, places where lots of people commute to NYC. Also NYC cops, which are ultra-authoritarian and shake down people for carrying pocket knives.

          1. My suspicion is that big-city cops, who see lots of gun-murders, are more likely to be pro-gun-control.

            1. I suspect it’s more that cops in heavily gun controlled cities see a lot more bad guys than good guys with guns. Funny how that works.

  34. It seems to me that there is too much focus on Rittenhouse as militia. Yes, our host points out that per current federal statute, and the common law tradition from which said statutes are derived, Rittenhouse was militia. But there seems to be an additional connotation that lefties have for the word, one that would certainly explain the visceral revulsion that lefties seem to have for the concept. That connotation is thus: said armed individuals are not blessed by or under the command of the legal authorities. Therefore they are rogue paramilitaries or vigilantes, and thus illegitimate threats to the current order. Because of this, a militia’s actions, or hell, even just its presence, will invariably make things worse, regardless of any good intentions (which I seldom see lefties willing to ascribe to militia). And this mindset seems to be coloring lefties’ analysis and judgement of Rittenhouse’s engagement, his intentions that evening, and his character.

    But whether you hold such a view of militia, whether consciously or subconsciously, forget about Rittenhouse in a militia role. There’s another explanation for his presence: a civic-minded desire to help his community. He had a day job in Kenosha as a life-guard. Photos place him cleaning graffiti at the local high-school before the riots. Prior to his engagement, what do we have video footage of him doing? Stating his purpose out there was to render medical aid, and offering it to all who went by.

    But what about the rifle he was carrying? The impression I am getting from lefties is that the rifle should be considered prima facie evidence of intent to engage in vigilantism. It is a “military-style” rifle after all.

    But there’s another angle to consider. Given that we have two prior nights of violence breaking out, it would not be unwise to go armed, even if your intent was to render medical aid. So why not carry a compact pistol? It is smaller, and much less threatening. It can be concealed to make its carrier seem much less threatening. So if Rittenhouse absolutely must have carried a weapon for his own defense while out trying to offer medical aid, shouldn’t he have carried a pistol instead instead of that rifle?

    No, because the rifle is the only weapon he can legally possess, given current laws. He can’t carry a pistol in Wisconsin before he’s 18, only a rifle. Had he carried a pistol on his person, he absolutely *would* have been in violation of local firearm laws. And had he attempted to conceal a pistol, even moreso. And I suspect the person who lent him the rifle knew that.

    1. >That connotation is thus: said armed individuals are not blessed by or under the command of the legal authorities.

      Under the Constitution, the unorganized militia – the entire body of the people in arms – is the ultimate authority. Its consent is the foundation on which “legal authority” rests.

      1. I think the Founding Fathers are merely recognizing two facts here: First, that if your whole populace has armed itself against you governing will indeed be very difficult. Second, that large segments of the populace doesn’t frequently decide that the government is so very horrible that it needs to be violently rebelled against, and if the population has done so you’re probably not doing a very good job of governing. Rule of law is very naturally founded on not making the populace as a whole so very angry that they take up arms!

        So yes, legitimacy is ultimately derived from the population’s decisions about using force. We recently relearned that lesson in Iraq, where it didn’t take a particularly large segment of the population to make governing the country very, very difficult.

        That doesn’t mean, practically speaking, that the simple declaration that one belongs to a militia gives one any more rights against arrest on some kind of criminal charge or against following legitimate government orders than the next person who didn’t declare him/herself to be a militia. It means that you have to do one of two things: convince a Federal judge that declaring yourself to be a militia was the correct decision for some reason, or successfully force the issue via use of arms. Otherwise any asshole can declare themselves to be a militia member and get away with murder.

        There’s a huge difference between recognizing the ultimate authority of the population and giving any group of assholes with a grudge the automatic right of insurrection.

        BTW, wasn’t it Mao who said that legitimacy grows from the barrel of a gun?

        1. If the legitimacy of the cause is based on what a judge rules by law, rather than any abstract reasoning of rights or virtue, then ultimately it comes from the ability to enforce that ruling. I.e, “the barrel of a gun”.

          And he’s not wrong if you’re only looking at the efficient cause. Do you care about first or final cause? If not, then your citation of Mao is irrelevant, because that’s what you believe too, but are too emotional to accept it.

          1. I would say that legitimacy really stems from three things. The first is the ability to enforce your government’s laws. The second is the just nature of those laws. The third is that the populace has some legal way to strongly influence how the laws are written. (I like voting myself, but someone might come up with something else that works.)

            1. But by what standard do you judge the “just nature of those laws”?

              And is not the ability to form a militia and overthrow the government not a legal means by which to “strongly influence the laws as written”? And why privilege the written law over common law or tradition?

      2. Honestly, if “defund the police” leads back to this understanding and practice, it might be worth it in the end.

        Imagine a future where people take responsibility for their own safety, and that of their community. Seems impossible today, but if only…

        1. Keep in mind that “defund the police” is the most inaccurate slogan ever. What it really means is taking some of the money the police get and distributing it to portions of the city/county that handle things like mental-health crisises and such. It doesn’t mean “get rid of police” or “stop getting things done.” It means, “distribute the money we use for keeping order in our society differently.”

          1. It depends on who you talk to. I’ve heard your explanation, and I’ve heard the maximalist interpretation.

            Though I think we should, in fact, use other mechanisms for some of what the police are doing (whether by mental health professionals, or neighbors solving their own disputes like adults, or whatever), but also increasing the training budget for police departments to include lots more de-escalation training among other things. That is, if we are to keep the police at all. I wouldn’t mind, in rural areas, returning to a much older model where there is a sheriff who can deputize members of the community in times of need.

          2. I hear this argument a lot, especially on Facebook in the form of “unfriend me if you don’t know what ‘defund’ means in context and wish to argue with me about defunding the police”.

