I agree with your assessment that both could be alive. But for their individual actions they would not have been killed in the manner they were. Unlike some, I don't automatically say Ashli should not have been shot. Nor do I say that she should have been. We have all seen the video. She most certainly was in a place she shouldn't have been, climbing through a broken window. Here is where I am going to go in a different direction. We also see in the video that there were armed police behind her. Maybe the officer on the other side of the door felt he should use deadly force, and if we knew his perspective, I might agree with it. But that information is not being made public. Therefore, we cannot conclude that he was absolutely in the right. Just like we cannot conclude he was absolutely wrong. Moving on to Duante. The focus is on the fact that the officer, based on her own words, clearly intended to use a taser. But is anyone considering that the officers knew that he had a warrant for a violation that included violence and the use of a gun. Why would it not be reasonable to conclude that when he broke away and lunged back into the car that he was going for a gun? And why would it not have been reasonable to use deadly force if that was the reasonable belief? And just to make a point, what would an officer have done in the exact same situation were tasers not even available? There has been no investigation to look into the details of the situation simply because everyone knows what she intended, and then accidently did. An investigation would be needed to determine whether or not deadly force COULD have been reasonable under the circumstances in the first place. Reaching a conclusion that she needs to be prosecuted and the capitol police does not without an investigation into either one is not reasonable. I would state firmly that anyone who makes a decision to engage in criminal behavior assumes the risk of dying, either by accident or design. And that is something both of these people did. I believe in this instance, Matt Walsh had a better take on it. Live by the sword, die by the sword. And wait for an investigation before jumping to a conclusion.
As you know, we have a thirteen year young man in Chicago named Adam Toledo who is dead this morning, killed by a Chicago police officer while in the company of a 21 year old gangbanger with a criminal recors involving gun crimes. The bodycam footage reveals, IMO, an officer who, after chasing a clearly armed Toledo on foot, didn't see him discard his gun in a poorly lit area. When Toledo turned to face the officer, and began to raise his arms, he was shot.
The facts in evidence strongly suggest that this was, whether or not one tribe wishes to accept it, a justified shooting. And, I'm sure that the Chicago Police Department will soon release the officer's name, as it should - just as the Capitol Police should release the name of the officer who, I believe justifiably, shot Ashli Babbitt. The failure to release that name gives the strong appearance of a department, and a Federal Government, eager to hide something. I don't believe for a minute that is the case, but the continuing failure to do so fuels suspicion and dark fantasies among those who somehow think that breaking into the U.S. Capitol building was some sort of noble and justified action, just as withholding the name of the Chicago officer would similarly do for the other tribe. The Woke-O-Haram tribe will protest that action; let them tell that to the family of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota officer Kim Potter, who was doxxed within 24 hours of her shooting Duante Wright, and now live in fear behind a fence with 24/7 police protection as a result.
BOTH tribes need, for the good of all and the future of the Republic, such as it is now, to back off immediately. The center is not holding, as both tribes chip away at its legitimacy and stability. The ultimate goal here, as I see it, is for the Biden administration, and the radical Marxists who are running it, to Federalize all American policing, an action which, based on my experience living abroad during my military career, will result in less transparency, less accountability, more dead citizens at the hands of police, and the final surrender of the essential liberties of both tribes, and everyone else, to an authoritarian Federal government.
George Packer writing in The Atlantic earlier this year had an interesting paragraph. The last sentence is especially accurate and applies to both tribes.
"For his (Trump's) opponents, the lies were intended to be profoundly demoralizing. Neither counting them nor checking facts nor debunking conspiracies made any difference. Trump demonstrated again and again that the truth doesn’t matter. In rational people this provoked incredulity, outrage, exhaustion, and finally an impulse to crawl away and abandon the field of politics to the fantasists."
Truth: Ashli Babbitt and 4 other people (including a police officer) would still be alive, and the Capitol would not have been ransacked by a mob, but for a liar, fraud, grifter and huckster by the name of Donald J. Trump. And our "Tribe" continues to believe his lies. Shameful.
Nice. What is truly unfortunate is that you actually have to write about these kind of things. This would have been dystopian fiction 20 to 30 years ago. As always, your organization of ideas is excellent. Well written sir!
Thank you for pointing out something I've not seen brought to light many other places.
Yes the death was tragic and unnecessary.
If ANY officer feels to need to pull a trigger, they have a duty to be absolutely sure what they're holding in their hand.
The shooting was a horrible, tragic mistake.
BUT.... the mistake NEVER would have occurred if he hadn't resisted. Once he made that decision, he set into motion the actions that caused his demise. He bears the lion's share of the responsibility for his death.
“What is truth?” said Pilot as he walked away. Things haven’t changed in two thousand years. Everyone has their tribal truth to defend. The 24/7/365 news cycle doesn’t help. I use my morning readings of Psalm and Proverbs to help me shift the wheat from the chaff.
Right now I believe that everyone should be a policeman for a day. You are absolutely right both should still be alive. I do not condone either death. But, there is one small fact, one was a criminal, one was not.
