throwaway040922

This story is specifically about a man that members of the U.S. government were lobbying to come and testify at the ICC ("...after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers"). The ICC that the U.S. is not only not a member of, but specifically has a law against anyone assisting the ICC in cases against members of the American government[1]. I don't see why the motivations of the groups involved shouldn't be discussed.

Likewise, if someone suspects someone of bias, I don't think it's unimportant to ask them if they hold consistent positions. If a Trump supporter is talking about how Biden should be impeached for something Trump did, I don't think it's "whatboutism" to ask if they would hold the same standard to Trump (or vice versa). There's a big difference between being concerned about something because of an underlying moral principal, and being concerned about something because of a specific bias against one of the groups involved. This used to be considered an important distinction, but now people act as if we shouldn't even talk about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

Thanks. I just checked The Washington Post and USA Today. The Washington Post has three articles on Lemp and one that mentions him in passing. They're all in the local news section (the shooting happened in a suburb of Washington D.C.). There's over a dozen articles on Brionna Taylor, even though that happened in another part of the country. Likewise, USA Today has one article on Lemp, and over a dozen on Taylor.

Indeed. If I'm advocating for a project that will bring $10 million in to Town A that has a population of 5,000, and $50 million in to Town B with a population of 50,000, I'm going to be telling both Town A and Town B how the project will benefit them. I'm not going to be telling Town B that this project is only for Town A, and it's not an issue that affects Town B. If someone was saying that, you would expect that they'd be advocating against the project.

It's hard to believe that anyone who's actively downplaying the way an issue affects the majority of the population is actually interested in solving the issue.

> The Lemp case has a number of pertinent differences.

You were comparing the Locke case to the Abou-Khatwa case in the article (about a white collar criminal the FBI was going after, where guns weren't involved) and the Rittenhouse case (shootings which didn't involve any law enforcement agency). The shootings of Locke, Lemp, and Taylor all have certain differences, but they're much more similar to each other than to those other cases.

I think the fact that you have to go to alternative media like Reason to find articles about it speaks volume. Check out searches of mainstream news sites:

Google search for "Duncan Lemp" site:nytimes.com[1]: Two articles, neither of which are about his shooting, but which mention him in passing when talking about Boogaloo "extremists."

Google search for "Breonna Taylor" site:nytimes.com[2]: Dozens of articles from the Times.

Google search for "Duncan Lemp" site:cnn.com[3]: No articles on CNN.

Google search for "Breonna Taylor" site:cnn.com[4]: Dozens of articles from CNN.

It's simply impossible to not notice the glaring disparity with the media coverage (and again, these two shootings happened a day apart).

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22duncan...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com+%22breonna+ta...

[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com+%22duncan+lem...

[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com+%22breonna+ta...

> You said "This kind of violence affects everyone" and this is disingenuous when we look at the ratio of black vs white being murdered by police.

If you want to argue that this kind of violence affects certain races more, that's fine. But why downplay the fact that it affects all races? The percentages are higher for Black Americans, but White Americans still make up the majority of people shot by police[1]. If people actually cared about creating a broad coalition to address this, they would want to highlight both facts, not hide the latter fact.

You actually see the a similar attitude when racists attack social programs. If members of a minority group are more likely to benefit from a program, they treat it as a program for minorities, even if the majority of beneficiaries are non-minorities.

It's also interesting to see how people divide the demographic information. If you look at the breakdown by sex, you'll find that the divide between men and women when when it comes to these shootings is much, much greater than the divide between races. Yet the latter is talked about a lot all over the media, and while I don't think I've ever seen the latter treated as an issue. My guess is that we'd also see another large divide if we divided the numbers by wealth (and this article is a good example of that).

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

Duncan Lemp was white, and was similarly awoken in the middle of the night by police, reached for a gun, and was shot dead (unlike Locke, I don't think he even pointed the gun at them). It actually happened the day before the Breonna Taylor shooting (another similar situation), but received almost no media attention. Even around the area where Duncan Lemp was killed, you will find a lot of posters for Breonna Taylor, none for Duncan Lemp.

This kind of violence affects everyone. Some people, particularly those in the media, have worked hard to elevate certain shootings while almost completely ignoring others in order to push a specific racial narrative.