            It’s a motte-and-bailey argument. They will claim “Oh, we just mean reduce funding and reroute it to social programs, etc.” and once everybody goes “Well, okay, defund the police then!” BLM and their fellow travellers let the masks slip and s/defund/abolish/g. And if you admit that level of nuance about “abolish”, then the Missouri Compromise counts as abolishing slavery!

            It’s letting your rage do the thinking. I’d be 100% onboard with defund/abolish the police — provided the activists who chant it solve for the problem of how do we ensure that the laws are enforced and civil order is maintained in the absence of police? They still haven’t solved for that, and that’s a problem because uh, last time I checked, criminals without badges still kill more black men per year even than the cops do. And those black lives matter, too.

            1. provided the activists who chant it solve for the problem of how do we ensure that the laws are enforced and civil order is maintained in the absence of police?

              Oh, I have a few ideas, which said activists will like a lot less then the current system.

            2. I’d be 100% onboard with defund/abolish the police — provided the activists who chant it solve for the problem of how do we ensure that the laws are enforced and civil order is maintained in the absence of police? They still haven’t solved for that, and that’s a problem because uh, last time I checked, criminals without badges still kill more black men per year even than the cops do. And those black lives matter, too.

              Yes — this exactly. I’m absolutely amenable to a number of possible solutions that would involve getting rid of some or all local police in some places. But how you get from here to there without many lives lost, many houses and businesses burned down, etc. is not a trivial thing.

              The Marxist “tear down the structures of oppression and magically people will for the first time in history self-organize quickly in a conflict free way to make a utopia” is just lazy, dishonest, or ignorant of human nature.

              It’s likewise my principal objection to “automation is great! Sure, it will in a short time obsolete the work that half of the people on the planet, but all those truck drivers that would fail a fourth grade math exam can just learn to code in a weekend! No need to worry about a decade of civil unrest due to mass poverty!”

      3. In practice, USG very clearly does not have the consent of the people, and this doesn’t stop it or even slow it down. For example, immigration is in fact extremely unpopular. Cause and effect are reversed; it is made policy, and therefore the public comes to consent to it.

    2. My feelings toward Kyle are mixed. On one hand, I’ve raised children, and I therefore have some idea what a kid of that age can get wrong and how badly they can screw up their own life. From that standpoint – the parental part of my brain – it would be nice if the judge could give somehow give Rittenhouse a chance. (And fuck trying anyone under 18 as an adult! – If you want to see an injustice in the situation, that’s it!)

      So I see the logic of your claim that Kyle was a nice kid who got in over his head.

      On the other hand, the political part of my brain wants to see Kyle given the longest sentence a juvenile can possibly receive, and for anyone who was involved with him to be either prosecuted or fired. The idea that a group of people can legitimately get their information from Facebook, hear the president complain about the governing skills of a mayor who’s city is in trouble (during an election year,) organize into a militia, show up at another city’s riot against the wishes of local law enforcement, etc., needs to be extinguished as quickly and forcefully as possible – if you want people to respect the law then you must enforce it!

      1. I think what you propose as your second option will have the opposite effect that you want. It would escalate tensions further on the side of would-be militia members.

        I also don’t understand why you keep beating the canard of “against the wishes of local law enforcement”. Why do the wishes of law enforcement matter? Especially if law enforcement is so fundamentally broken in this country towards minorities, which you suggest? Law enforcement wants more militarization, more MRAPs, more power to wield force without consequence, etc. In a society like ours, the power comes from the people, and any special privileges lent to law enforcement is predicated upon this. Aren’t all of these protests supposedly about that? Law enforcement wishes the protesters to disband and go away, because it makes their job harder. It has no bearing whatsoever on whether the protests themselves are righteous.

        There’s other places here where reasonable people can disagree, but no one reasonable would think the “wishes of local law enforcement” are a standard by which any of us are bound.

        1. It isn’t even a stretch to say that Law Enforcement ordering the Militia to leave / not show up de-legitimizes law enforcement.

          That whole “delegated by the people” thing matters.

          1. It’s taken me several days to see this – there are so many layers of BS to dig through – but your reply crystalized things for me in a very profound way. It started when I realized, almost immediately upon reading your post that the majority of the people in Wisconson/Kenosha had already delegated authority to their existing government. If those people want a different law-enforcement mechanism they can advocate for it and vote for it at the next election, with a majority vote changing the way policing – or whatever activity – is done in their city or state

            Then I thought, if Ian doesn’t like the way the government is run, he is guaranteed lots of rights he can use for fixing the problem. He can protest, organize, make political contributions and write letters to office holders. He can run for office or help others run for office, and on any platform he desires. He can participate in citizen committees – most cities are always looking for people to be on the stop-sign committee, or whatever, and I’m told that this is a great way to learn about the nuts and bolts of governing. He can publish a newsletter, recruit others as candidates, even put a bumper-sticker on the back of his car. Ian can run with this as far as he can convince other voters to take him… because we have a democracy and our Constitution provides rules for changing the rules.

            Ian, you can move to Kenosha and advocate for whatever kind of policing you’d prefer to what Kenosha has now.

            But then Ian, I realized that this wasn’t enough for you. That having an existing, frequently-used path for changing things wasn’t enough for you. Your ideal of militias is essentially the idea that any mob can declare itself a militia, declare an existing government illegitimate and magically declare, without a majority of voters, that whatever set of laws that mob is concerned with are null-and-void. I realized that this was essentially a path to warlordism. That if Ian’s mob declares the laws which Bob likes null-and-void and Bob declares the laws Ian likes null-and-void, and this is legal… those two minorities can then use any city, county, state or country as a battleground, because of course the first step is to declare the laws against killing the other mob to be null-and-void, believing all the while that the dangers of the other mob are more pressing than the dangers their own attitudes present towards the well-being of everyone in the area.

