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She was carrying a backpack big enough to hold a bomb, climbing through a hole in a door that was barricaded, being warned by armed guards not to, and was backed by thousands of angry rioters ready to follow her in.
I'm pretty sure she represented a threat.
If your house were surrounded by people yelling and waving bats and batons and pipes and you barricaded your door against them entering, would you feel threatened by someone who broke your window and started climbing in?
You shouldn't have brought it up if you weren't prepared to discuss it.
No one is asking you to debate this first part:
We all know a woman got shot by the government and was justified by the government.
However, YOU made this statement:
And you are 100% nothing more than a troll IF you claim it's not reasonable to have to justify such a position, YOUR position, as stated by you.
Okay, I’ll defend what I said so that it’s clear that I brought it up not to troll or engage in bad faith but as an example of the effects of state violence on public trust.
Regardless of weather or not you believe the states defense of its agents actions, you can’t deny that the woman who was shot was unarmed (I think I saw some news articles trying to call her armed because she had a pocketknife, but come on!) and that there were alternatives to deadly force available. I saw them discussed online and heard even my very vote blue no matter who style lib neighbors say them when we talked about the news.
Some of the stuff I remember hearing people say was “push her back through”, “push her back through with a stick” “let her come through and arrest her” “beat people trying to come through with a stick” and “shoot into the air/ground to disperse them”.
I’m not bringing those things up to then give you the opportunity to ask me to defend them, but to provide examples of normal everyday people’s responses to seeing the states agents kill someone who looked like them or someone they knew and only became more sympathetic as her background was reported on and pictures of her from before January 6 surfaced.
I also know that she was brought up in the news as a victim of state violence and her name was used as a kind of dogwhistle for stop the steal type right wingers and even normal republican types for little while.
I don’t remember it because I don’t run in those circles but it had a cadence like “Sharon bobbit” or something.
The effect of that one death was very polarizing and did little to build broader trust in government except for with people who took the controversial “I don’t like those people/they’re criminals so good riddance” view.
So that’s why I brought it up and specifically said that she posed no threat. Not because I wanted to defend the people who did January 6 or the ones who use her name as a shibboleth but because it’s a good example of state violence suppressing January 6 prompting a negative response.
I appreciate that you expounded on your overall point, but I don't think you defended what I quoted at all, and that's the only bit I think you are really on the hook to defend here.
I won't list all the examples others already gave you of how easy it is to see that from the point of view of anyone on the other side of that specific door at that specific time, she was indeed a threat. That's not "accepting the government's justification" that's using my own eyeballs and not pretending I don't understand the context of what was happening. Anyone claiming she's not a threat at that moment is willfully ignoring every other detail of the situation.
I’m so sorry for not being clearer about the meaning my words have.
In the context of a shooting by cops I’m using “no threat” to mean no threat that merits deadly force, not that it wasnt a crazy situation.
My point was never to say that the situation wasn’t unique or that fear or feeling threatened never factored in, but the situation in which that woman was shot didn’t constitute a threat to anyone that merited deadly force.
She was unarmed (again, I remember some news trying to say that her pocketknife constituted a weapon but whatever), was climbing in through a barrier that she had to be lifted up to reach and could have been restrained with several different tools or techniques at the disposal of the cop that shot her.
If there were no other options available then a person could believe otherwise and plenty of cops have gotten off for killings because they said their service weapon was their only option.
I was hoping it would be clear what I meant by “no threat” when I explained how lots of people had said all those things they thought the cop could have done, but that’s my fault.
There was no reason to believe that though. Now I'll make the list anyway. First person at head of mob to come through that window. Bomb in backback was possible. (Members of congress were still escaping from the area), concealed weapon was possible, either of those things on the next person behind her were possible. She was in one of the most protected areas of our government, at the head of a mob that had beaten their way into the building, and had built a noose outside while cheering for the death of the vice president. She was a threat.
The only thing you have that even remotely begins to resemble a point is that she posed no VISIBLE threat. Which, when you're protecting high value targets, is fucking meaningless.
If you were a world leader and saw a mob of angry empty headed idiots coming towards you while their friends outside are talking about hanging one of your superiors, are you really going to pretend that's not a threat?
It absolutely did, and deadly force was merited well before it was used. Again, a mob of people chanting they wanted to hang a politician violently broke into the antechamber for many politicians that may have carried concealed weapons or explosives.
Just because you're not capable of seeing why deadly force was more than justified doesn't mean it wasn't, and your arguments willfully ignore the context and surrounding factors that harm your argument
Why should we worry ourselves with the perceptions of idiots? They're idiots. Fuck what they think.
There’s a lot of people in the replies saying something along these lines but none as succinctly put as you.
What’s the right way for the state to deal with “idiots” when it doesn’t care what they think? Certainly after this next January 6 the state can’t just kill them, what’s the response from the state you’d like to see?
Wtf, why would we need to kill someone for being an idiot? The obvious and simple answer is to ignore them.
I think most Americans didn't have any perception change of their government when they saw that chick get shot. If anything they were shocked by what levels conservative civilians were ready to go to for their completely unfounded beliefs.
And just how far the government was willing to let them go before they took off the kid gloves and began to consider treating them even somewhat like the George Floyd protestors were treated.
It was rather eye opening to see the dichotomy between law enforcement response between protests that started non violently protesting in the street vs an angry mob marching on Congress while they actively tried to do a peaceful transfer of power.
I agree with you that most Americans were shocked in general or didn’t care but I think there was a significant amount of people whose perceptions were maybe changed.
Do you think the scale would change things? If this becomes a pattern, what’s the way out?