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‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

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Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#181

Post by bsder »

gameswithgo wrote: post #134

That many people feel what the townspeople did here was wrong is fascinating to me. It seems many people believe in certain ideals, as dogma, to the extent that they expect other people to suffer or even die upholding those ideals. The rule of law is important, yes. But why does anyone expect a town to let themselves be maimed and murdered to maintain the rule of law? This is an insane expectation. The people defende…

> The people defended themselves. Nobody can criticize them for that.

Humans normally have a strong aversion to murdering one another. Lots of soldiers in WWII simply would NOT fire their gun under any circumstances.

The fact that the situation got to the point where an entire town decided to murder a man speaks to a series of epic failures on a lot of fronts.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#182

Post by pessimizer »

vkou wrote: post #12
leetcrew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it seems like a more extreme version of jury nullification. if it became widespread, it would essentially be the end of rule-of-law. but in isolated and rare situations, perhaps it's a beneficial escape valve? easy to suggest from my comfy office in a quiet suburb of course.

It's not a 'beneficial escape valve' when the community decides to, say, kill the n_______ who had the audacity to sleep with a white woman. Which is a far more common application of lynching. We should not be glorifying this.

Glorifying this in general is definitely bad for exactly the reason you said, but I think glorifying this case specifically is fine. This is a specific case in which legal process broke down, not a case in which there weren't laws that covered or should have covered the behavior of the victim. Law gets its privilege from the consent of the governed given based on its integrity, consistency, and gradual convergence to reflect the specifics of that consensus, not by basis of being designated "law."

If the law isn't working, it will be abandoned.

Laws on race were imposed from a larger consensus on race (federally.) There's no such consensus on defending bullies who are terrorizing their neighbors. Specifics matter.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#183

Post by macintux »

neaden wrote: post #2

To be clear, community murders like this happened all the time in US history. The thing that makes this special is that the man killed was white and actually guilty of crimes.

Clearly the “and” was not strong enough, based on the negative comments.

“is that the man was both guilty and white” might have done the trick.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#184

Post by codyb »

its_the_future wrote: post #180
jcims wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be a bias of mine, but if averaged out over an entire county I don't think these are mutually exclusive. I'm talking about the 'rough parts of town' that are typically dominated by a minority population. Try this: Go find a crime map site, pick a big city and show homicides over the last year. Then go to the racial dot map and see how it compares to the census of that locale. http://demographics.virginia.edu…

Are you sure socioeconomic status is not a better fit and that race is not just a proxy for it?

I very much think socioeconomic status is more likely a better fit.

I have a feeling if you did the same test but instead of “crime” you did “wealth percentile” you’d probably end up with the same results in the United States though unfortunately.

Not a lot of well off minority neighborhoods throughout the country and the wealth disparity even with all the poor white people is very real.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#185

Post by pault »

rocqua wrote: post #146
smacktoward wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also the overall story arc of my favorite show ever, HBO's Deadwood : a bunch of people, who were all attracted for various reasons to a place specifically because it had no law (the town of Deadwood stood on land that had been ceded by treaty to the Sioux, and was therefore outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law), slowly discover over three seasons all the reasons they actually need law after all.

The lack of an ending to that show was very frustrating. There is a movie out to wrap up the story. I haven't seen it yet, but I have high hopes.

I've seen it. Lower your expectations.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#186

Post by jcwilde »

parsnips wrote: post #164
twic wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth does "per capita square mile" mean?

Comparing urban and rural and using per-capita numbers is a fallacious argument. You must control for land area. For example a square mile that is labeled “urban” vs square mile labeled “rural” the numbers per-capita tilt homicides way in favor of urban areas... and its not even close. https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-u...

I fail to see how "per capita per square mile" is a useful measure.

_Anything_ measured in that way would show densely populated area vastly outnumbering rural areas, perhaps with the exclusion of things that essentially don't exist in cites, such as "number of farms per capita per square mile".

The measure appears to be concocted specifically for Lying With Statistics™.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#187

Post by thaumasiotes »

codyb wrote: post #184
its_the_future wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure socioeconomic status is not a better fit and that race is not just a proxy for it?

I very much think socioeconomic status is more likely a better fit. I have a feeling if you did the same test but instead of “crime” you did “wealth percentile” you’d probably end up with the same results in the United States though unfortunately. Not a lot of well off minority neighborhoods throughout the country and the wealth disparity even with all the poor white people is very real.

> I very much think socioeconomic status is more likely a better fit.

Believe it or not, this exact question has been studied pretty intensively for decades.

The predictive value of race is much higher than the predictive value of socioeconomic status.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#188

Post by hinkley »

persistent wrote: post #151
jcims wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my prevailing theory as to why minority enclaves in metropolitan areas tend to have higher violent crime. It's not socioeconomic as much as it is folks being forced to mete out justice on their own.

Are you sure this isn't just a bias of yours? Urban areas in the United States have a lower rate of fatal injuries due to violence than do rural areas. Perhaps this is not what you meant by "violent crime"? I know the output of these reports is difficult to interpret but see [1]. The top decile of per-capita violent deaths are rural counties, not urban ones. 1: https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/cdcMapFramework/output/m588…

Americans have a real problem with proportions.

If you put a million people in a city and 100 of them die of a flu, everyone screams epidemic. You spread those same people out over all the small towns in a state, and 200 of them die, it's just fine.

Because, I suspect, we often associate statistics with a location rather than a cross section of society. We think "someone in my town was murdered", not "the murder rate is 1/250,000".

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#189

Post by hinkley »

parsnips wrote: post #164
twic wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth does "per capita square mile" mean?

Comparing urban and rural and using per-capita numbers is a fallacious argument. You must control for land area. For example a square mile that is labeled “urban” vs square mile labeled “rural” the numbers per-capita tilt homicides way in favor of urban areas... and its not even close. https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-u...

I think I'm hung up on the same thing, chief.

Why per capita per square mile instead of per capita? Why do the miles enter into it? Because of more interactions? I'd like to see just the numbers per capita. I suspect they're fairly close.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#190

Post by hinkley »

Retric wrote: post #107
jcims wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my prevailing theory as to why minority enclaves in metropolitan areas tend to have higher violent crime. It's not socioeconomic as much as it is folks being forced to mete out justice on their own.

Alternatively, crimes are more common in metropolitan areas due to increased contact. Crimes are also more likely to be reported in poor metropolitan areas. Poor minorities are more like to stay in metropolitan areas. Resulting in a rather insidious bias that's hard to adjust for. http://www.hngn.com/articles/75816/20150309/dea-was-told-not... PS: It is also easier to hide a body in the country, so missing persons ca…

In addition to hiding evidence, the likelihood of a witness in a low population area is lower. The internal narrative that you might get away with your crime (whether that is true or not) could be pretty compelling.
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