Please descend not into self-parody; it’s lame, it doesn’t work.
Self-parody? Do you know who vandalized the tree or stole the memorial stone?
Are you vouching for the Rolling Stone staff? For Brawley and Sharpton? For the CNN minions? Maybe Dorian Johnson is hoping to get a little more public attention?
It’s self-parody, or perhaps a better term would be trolling, because not even you believe a single word of that.
Could you provide a list of possible suspects? Does anyone have a list of possible suspects? Has anyone been cleared of this crime? Is everyone still a suspect?
Has any organization, or individual, destroyed their own memorial in order to be given the opportunity to blame the other side?
I’m wondering if you have children.
I do. One would occasionally smack the other for no apparent reason. That one would get punished.
Occasionally one would antagonize the other until the other snapped and hit him. Then BOTH would get punished. To just punish the attacker would only encourage the antagonist to continue to set up his brother.
So, yes MY feelings would change based on the circumstances.
My example is mild compared to the reality discussed here. It was given to explain why I can hate that MB got shot while understanding how his actions contributed to his death.
A minor nitpick - cops DO pull their guns in order to intimidate. It is know as “constructive authority”, at least where I’m from. Cops are not limited to pulling their guns only when they intend to shoot (not “kill” as the poster said), although it may come to that if people who think with their hearts rather than their heads have their way.
Why is stupidity a moral get-out clause? Generally I would have said that if a person is incapable of understanding the likely consequence of their actions, that would result in me being more sympathetic, rather than less.
To shoot at all is to shoot to kill.
incapable of understanding ≠ stupid
Stupid - 1.lacking intelligence or common sense.
If I were to sympathize for the biker bar victim for his stupidity shouldn’t I also sympathize for the biker for losing his temper?
We can have a big sympathy-fest but the outcome would be the same as Ferguson - Two stupid people fighting over a gun usually results in one of them dead. I save my outrage for situations where the victim had no control over the situation.
To shoot at all is NOT to “Shoot to kill”. If cops intended to kill each time they fired there would be a lot more dead suspects. It may seem like ts only semantics but its more than that. If I am shooting, my intention is to stop you and once your are stopped (and I perceive it) I will stop shooting. If you happen to die, oh well. You should not have put me in fear of death or serious bodily harm.
Why would you ever shoot something you didn’t intend to kill?
I believe that you have it backwards. Every shot is to shoot to kill. If you happen to live, you got lucky.
The point is, there is no such thing as “shoot to wound.” If you shoot at a person, no matter at what body part, you are assuming the risk the shot will kill – by hydrostatic schock, if nothing else. Or by nicking an artery. Cops might not mean to kill every time they draw, but we shoot assume deadly intent every time they shoot.
I would sympathise with someone who comes to fault because of their lack of intelligence or common sense.
What harm has he come to?
Lacking intelligence and common sense seems like a very good way to find oneself unable to control a situation.
And that’s why cops should not be allowed to carry guns.
It’s silly, but I feel in some way as though I contributed to that. Ugh.
You’re the one who compared Brown to a rape victim which indicates you think him blameless. He is objectively not blameless–he robbed a convenience store at the very least and confronted a police officer who was investigating the robbery.
Nope I certainly did not.
What I said was that it was irrelevant.
Is extrajudicial summary execution a legal and appropriate punishment for the robbery? No? Then it’s irrelevant.
Do we give beat cops the authority to determine guilt, sentence, and execute a sentence without legal process? No? Then it’s irrelevant.
Whether he robbed a convenience store or not is irrelevant.
Nothing he did in his life before his encounter with the cop in the street is relevant.
That’s what makes it analogous to a rape case. Not that he lived s blameless life—nobody does anyway—but that not being blameless is not required of anyone in order to avoid getting killed—when, as you said, he didn’t deserve it—by a servant of the public.
Since that is not what happened then I’d have to say your argument is irrelevant.
If you are going to bring up “blamelessness” or the lack thereof or anything at all about Brown’s background or character or past actions, then it’s relevant, because you are saying that it justified his being killed.