Yes, mistaken, unintentionally. Unintentional mistakes are not lies. Intentional ones are, the writer of the article was not making a mistake. Maybe you can try calling it satire, but satire is just lies that are meant to be either funny or analogous (which I did not find this article to be either). Unless you are here claiming that the author was just mistaken in their reporting of events, which I hope not to be the case.
And, as far as satire goes, when some media outlet runs with an Onion article as if it were factual, I find it to be funny, but I don’t think that it proves the Onion author’s point, as you did with eschereal’s mistake.
That is what I am bringing up for in this instance, that you claimed that him falling for what we will generously call a satirical article proves that satirical author’s point, this was incorrect on your part.
Have you ever been in a crowd?
During football season, if I forget about it and don’t take another direction, every other friday, on my way home, I encounter a giant group of football fans that are crossing the road that intersects the interstate. Sometimes, that even backs up the interstate for miles. There is quite a bit of frustration involved, as there have been times when it has increased my fifteen minute commute home by over an hour, and once you are stuck on that road, it is nearly impossible to turn around.
If I were to get frustrated with these jaywalkers, and start moving into them at <1mph while I have the green light, I could hurt or even kill someone. Would you try to prevent me from doing so?
Keep in mind, it’s not just protests that block traffic, it is anytime that people are in the road.
If I am walking towards a crowd at 1 mph, swinging my bat and yelling at people to get out of the way, do you think that it would be hard pressed to make the case that it was not being used as a deadly weapon and have no justification for harming me?
I don’t think it was incorrect. The author’s point, as I understood it, is that leftists and the media are too quick to seize on any hint of violence from the right, but far more likely to ignore violence from the left. That’s exactly what eschereal did. He was so eager to prove the point that Tea Party rallies were violent that he couldn’t even finish reading the article. And when it was pointed out to him that it was actually left-wingers being violent, he didn’t have a single word of condemnation for them (although he deserves some kudos for at least acknowledging his mistake directly, IMHO.)
Anyways, this is probably the last thing I’ll say on this particular subject (for a couple of reasons: 1 - it feels a bit like continuing to pick on eschereal’s mistake, and I try not to do that once someone has acknowledged their error, and 2 - I doubt I’m going to win any hearts / minds on this point, especially with someone that thinks satirists are “liars”)
So … as for your other questions:
Yes, although I don’t believe I’ve ever deliberately acted to purposefully block traffic, which I see as something of a key distinction between your hypothetical crowd of football fans and some lefty protesters. The football crowd is trying to get to a game, or out after the game. They’re not trying to block traffic. They’re not likely to run into the path of your vehicle or jump onto the vehicles if you try to nudge your way through. Quite the opposite, they’re likely to behave logically and try to get out of the way / clear a path if possible. The lefty protesters, at least in some cases, do the opposite.
I might say something, or tell the fans to look out. I sure as hell wouldn’t shoot you, and I wouldn’t purposefully place myself in the path of your vehicle.
Please see my point about the purpose / goal of the protesters vs the others, above.
Your question has something like a double negative (“hard pressed” and “not”), and I’m tired, so I’m not sure I understood it correctly. But, if I did, then no, I don’t generally think it would be very difficult to make the case to a jury that someone swinging a bat and advancing on a person is a threat. There are probably some circumstances where it would (be difficult to make the case), but they’re basically edge cases / exceptional circumstances (imagining something like a kid who just got a new bat for Christmas and is cheerfully approaching his friend saying, “Hey, check out this new baseball bat I just got for Christmas. It’s awesome!” or a batter on a baseball diamond, coming up for his at-bat, swinging the bat to warm up as he approaches the batter’s box, catcher, and umpire).
True think how much better things would be if all protestors avoided inconveniencing anyone. Why by 2023 we might even have desegregated lunch counters.
They are a crowd of people, jaywalkers in this instance. Say they want to get to a football game. They are in the intersection against the light. I come at them with a bat, swinging it back and forth, approaching at 1mph, yelling at them to get out of my way.
That’s fine. Just saying that being fooled by satire is not the same as what you are claiming here. And I do not see how satire is not a lie. It is a specific type of lie, one that can usually be determined by context, but it is still deliberately stating untrue things. (And I also don’t find this to be a good example of satire, more of just projection, with the whole, “This is how the liberal media would have reported”)
Ummm, you have never met football fans, I take it? I’ve had people walking by, pounding on my hood and screaming their teams name at me. I’ve had people decide that the crosswalk wasn’t wide enough, so they start going behind my car and between other vehicles at the light. I’ve even seen people walking on and jumping between the hoods and roofs of cars, though that’s not happened to mine.
No one that I am aware of has ever actually tried to push them out of the way with their cars, so I can’t say definitively how they would react, but I would say that they would react with the same anger that anyone would when you threaten them with potential grievous bodily harm.
The question was if the car is actively threatening to or currently causing harm to the people in front of it. Would it be okay to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from doing so?
Right, and that is fine. It is the acknowledgement from you that it is the reason that people are blocking the road that makes it okay to threaten them with your car, not just their act of blocking the road that I was looking for.