            And I realized that this was not the sane thinking of an adult. This is the spoiled thinking of an over-privileged child. It’s like the kid who could learn to play a game, such as Monopoly, and legitimately win some victories who instead chooses to overturn the game board. We have rules for how our politics work. You, Ian, could learn those rules, participate in the game as everyone else plays it, and maybe gain high-office and implement your ideas.

            But instead of learning the rules you’d rather find a way to declare that those rules are null-and-void. Everything Ian likes is good, everything else is illegal, I get to kill people I don’t like, no take backs! I call Constitutionality! Nyah-nyah!

            Claiming that this “militia” you want to form is Constitutional “because I say so” is the last political refuge of a spoiled child. As I said, the voters of Kenosha have already delegated authority – and they didn’t give it to a mob organized on Facebook.

            Warlordism bad, Mmmmkay?

            1. That having an existing, frequently-used path for changing things wasn’t enough for you. Your ideal of militias is essentially the idea that any mob can declare itself a militia, declare an existing government illegitimate and magically declare, without a majority of voters, that whatever set of laws that mob is concerned with are null-and-void. I realized that this was essentially a path to warlordism.

              As opposed to any mob being able to declare itself a “protest” and burn down half the town, which is apparently perfectly ok by you.

            2. That if Ian’s mob declares the laws which Bob likes null-and-void and Bob declares the laws Ian likes null-and-void, and this is legal… those two minorities can then use any city, county, state or country as a battleground, because of course the first step is to declare the laws against killing the other mob to be null-and-void, believing all the while that the dangers of the other mob are more pressing than the dangers their own attitudes present towards the well-being of everyone in the area.

              There is a simple solution to this paradox. See whose laws actually accord with natural law. Your problem is that you don’t see to believe in natural law, in which case all you have left is in fact just warlordism and might makes right.

              1. >See whose laws actually accord with natural law.

                You’re not wrong. But to make that argument effectively you have to unpack it into terms a Troutwaxer is willing to understand. “Natural law” won’t cut it, because he has internalized the (nonsensical) position that you can’t turn an “is” into an “ought”.

                1. >he has internalized the (nonsensical) position that you can’t turn an “is” into an “ought”.

                  That’s fascinating, could you (or have you already on these pages) expand on that? I mean tossing out Hume’s guillotine, not his internalizing it.

                  1. >That’s fascinating, could you (or have you already on these pages) expand on that?

                    I have a wonderful proof of this theorem which is, alas, too small to fit in the margins of this comment. Besides, if I tried, the thread would get totally jacked.

                    Future blog post. Near future.

                    In the mean time, read this.

                  2. It depends on what exactly you mean by [ought].

                    If you’re not too strict it’s easy: if you want X, you ought to do Y, which results in X. The [is] is a desire.

                    If you want [oughts] which go beyond random whims, then it gets more complicated but still reduces to the above. E.g. you can suppose Jesus is the Creator God, but then you ought to do what Jesus wants because he will do something you intensely dislike if you don’t. More generally you can say one [ought] not to be selfish but it always reduces to someone else being selfish.

                2. My working theory for years now has been that most if not all on the Left consider self-defense to be a malum in se crime rather than a basic human right. They’ll often deny this, even to themselves, but the tell is that they’ll claim to accept self-defense in principle but when presented with actual examples they’ll deny that they’re cases of legitimate self-defense. Thus the claims that Rittenhouse’s actions were criminal homicide.

                  1. >most if not all on the Left consider self-defense to be a malum in se crime

                    No, not quite. The real crime in their eyes is asserting your right to use force under any circumstances at all rather than leaving it an exclusive privilege of the state.

                    1. You’re certainly not describing me. I’m perfectly comfortable with the idea the Kyle Rittenhouse is allowed to defend himself, even if it’s trouble he could have avoided – sometimes you have to follow your heart.* But let Kyle go to court, state the reasons he had for defending himself, and face the music. Or if that’s not appropriate get let off the hook by a sensible DA. In short, let Kyle take responsibility for his actions! (Leaving aside, for the moment, my discomfort with trying juveniles as adults.)

                      What I’m totally uncomfortable about is the idea that Kyle’s in a “militia,” that the “militia” is automatically legitimate and thus Kyle – or anyone else – has a “get out of jail free” card as a result of using the magic “militia” word.

                      Using your (Eric’s) “natural law” interpretation, Kyle might even have a right or responsibility to help his fellow humans in Kenosha. I’m don’t hate the idea nearly as much as anyone thinks I might, but once again in doing so there should be no magic in the fact that he does so – Kyle still has the duty to follow all legitimate laws and to show up in court to defend himself if someone in authority thinks he has not done so. Being a good person in instance A doesn’t let you off the hook in instance B.

                    2. >What I’m totally uncomfortable about is the idea that Kyle’s in a “militia,” that the “militia” is automatically legitimate and thus Kyle – or anyone else – has a “get out of jail free” card as a result of using the magic “militia” word.

                      You’re being an idiot.

                      I have not asserted that Rittenhouse’s status as a member of the unorganized militia is a get out of jail free card. I do not believe anyone else has, either. This is a fantasy that inhabits only your own head.

                      What I said originally is that his duty as a member of the unorganized militia, specifically in the event of a collapse in civil order, disposes of the claim that he had no business being in Kenosha defending the lives and property of others.

                      Rittenhouse had both a lawful right under Section 246 of Title 10 and a moral duty to be there. He executed that duty with impressive skill and restraint (I would have put finishing shots in the Communist thug he merely maimed; possibly this means he’s a better person than me).

                      Had he committed a crime, such as an unlawful killing, during his attempt to serve, it would certainly have been grounds for prosecution and jail. Nobody questions this. The only circumstances that would create a question about it – a legitimacy collapse of governing authorities – never occurred.

