—> ICE / Immigration / Video from ICE shooter POV released, firestorm ensues

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Paine said:
We’ve become a society that is functionally immunized to death. Not just mass death, but death as such. We live inside a brutal empire that has killed hundreds of thousands abroad over the last few decades, mostly in our name, and that violence has been normalized to the point of background noise. Drone strikes, “collateral damage,” endless wars with no reckoning. Shrug, move on.

That habituation comes home. A violent society produces violent policies, and it produces people who stop feeling violence as morally shocking.

COVID was a mass death event that should have shattered something fundamental in our political culture. Instead, half the country shrugged, rationalized it, or treated preventable death as an acceptable cost of “normal life.” We never processed that. We never mourned collectively. We never drew a moral line and said this is not acceptable.

Layer on the war on drugs, the war on terror, mass surveillance, and the way “counterterrorism” became a catch-all justification for state violence, and you get what feels like a new phenomenon but isn’t: an imperial boomerang. The tools, language, and moral numbness forged abroad have come back inward.
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The only I'd say in response here is that it suggests the US has somehow uniquely become "immunized to death." I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think the things happening in the US are happening across the world in a number of other places, in particular much of Europe where fascism is similarly making a resurgence. Moreover, I'm not really convinced that the modern world is really more bloodthirsty/evil than it has been throughout history.

I'm not intending to excuse the sins of the US at any point in the last few decades, or suggest that the things you referenced haven't played a role, but I think it's too US-centric a focus.
 
CFordUNC said:


"The most insane thing about all this, is just that: -There is no reason to defend this.It’s not political. You could just say:“Officer didn’t follow protocol. Doesn’t reflect our values. Will be held accountable”There is NOTHING to gain from defending this UNLESS you *want* for ICE to have the freedom to kill US citizens for disagreeing with you!"
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Maybe the same thing, but I would add they can't throw the officer under the bus because that would send the wrong message (their thinking) to the rest of ICE. So pretty much the same thing as wanting to give ICE the freedom to do bad things.
 
rodoheel said:
The only I'd say in response here is that it suggests the US has somehow uniquely become "immunized to death." I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think the things happening in the US are happening across the world in a number of other places, in particular much of Europe where fascism is similarly making a resurgence. Moreover, I'm not really convinced that the modern world is really more bloodthirsty/evil than it has been throughout history.

I'm not intending to excuse the sins of the US at any point in the last few decades, or suggest that the things you referenced haven't played a role, but I think it's too US-centric a focus.
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Yes, look at the Philippines.
 
rodoheel said:
The only I'd say in response here is that it suggests the US has somehow uniquely become "immunized to death." I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think the things happening in the US are happening across the world in a number of other places, in particular much of Europe where fascism is similarly making a resurgence. Moreover, I'm not really convinced that the modern world is really more bloodthirsty/evil than it has been throughout history.

I'm not intending to excuse the sins of the US at any point in the last few decades, or suggest that the things you referenced haven't played a role, but I think it's too US-centric a focus.
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That’s fair. I didn’t mean to suggest the U.S. is uniquely cruel or that this moment is unprecedented in human history. I think you’re right that similar dynamics are playing out across much of the world right now.

What I’m trying to name is less a comparison across eras or countries and more a shared condition of modern politics: mass death and state violence have become abstracted, bureaucratized, and morally distant in a way that makes it easier for people to stop reacting at all. The U.S. is just the context I’m closest to and where I see that numbness feeding back into domestic life most clearly.

I remember reading about reactions to the Spanish Flu being similar to what we saw with COVID, how people had just lived through one mass death event and then another followed, and there was this collective numbness, even a reluctance to talk about it at all.
 
One thing to remember: there's almost no chance this scumbag gets away with it unless he flees the country. There is no statute of limitations on murder, if I recall correctly. Trump cannot pardon him.

The real question is whether Ellison goes ballistic on the others. I would indict every single ICE officer involved on felony murder. The person grabbing the car door and trying to open it is attempting a carjacking. That is a felony. Every single ICE officer on the scene went along with all of it. The Chauvin accomplice precedent looms large.
 
superrific said:
Right, but isn't that the issue? You are killing people on the virtual battlefield to blow off a little steam. You are using aggression against other people as a palliative for your own troubles. I'm not saying you're wrong to do so -- I mean, it's not as if your choice to play or not play will change what others do -- but I think we have to acknowledge how these things build up. When people use virtual killings to make them feel better, maybe other killings could follow? Use enough pain killers, and the door to shooting heroin opens.

They don't build up over a few months. Not over a year. Not necessarily in everyone (probably not in you at all). But sum over all decades and all people, and little things like this can make for a violent society.

And of course there's also the usual suspect, which is far more relevant but also talked about to death, is the constant refrain from right-wing media voices that Dems are traitors who deserve the death penalty.
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For me it's not about "killing". It's about competition. I get what you are saying though. I'm just speaking from personal experience. I'm not a violent person. I've been in just a few fights in my life. When I was in the National Guard I was not deployed into a combat zone.
 