If they are just assholes who don’t care about backing up traffic onto the interstate because they want to get to their football game, that’s fine, but if they are people that are trying to get people to take notice of inequalities or injustices to make social change, that is not.
So, advancing on someone with a bat and expecting them to get out of your way is wrong, but advancing on them with tons of steel is fine.
Out of curiousity, when you were taught to drive, were you told:
“right of way” is a privilege that drivers and pedestrians can seize upon, such as force upon other traffic, such as by compelling other traffic to move, stop, pull over, etc., or…
“right of way” is a privilege that drivers and pedestrians are expected to yield to those with the privilege, but it is not a method of compelling others to get out of your way.
I was instructed that the law supports meaning number two, but it appears that you think it supports meaning number one.
That’s probably because violence from the right is far more prevalent than violence from the left:
In fact the chances of dying from right wing extremism is almost as likely as dying from Islamist extremism.
Take away the night club shooting and right wing violence is a greater threat to the average American than any other group.
While there are left wing extremist groups in the US I am unaware of the FBI issuing warnings about them to the public in the same manner as above (as opposed to publishing a generic most wanted list or other such thing). Usually left wing extremism results in property damage and not death. Which is to say I would be far more concerned for my safety if I ran into a Alt-Right rally than if I ran into a PETA rally.
Articles like the one being discussed are trying to pretend an equivalence where none exists.
I’ve answered this question several times already. First off, a caveat - laws vary by states, so while many laws are rather similar from one state to the next, you’ll have to check the state’s laws in which you contemplate performing this action. My layman’s understanding is, I think, pretty good for Utah’s laws on deadly force. And in Utah, I strongly suspect you would end up with a right good fucking from the legal system if you were a protester and shot the driver of the white or red car in the OP from the video. OTOH, if something like the Charlottesville attack happened here in Utah, and somebody shot the driver, they’d probably be fine (at least legally - they still might get run over). The specific determination in your case will hinge on the facts specific to your case. Some things that would work against you, from the OP’s video:
the threat has to be genuine. A car speeding at 60 mph towards a crowd is a much more genuine threat than a car moving at 1 mph and leaving the protesters plenty of opportunity to get out of the way
“lawfully entered or remained”. The protesters have not “lawfully entered or remained” in the intersection. They’ve lost a bit of legal protection by doing so. (ETA: someone up-thread mentioned that the Charlottesville crowd was actually in a foot traffic shopping area, not a roadway. I don’t know for certain if that’s true, but if it is, it certainly entitles them to some enhanced legal protection)
the “nature / immediacy of the danger” and the “probability that the unlawful force would result in death or serious bodily injury” are all quite low in a situation like the OP’s video. All of these things will count against a protester being justified in harming the driver. In the Charlottesville example, the nature and immediacy of the danger, as well as the probability that the unlawful force will result in death or serious bodily injury are all quite high.
The roads are generally places where we expect people at the command of tons of steel to advance on. Just like a baseball diamond’s batter box is generally a place we expect someone with a bat to advance to. That doesn’t necessarily mean drivers can’t be prosecuted for nudging their way through a crowd (they might be), regardless of the nature / intent of the crowd, but it does mean that I personally strive to not be part of a crowd impeding drivers on roadways, and I certainly wouldn’t want to take the legal / physical risk of attacking a driver in such a situation.
Your post is about “violence from the right” and “violence from the left”, but your cites focus rather narrowly on the violence that results in deaths. For example, they completely ignore the lefty nutjob that shot at Congressional Republicans, because (fortunately) Steve Scalise and the others survived. It’s definitely “violence from the left” but not lethal. Should it be counted? I think so.
That might be a reasonable position to take. Likewise, I’d be far more concerned for my safety if I ran into an Antifa / BLM rally than if I ran into a Tea Party rally. But it’s probably worth pointing out here that the vast majority of “violence from the right” and “violence from the left” and even the “lethal violence” doesn’t usually happen at a “rally”.
I think attempted murder should count too. If you think including attempted murders balances the scales between right/left wing violence feel free to cite some numbers that support it. If I were to bet on it I don’t think it will narrow that gap very much. There is a reason the FBI and DHS warn us about right wing violence and not left wing violence.
True, I suspect that the number of LGBT men and women beaten to within an inch of their lives by right wingers would eclipse any such statistic on the left by an order of magnitude.
Sometimes cool heads prevail.
In THIS VIDEOthe potesters allow a car thru when it said it had to go to the hospital. They they just open up and let cars thru. At the end you hear a man telling protesters to stay on the sidewalk.
In THIS VIDEO the jeep hits someone but the other protesters protect the driver and tell the other people it was their fault and need to let the person thru. In the background you hear calls for common sense such as rioting and violence will only cause more problems and police will come in.
Again I say, we need to remove the problem in the first place. I dont care what laws are enacted sooner or later drivers lose patience and drive thru protesters. People will be hurt and killed.
Police need to get the word out that this form of protest in unacceptable, they will be arrested with heavy penalties, and the law wont always protect them if they try they get violent and try to assualt drivers.