I think what concerns me the most is the belief espoused by so many people, including members of Congress and other members of government, that “this was no accident”. It is as if they truly believe that Kim Potter, a member of law enforcement living so close to the powder keg that is the Chauvin trial right now, fully intended to shoot and kill an “unarmed black man”.
It’s utterly absurd...because anyone with the brains the Good Lord gave to a goat should realize that the second to last thing any LEO in America wants to do right now is destroy their career, their future, expose their families and friends to the harassment from “the mob” that they will inevitably face, even if the shooting was completely justified. (The “last thing”, of course, is to die, or see one of their fellow officers or an innocent bystander die, because they feared to act until it was too late.)
I watched the tape, heard the horror in her voice as she cried out “Oh, s—-, I just shot him!”, and I’ve read multiple news stories where they’ve edited out the first part, and claimed her statement was “I just shot him”, as if she said it casually, shrugging it off as of no account.
Then a government employee loses their job for stating what “should” be the government’s position on any crime...that the accused is entitled to due process of law.
“The mob” will always be “the mob”...screaming for vengeance and their idea of justice, which is usually a lynching, virtual or a actual. But that members of our government are part of “the mob”, is horrifying.
The problem is not tribalism per se. America has been a multi-ethnic society for decades. It goes deeper, to one political faction in the country not only seeking to permit but also actively using tribal violence in pursuit of power. Ashli Babbitt's murderer will be unnamed and free because, despite your obvious efforts to paint them as threatening, *Trump supporter's won't riot* and everybody knows that. Kim Potter is named, fired, and probably already receiving death threats because another tribe will riot. If this unequal treatment continues to spread, the closer and closer we inch to the point that people will decide that violence is the only remaining option.
All disasters have a chain of events. Break one of the links in that chain, and the disaster does not happen. In the events mentioned here, the deceased had multiple chances to break a link in the chain, but they didn't. The police also had the opportunity to break links in the chain, though not as many links as the deceased.
What is truth? That which has fidelity to the original. There is only one original. Not my original and not your original. The Evil One's #1 objective is to obscure the Original. That gets manifested in millions of daily interactions by him and Scripture warning of that is all we need to know how to live with that temporal reality. Until the return of the Original...let's all be mindful to check our own perceptions of the truth. Thanks for the reminder, Erick.
I agree with your assessment that both could be alive. But for their individual actions they would not have been killed in the manner they were. Unlike some, I don't automatically say Ashli should not have been shot. Nor do I say that she should have been. We have all seen the video. She most certainly was in a place she shouldn't have been, climbing through a broken window. Here is where I am going to go in a different direction. We also see in the video that there were armed police behind her. Maybe the officer on the other side of the door felt he should use deadly force, and if we knew his perspective, I might agree with it. But that information is not being made public. Therefore, we cannot conclude that he was absolutely in the right. Just like we cannot conclude he was absolutely wrong. Moving on to Duante. The focus is on the fact that the officer, based on her own words, clearly intended to use a taser. But is anyone considering that the officers knew that he had a warrant for a violation that included violence and the use of a gun. Why would it not be reasonable to conclude that when he broke away and lunged back into the car that he was going for a gun? And why would it not have been reasonable to use deadly force if that was the reasonable belief? And just to make a point, what would an officer have done in the exact same situation were tasers not even available? There has been no investigation to look into the details of the situation simply because everyone knows what she intended, and then accidently did. An investigation would be needed to determine whether or not deadly force COULD have been reasonable under the circumstances in the first place. Reaching a conclusion that she needs to be prosecuted and the capitol police does not without an investigation into either one is not reasonable. I would state firmly that anyone who makes a decision to engage in criminal behavior assumes the risk of dying, either by accident or design. And that is something both of these people did. I believe in this instance, Matt Walsh had a better take on it. Live by the sword, die by the sword. And wait for an investigation before jumping to a conclusion.
I agree, BUT I do have one small question.
As you know, we have a thirteen year young man in Chicago named Adam Toledo who is dead this morning, killed by a Chicago police officer while in the company of a 21 year old gangbanger with a criminal recors involving gun crimes. The bodycam footage reveals, IMO, an officer who, after chasing a clearly armed Toledo on foot, didn't see him discard his gun in a poorly lit area. When Toledo turned to face the officer, and began to raise his arms, he was shot.
The facts in evidence strongly suggest that this was, whether or not one tribe wishes to accept it, a justified shooting. And, I'm sure that the Chicago Police Department will soon release the officer's name, as it should - just as the Capitol Police should release the name of the officer who, I believe justifiably, shot Ashli Babbitt. The failure to release that name gives the strong appearance of a department, and a Federal Government, eager to hide something. I don't believe for a minute that is the case, but the continuing failure to do so fuels suspicion and dark fantasies among those who somehow think that breaking into the U.S. Capitol building was some sort of noble and justified action, just as withholding the name of the Chicago officer would similarly do for the other tribe. The Woke-O-Haram tribe will protest that action; let them tell that to the family of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota officer Kim Potter, who was doxxed within 24 hours of her shooting Duante Wright, and now live in fear behind a fence with 24/7 police protection as a result.
