Jay Peterson
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But why do white people get taken alive?

9/23/2016

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With the capture of the bomber in NJ after a gunbattle following police shootings in Tulsa and Charlotte, the old chesnut of "why do white people get taken alive?" is once more rearing it's ugly head. (Now available in direct and passive-aggressive)
Since it's one I actually haven't answered yet, I'll give it a go.
First off: when cops are allowed to shoot people.
I covered this in my earlier note on three kinds of police shootings, but Cliff's notes version is this.
To use lethal force, the suspect you are facing needs to show...
- Ability (physically capable of killing/severely hurting you. e.e. has a gun)
- Opportunity (close enough to kill/severely hurt you. e.e. in range of their weapon)
- Jeopardy (reasonably look like they're going to try and kill/severely hurt you)
All three need to be there AT THAT EXACT MOMENT IN TIME.
The police shootings we typically see publicized all take place within a minute or two of a suspect encountering an officer. Whether they seemed to be attacking an officer (Brown), reaching for a weapon while resisting arrest (Sterling), were being SWATed (Crawford), or looked like they were drawing a weapon (Rice), all of these cases could be argued to have all three aspects needed for lethal force to be justified.
(Keep in mind I did NOT say they all were justified, or that said arguments were particularly strong. Just that they could be argued.)
Now, mass shootings.
While they're still rare enough that getting a sample size is tricky, the majority of mass shooters in the U.S. are what I call "Avatars," (some academic will dream up a more hoity-toity term, I'm sure). These guys, once they gear up and pull the trigger for the first time, are in complete control of their world. This control lasts up until they meet some form of resistance.
This resistance can take a couple of different forms. The Aurora theater shooter had a magazine jam. The Gabby Giffords shooter was tackled by bystanders. And the SC church shooter simply ran out of targets.
When a shooter of this type meets resistance, they either commit suicide or surrender. Neither of which meets the three criteria for lethal force I mentioned above. The SC and Aurora shooters simply walked out and surrendered.
Occasionally a shooter is taken alive by sheer luck. The Ft. Hood shooter (not an example of an "Avatar," but that's another story) was shot five times before he lost consciousness. He lived, but was in a coma for about a day and is now a paraplegic.
I haven't seen much analysis from the shootout with the NJ bomber, but from the huge bandage on his leg I'm guessing he either surrendered or was crippled after being shot in the leg. (And No, that is NOT an excuse for shooting people in the leg. The cop who fired the shot was probably aiming for his solar plexus. Bullets do screwy things in combat. This one seemed to have hit his femur and NOT his femoral artery, which would have killed him within 2 minutes. That's not effective shooting. It's sheer fucking luck.)
(And for those of you mentioning, "Hand's up, don't shoot," That. Never. Happened. It was a bullshit line told to a reporter by a resident of the neighborhood who wasn't there at the time, and it became a catchphrase. Two investigations and six eyewitnesses proved in court that it never fucking happened. Please quit perpetuating lies, thank you.)
So, in as small but detailed a nutshell as I can make, that's why.
I just can't make a smug meme out of it.
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What do you believe?

9/22/2016

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About a month ago, I was asked at a party, "Jay, you give all sides a fair shake, what the fuck do YOU actually believe?"

After a pop culture filter, I've decided that if Abby's avatar of justice is Julia Sugarbaker, then mine is Sam Vimes.


The bugger of it is, I do give everyone a fair shake. I'm not one to take down a bastard just for being a bastard ("No, Carrot, you can't arrest the head of the thieves' guild for being a thief."). No matter how much of a shit someone is, I can't abide seeing them being taken down for something they didn't do.

From finding the truth..

“It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger's nerve'd crack and he'd give himself up.”

- Feet of Clay

...A conservative's distrust of groupthink...


“Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.”

- Jingo

...A serious distrust of any asshole convinced that they're on the right side of social change...


“People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn't be a revolution or a riot. It'd be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn't try to bite the sheep next to them.”
- Night Watch

... A still higher distrust of anyone whose solutions can fit on a bumper sticker...


“Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.”

― Snuff

...and a deep and abiding intimacy with the darker side of humanity...


"You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibly sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast.”

― Night Watch

...And the knowledge that oversight is useless without personal integrity.


"‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Your grace.’