                      But the video evidence makes it very clear that he committed no crime. People harassing him for doing his duty are being shitheads.

                    3. The real crime in their eyes is asserting your right to use force under any circumstances at all rather than leaving it an exclusive privilege of the state.

                      Their radical-activists are perfectly willing to use force.

                    4. >Their radical-activists are perfectly willing to use force.

                      Ah, but they are serving the oncoming Utopia of the perfected and totalitarian state, not asserting any sort of individualism. That makes it OK.

                    5. No, not quite. The real crime in their eyes is asserting your right to use force under any circumstances at all rather than leaving it an exclusive privilege of the state.

                      It’s not even that — they’re currently objecting to even the state exercising that right. Which boggles the mind. My guess is most of them haven’t thought this through; the rich whites among the left have internalized that they live in a “safe” neighborhood, and won’t have to deal with the icky cops to defend them from attackers.

                  2. I think these would be the leftwing equivalents of the rightwingers who believe that the Second Amendment allows one to own a man-portable nuclear-weapon… people who are waaaaay out at the frindge.

                    1. Yes please!

                      Snark aside; anyone who apriori objects to privately held nuclear weapons needs to go stare the kizinti lesson in the face until they stop being silly.

                    2. >the Second Amendment allows one to own a man-portable nuclear-weapon

                      Of course it does. What part of “shall not be infringed” did you fail to understand?

                      Now, I happen to believe man-portable nuclear weapons can be Constitutionally banned from populated areas under a theory that has nothing to do with the fact that they are weapons. What they are is devices that can’t be stored without unacceptable risk to your neighbors in the event of accidental detonation.

                      But 2A intentionally puts banning any device solely because it’s a dangerous weapon out of bounds.

                    3. Yeah, too many ways to hurt people and break things. (Ominous Hummmmmmm!)

                    4. Snark aside; anyone who apriori objects to privately held nuclear weapons needs to go stare the kizinti lesson in the face until they stop being silly.

                      This. As technology advances there needs to be a better way of dealing with essentially WMD’s in the hands of civilians. We can skirt the problem with nukes since fissionables are really hard to make. However, if DNA printing gets cheep enough it becomes easy to print bio-weapons in one’s garage.

                    5. >However, if DNA printing gets cheep enough it becomes easy to print bio-weapons in one’s garage.

                      I’m willing to forbid those to anyone who has not demonstrated the ability to run a level 4 biohazard containment facility.

                      I’m not willing to allow them to be banned because they are weapons.

                    6. That is what it implies. If the military is allowed to own it, so are the people.

                      The only way it doesn’t cover it is if the US decides that nukes can’t be owned by anyone, including the military.

                    7. Considering the Constitution assumes private citizens could and would equip warships (Art 1, Sec 8, Clause 11, Letters of Marque and Reprisal) and military cannon were in private hands that’s not exactly a stretch. It also implies the 2nd Amendment was INTENDED to cover military-grade weapons.

              2. I’m not saying “might makes right.” I’m saying “might shouldn’t make right.” I’m also asking anyone who supports the “anyone can declare themselves a militia” position to explain why their ideas won’t lead to warlordism.

                1. Because your idea of militias are private armies enforcing private and narrow interests by force and threat of force.

                  THIS IS ALREADY ILLEGAL, as you should know.

                  Ours is of Militia enforcing the law when the Authorities are unwilling, viz Seattle, or unable , viz Kenosha.

                  It wasn’t Kyle, or the Militia, the public in arms, or narrowly your boogyman imaginary version of the Militia-KKK-Boogaloo-Trumpists, who burned down a car lot in Kenosha and is shooting children in Altanta and Seattle.

                  1. There is something else.

                    Militias (and Vigilance Committees) only punish malum in se crimes. They don’t punish malum prohibitum.

                    Which is why would be social planners hate them with a fury one usually sees reserved for child molesters caught in the act.

                2. Riotous paramilitaries are of course somehow not-warlordism. Can you say kto kogo?

                  Presumption of innocent has been revoked a long time ago. Have you prove you care about principles. (Indeed should never have been granted in the first place.)

        2. If the government is legitimate, the wishes of law enforcement are legal and enforceable. If the government is not legitimate, then obviously the wishes of law-enforcement are not legal or enforceable.

          So it depends on whether someone sees the government of Kenosha as legitimate, and I don’t think anyone is seriously proposing at this point that they are not.

          As to “the wishes of law-enforcement” that’s one of the obvious arguments that the militia is not legitimately constituted – nobody on the Kenosha side thinks things are so bad that couple thousand White People with guns will help the situation. (If I was Black and lived in Kenosha I might dislike the police, but I’d certainly agree with law enforcement that a bunch of heavily-armed White people with no training or chain of command wasn’t the solution to any of the city’s problems!)

          As to why I dislike the whole argument that militias are legitimate, consider the current political climate. The President is arguing that Democrats will steal the election and that Democrats are incapable of keeping order, the Democrats are arguing that the President will steal the election and is incapable of maintaining order, the Attorney General of the United States is proposing to prosecute Seattle’s mayor and also charge protesters under the Federal sedition statutes, not to mention the nutcases talking about a new civil war… yeah, an armed mob that “organized” to somehow use guns to stop a riot based on some deep and long-standing racial issues, and which claims constitutional legitimacy and the legality of killing folks under a whack-job legal theory is EXACTLY what we need right now… /sarcasm off.

          And how many steps are needed from “an armed mob that commits murder and claims it’s legal” to “we kill the Jews because our philosophy is ideologically correct!”

          Not many, I’ll wager.

