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What have George Floyd, Micheal Brown and Malice Green in common?

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dream_weaver

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What have George Floyd, Micheal Brown and Malice Green in common?

When the flames appeared in the headlines about Twin Cities, the incident that had happened several days earlier found its way into my awareness. Who was George Floyd, and why does a police station need to offered as a burnt offering to appease the social media spirits?

Then, a headline came up today that offered a clue under which to categorize this:

Medical examiner concludes George Floyd didn't die of asphyxia

The full report by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office is pending but so far has found "no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation."

Floyd's underlying health conditions included coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The report says the underlying health conditions, combined with Chauvin's restraint and any possible intoxicants in Floyd's system, likely contributed to his death.

More controversially, Rodney King could be added to the list. It is farther removed, and also did not result in death as the three referenced individuals.

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I have not searched for the screen play apparently showing George telling the officer that he couldn't breath, but I do recall my Sensei, during class, telling students who claimed to be unable to breathe, that if they could talk, they could breath.

Noted, that the restraint was indicated as being in conjunction with, is similar to the Malice Green case, where the flashlight used, should not have caused death in a healthier individual.

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4 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

I do recall my Sensei, during class, telling students who claimed to be unable to breathe, that if they could talk, they could breath.

People do exaggerate. A person might say, "I can't breathe" when "I''m have difficulty breathing" or similar is more truthful. 

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There are a few videos available. This one does not have extra editorial footage added, but is missing some video showing him being led, already handcuffed, from in front of a nearby business.

Spoiler

 

I understand that people express themselves in an exaggerated way. Sensei's point was in order to speak, one has to expel air one has taken in, even when winded from vigorous activity.

More disturbing to me was hearing the officer tell him (while holding him down with his knee) that all he needed to do was get up and get in the vehicle. (Not part of the incident report from linked to in the O.P.)

Still, the coroner, so far, has said that that cause of death wasn't consistent with asphyxia or strangulation. If the method of restraint contributed to the death, the causal connection is not clear at this time.

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5 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

I do recall my Sensei, during class, telling students who claimed to be unable to breathe, that if they could talk, they could breath.

Yes, if you can talk you can breathe, but you might be able to say you can't breathe a few seconds before you stop breathing. 

But that's stupid to talk about. Do we really need some linguistic argument to understand that he was in severe medical distress? 

The category is police abuse, full stop. 

5 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Who was George Floyd, and why does a police station need to offered as a burnt offering to appease the social media spirits?

It might be justified, I haven't really decided, but it's a pretty simple connection between initiation of force to retaliatory force. 

 

Edited by Eiuol
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Rand seemed to be resistant to the death penalty because of the mistakes that could be made. Looks like such a mistake was made in this case.

If there were underlying conditions, does that justify the way the police handled it?

A justified standard around use of force needs to be used. Perhaps sometimes it will be too much and that it should be okay, some mistakes will be made. It all depends on how much of a "high risk" Floyd was or could have been. If they found a large bomb in his pocket, people would be cheering. 

At this point the videos showed he was cooperating. Why aren't handcuffs enough? Why sit on someone's neck for eight minutes?

I'm willing to wait to get more information but the only thing that could justify something like this would be that Floyd "was a major deadly danger to the police or others". Not an African American father with some drug offenses.

We shall see.

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I understand that might does not make right, yet being right does not always negate the need to have the might behind it.

As the facts continue to become exposed, my initial comparison to Micheal Brown and Malice Green was premature.

Drudge Report listed 26 cities and concluded with "more . . ." which brought up a map with 51 discernible locations marked, and it doesn't include cities I heard mentioned on the radio this morning. Clearly the protests are not delineated to individual rights, as rioters take to destroying private property to express the rage being unleashed without a coordinated plan behind it, and likely not a clear introspective identification of the contributing ideas behind the rage.

The mistake in handling George Floyd is likely to serve as a scapegoat to attribute the otherwise "inexplicable" trend to resort to violence rather than reason to shape the governing influence for many tomorrows to come.