CFordUNC said:


"Aimed her car". BY TURNING THE WHEELS AWAY FROM THE SHOOTER???
"Pressed on the accelerator" YEAH BECAUSE HER HEAD WAS BLOWN OFF HER BODY
"Nobody debates that." EVERY GODDAMN PERSON WITH TWO EYES AND A FUCKING BRAIN SEES OTHERWISE IN THE FOOTAGE.

This grotesque piece of vermin slime is the Vice President of the United States. God fucking damn us.
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JD is burnishing his MAGA bonafides in preparation for 2028 should Trump not declare himself president for life.

If Rubio wants to compete he will have to up his game as a despicable human being.
 
Paine said:
What I’m trying to name is less a comparison across eras or countries and more a shared condition of modern politics: mass death and state violence have become abstracted, bureaucratized, and morally distant in a way that makes it easier for people to stop reacting at all. The U.S. is just the context I’m closest to, and where I see that numbness feeding back into domestic life most clearly.
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While that is true, it's also true that the ready availability of camera footage for these crimes at least makes outrage possible.

It's not as if mass death and state violence haven't existed before. How would you characterize the numbness of the people to what happened in Ludlow CO? I suspect not that many people even heard about it. They certainly didn't see it, and they might well have been inclined (even if not patricians themselves) to say, "Wobblies kicking up trouble again."

And IIRC, My Lai was much less a firestorm than it should have been. Tet Offensive was what killed public support, which was really about whether the US could even accomplish its goals. The damage to Vietnamese citizens was not really a big deal. When Nixon commuted Calley's sentence, there was a ton of support for Calley. The American people treated the whistleblower Thompson as the real villain.
 
MOUNTAINH33L said:
For me it's not about "killing". It's about competition. I get what you are saying though. I'm just speaking from personal experience. I'm not a violent person. I've been in just a few fights in my life. When I was in the National Guard I was not deployed into a combat zone.
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I know. That's what makes these issues difficult. There are no people who, after playing shooter games, decided to go out and commit a mass shooting. There are plenty of people who play shooter games who are not desensitized to real world violence.

But isn't it like issues about language? When people hear human being referred to as "illegals," it doesn't necessarily make anyone go out and hate on brown people. Not directly. But hear it enough times, over and over, and it forms a mental habit, perhaps subconsciously. And that's how you get the mentality that people on this board exhibit -- i.e. that "the border" is the single most salient issue in American politics, that "the invasion" is a national emergency, that we must deport everyone.

We've had people on this thread spout lies about millions of unvetted people being waved in. That becomes easier to believe if your mental structure is "these people are illegals."

To make it more concrete: the shooter of Charlie Kirk was a gamer. Games did not make him do what he did. But maybe the idea of shooting the guy came a bit more naturally to him because he had been shooting thousands of people virtually?

There are more obvious culprits, of course. Social media; the attention culture; right-wing media depravity. Those are well documented. My job here is to point out other things that might contribute even though we tend to think of them as innocuous. But think about this way: player v player became popular because the games' AI provided little challenge. Now that we have great AI, why not get rid of player versus player and everyone fight the AI?
 
MOUNTAINH33L said:
The Wire Wow GIF

I've never really considered that until now. Fair point. Also you're 100% spot on about how language plays a role.
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I don't want to make too much of the point. I mean, there were no video games when that sick fuck climbed the clock tower at U of T way back when.

This would be something where empirical research would be handy, and empirical research like this is really hard to do because it's almost impossible, if not completely so, to separate all the causes.

By no means do I support banning video games, but I do wonder if there aren't slight "nudges" we can make. Like use AI for enemies instead of other humans, now that AI is good.
 
As sad as the murder was, it's so disheartening to see so many people justifying the murder by openly lying about what happened.

The fact that so many people are completely fine with what happened in this heinous act is so disturbing. It just really reinforces the divide in this country.
 
heelinhell said:
JD is burnishing his MAGA bonafides in preparation for 2028 should Trump not declare himself president for life.

If Rubio wants to compete he will have to up his game as a despicable human being.
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I disagree. Rubio sold his soul to the devil to be able to have a seat at the Trump table. He's right there. It'll be too close to call.
 


I’m trying not trying to become all reflexively emo all of a sudden, and I know that I am guiltier than most of having previously peddled this line of thinking for most of the last half-decade or so, but I’m getting so motherfucking tired of this line of thinking that there is some silent “majority of the country that wants government to act responsibly” or that there is some silent majority that opposes this shit. There is not- and the notion that there is, is laughable at best and risible or worthy of scorn and derision at worst. At least 35% of the country loves this, and another 35% can’t be bothered enough to give enough of a fuck to bother voting against it. Those of who are deeply aghast are a minority, and will continue to be a minority.
 
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