BOTH tribes need, for the good of all and the future of the Republic, such as it is now, to back off immediately. The center is not holding, as both tribes chip away at its legitimacy and stability. The ultimate goal here, as I see it, is for the Biden administration, and the radical Marxists who are running it, to Federalize all American policing, an action which, based on my experience living abroad during my military career, will result in less transparency, less accountability, more dead citizens at the hands of police, and the final surrender of the essential liberties of both tribes, and everyone else, to an authoritarian Federal government.
George Packer writing in The Atlantic earlier this year had an interesting paragraph. The last sentence is especially accurate and applies to both tribes.
"For his (Trump's) opponents, the lies were intended to be profoundly demoralizing. Neither counting them nor checking facts nor debunking conspiracies made any difference. Trump demonstrated again and again that the truth doesn’t matter. In rational people this provoked incredulity, outrage, exhaustion, and finally an impulse to crawl away and abandon the field of politics to the fantasists."
Truth: Ashli Babbitt and 4 other people (including a police officer) would still be alive, and the Capitol would not have been ransacked by a mob, but for a liar, fraud, grifter and huckster by the name of Donald J. Trump. And our "Tribe" continues to believe his lies. Shameful.
Nice. What is truly unfortunate is that you actually have to write about these kind of things. This would have been dystopian fiction 20 to 30 years ago. As always, your organization of ideas is excellent. Well written sir!
Thank you for pointing out something I've not seen brought to light many other places.
Yes the death was tragic and unnecessary.
If ANY officer feels to need to pull a trigger, they have a duty to be absolutely sure what they're holding in their hand.
The shooting was a horrible, tragic mistake.
BUT.... the mistake NEVER would have occurred if he hadn't resisted. Once he made that decision, he set into motion the actions that caused his demise. He bears the lion's share of the responsibility for his death.
“ Ashli Babbitt should be alive as well.”
That was not your point of view on JANUARY 6, 2021.
“What is truth?” said Pilot as he walked away. Things haven’t changed in two thousand years. Everyone has their tribal truth to defend. The 24/7/365 news cycle doesn’t help. I use my morning readings of Psalm and Proverbs to help me shift the wheat from the chaff.
Right now I believe that everyone should be a policeman for a day. You are absolutely right both should still be alive. I do not condone either death. But, there is one small fact, one was a criminal, one was not.
I think what concerns me the most is the belief espoused by so many people, including members of Congress and other members of government, that “this was no accident”. It is as if they truly believe that Kim Potter, a member of law enforcement living so close to the powder keg that is the Chauvin trial right now, fully intended to shoot and kill an “unarmed black man”.
It’s utterly absurd...because anyone with the brains the Good Lord gave to a goat should realize that the second to last thing any LEO in America wants to do right now is destroy their career, their future, expose their families and friends to the harassment from “the mob” that they will inevitably face, even if the shooting was completely justified. (The “last thing”, of course, is to die, or see one of their fellow officers or an innocent bystander die, because they feared to act until it was too late.)
I watched the tape, heard the horror in her voice as she cried out “Oh, s—-, I just shot him!”, and I’ve read multiple news stories where they’ve edited out the first part, and claimed her statement was “I just shot him”, as if she said it casually, shrugging it off as of no account.
Then a government employee loses their job for stating what “should” be the government’s position on any crime...that the accused is entitled to due process of law.
“The mob” will always be “the mob”...screaming for vengeance and their idea of justice, which is usually a lynching, virtual or a actual. But that members of our government are part of “the mob”, is horrifying.
We’ve got deadly intersections
Tribal drumbeats, angry cries..
Fists are raised and eyes are bulging.
We’ve exchanged true Truth for lies.
We’ve got fires on every corner,
(“Newsmen” starting even more.).
“Tear it down!” is The Agenda…
‘Til there’s nothing to restore.
We’ve got goalposts always moving,
Definitions to unseat.
Law is bowing to disorder.
Bedlam tweets out in the streets.
* * *
Satan’s Plan: “Divide and conquer!”
As he strokes our Human Pride.
The oppression is progressing
Down the slipp’ry sloping slide.
The problem is not tribalism per se. America has been a multi-ethnic society for decades. It goes deeper, to one political faction in the country not only seeking to permit but also actively using tribal violence in pursuit of power. Ashli Babbitt's murderer will be unnamed and free because, despite your obvious efforts to paint them as threatening, *Trump supporter's won't riot* and everybody knows that. Kim Potter is named, fired, and probably already receiving death threats because another tribe will riot. If this unequal treatment continues to spread, the closer and closer we inch to the point that people will decide that violence is the only remaining option.
All disasters have a chain of events. Break one of the links in that chain, and the disaster does not happen. In the events mentioned here, the deceased had multiple chances to break a link in the chain, but they didn't. The police also had the opportunity to break links in the chain, though not as many links as the deceased.
What is truth? That which has fidelity to the original. There is only one original. Not my original and not your original. The Evil One's #1 objective is to obscure the Original. That gets manifested in millions of daily interactions by him and Scripture warning of that is all we need to know how to live with that temporal reality. Until the return of the Original...let's all be mindful to check our own perceptions of the truth. Thanks for the reminder, Erick.