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2 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Clearly the protests are not delineated to individual rights, as rioters take to destroying private property to express the rage being unleashed without a coordinated plan behind it, and likely not a clear introspective identification of the contributing ideas behind the rage.

Rioters are not necessarily connected to protesters. Sometimes rioters are people who take advantage of a chaotic situation to do things they have been wanting to do for a long time. Another reason is that by seeing other people push the envelope, they are willing to push themselves to act in ways they would not normally, even if has nothing to do with why the other people are acting so extremely. So if a convenience store is set on fire, it is probably for unrelated reasons than why a police station was set on fire. They simply correlate with each other.

3 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

The mistake in handling George Floyd is likely to serve as a scapegoat to attribute the otherwise "inexplicable" trend to resort to violence rather than reason to shape the governing influence for many tomorrows to come.

What's inexplicable? If you're talking about stealing TVs, those are just the usual reasons why anybody steals anything. If you're talking about setting police stations on fire, that's retaliatory force.

3 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

yet being right does not always negate the need to have the might behind it.

Force should be at least proportional. You wouldn't call an air strike to stop someone who stole your bench outside. You wouldn't mock someone and tell them to get up when you know you won't let them get up, if you aren't using more force than necessary. This isn't a case where we are utterly shocked that this use of force ended up with someone dying. The guy was completely subdued, there was no need to keep going. 

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6 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Check your premises.

Which one? "Check your premises" doesn't mean anything here, this is a conversation.  

I'm not sure if that use of force is proportional, but it is still retaliatory. 

DW, what's confusing or weird about my post?

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After watching the militia in Michigan intervene on behalf of a barber, another militia establish a protest in Lansing, both of which the protesters were armed, then compare protests that originated in Minneapolis and rapidly spread to well over 5o different cites with various levels of violence associated with them.

Why does violence seem to manifest with one form of protest and not the other. It's not sufficient that a few unruly individuals decide to up and at 'em on one day, and not opportune themselves on another. That does not compute for me.

 

Secondly,

Quote

The mistake in handling George Floyd is likely to serve as a scapegoat to attribute the otherwise "inexplicable" trend to resort to violence . . .

followed by the inquiry:

Quote

What's inexplicable? If you're talking about stealing TVs,

I suppose one can view stealing TV's as a form of violence, but I was thinking more in line with arson, and pelting police with various objects.

 

As to the level of response, as Officer Chauvin is on the proper path to establishing guilt or innocence with regard to George Floyd's rights being infringed upon, the public response to the situation is going to quickly have the response ratcheted up as consideration of how to invoke the National Guards in various communities become a necessary resort.

 

I've already ceded my initial position on this matter as premature.

My position has switched to the process of reasoning required for life, and although it is not an invocation of the death penalty in a 'legal' sense, what irrationality in the public response that appears to be spreading across the country is liable to end up as, if it is not reigned in.

Edited by dream_weaver
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3 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

That does not compute for me.

As I was saying, the circumstances have changed: observing one person acting in an extreme way can motivate you to also act in an extreme way. Your threshold for action would be lower. There's a theory in sociology related to this idea of lowering your thresholds for action when you see others taking extreme measures, regardless of why those other people took extreme measures. So you end up with a huge mix of different people rioting in different ways for different reasons for different objectives. It's not as if a riot is cohesive. The only thing I would say about a riot is that it is not guided by any principle. The only philosophical underpinning here is that there is none. 

Your question sounds more like "why does violent protest correlate so well with rioting, but not other forms of protest?" Probably because it is involved with such high emotion.

3 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

I suppose one can view stealing TV's as a form of violence, but I was thinking more in line with arson, and pelting police with various objects.

Okay, my point is that either way, you have an explanation that's pretty straightforward.

