Lookin4GoodArgs

Warning: Violation of Rule #1.

Warning for violation of rule #1.

Stated plainly: Floyd chose to commit a crime. He was apprehended for that crime and became belligerent during that apprehension. The arrest resulted in additional physiological stress and the release of adrenaline. This stress was not excessive by ordinary standards, though it was excessive for Floyd because of who he was and the bad choices he had made. According to Baker, “it was the stress of that interaction that tipped him over the edge given his underlying heart disease and his toxicological status.” It is in this limited sense that the arrest “caused” Floyd’s death—much as riding a roller coaster might have done.

Let's just set aside the despicable, subtle racism of "who he was" in that paragraph...

The article basically argues that, because Floyd's physiological stress was his own doing, then Chauvin should not have been tried for second-degree murder, or the intent to kill Floyd without premeditation.

Fine.

That still leaves open the possibility that Chauvin was guilty of involuntary manslaughter, or causing his death by failing to behave with the level of care a reasonable person would have exercised under the same circumstances. That's what the second part is about: "As I’ll explain in Part II, the body camera footage proves that the arrest was conducted in a professional and dispassionate manner."

Still fine.

I can concede all of that, and still dress down the practice of policing generally and that of the Minneapolis Police Department specifically, even of Derek Chauvin specifically, according to the Department of Justice's investigation of the MPD (PDF).

On December 15, 2021, Mr. Chauvin pleaded guilty to federal criminal civil rights violations, both for the murder of Mr. Floyd and for holding a 14-year-old teen by the throat, beating him with a flashlight, then pressing his knee on the teen’s neck and back for over 15 minutes in 2017.

The MPD had a record of being a shitty department and Chauvin contributed to that by being a shitty police officer. That the prosecutor's office was "struggling under the weight of unfamiliar public scrutiny" was because regular people experience the documented civil rights abuses long before they're documented and what accountability.

In the same way that the physiological stress of Floyd, coupled with Derek Chauvin's behavior, caused Floyd's death, the public anger against police that Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers generated also caused the prosecutor's office to publicly flog Chauvin for his crimes.

Trump.

He's already demonstrated that he's a washed up fascist and is significantly easier for Biden to beat.

Haley is the real threat. Her target audience and Biden's are largely the same, and Haley has the advantage.

In any case, regular working class and middle class people are going to be screwed.

Dershowitz said, “The 14th Amendment provides in Section 5 that Congress, not the states, Congress can enforce this provision. Now, remember who wrote the 14th Amendment, Radical Republican reconstructionists who didn’t trust the states. They would never have left the decision [on] who can run for president to South Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama, members of the Confederacy. Of course they left it only to Congress. The idea that states, one at a time, can decide who’s disqualified is the most absurd reading of a constitutional provision I have ever seen.”

...okay, that's actually a plausible argument.

Warning for violation of rule #1.

Simmer down...

From the article:

But for a politician like Trump, an indictment can be an opportunity because it confirms the populist narrative: See, they view me as such a potent threat that they’re threatening to throw me in jail just to get me to stop fighting for you. But they can’t scare me. Together, we will achieve vengeance!

Ostensibly for BoaT, enforcing the Constitution is corruption because Trump did all of those things. No one ever says he didn't do those things; they just say those things don't constitute insurrection, and thus Trump is "innocent". Talk about staggering mental hoops...

Because Anti-Christian hostility is reaching unprecedented levels, and they're "under attack"!

It's not, and they're not...160 American Evangelicals weren't murdered by anyone for their beliefs.

All Christians? Absolutely not.

Murderous Muslims? Absolutely.

Overzealous Christians that believe in Dominionism? Also absolutely.

There's a particular rhetorical strategy I'm increasingly learning to identify with your help. It's called minimization.

I've identified a pattern of Christian exceptionalism and clearly juxtaposed it against the attention-whoring, as you call it, of the Satanic Temple.

You implicitly disagree by maintaining it's not Christian exceptionalism (after all, you're an atheist), they're just trying to celebrate a holiday. You ignore the activity of zealous Christians altogether. They're faultless not because they're not trying to make Christianity the state religion, nor because they and they alone can discriminate against same-sex couples, nor because they want their religious icons in government buildings, nor because they want Bible study after school programs to the exclusion of other religious programs—no, no, it's because...they're trying to party. Thus, complex legal strategems that take years to manufacture and construct and represent a danger to American democracy are minimized to a celebration. And the self-described Satanists are the party poopers.

It's good stuff. I genuinely appreciate your help.