In the Colorado example, someone died at the hands of police officers, and other police officers are making fun of that. There's no gray area.

In the Oregon mask-wearing example, we're talking about masks, and there is a still a lot of misunderstanding and competing messaging about mask-wearing. I personally don't think there's any gray area about the benefits of mask-wearing, but I lived in Asia for 12 years, where it's just a given that you wear a mask to protect yourself and others. So I am used to the idea. But I get that for most Americans, this is a really new idea and it's going to take a while for people to adjust. So I'm ok with giving a little more benefit of the doubt, and giving people a chance to adopt mask-wearing even after initial resistance.

When the subject is police brutality and in particular the death of someone at the hands of police, I 'm ok with being much more strict.

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Originally posted by Horace:

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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:

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Originally posted by Horace:

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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
I don't know. If I were on a review board, I might lean toward suspension, except for the ringleader.

Still, this is endemic of the national problem. Police do not believe they are public servants, and do not believe that they are responsible to anyone other than themselves.

That obviously isn't true of all police, but it's true of more than a small minority.

Is there a way to measure this notion that police do or do not believe they are public servants? Beyond prevalence of viral videos of individual bad actors, of course.

To quote a movie that you may or may not have watched, why do you ask questions to which you already know the answer?

No, I don't know how one would go about measuring the degree to which government employees consider themselves to be public servants. I suppose you could just ask them, but I doubt you'd trust the answers.

You answered your question. You can't. You can only make reasonable guesses based on observed behavior.

You can literally never know someone's intent with 100% certainty, because you aren't inside their head. So, on any issue where the question is, what is someone thinking, you can never be certain.

But you don't have to be certain. You just have to be able to say, their behavior suggests that it is more likely than not (or whatever the applicable standard is) that they believe or don't believe something.

Putting it another way in a different context, if you don't want people to think you're a racist, don't do the things that people believe racists do.

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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
You answered your question. You can't. You can only make reasonable guesses based on observed behavior.

You can literally never know someone's intent with 100% certainty, because you aren't inside their head. So, on any issue where the question is, what is someone thinking, you can never be certain.

But you don't have to be certain. You just have to be able to say, their behavior suggests that it is more likely than not (or whatever the applicable standard is) that they believe or don't believe something.

Putting it another way in a different context, if you don't want people to think you're a racist, don't do the things that people believe racists do.

It would be nice to see some of the higher powered intellects on the left apply that intellect to the notion of deriving broad scale cultural conclusions from viral videos.

I suppose you said left when you meant right, and you were talking about Trump drawing broad scale cultural conclusions from lies and the absence of any evidence.

That's just a supposition based on observed behavior, though.