Yeah, makes one nostalgic for the good old wotmania days, doesn't it?

The culture wars have been going on for ages of course and it's not new that left and right put very different spins on the same events - but increasingly people are basing those different opinions on entirely different facts, so they no longer merely disagree, they find themselves to believe the other side is either certifiably insane or extremely and deliberately dishonest. In some cases because they are getting their information from sources that don't have the slightest qualms about making random shit up without any regard for actual facts (and yeah, you know who I'm referring to), in other cases both narratives are actually based on more or less accurate facts, but so selectively chosen and presented that it's hard to understand how anyone could take the opposite view (like in the case of a FB discussion I had a while back with Joe and Greg about those riots in Amsterdam).

In this case, at least we're all watching the same video, that's a start. Most conservative sources taking up the officer's defense that I've seen are wisely ignoring the absurd lies from Trump/the WH and basing their views on the actual video.

But we do start the video with rather different preconceptions that colour our interpretation from the first moment. For instance, you keep talking about 'a federal law enforcement agent', but that's already taking a particular political position, because for a large part of the country, ICE are uniformed thugs who have nothing to do with the police or with law enforcement in the normal sense of the word - sure, they are enforcing a specific subset of laws with regards to illegal immigration, but without much attention to other laws, legal precedents or the interests of public safety. And considering the way they've massively increased their ranks within months, citizens can't rely in the least on any individual ICE agent having had the training or the legal knowledge that police officers have.

I agree obviously that further investigation is needed before one can draw any final conclusions about the officer's guilt. But there are still several points on the other side that one can reasonably make already before any further investigation and without needing to know what precisely Good was thinking... most importantly, that whether or not the ICE officer overreacted within those few seconds from the moment the car started moving towards him until he fired his last shot, the only reason that high stakes situation even occurred was because he chose to put himself in that position, stepping in front of a car already manoeuvring to start moving away while he knew the driver's attention was distracted by the other officers on her left side. There is a big difference between 'attempting to strike someone with your car' and 'failing to avoid striking someone who stepped in front of your car'.

But true, that inevitably takes you to the question, what was his justification to step in front of that car and risk his own safety to try to prevent her from driving away, which is very much the sort of thing that does require further investigation - and that will probably remain a matter of vehement debate even long after the investigation is finished. If she actually was a murderer or 'domestic terrorist', or if he had other good reasons to think she'd pose a major risk to public safety if she escaped, he might be considered a hero for doing that.

I guess we agree that this situation likely would have ended better if local police had been there - even if I look at it more from the perspective of 'make sure ICE behaves' than 'assist ICE operations'.

On a side note, it certainly is interesting how in the US both sides' views about which authority is more important, local/state or federal, have a remarkable degree of flexibility depending on who happens to be in charge of said federal authority at that particular time... just imagine the sort of scenes we'd get if some future Democratic president and either Congress or the SC made abortion legal in the entire country again, then set up an ICE-like 'law enforcement agency' specifically to defend abortion clinics and deal with pro-life protesters in red states, while claiming primacy over local law enforcement and authorities.