The shooting of Alex Pretti

There's a big difference between saying vigilantism is a result of corruption and saying it is good for society. Copycat shootings are a real thing, and the next ten assassins might have a very different idea from you about which people deserve the bullet.

Didn't say it was good for society in itself - what is best for society is an uncorrupt, competent, and efficient justice/governing apparatus which operates within strict legal bounds. But that's something that easily falls apart and is hard to maintain for long stretches of time. When it falls apart to the point where people start to suffer heavily under it, vigilantism and other anarchic violence is the result.

You don't fix the problem by stopping the vigilantism, you fix the problem by fixing the justice system and governing apparatus. It's like saying that flooding is bad for society - undoubtedly true, but you respond to it by fixing the dams and levees and better controlling stormwater, not by trying to bulldoze water back up the river.

The flooding in a way is also good in the grand scheme of things: it's so horrible that it prompts investment in infrastructure that has other benefits to society like irrigation, recreation, and power generation. Similarly, vigilantism and frontier chaos can be so scary that it often frightens corrupt institutions into reforming and become more efficient and fair - this leads to better results in all other areas of society as well.

The flooding in a way is also good in the grand scheme of things: it's so horrible that it prompts investment in infrastructure that has other benefits to society like irrigation, recreation, and power generation.

Well, only if the voters recognize the flooding as bad and vote to fix the system, but in this case they seem to be celebrating it. If anything it has made people complacent, since they think they are "fighting back" when they have accomplished very little toward actually fixing the underlying problems. Much of the discussion around healthcare, for example, now revolves around Luigi's cult of personality, not actual feasible reforms. Also I don't think the issue is lack of motivation, it's that people have conflicting interests and healthcare is not an easy thing to solve with simplistic slogans.

Also when people are fired up, they don't tend to act rationally. Radicals celebrating Kirk's death just helped Trump get away with more bad things, but of course they did it anyway.

I get all the moral implications of vigilanteism, I am just asking if you think the intended and collateral American lives lost due to vigilantes are worth the societal cost of chaos. Shooting a healthcare CEO didn't really change your system. In fact, most of your Congress afterwards doubled down on subsidizing the very companies that CEO worked for with increased corporate subsidies. The system absorbed the shock, hardened, and moved on. That is what large bureaucratic systems do: they outlast individuals. Will killing ICE and others who are misidentified as ICE really change anything?

The vigilantes are clearly targeting the wrong people if the goal is to stop the system, which makes me believe they behave more like Brownshirts than John Brown. I can only see more bad coming out of this vigilante mistargetting, as it will likely decrease freedom in America through the self-serving mechanism similar to the Patriot Act.

Well, only if the voters recognize the flooding as bad and vote to fix the system, but in this case they seem to be celebrating it. If anything it has made people complacent, since they think they are "fighting back" when they have accomplished very little toward actually fixing the underlying problems. Most discussion around healthcare, for example, now revolves around Luigi's cult of personality, not actual feasible reforms. Also I don't think the issue is lack of motivation, it's that people have conflicting interests and healthcare is not an easy thing to solve with simplistic slogans.

Vigilantism happens when people realize that voting will never fix the problem, because they've tried that for years. It happens when non-violent means of addressing the issue are exhausted. The violence will continue to escalate until reforms are made - that's what the cult of Luigi is all about. It's gearing up for that escalation. I think things will get increasingly ugly, and eventually someone looking to accrue personal power might see that violent movement as a vehicle to said power and will gladly cut off the leeches to earn their loyalty, as the naked power to be gained by such a move will be far more lucrative than the original graft - the thing which caused the backlash in the first place. Trump is basically doing this with immigration right now - people are incensed about it, the negative consequences are being ignored because wealthy people profit from it, nobody voted for it, it's perennially unpopular. By positioning himself as the man who will cut the Gordian knot and solve the problem, he's able to bend and hammer away at norms and laws that would otherwise constrain him.

Also when people are fired up, they don't tend to act rationally. Radicals celebrating Kirk's death just helped Trump get away with more bad things, but of course they did it anyway.

There often comes a point where you have to act irrationally to win - rationality can make you predictable. After all, if every soldier in an army was personally rational, they would get absolutely folded. It's more effective to have a rational leader with long vision and irrational masses.

I get all the moral implications of vigilanteism, I am just asking if you think the intended and collateral American lives lost due to vigilantes are worth the societal cost of chaos. Shooting a healthcare CEO didn't really change your system. In fact, most of your Congress doubled down on subsidizing the very companies that CEO worked for with increased corporate subsidies. The system absorbed the shock, hardened, and moved on. That is what large bureaucratic systems do: they outlast individuals. Will killing ICE and others who are misidentified as ICE really change anything?