          1. The President is arguing that Democrats will steal the election and that Democrats are incapable of keeping order, the Democrats are arguing that the President will steal the election and is incapable of maintaining order,

            One of these claims is true, one is false. It’s not particularly difficult to tell which is which by looking at what’s going on, even if you can’t seem to manage it.

          2. > And how many steps are needed from “an armed mob that commits murder and claims it’s legal” to “we kill the Jews because our philosophy is ideologically correct!”

            If you’re worried about that, you’re looking at the wrong side. Have you looked in the mirror lately? By the way, Ilhan OmarNur Said Elmi, Rashida Tlaib and Linda Sarsour say, “Hi!”

          3. > As to “the wishes of law-enforcement” that’s one of the obvious arguments that the militia is not legitimately constituted

            I’d say Trout’s statement above supports my thesis: the left’s view of legitimacy has become inverted from the foundational documents of this country. The foundational documents of this country state that legitimacy flows from the people to the authorities. The left would have legitimacy flow from the authorities to the people.

            This would certainly explain 4 years of conniptions from the establishment, its sympathizers, and allies, at the audacity, nay, the heresy, of the people daring to legitimize a someone not domesticated and blessed by the establishment.

            1. “The foundational documents of this country state that legitimacy flows from the people to the authorities.”

              This is absolutely correct. But the question is by what method is the legitimacy transferred?

              The correct view is that the proper method of legitimacy transfer is via the vote, in particular via a fair election. Any other form of legitimacy transfer is very much secondary, and only for emergency use – Nixon resigns so Ford becomes the legitimate President until the next election…

              We can make any change we want to the country by using the vote, including foundational changes to the Constitution. If we all voted for it we could even be a feudal monarchy or accept rule by Cthulhu. And voting is what the Constitution talks about. Our Constitution frequently discusses votes and elections. Our state and Federal laws frequently discuss votes and elections. Our Constitution contains the ability to modify itself by… voting!

              Obviously this can become complex, but it’s certainly not impossible (I’m not going to explain how amending the Constitution works to a bunch of adults who have all presumeably passed a civics class) and we’ve done it seventeen times previously (27 amendments minus the original 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights.)

              It looks to me like many of you are fond of the Battle of Athens. There were many things which made the government of Athens illegitimate; but the only thing which made the use of force necessary was the inability to vote in a new government. Without the decision to cut the number of voting precincts from 23 to 12, and without the ballot-box stuffing, it would have been very easy for the GIs to vote in a new, legitimate government. In fact, most of the fighting on election day concerned who had possession of the ballot boxes, because without an accurate count of the votes it would be impossible for the GIs to form a legitimate government, so even in this very stressed environment the ballots were more important than the bullets.

              But to answer Jeremy’s objection, think of legitimacy as a token that is owned by the people, but gets passed from the people to the government during an election. Once the government is voted into power it holds the legitimacy token, (but doesn’t own it) which allows the government to pass and enforce laws. During the next election, the legitimacy token is passed back to the people, who are it’s rightful owners, and they vote in a new government if they don’t like the old one, or affirm that the old government should still possess the legitimacy token, or some variation involving which candidates are elected/not elected. While the government holds the legitimacy token the the citizens are expected to follow the laws as long as those laws are just and reasonable, and we have a whole set of court systems to adjudicate the justice of a law – in part so that the government can maintain it’s legitimacy.

              But when you tell me that a minority of people can legally decide that the government is not legitimate, and then take up arms, you’re stupidly fucking wrong. Our Constitution does not discuss that sort of power-transfer. If you think that this is the case, show me the passage which says so. I promise you it’s not there!

              The riots are over, having destroyed no more than five-percent of Kenosha’s business community. (If you think I’m wrong about that number, read some of the links I’ve provided above.) If the voters in Kenosha decide to make the riots an issue in the election, they can – and I have no doubts that they will – but a bunch of yahoos with guns who “organized” over Facebook and came in from out of town don’t get to challenge the legitimacy of Kenosha’s government!

              There are circumstances where it’s legitimate to overthrow the government by force, but I don’t see any of them applying right now in the U.S.

              1. The correct view is that the proper method of legitimacy transfer is via the vote, in particular via a fair election.

                A small point of contention: If it’s the vote that makes governments legitimate, then when fewer than 10% of the eligible voters vote in an election, just how “legitimate” is said that government?

                In practice, the government gains its legitimacy from the ACCEPTANCE of its authority by the people whether they voted for them or not, and in this case, the PEOPLE decided that the government was doing a shit job, and took matters into their own hands.

                That’s why the militia exists in our founding documents.

                It’s not always about shooting the politicians, sometimes it’s about doing the job that they should be doing but are refusing to. And with that, there’s always the risk that those same politicians who shirked their responsibilities will get pissed off about you doing their “legitimate” job, which is where we are now.

              2. “The riots are over, having destroyed no more than five-percent of Kenosha’s business community”

                Gotta love that wording. No more than 5% folks! Nothing to see here, what are you all getting upset about?

                1. Yeah — aren’t small businesses having enough of a hard time right now? You really want to concentrate yet more power into the hands of the giant mega-corporations who are more powerful than the US government?

              3. **Lots of chatter about legitimacy**

                One post up:

                >”If the government is legitimate, the wishes of law enforcement are legal and enforceable. If the government is not legitimate, then obviously the wishes of law-enforcement are not legal or enforceable.”

                The Wishes of elected officials are enforceable law?

                The law is written, and certain duties are delegated to elected officials for the duration of their tenure, but their wishes are not law.

          4. > And how many steps are needed from “an armed mob that commits murder and claims it’s legal” to “we kill the Jews because our philosophy is ideologically correct!”

            Again the Leftist assumption that by defining all the terms one can define oneself as winning any argument.

            Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t commit murder. He “committed” self defense against a mob trying to kill him. _You_ are the one defining that as murder. Those of us here claiming that self-defense is legal are not magically transformed into people who “claim [murder]’s legal” via your redefinition.

