The slight problem with this characterization is that it's completely wrong. Again, the situation is not simply about petty theft. There's evidence that she had stolen before and has an outstanding warrant. She had backed her car into a disabled stall illegally and ignored the dozen police requests to talk. She nosed her vehicle into a police officer. He should not have been standing in front of her car, but if someone is standing in front of your car, particularly a police officer, it's poor form to shake him off like paparazzi.
Oh it's
completely wrong that she didn't commit the crime she was being accused of? Damn.
Wait, no, this is your entitlement to overstate coming out again.
Wrong on the facts and the argument, you're reduced to the old straw man. It's rather incredible that you insist on engaging in semantic wanking without double-checking your own highlighting. I did not say "all ordinary people" or even just "ordinary people." I wrote "most ordinary [people]." I will ignore the subsequent shameful strawman upon strawman about who this supposedly "excludes."
I'm sure you want to exclude it, but the
comment you responded to said 'ordinary people' to which you responded 'ordinary criminals maybe'. The 'semantic wanking' is you trying to wiggle out of your overstatement dismissal of valid concerns.
You're going to keep changing the set to fit your goals, but oh well.
Who were these several people who said "X"? I should think the belief that Americans tend to be pro-police is rather non-controversial. We can call this support "brainless," as someone did, but the dispute here is empirical rather than normative. Now, it's entirely possible for Americans to support the police in general, but not in a specific instance. However, in this specific instance, regardless of whether they're morally correct or not, it would seem that people are siding with the police. As usual. For reasons that should not be difficult to discern as they are echoed in numerous comments and votes.
Gauging public sentiment is notoriously tricky and reasonable people can disagree. Observers should be minimally aware of their biases. Sometimes we believe things to be a certain way because we want them to be that way, or even more deceptively because we expect them to be that way. It should go without saying that being aware of these cognitive biases is no guarantee against falling prey to them.
Right, so
take a damn correction with some grace then. Your 'observation' is no more valid than anyone else's here and trying to bolster it with inordinately biased sources actually lessens the validity of it. You dismissed 'ordinary citizens' based on
news comment sections. News comment sections aren't a good measure. They are notoriously white, conservative, and old because those are the demographics who would even think to use them.
Put a way you feel entitled to state it, it's what an ordinary old person might consider valid at least.
I can't help but arrive at my own estimate. It's amusing for you to reach into your Junior Skeptics Workbook and pull out "subjective observation." It's doubly fatuous. I invite others to speculate and reach their own estimate. If they answer, "Obama mind rays," then I will dismiss their view as unreasonable.
Yes, yes, you believe you're the old school professor describing wisdom on high to the 'students' with their 'workbook'. Your dismissal is
so valuable.
Now back to the point you tried to dodge; how does the view 'ordinary citizens afraid to be shot by police' line up with 'Obama mind rays'?
Are you serious? It's a direct response to you extrapolating from an extreme outlier case that you, without sarcasm, described as a "good rebuttal."
...you're pretending right? You sound like the person telling the guy surrounded by great white sharks more people are killed by cows every year. The police
can demonstrably shoot you for no reason and get away with it. This means it isn't an invalid concern to have even if most of the time you can indeed mitigate that risk. This means that someone
could have the fear and still know it's not generally likely, but
with a ******* gun pointed at you or the police chasing you, it's not off the table.
This really isn't complex.
You're losing the plot. When a cop is tapping on the window insisting that you talk, feel free to liken that to the shooting pain. She ignored a host of warning signs. Again, when it comes to the facts, there are stronger reasons to believe that she was fleeing because she was going to get caught in the criminal justice system, not "summarily executed." She slowly drove away; she did not pound the gas.
Oh, the person didn't react
exactly how you think you would react if you saw yourself in the same situation, and that is why
I lack empathy in my argument?
But more to the point, ignoring the shooting pain doesn't mitigate the EMT laughing at you and refusing aid because you're black/trans/democrat. (At least two of those have actually happened more than once.)
And this is mistaken. By all indications, Young knew she was on the hook for more than a very minor crime, especially since she could've beaten the stealing-alcohol charge. They run her name and plates VIN, she's in trouble. And we have good reason to believe she knows she's in trouble. This should not require the pulling of teeth. What is a more plausible reason for why she fled:
A) Because she was being falsely accused of stealing alcohol even though she "didn't steal ****" and could readily prove she "didn't steal ****."
B) She was going to be held to account for things that happened before that day.
Yes, how empathetic to use her actions not being perfectly rational in the instant to mean she wasn't concerned about being shot or the shoplifting accusation. You know she wasn't thinking about the shoplifting accusation because she could have 'beaten that' and prove it as that's what
you would have (or you would think you would have) thought at the time if
you were in the situation. Why on earth would she think that? She wasn't an old white man, she was a poor young black woman with different experiences and thus concerns than
you.
Her reactions don't mean she was probably just a criminal and not worried about the police outside of that.
You and the old people on news comment sections can't see yourselves in that situation but a lot of other people can.
This is yet another mischaracterization.
No, it isn't. You just lack the combination of empathy and critical thinking rigor required to understand that this is indeed the point of contention.