The vigilantes are clearly targeting the wrong people if the goal is to stop the system, which makes me believe they are more like Brownshirts than John Brown.

The system hardening in response to Luigi is an unforced strategical error, just like the slave states hardening in response to Brown's Harpers Ferry raid was a strategical error in the long term. They originally successfully framed him as a madman, but the underlying reasons slavery was opposed (not the ideologically pure if naive feelings of Brown, incidentally - the actual reasons were racism and naked economic self-interest) continued to exert pressure. It was only the underlying reasons that mattered in the end, and Brown was eventually lionized as a hero, becoming a figurehead in a deepening divide that eventually ruptured.

The ICE people I would not classify as vigilantes, as they are as you said targeting the wrong people. It's impotent violence directed at a basic function of the state, just grist in the mill. A random drug addict resisting arrest is not a vigilante. Kirk I'd say was an assassination by his own 'side' but that's a discussion for another day.

I think Vigilantism can 'at 'times achieve it's aims,

But such depends 'what their aims were.

More often I think it degrades society and cooperation.

I often think vigilantes ought reform themselves, not others.

. . . Course Vigilante is such a broad term. . .

Medicare for example, better off gathering to themselves a likeminded community to enact their ideal society.

Communes exist, Gated Communities, Home Owner Associations.

I think you fundamentally misunderstood what I meant when I said the ICE vigilantes are more like Brownshirts than John Brown.

John Brown didn't target slave catchers because it would have hardened the system. He targeted the Armory to speed up the Civil War, because that was the systemic source of the problem; the Federal Force allowing slavery to continue. No systemic politician supported Brown on either side.

Now look at the ICE vigilantes, they don't dare touch the politicians or the lobbyists, which is the real source. They are going after the bagmen, which only hardens the system. The way we know this has to be true is that the politicians in the very same system ON BOTH SIDES are allowing it to happen and arguably encouraging it to happen, similar to the Brownshirts. Chaos as an opportunity for power on both sides, but only for the sake of power and more corruption, and not for any ideological reason. Now, maybe a real John Brown type of vigilanteism could somehow come out of all this that's not astroturfed by systemic NGOs, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Notice that the FBI is nowhere to be seen in a state that's been exposed by independent media as completely corrupt. That is a hard tell about what is really going on.

What type of people do you consider ICE vigilantes?

nobody is going to change their opinion, no matter what the facts demonstrate

Enough moderates have condemned the shooting that I'm not sure this is entirely true.

Yeah, good point, I just saw on the news a recent poll shows only 20% of Americans think the Alex Pretti shooting was justified, that necessarily includes a large portion of MAGA.

Vigilantism happens when people realize that voting will never fix the problem, because they've tried that for years.

Reforms have happened, they've just been gradual because the people protesting all want different things. I'm not sure how violence=reforms when the people cheering the violence can't even agree on what reforms they want. If they could all agree on that and were all willing to accept the consequences of those reforms, politicians would implement them to get more votes. If you overthrow a democracy, what are you going to replace it with? Another democracy? With the same voting base voting for the same things? Trump's "concepts of a plan" got him elected, because apparently that's what voters want right now.

There often comes a point where you have to act irrationally to win - rationality can make you predictable

If the voters want politicians to do what they want, the politicians have to know what they want. Obscuring their motivations isn't helping anyone.

I think you fundamentally misunderstood what I meant when I said the ICE vigilantes are more like Brownshirts than John Brown.

John Brown didn't target slave catchers because it would have hardened the system. He targeted the Armory to speed up the Civil War, because that was the systemic source of the problem; the Federal Force allowing slavery to continue. No systemic politician supported Brown on either side.

I think this fundamentally misunderstands the causes of the Civil War. Slavery was already in a tenuous position; there was no iron-clad consensus that it continue. This is because as new states were added, there were fights over them being slave states or free states. These fights weren't about the morality of slavery, except on the fringes. The opponents of slavery largely framed it as the new states being for free white men, who didn't want a black slave class imported to compete with them. That side was largely winning out, and had the backing of business interests in the north who profited from this model, as opposed to the slave-driven agricultural model which was supported by slaveholding interests in the south who wished to expand their servile model into the new territory so that they could extract wealth from it.

There was a very real conflict between two competing, extractive economic models and their ruling classes which were mutually exclusive. Free white men could never compete against a slave caste, and managing a slave caste was something that the southerners were capable of, not the northern industrialists. John Brown's actions were at first seized upon by the south as a moral bludgeon to hit the north with, claiming that they were insane, violent ideologues. As tensions escalated, the north eventually seized upon the moral dimension to use in war propaganda, and, in that sense, John Brown became lionized. This culminated in the Union battle march 'John Brown's Body', whose bawdy lyrics were eventually sanitized into 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' while keeping the same tune.