            My philosophy is that any human has the right to defend their life, family, and property against those who would destroy them. I really don’t care if you consider that “ideologically correct” or not; if you try to kill my family, I will take what steps I can to defend them, and “starting a debate to try to convince you I’m not ideologically incorrect” is not going to be one of those steps.

            The only way my “philosophy” can result in me “killing a Jew” (or non-Jew) is if they try to kill my family or me. I’ll leave it to philosophers like you to count the number of steps on the head of that pin.

      2. Wow both your hands demonstrate what a horrible human being you are. I mean, it was becoming obvious from your other comments, but this one spells it out so explicitly.

      3. if you want people to respect the law then you must enforce it!

        1. They refuse to, unless you have the wrong politics.

        2. If you want people to Respect The Law you make it something worthy of respect. That particular mirror has been cracked for over a century, and the legislatures won’t stop hitting it with a hammer.

        1. “If you want people to Respect The Law you make it something worthy of respect. That particular mirror has been cracked for over a century, and the legislatures won’t stop hitting it with a hammer.”

          There’s a lot of reason to agree with that. I even suspect some overlap in our ideas of what’s broken if we actually discussed them. But as I noted above, you have lots of alternatives for dealing with that if you want to. Run for office and do what you can to fix the problem. That’s why we have a democracy! (I’ll vote against you, but I’d still encourage you to take proper democratic steps – fight according to the existing rules – for what you believe in!)

      4. Are you castigating the protesters for ignoring the wishes of Kenosha law enforcement and coming to the protest? I’m not asking about the rioters, here, but specifically about the peaceful protesters. If the Chief of Police of Kenosha had said, “please, do not come and protest in this city, I do not want that” would any protester have any obligation to heed him?

        If the protesters had no obligation to obey the police official’s request not to come, why would anyone else have that obligation?

        1. If the Chief of Police of Kenosha had said, “please, do not come and protest in this city, I do not want that” would any protester have any obligation to heed him?

          No. It is well-known that this would not be a lawful order, and the legal system is very protective about our right to protest. Everyone involved would know that this demand had substantially reduced the police force’s legitimacy.

          But “Don’t come to our city and try to take over the duties of law-enforcement” would definitely be lawful – the citizens of Kenosha have already chosen a government and declared it legitimate with their votes, and that government has chosen the local police department, (and not a bunch of civilians with guns, some of whom come from out of state, none of whom are trained or sworn officers,) for their law-enforcement.

          To give a more concrete example, if a civilian comes to Kenosha to “help” the police and points a gun at someone, while trying to give an order that (because of lack of training) might or might not be lawful, that civilian is still guilty of assault.

          Once again, for the idiots that are reading, I don’t approve of riots. I also don’t approve of mobs with guns showing up in someone else’s town after “organizing” on Facebook. Someone might get hurt!

          1. So, don’t come and commit crimes? You are out on a real limb here Trout.

            >”I don’t approve of riots. I also don’t approve of mobs with guns showing up in someone else’s town after “organizing” on Facebook”

            Legal to travel, legal to organize and assemble in groups, and legal to carry a firearm. Or should we give up the First and Second Amendment when you don’t like it?

            1. No, we don’t give up the 1st and 2nd Amendments when Troutwaxer doesn’t like it. We only give them up, apparently, when the a chief of police wants to restrict our rights to peacefully assemble and we’re not protesting something that Troutwaxer thinks is important.

              If it helps you any, Troutwaxer, just think of Rittenhouse’s behavior – at least until he was chased and had to defend himself – as part of a protest against rioting and graffiti.

          2. One question: what does any of this have to do with Kyle Rittenhouse?

            He wasn’t in Kenosha to “help” the police, or to catch criminals on his own, whatever the Left fantasists might say. He went there to protect a specific business from looters and rioters, and to give medical aid to people injured by rioters. He was armed because he was running a risk of being attacked by rioters and might need to defend himself – as indeed he did.

            The specific duty of the militia to revolt against a tyrannical state wasn’t the duty ESR was talking about when he said Rittenhouse acted as one of the militia. The need for that has occurred in the US occasionally, but no one thinks Kenosha had gone that far. The duty Rittenhouse discharged was that of defending his fellow citizens from an imminent threat of harm to their persons and property.

            And I’ll just mention that societies which teach that that duty can be delegated, so that only soldiers and police need to think about it, are decadent and corrupt. The spread among the Western political classes of the idea that response to criminals is a job for trained specialists only is evidence of those classes’ unfitness for their positions.

            1. >The duty Rittenhouse discharged was that of defending his fellow citizens from an imminent threat of harm to their persons and property.

              …specifically in the context of a collapse of civil order, which is one of the cases in which the militia duty is clearest.

              Nobody is arguing that Rittenhouse was executing any of the other Constitutional duties of the militia, such as rising against tyrannical government.

            2. “response to criminals is a job for trained specialists”

              More like trained peons. A couple of weeks ago The Atlantic, in an article reluctantly admitting crime in NYC had gone up, accused the NYPD police of ‘sulking’. I’m still gobsmacked by the level of entitlement and disdain lying behind the choice of that word.