I want to say though, I don't think violent protest is effective in this situation. Nonviolent protest is very effective even towards violent individuals. Not because violence is inherently bad, but because psychologically speaking, the protesters remain in much better control of themselves, the other people don't respond to it by feeling inspired to take measures into their own hands, and responding nonviolence with violence only makes it clear who is violating rights (even to the people who aren't yet convinced of individual rights as a thing). Historically, we know it can work.

Also, when I suggested that burning down down police station as retaliatory, I was referring to Minneapolis. I don't think burning down a police station in Atlanta would be retaliatory. 

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What about all the people who are seeing these extreme actions and are not joining in and participating in the opportunity to loot, pillage and burn? Either individuals are responsible for what they do, or they are automatons. Are people endowed with the faculty of reason, or are they not? I'm not looking for psychological apologism here.

This conversation is bizarre to me. More bizarre than when we couldn't see eye to eye on the Michael Brown events as they unfolded.

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4 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

I'm not looking for psychological apologism here.

You said it didn't make sense to you, so I'm explaining why somebody might become a looter. There are of course all the other factors that lead someone to make looting a consideration.

Imagine you are a person who is completely apolitical and has committed petty crime before. You recognize that people are protesting the killing of Michael Brown. While you don't really have hope from political change, and don't think politics really makes a difference to anything that goes on in the world, you recognize that this is an opportune time to go beyond petty theft and start looting TVs from Target. Other people have burned down a police car a few blocks away. Seeing that, you realize that you might be able to do something extreme as well. If someone can burn down a police car, imagine what you could steal when the cops are busy! Normally you wouldn't attempt to loot an entire store, but today, there are new opportunities. 

Just to be clear though, I don't think anything could justify the looting. It's not even retaliatory. It's just opportunism. Nothing more than that.

4 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

More bizarre than when we couldn't see eye to eye on the Michael Brown events as they unfolded.

I don't really know which part you disagree about.

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This is becoming uncanny.

23 arrested at London Black Lives Matter protest after George Floyd demonstrators ‘assault police’ at US embassy

Another bizarre comparison was a parallel drawn between the Apollo and Dionysus article written in '69 contrasting the rationality of the moon landing with the irrationality of Woodstock with the recent Space X launch and the (now world wide?) spreading rioting.

Holding in mind the following:

When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it.

I have to ask:

Are all individuals involved in governments and agencies and their branches of law enforcement irrational animals and actions to be be viewed with white-washed suspicion? Is it the protesters that are supposed to be providing a form of cover for rioters seeking to be wolves disguised in sheep's clothing here or the rioters seeking the 'politically correct' protesters to disguise their ulterior motives?

 

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1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

Another bizarre comparison was a parallel drawn between the Apollo and Dionysus article written in '69 contrasting the rationality of the moon landing with the irrationality of Woodstock with the recent Space X launch

Yaron goes into that. I have set it up to play at that point

 

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The current high emotion is due to political failure. Could be Covid, could be racism, could be other frustrations or fears, and in politics, perception and emotion are far more central to outcomes vs. the philosophical view, where reason takes center stage.

One does not win political campaigns without influencing emotions of voters and a mob is not an entity with a faculty of reason.

Where there is pent up anger, sometimes violence erupts. Philosophically it is usually wrong. Politically it is natural and expected.

In times of high emotion, since the faculty of reason is diminished, the ethical thing to do is to either avoid discussion in times of high emotion, or to avoid high emotion at times of discussion. But right now, it is too late for prevention of violence. High emotion does not allow reason and opens the door to demagogues. (as an aside, Trump and Bannon are a masters of that). The only thing that can be done is either actively try to calm emotions or to wait for the storm to pass, to settle down, and then have the discussion.

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22 hours ago, Eiuol said:

If you're talking about setting police stations on fire, that's retaliatory force.

Check your premises.

21 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Which one? "Check your premises" doesn't mean anything here, this is a conversation.  

I'm not sure if that use of force is proportional, but it is still retaliatory. 

DW, what's confusing or weird about my post?