ICE has also existed under presidents other than Trump. I think.

It is not their 'purpose that people disagree with I think, so much as current methods.

Well, lot of people also just dislike Trump, but that's only partial I think.

No doubt, the Civil War was fought over money, not ideals, the same as today's fight over Immigration.

But this is the clear line I see: Astroturfed brownshirts---->chaos---> Patriot Act 2.0

Hypothetically, if we had John Brown-style attacks, real grassroots to challenge real power, the response would be totally different, as well as the outcome.

The courts should rule Trump’s use of ICE illegal . That will bring back safety to protest and more protestors on the streets.

Reforms have happened, they've just been gradual because the people protesting all want different things. I'm not sure how violence=reforms when the people cheering the violence can't even agree on what reforms they want. If they could all agree on that and were all willing to accept the consequences of those reforms, politicians would implement them to get more votes. If you overthrow a democracy, what are you going to replace it with? Another democracy? With the same voting base voting for the same things? Trump's "concepts of a plan" got him elected, because apparently that's what voters want right now.

This isn't true - it's been demonstrated that public support for a particular reform has no positive correlation with it being adopted into law. Politicians ape at reform but usually just use it as an excuse to create more sinecures and regulate their buddies' competition out of existence. So this isn't a question of just waiting for the right reforms or protecting a democracy - when the bureaucracy and legislature are so irrevocably captured by moneyed interest that legislation has no correlation to public opinion, you don't have a democracy, you have an oligarchy. Oligarchs aren't voted out of power. They're removed by other means. All governments eventually reach this state of dysfunction and widespread discontent. They either reform internally, become so inefficient they are destroyed by an outside, competing force, or are overthrown by their own people. The third choice is preferable to the second, though the first is best.

As an oligarchy is overthrown there is almost always an authoritarian strongman who takes power of the unruly, anarchic mobs - this has been recognized since Polybius's anacyclosis.

it's been demonstrated that public support for a particular reform has no positive correlation with it being adopted into law

That hasn't been demonstrated. Voters know what Republicans tend to do and what Democrats tend to do and vote accordingly. We got the tariffs because Trump was elected. We got Obamacare because Obama was elected. They both ran on those things.

That hasn't been demonstrated. Voters know what Republicans tend to do and what Democrats tend to do and vote accordingly. We got the tariffs because Trump was elected. We got Obamacare because Obama was elected. They both ran on those things.

Obamacare was not what Obama ran on, though - he ran on a public option. Obamacare originated as a Republican plan in Massachusetts and was rebranded. Both candidates ran on change, but Obama's entire cabinet was given to him in an email from Citibank and Trump's administration was immediately filled with swamp creatures who once vociferously opposed him - he then proceeded to turn against many of his most loyal supporters. Trump also implemented tariffs through executive fiat, he never would have gotten them through Congress - him actually delivering on that promise is an example of the collapse of norms and separations of power allowing decisive action to be taken. It shows that people who vote for a strongman who constantly tests the limits of his power will be rewarded for it while those who insist on following norms will not.

This is the study which pretty much demonstrated this pattern: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

The Jewish control of media also controls the politics in America.

Obamacare was not what Obama ran on, though - he ran on a public option

That was a part of his proposal, but he did implement protections for pre-existing conditions, health insurance exchanges, subsidies and tax credits, medicaid expansion, etc.

It shows that people who vote for a strongman who constantly tests the limits of his power will be rewarded for it

Which means that voters do have power.

This is the study which pretty much demonstrated this pattern

Study is behind a paywall, and it's not clear to me how they are measuring influence. The Civil Rights Act, environmental protections, and marijuana legalization passed largely because of public pressure. Support for gay marriage among politicians have largely shifted because of a shift among the public.

The point isn't that the public gets exactly what they ask for, it's that politicians are afraid of ticking off the public too much because they need to get reelected. Basically, they can't stray too far outside the Overton window. Politicians do keep their promises most of the time when they have the power to. And if the politicians voters elect are lousy snakes, then that's kind of the fault of the voters. So they still did get what they voted for.

Trump lied to the public to get elected. The public are not getting what they voted for. Follow the news.

The public voted for a known liar and got what they voted for. Hence, votes do count.

Trump lied to the public to get elected. The public are not getting what they voted for. Follow the news.

This is Trump 2.0, they knew he was a liar, he was a felon, a racist, an adjudicated rapist, and an insurrectionist when they elected him. He promised vindictiveness, retribution and violence, this is what that looks like.

They got exactly what they voted for.

Trump voters are to blame.

