Don't gaslight people by just calling her "unarmed" especially when QAnon is turning her into a martyr for their movement. It's fundamentally dishonest.

Babbitt was at the head of a mob breaking through a barricade preventing them from access to members and staff of Congress, against whom the mob was threatening violence, and whom had only seconds before cleared the lobby (and who therefore were in imminent danger of being overtaken by the mob had the mob not been stopped at the barricade.) There were insufficient officers present to control the mob even with deadly force were they not stopped at the barrier.

> If I break the law and an officer shoots me in cold blood, it was my actions, not my beliefs which led to my death. Does that mean I deserved it?

If you break the law in a way which poses an imminent serious threat to other people’s lives, and no other means are available that are likely to stop you, then an officer is certainly justified in using deadly force. (Whether you deserve it is a question of the morality of your act, not the officer’s, which is not germane to the shooting. Maybe your threatening act is under some kind of external compulsion or internal mental disorder that would make you not fully culpable and thus not deserving of the consequences of the justified response to your action. That you don't, in that case, deserve death doesn't make the justified action which proximately causes your death unjustified, though.)

In lots of circumstances, other clear and undisputed facts make it so that “unarmed” added to them implies “no imminent threat”, but “unarmed” is not, otherwise, decisive.

And you agree that if it was brown people, it would have been called a coup and there would people on trial for treason.

I'm not one to celebrate people's death, but I will sleep a little easier tonight knowing that he now belongs in the past.

I celebrated Albert Speer's death. Nothing said by any historian subsequent to the trial(s) makes me think he truly accepted what he had done, and what he helped happen.

I celebrated Pinochet, and Franco dying. I wish they'd died sooner.

Because of the ZA truth and reconciliation process, I have markedly more charity for the white south african political leaders who helped do something truly impressive: A flawed, but none the less important process for grieving families to learn what really happened.

A lot of people in my political sphere struggle with Mugabe who, like Rush was fiercly anti-gay, as well as a complete savage monster. Nobody much mourns Idi Amin.

Yet we let Tony Blair parade his wit and wisdom, who allowed a completely corrupted process to determine his nations role in a very un-just war, and we tolerate his attorney-general Goldsmith, who equivocated on it with bad advice. Strange. Blair should be in prison.

On huge threads with like 1k comments, I do find that the high quality ones float to the surface (having more to do with stuff like hiding vote counts and restricting down vote access IMO). However, it's not hard to find people confidently talking out of their ass making it to the top of threads with even hundreds of comments. Look for people talking about something you are an expert in (or do a brief google search on a topic somebody is claiming expertise in, especially if it is related to ideology) and it isn't hard to spot. There are even all the bad cliche comments of the other platforms even if they aren't as simple as "have an upvote my friend" or "username checks out".

I find threads on politics and culture particularly unbearable here because it's the exact same chest beating and narratives that you will find on any other platform except that the posters possess the same self-rightousness and academic tone as if they were talking about mathematical fact and not a political opinion. Even more so, it often comes without the self-awareness to know that your opinions and arguments are most often being taken from whatever social media you frequent. Everybody is a "free thinker" here even though they spout off the exact same political arguments as everybody else in their clique. It makes some threads pretty toxic IMO because of how seriously everyone takes themselves. I'm of course making general claims to which there are exceptions, but this is something I've seen.

Thinking that you need to be super-intelligent to post on or browse HN is a bad meme. Take the guy below me that thinks jokes on HN "require higher levels of intelligence to parse". It's the same mentality that part of the Rick and Morty fan base gets made fun of for.

I have no interest in the cultural warfare that supposedly educated ideologues seek to impose on society at large.

> Toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly “feminine” traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as “man” can be taken away.

It seems to be a catch all term for the problematic parts of the way men are idealized by society. IE stuff like how men can be expected to hide away their emotions or be perceived as weak. Stuff like that shows up in suicide statistics.

Part of the problem with understanding the concept, IMO, is that ideological forces have managed to sway part of the public (or at least certain echo chambers) into believing that the people talking about it really mean "all men are bad" or "traditional masculinity is bad." I think there's something real here that needs to be addressed though.

Edit: Case and point... somebody further down in this thread accused the term "toxic masculinity" of being designed by "academic Marxist feminists" who are waging culture wars in order to hyper-feminize small boys.

[1] https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-difference-b...

It also goes against studies that show Young Men Who Endorse The Masculine Ideal of Success Enjoy Greater Psychological Wellbeing[1]

"The findings are mixed, but given the recent cultural emphasis on toxic masculinity, one result stands out: young men who, on the “Conformity to Masculine Norms” scale, more strongly endorsed the masculine ideal of “success and winning” (they agreed with statements like “In general, I will do anything to win”), tended to score higher on psychological wellbeing six months later. “Men who adhere to this norm may experience a sense of mastery and achievement through their accomplishments,” said the researchers, led by Aylin Kaya at the University of Maryland, “which can in turn boost their eudaemonic well-being.”"

Not only is the belief in a code of “true manliness” nearly universal, there are, as anthropologist Thomas Gregor puts it, “continuities of masculinity that transcend cultural differences.” While every society’s idea of what constitutes a “real man” has been molded by their unique histories, environments, and dominant religious beliefs, Gilmore found that almost all them share three common imperatives or moral injunctions — what I’ve taken to calling the 3 P’s of Manhood: a male who aspires to be a man must protect, procreate, and provide. What is so striking is that this triad of male imperatives can be found in cultures that share little else in common. They are the “deep structures of masculinity” and are present in societies that are patriarchal as well as those that are relatively egalitarian, primitive as well as urban, bellicose as well as peaceable. The 3 P’s are not universal, as there are a few cultures where no ideal of manhood exists at all. But these exceptions are so rare, and so, well, exceptional, that the code is, if not universal, than highly ubiquitous.

From https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-3-ps-of-manhood-...

These are positive traits, it is hard to see what is so toxic about them, and therefore the phrase toxic masculinity feels like it is just attacking men for being men.

Collectively, all this toxic masculinity talk and feminising of the world has done is created an entire generation who cannot solve their own problems. Any problem they have they run off to an authority figure to resolve. You constantly read about stories like this:

    Billy said something I found offensive.  Kelly didn't like it.  She didn't explain any of this to billy, instead she ran off to the Dean to complain.

Does anybody else remember it? It was one of the good ones. From what I remember, the "asshole genius" trope was greatly played up for the film and he was much more human than that even with the treatment he endured.

("Horizon: The Strange Life and Death of Dr. Turing" (1992) )

I ended up socializing a bit with the students during optional study sessions and it was usually the people that came from more disadvantaged schools that needed to be there in order to keep up with the class. Some of them also had to take a job (or two) to manage their bills during college which meant that they didn't always have the time to be at the study sessions.