‘I know that one,’ said Vimes. Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr Pessimal.’
‘Ah, but who watches you, your grace?’ said the inspector, with a brief smile.
‘I do that too. All the time,’ said Vimes."
- Thud

Pretty much sums it up.

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That's not tea

9/22/2016

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Damage done in the Boston Tea Party: 340 Chests (about 46 tons) of British East India Company Tea, and one padlock belonging to the captain of one of the ships. The Sons of Liberty replaced the padlock the following day. After the tea was destroyed, the decks of the three ships were neatly swept, the crew unmolested, and everything else put back where it was found.
(Source: The Boston Tea Party Ship Museum)
Damage done in buildings partly or completely burned to the ground in the riots following the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for shooting Mike Brown:
Little Caesar's, Beauty Town, Public Storage, Walgreens, St. Louis Fish & Chicken grill, Prime Beauty Supply, Juanita's Fashions R Boutique, Auto By Credit, Ferguson Market & Liquor, Hidden Treasures
(Source: NYT)
Wanna tell me what the St. Louis chamber of commerce did to piss people off? Or would you rather keep making bullshit false historical equivalencies?
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Chelsea

9/18/2016

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Remember this.
Remember our first impulse. Our first action. Our strongest action.
Not an act of fear, nor of rage, nor of hate.
Neither of vengeance nor wrath.
It was to seek our loved ones, and know of their safety.
If you had no further evidence that the word "humanity" still exhibits as deep a compassion as it did on the day the term was coined, you would not need any.
Maybe there's some hope for us sorry motherfuckers yet.
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"There is a world elsewhere"

9/15/2016

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Today they lay to rest a comrade who fell in battle against his demons.
Went up a mountain and back today with him on my mind, looking for something fucking insightful or profound to say about it.
After reading Junger's latest, I think what kept me from PTSD more than anything else was that instead of a bottle or a dragon, I wound up falling in the arms of a loved one.
While I'm grateful beyond measure for that, I realize such a save required two things.
One, a loved one willing to see how dark it actually gets. I've been blessed in that regard many times over.
Two, it required me being willing to fall.
Either one is hard to come by. Both, all the more so.
A lot of people don't want to think about or acknowledge that over 2 million of us fought a fifteen-year-long war, with all that entails.
A lot of veterans came back to a world that was even more intimately disconnected than when they left.
On top of that, the vulnerability needed to open up is severely hard for a lot of them. The real world tries seeing it in a masculinity lens, a whole, "you're not a man if you show weakness."
In reality, it's more of a, "if you're not strong enough to make this happen, those around you die. You may or may not go with them."
Imagine the physical strength to haul your furniture up the complex stairs being the deciding factor in whether your roommates live or die. Or the physical strength and technical skill to change a tire in the mud. Face that shit for a few years, then somehow be able to show weakness to someone.
Both ways are wrapping their heads around completely alien (and usually terrifying) outlooks.
Not long ago I was helping an actor friend portray a Marine. And with every anecdote, every history lesson, every discussion, I was wondering when I was just going to cross a line I didn't see and break their head Cthulu-style.
(FWIW, I never did. That actor speaks good if not entirely fluent Marine now, and by all accounts their portrayal was incredible.)
So yeah, more of both needs to happen.
If you're a vet and your demons won't shut up, get help wherever you can. There's no shame in dropping your pack if you really are about to be a casualty. Gods know I've been woken up with enough late night phone calls to prefer dealing with them over seeing another fallen friend. I've officially lost more comrades to civilian life than I did to Afghanistan, and I'm not even 40 yet.
If you're a civilian wanting to help, that's fucking awesome. I'm honestly loving seeing the 22pushup challenge circulating among the fight family.
But the serious helping? That comes in listening. And sometimes that's uncomfortable listening. Maybe the stories hit too close to home. Maybe offensive colloquialisms fall out of their mouth. Maybe you catch them checking out your ass when your back is turned, could be anything. But remember, you're not only listening to someone who probably needs it, you're reaching across a cultural divide. And that doesn't work if your brain shuts down. I'm not saying you have to intentionally subject yourself to such things and deal. But I am saying realize that that's the risk you take in crossing that divide.
I've already taken too long.
Go say something you've left unsaid.
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    Jay Peterson

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