What IS retaliatory force?

Of course setting police stations on fire is force, no question.

 

But IS it retaliatory?

NO.

 

The mob is made up of individuals who were NOT there, and in the act(s) of the officer(s) against Mr. Floyd, none of those mob individuals have been attacked, and hence any use of force by that mob could not be retaliatory.  If the mob acted directly against the officer(s) who did act, it could not be in retaliation as they had never been attacked by those officer(s).

Moreover, the mob is using force not against the individual officer(s) but against the police institution itself.  A sharp mind can easily see that to the extent the acts of the officer(s) was unlawful, i.e. the initiation of force, they acted outside of their authority given by the police institution who employed them.  So not only was the mob not acted upon, the police institution did not commit the acts that were not acted upon them.  EVEN if Mr. Floyd did not die, were he to set fire on the police station it would NOT be retaliatory force. 

Here, non-victims of any force are attacking non-perpetrators of any force.

This is the INITITATION of FORCE, and it is clearly illegal and immoral.

 

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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Has anyone seen an objective piece of proper journalism reporting about the George Floyd incident and aftermath?  If so please include a link in your reply.

 

I'm really interested to see if ANY journalists or media outlets in modern times are capable of objective, non-editorializing, non-opinionated, non-spin infested, reporting of the facts and issues and yes that includes objective reporting of the so-called "positions" or sentiments of various players involved.

I'm wondering is there ANY media outlet that reports the news to consumers who want to know what's happening and want to make-up their own minds, instead of setting out to virtue signal, lecture, preach, and try to change public sentiment in the dumb masses (as they see them).

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Check your premises.

Why do you keep saying that? That phrase is for essay writing, not conversations. What do you think a disagreement is? You think my premises are wrong.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

 A sharp mind can easily see that to the extent the acts of the officer(s) was unlawful, i.e. the initiation of force, they acted outside of their authority given by the police institution who employed them.

You didn't finish your line of reasoning. Note that I'm not using passive aggression to call you a moron. Thinking on a moron doesn't help your case when I already said I'm undecided if torching a police station was justified. Why insult me?

Yes, the actions were unlawful, at least in the sense that attacking a police station is always against the law. But I don't think that's what you mean. 

If you mean unlawful only in the sense of initiation of force which is not retaliatory, that's not necessarily true. The whole point of you even responding to me is that you think it is initiation of force, and I think it is retaliatory (by being retaliatory, it still isn't necessarily justified). 

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Moreover, the mob is using force not against the individual officer(s) but against the police institution itself. 

A police precinct is responsible for its officers. I clarified earlier that I was only referring to Minneapolis. In the same way the actions of one soldier justify actions against that soldier's army, the actions of one officer justify actions against that officer's precinct. In other words, initiation of force done by one officer means that force in response would be retaliatory.

Acting outside of your authority isn't initiation of force, I don't know what you're talking about.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

So not only was the mob not acted upon, the police institution did not commit the acts that were not acted upon them.

This is true as far as a precinct in Atlanta, for example. Police departments across the country are not unified institutions across the board. Officers in Atlanta are not responsible for officers in Minneapolis.

 

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6 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Why do you keep saying that? That phrase is for essay writing, not conversations. What do you think a disagreement is? You think my premises are wrong.

You didn't finish your line of reasoning. Note that I'm not using passive aggression to call you a moron. Thinking on a moron doesn't help your case when I already said I'm undecided if torching a police station was justified. Why insult me?

Yes, the actions were unlawful, at least in the sense that attacking a police station is always against the law. But I don't think that's what you mean. 

If you mean unlawful only in the sense of initiation of force which is not retaliatory, that's not necessarily true. The whole point of you even responding to me is that you think it is initiation of force, and I think it is retaliatory (by being retaliatory, it still isn't necessarily justified). 