Trump voters are to blame

At some point, we have to start blaming the voters. they literally let same guy screw them over twice. they would rather elect a criminal and a rapist than a black woman. And trump's victory in 2024 is mostly due to Putin's effort, because Putin convinced Americans that Biden is at fault for defending Ukraine from being invaded, and that economy in USA was terrible. Well, economy was terrible, but thats not really a good reason to elect Hitler. Germans made same mistake in 1933. to put it simply, if economy is bad, it is still better not to elect Hitler.

Putin is happy.

That is why Trump wants to invade Greenland so he will look like Putin invading Ukraine. Most Americans do know where these countries are on a global map and Trump knows that.

They might think twice before committing a crime though. Guards/superior force can and do deter attacks in many cases.

Statistically, most people will. But when you’re talking about large crowds of people who are already showing a disregard for life and property because they are fed up with a system that they believe do not care about their lives… it’s frankly stupid to think they will all react that way. That’s not how human emotion works.

You say you blame him for putting himself in that situation, but also that his showing up to defend property was admirable. I'm not sure how those can both be true.

Because intent and actions are two different things.

I find his intent admirable, although based on a deeply flawed understanding of both the situation he was walking into and how human nature works.

How he decided to go about it is the problem, which is the natural result of a deeply flawed understanding.

If you walk into a riot armed with an AK, there’s a very real chance someone will push you into using it. That is or at least should have been common sense. Failure to account for that does not make him morally evil, but also does not absolve him of being culpable for the result. Even at 17, he should have known better.

But when you’re talking about large crowds of people who are already showing a disregard for life and property because they are fed up with a system that they believe do not care about their lives… it’s frankly stupid to think they will all react that way

Being willing to rob a store and being willing to get yourself killed by attacking someone holding a gun are two different things. If the rioters were protesting gun owners, then yeah they might be expected to target someone with a gun. If they just want to cause chaos or steal things, the path of least resistance (if they have any self-preservation instincts) is to avoid attacking someone armed with a deadly weapon and look for other targets if they are really committed.

I mean, at the end of the day I think we're saying similar things. Now we know that going there with a gun meant Kyle would be attacked, but at the time it was understandable for him not to know that.

Open carry is legal in Minneapolis and throughout Minnesota. The victim had a permit to own and gun. The video does not show him with a gun in his had when he approached the ICE officers.

If they just want to cause chaos or steal things, the path of least resistance is to avoid attacking someone armed with a deadly weapon

But they didn’t “just want to cause chaos or steal things”. Again, they were there because they’re sick and tired of a system that they believed does not value human life if that life is wrapped in dark skin. Their actions were not goal oriented, they were there out of deep seated anger, frustration, and resentment. Those emotions do not mix when you show up brandishing a rifle in front of their faces. The failure to account for that is just reckless.

Now we know that going there with a gun meant Kyle would be attacked, but at the time it was understandable for him not to know that.

It really wasn’t. Anyone paying the slightest bit attention to what was going on and why people were rioting in the first place would have understood, at least on a basic level, that this was not a risk averse situation. The failure to foresee what would eventually occur is a direct result of a news feed that is totally uninterested in understanding “the other side” because you get much more clicks by just demonizing them instead.

The failure to foresee what would eventually occur is a direct result of a news feed that is totally uninterested in understanding “the other side” because you get much more clicks by just demonizing them instead.

Okay, but you have said the crowd was willing to assault anyone who showed up because they were angry in general and not logical. Is that not demonizing them? Perhaps Kyle was giving the protesters more credit than you. Also my argument isn't that it was a risk averse situation, it's that when given the choice, the crowd should be assumed less likely to attack someone with a visible weapon, hence why it was reasonable to bring one. Just cause they're ready to attack people doesn't mean they are more likely to attack someone who could defend themselves.

I would say we need to draw a distinction between smart conduct and illegal or immoral conduct. In both cases what they did was extremely dumb.

Going into a riot zone with an AR-15 to defend a used car lot is stupid. Putting yourself in a situation where you’re going to get into a confrontation with a bunch of law enforcement officers is stupid, and bringing a gun with you when you’re going to do that is doubly so.

But in both cases they weren’t guilty of a crime (at least not overly serious ones) they’re guilty of being stupid. I’ve always hated the “fuck around find out” or “play stupid games win stupid prizes mentality” where as soon as someone does something dumb everything that happens to them afterward is automatically justified no matter how disproportionate. So yeah for both the attacks on these individuals ring hollow to me and definitely seem like obvious motivated reasoning. What Rittenhouse did was dumb but objectively he was the victim of attack, was on video from multiple angles running away from all of his attackers and only firing on people trying to hurt him, etc. That he was ever brought up for trial was an insane miscarriage of justice. The Pretti shooting while there’s probably more info that could come out from what I can see now it looks extremely bad. I would be shocked if it turns out to be a justified shooting