  35. This is a reply to esr where he says “And yet you claim it’s crazy
    difficult in PA.” I never said anything of the sort. I expect that
    it’s easy for 90%, difficult for 5%, and impossible for 5%. Yes, they
    still accept utility bills, which many people have, and CCW licenses,
    which a few people have. But, according to
    http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Public/DVSPubsForms/BDL/BDL%20Publications/pub%20195us.pdf
    those alone aren’t sufficient. As in Virginia, you need documents from
    each of several distinct lists.
    “In what part of the U.S. outside of New York City do lots of people
    not have cars?” In the parts where lots of people have medical,
    legal, financial, or (especially in your home state) religious reasons
    why they can’t drive. In other words, in all 50 states. Again, by
    “lots of” I mean “lots of,” not “almost all.”
    And of course there’s a strong correlation between not driving and not
    already having ID.
    What is your claim? That *nobody* in the US is unable to get ID? Or
    that it’s not millions but “merely” hundreds of thousands, and if those
    people are forbidden from voting it’s a small sacrifice for reducing the
    odds that someone somewhere might vote twice?
    Is this really the hill you want to die on? Lots of people already
    think you’re “batshit insane” (to quote Jeff Read), and this will cause
    more to think that and ignore everything you say. And I don’t want
    people to ignore everything you say, since much of what you say is of
    value and other people aren’t saying it.
    You’d enjoy https://existentialcomics.com/comic/16
    But you wouldn’t enjoy the author’s politics, for which see
    https://twitter.com/existentialcoms

    1. >Or that it’s not millions but “merely” hundreds of thousands, and if those
      people are forbidden from voting it’s a small sacrifice for reducing the
      odds that someone somewhere might vote twice?

      Almost that, but bear with me while I explain. It’s a tradeoff question, really, as with other kinds of security engineering. Which is a better election system if our choices are between “100K people who should be able to vote cannot” and “tens of millions of fraudulent votes are readily manufactured”?

      A good way way to think about the tradeoff is to consider how many people are effectively disenfranchised by how you set your filter. Every fraudulent vote cancels a real one. So let’s say 250K citizens can’t vote because of ID requirements. Unless you think the total national capacity to manufacture fraudulent votes is less than 250K, there is an open-and-shut case for making the requirements tighter. And to keep tightening them until your best estimate of the number of fraudulent votes that can be introduced into an election falls below the number of people locked out by ID requirements.

      We are very, very far from that break-even point in the U.S. Most random Third-World shitholes have better election security than we do. Go look up what it takes to vote in Mexico, for example. Or a relative non-shithole like Brazil. Or even Iran.

      1. ESR asks, “Which is a better election system if our choices are between
        ‘100K people who should be able to vote cannot’ and ‘tens of millions
        of fraudulent votes are readily manufactured’?”
        What if even one fraudulent vote would cause the Flying Spaghetti
        Monster to destroy the Earth? That’s about as useful a question,
        given that the actual number of fraudulent votes caused by people
        voting multiple times in person or by mail is in the single digits,
        not in the tens of millions. Trump’s own Presidential Advisory
        Commission on Election Integrity couldn’t find *any*.
        Hardly anyone will risk going to prison for years by voting twice,
        given how little the value of one additional vote is.
        If there is a massive number of fraudulent votes, which I strongly
        doubt, it’s done by computer hac^H^H^H fraudsters, and can’t be
        prevented by ID requirements.
        Today I watched an Amazon Prime documentary on voter suppression
        in the US, both past and present, titled “All In: The Fight for
        Democracy.” It mentions ID requirements as a form of voter
        suppression, and gets a Republican politician to admit on camera
        that that’s its purpose. It says 21 million can’t get ID, which
        agrees with other sources. It also mentioned several reasons
        people can’t get ID that I hadn’t thought of, for instance Indians
        on reservations who don’t have numeric street addresses.
        Are you going to claim that Amazon is a Democratic Party shill?
        According to Wikipedia, “In 2012, [Bezos] donated to Amazon’s
        political action committee (PAC), which has given $56,000 and $74,500
        to Democrats and Republicans, respectively.” It gives two references
        for this claim.
        Are you also going to claim that *I’m* a Democratic shill? You know
        me better than that. I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life,
        not even for dogcatcher. Nor have I ever donated any money to any
        political campaigns except Libertarian ones.
        I’d like to hear a reference for the extraordinary claim that there
        are tens of millions of fraudulent votes. A reference other than
        Trump, who has zero credibility. That’s just as credible as covid-19
        disappearing when the weather turns warmer, another supremely
        confident claim by the soi-disant “very stable genius.”
        “Covfefe” is the new “fnord.”

        1. > That’s about as useful a question, given that the actual number of fraudulent votes caused by people voting multiple times in person or by mail is in the single digits, not in the tens of millions.

          You mean the number of proven fraudulent votes. How many fraudulent votes get through that we don’t know about?

          > Are you going to claim that Amazon is a Democratic Party shill?

          Well given who runs it and the slant of the paper (The Washington Post) he also owns… yes! Also, nearly all of the entertainment industry has been captured by the Democratic party.

          I guess, more correctly, Bezos’ companies are establishment shills. Making sure that the Deep State never leaves power is their goal. Trump is apparently actively opposed to that goal; that’s why the Democrats and Never-Trump “Republicans” so ardently oppose him.

        2. >Are you also going to claim that *I’m* a Democratic shill?

          No. But you trust the Democrats’ captive media too much, and that leads you to believe many things that aren’t true. You have a lot of company in this.

          Individuals entitled to vote once who are voting twice or more isn’t the major source of fraud in the system. If you want to find out what is, look at the election that was invalidated in NJ recently due to proven Democratic vote fraud (and there goes the assertion that it’s rare enough not to matter).

          No, what the Democrats are masters of is really industrial-scale fraud involving dead people, people such as illegal immigrants who aren’t eligible to vote, and people who didn’t vote but whose ballots can be harvested and marked for their preferred candidate.

          Vulnerability to this sort of shenanigans was already high in the U.S. due to lack of voter ID requirements. Mail-in-ballots tremendously worsen the problem. Now read this:

          https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots/

          1. Important also, is that widespread mail in ballots undermine the protections of the secret ballot. Secret balloting is intended to prevent intimidation, blackmailing, and vote buying. Mail in ballots, however, lack these protections.