A police precinct is responsible for its officers. I clarified earlier that I was only referring to Minneapolis. In the same way the actions of one soldier justify actions against that soldier's army, the actions of one officer justify actions against that officer's precinct. In other words, initiation of force done by one officer means that force in response would be retaliatory.

Acting outside of your authority isn't initiation of force, I don't know what you're talking about.

This is true as far as a precinct in Atlanta, for example. Police departments across the country are not unified institutions across the board. Officers in Atlanta are not responsible for officers in Minneapolis.

 

I cannot make it any simpler for you.  I’m sorry but if you can’t understand the issues after my explanation, you just don’t get it.

I hope others get something from it so it’s not a complete waste of my time.

 

Good luck!

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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

The mob is made up of individuals who were NOT there, and in the act(s) of the officer(s) against Mr. Floyd, none of those mob individuals have been attacked, and hence any use of force by that mob could not be retaliatory.

Are you suggesting that a police (C) arresting murderer (B) who killed victim (A) is an initiation of force? Clearly C was NOT there in the act of B against A, C was never attacked, and hence any use of force by C could not be retaliatory?

You don't need to be personally victimized to use retaliatory force, especially when the victim is dead and could not possibly retaliate. The problem here is that the retaliatory force was carried out by a mindless mob, not the fact that retaliatory force was carried out at all, on somebody else's behalf, which is perfectly valid.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

A sharp mind can easily see that to the extent the acts of the officer(s) was unlawful, i.e. the initiation of force, they acted outside of their authority given by the police institution who employed them.

Nope. Plenty of laws protect police who initiate the use of force. They're not acting independently of the police institution. (Of course, you could be arguing about some abstract, perfect police station that works this way, but this case is very specific).

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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

The mob is made up of individuals who were NOT there, and in the act(s) of the officer(s) against Mr. Floyd, none of those mob individuals have been attacked, and hence any use of force by that mob could not be retaliatory.

Not to agree or disagree more broadly about this particular act of mob violence, but you're looking at "retaliation" wrong here. The thing that makes for retaliation is not that it is the individual who has had force used against them, replying in kind.

If you look at the most widely agreed-upon uses of "retaliatory force" -- namely, law enforcement itself, I think this should be plain to see: When the judge sentences a murderer to jail, that judge was not necessarily there at the time of the attack; neither he, nor the arresting officer, nor the jailer, have been themselves attacked. Yet their use of force is retaliatory.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Moreover, the mob is using force not against the individual officer(s) but against the police institution itself. A sharp mind can easily see that to the extent the acts of the officer(s) was unlawful, i.e. the initiation of force, they acted outside of their authority given by the police institution who employed them.

I think it's arguable at the least that police training and culture have contributed to these sorts of outcomes; that there are "systemic" and "institutional" problems manifesting themselves, beyond the mere choices of one (or four) bad actors.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

So not only was the mob not acted upon, the police institution did not commit the acts that were not acted upon them.  EVEN if Mr. Floyd did not die, were he to set fire on the police station it would NOT be retaliatory force. 

Here, non-victims of any force are attacking non-perpetrators of any force.

This is the INITITATION of FORCE, and it is clearly illegal and immoral.

I agree with you that what the protestors did in setting fire to the police station is wrong (and of course, illegal). Whether or not it was "retaliatory" in nature is less clear to me.

Things are complex in modern society. Given that there are laws which, themselves, initiate the use of force against the innocent, and given that the police routinely enforce those laws, it has long been unclear to me as to how one assesses that morally. I don't think carte blanche resistance or retaliation is moral, but at the same time, I don't think it's right for a police officer to kneel on someone's neck for minutes at a time, let alone in the circumstances in the Floyd video. If I saw an officer treating a loved one in such a fashion, I would fight back.

There are further problems in our culture that have deep roots and are subtle and insidious, and though "racism" has become such a fraught term, and often employed unjustly, it has to be remembered that racism does exist and has had a powerful influence on our country's history. I understand why people could look at a video like that and see it in that context, and come to consider the police "the enemy."

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