            1. I agree that mail-in ballots are suboptimal. This will be the
              first time I’ve ever voted absentee. But thanks to Trump’s gross
              mismanagement of the covid-19 crisis, and Republican protestors
              without masks picketing my county’s early voting site to suppress the
              votes of those who know they’re at risk of the disease, it’s not safe
              for me to vote in person.
              I’m assuming they will also picket the regular polling places on
              November 3rd. Of course if I wait to find out, it will be too late
              for me to vote by mail.

          2. ESR wrote, “But you trust the Democrats’ captive media too much, and
            that leads you to believe many things that aren’t true.” Or perhaps
            you trust the Republicans’ captive media too much. Is there really no
            way to tell what is true? Again, I really wish you’d do a post about
            epistemology, i.e. about how anyone can know anything without observing
            it personally and directly.
            I don’t find an admitted “Bernie Sanders die-hard” (the source for
            the NYPost article you pointed me to) a credible source. He could be
            telling the truth, but I have no reason to believe him.
            I don’t believe anything either major party says. They’re both gangs
            of dishonest thugs with no principles. For instance in 2016 the
            Democrats said it was wrong to block the president’s Supreme Court
            nominee in the president’s final year, and the Republicans said the
            opposite. In 2020 they’ve swapped positions, without even showing
            any shame for their hypocrisy. The only thing any of them care about
            is getting and retaining power.
            In my experience the Washington Post is mostly reliable. It’s been
            critical of both major parties for as long as I’ve read it. Whenever
            practical, I’ve personally directly confirmed their claims. Of course
            I can’t do that for most of their reporting, but I’ve done so for a
            semi-random sampling of it for decades. (As an aside, nothing about
            the Post changed when Bezos bought it.)
            I’m very wary of confirmation bias, so I’ve long gone out of my way to
            read more material I disagree with than that I agree with. For instance
            you’ll find lots of anti-police books in my personal library, but you’ll
            find even more pro-police books. Also pro-Republican, pro-Democrat,
            pro-Socialist, pro-Communist, pro-Nazi, and pro-slavery. Also books
            touting various religions and philosophies.
            I study history. Not just the dates of battles and plagues, but, far
            more important, the history of *ideas*. I want to understand why so
            many people throughout history, including the present, believed such
            bizarre things. And why they acted as they did. I’ve never been
            sympathetic to the monster theory of history, i.e. that people who
            were on the “wrong side” were simply inexplicable evil monsters.
            I believe most of them were simply misled.

            1. “I don’t believe anything either major party says. They’re both gangs of dishonest thugs with no principles.”

              Try a little harder to get past your frustration. For starters, you clearly don’t believe the above, since you later say:

              “The only thing any of them care about is getting and retaining power.”

              Let’s suppose I agree with you. (I don’t entirely, but in this case, it’s close enough.) I think you know as well as I that any body that cares about getting and retaining power is going to end up following some predictable rules. They’re going to produce narratives that justify their power, and trim whatever truths conflict. There will be exceptions, involving truths they believe no one will be able to deny. They’ll carefully cut around it and spin it to their side, or put extra emphasis on unrelated truths. They’ll lie, but only if they can get away with it, because they’re smart enough to know the rep hit they’ll take otherwise. And so on. There turns out to be a lot we can say about people if we know they’re motivated by keeping power.

              I think a lot of the unpredictable stuff happens because these bodies are often led by multiple people with multiple ideas for how to retain power. So one day they’ll appear upfront and honest to build reputation with the everyman, and another day they’ll go hard to one side to fire up some faction, and it could even be an accident of who got to write the speech that morning.

              If we want to go beyond amateur status, I suspect there’s no substitute for gathering intel on their individuals. Find the leaders, find their advisors, dig into their history, find what skills they’re likely to bring, their weak points, etc., and be honest with ourselves. It’s not enough, for instance, to say Sanders is a socialist. I think it’s pretty obvious that he’s a certain type of socialist. He’s no tankie, for example, although he might be advised by some. It’d help to know what any given BLM leader’s limits are. Stuff like that.

            2. >Is there really no way to tell what is true?

              One way I tell what media to trust about what subject is by looking for inconsistencies in the story and facts I can check from other sources. After doing this for a while it’s pretty easy to spot patterns of gaslighting.

              On voter fraud and its prevalence, the Democrat-controlled major media unanimously insist that that it’s too rare to matter. But every time I turn around I learn about things like this:

              Election Watchdog Finds 350,000 Dead Registrants on Voter Rolls In 42 States

              The last Presidential election was decided by fewer votes than that.

  36. Not driving does not equal no ID. My daughter doesn’t drive yet but she has a CA Real ID that verifies she is a citizen and a legal voter.

    Getting an original Social Security card and certified copy of a birth certificate aren’t impossible hurdles, and the second list is to verify you actually live where you claim the right to vote. Not remotely difficult unless you have made a concerted effort to become officially invisible..

  37. Thinking about it, I think it’s interesting that none of the “civil rights activists” concerned about the supposed large number of people who will be disenfranchised because they can’t get an ID are at all concerned with these people being deprived of their right to do any of the myriad of other things one needs an ID to do in our society.

  38. Kyle Rittenhouse’s Defense organization FIghtback.law has released another video. Watch it while you can

    https://youtu.be/E4dhPM99i4I

    Additional video of Rosenbaum appears to show him starting fires. Still unclear what precipitated Rosenbaum to chase Rittenhouse in the first place.

    1. Thanks for posting that (the ar15.com link upthread was more tactically detailed, but this one was laid out a bit more clearly for noobs like me); apparently the video is becoming harder to find as youtube has marked it “objectionable” and disallowed sharing, so I’m doubly grateful.

      I kicked in $100, a drop in the bucket for what Rittenhouse will need but hopefully a few tens of thousands of folks will do the same.

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