I was raised Republican and then came to be a libertarian after the 2nd Iraq War.
Part of my conversion was reading Reason. Shikha writing for Reason back in the day was always interesting because she wasn't really a libertarian. Balko got me into police reform, left Reason and then became..... something different. 2016 to 2022 really changed a lot of people and not for the better. Political became the personal. It's a shame.
The most disheartening aspect of the last few years for me, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, has been witnessing how so many people are intellectually weak, reactionary, fragile, easily manipulated, and close-minded. They should all be embarrassed, if not ashamed, but tribalism supersedes grace and humility.
On this point: Trump, in a lengthy speech at a rally Saturday, said it would be a “bloodbath” for the auto industry if he’s not elected. Partisans posted *10-second clips* online, without context, and said Trump was calling for violence. People fell for it, the media ran with it. Some TwiX users, even when given context, said the use of the word was “alarming.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
bloodbath
noun
b: a major economic disaster
a market bloodbath
“Very fine people,” Covington Catholic... They never learn, because they don’t want to learn. They just want their biases confirmed.
P.S. Upon archiving Merriam-Webster webpage (https://archive.ph/DimVv), I found that it had already been archived just 6 hours ago. I presume others thought, as I did, that Merriam-Webster might change the definition. We’ve seen that sort of thing before...
It's just crazymaking that anyone thinks this sort of stuff is ok. If someone had told me ten years ago that a dictionary was changing its definitions with hours' notice in order to buttress one political side's arguments, I would have rolled my eyes. And then I watched it happen!
For political gain, on Friday, the President of the United States lied about the circumstances of a teenage girl’s suicide, and on Saturday, lied about his opponent’s remarks.
Oh, and earlier in the week, Biden AGAIN lied about his involvement in the civil rights movement. But that’s more typical.
Word! It's been painful. I'm a bit of a junkie. I'm pretty forgiving ... after all, we don't, and certainly shouldn't, agree with our media sources all of the time regardless of how often we do. But, damn, I have a hard time listening or reading a lot of people I was super fond of. Trump's ascent started it, but that was fairly tolerable. However, people really lost their shit with all things Covid: the actual virus, lockdowns, policy, vaccines, all of the Covid-immune protests, etc. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been fuel on the shitfire. I hated to see Balko write and act like such a prick. I always enjoyed his writing and interviews.
I, too, learned a lot from Dalmia and Balko and appreciated their perspectives. I'm very disappointed with the way they have turned their disagreements with other libertarians into personal attacks. It's impolite to say, and KMG is too polite and professional to give the real reason, but there is *absolutely no fucking way* that the reason Dalmia left Reason is - as she claimed - that she was too anti-Trump. Not a single Reason staffer said they voted for Trump in 2020 (https://reason.com/2020/10/12/how-will-reason-staffers-vote-in-2020/).
I thought too well of her to speculate as to what was going on, but given her dishonest attacks on TFC here I am now convinced that she was lying about the manner of her departure.
Another interesting thing to note: Dalmia is clearly wrong when it comes to how TFC covered the documentary, which demonstrates a secondary problem with making everything personal. Once you've decided you don't like someone and are willing to treat them unfairly, you guarantee that you will get some things wrong about them. This is true whether or not they deserve your contempt.
From the cutting-room floor of this post: "A journalism that frets over the potential amplification of bad subjects will definitionally engage in self-censorship. And it will inevitably take guilt-by-association shortcuts in identifying other actors as disqualifyingly bad."
The saddest part of it all is looking at the Twitter bio: "Reformist libertarian fighting populist authoritarianism." That is accurate, no question about it. If I had four words to describe Matt Welch's "project", I might use the same four words. So you are natural allies of each other, and of me—a reformist libertarian against populist authoritarianism. (I won't say fighting because I don't make a living of it.) But because we don't hate the right people *with enough intensity*, it's not enough that we're basically on the same page about most actual policy issues. I know, I'm the choirboy preaching to the preacher but it's so depressing.
I think that the Unpopulist crowd has simply determined that "if you're not with us you're against us" when it comes to anything that could conceivably, tangentially help Republicans or Trump.
It makes me wonder - if the documentary had uncovered serious evidence that Chauvin was railroaded, would they change their minds? I get the feeling that Floyd is too important as a symbol to have any people asking questions about the reality underlying that symbol. The point of all this stuff is supposed to be discovering the truth, not protecting the appropriate narrative guardrails for your preferred policies.
This reminds me of a funny story from when I was like 26, one that made me respect Jeffrey Miron a ton - he was the guest at a fundraising dinner that we organized with a bunch of legislators, and people asked him about how much tax revenue legalizing cannabis would bring in. His answer was "not that much" and he went through his reasoning. At the time I was INCENSED. Libertarian economists were supposed to help make drug legalization happen, not fritter away persuasion points with details about how it might not make as much revenue as some protections suggest.
But I was being the idiot, and he was being a good guy. Lying about something to get people on your side never helps in the long term, as the Prop 110 supporters in Oregon have just learned.
It's a bit maddening to see people who's work Ive respected for a long time come out with such anger and zero good faith. I know no one likes Trump Derangement Syndrome - but what the fuck are we supposed to call this?
Maybe the fantasy of a respectful disagreement between individuals underneath a big and loosely structured tent was something I hallucinated when tripping balls in the late 90s.
Not me! This inarguably deserved the angry, wine-gulping cassingle from Matt that I've been lobbying for for the past several weeks. Nah, JK. I agree with you. Matt's got a lot of class.
I listened to the whole "debate" between Coleman and Balko and it seemed like the main point of contention was whether Coleman's alternate scenario could be constituted as reasonable doubt. It also took everyone over an hour to figure out that that was where the disagreement was. If the whole thing was a spirited debate about that specific point, I would have enjoyed that, and perhaps even learned something! Alas, everyone blew past that and started yammering about how irresponsible it was to amplify the documentary. I felt bad for Coleman for having to repeat his point about his argument being about reasonable doubt.
I don't think it's possible to have any sort of good-faith discussion when one party mischaracterizes or misrepresents the other's position or intent. This seems particularly egregious when the misrepresented party explains their position and intent! This was done to Coleman by Radley ("slippery") countless times, and by Liz Wolfe. Just admit it, Coleman, Chauvin murdered Floyd -- that was the snide contempt Balko, and sometimes Wolfe, had with almost every response/question. Dalmia did the same to TFC. She lost it before leaving Reason. I used to be a big fan of hers. I remember the Reason commentors (I go waaay back, Matt) savaging her in the comment section, back when it was worth reading right about that time.
Wolfe was more participant than moderator, but Zach Weissmueller filled the latter role well.
I didn’t care for the snide “slippery” remark either. The more I see and hear of Balko, the more unlikable, and unconvincing, I find him to be.
A two-hour debate, the scope of which extended beyond the topic of the trial, yet still no one made one of the most important points: That there was no evidence of racial bias on the part of Chauvin.
Yes this was the real takeaway from the whole trial. The media and dem pols were almost giddy to call this a racially motivated murder when it was simply a bad job done by police officers who had never been properly trained, evidenced by the fact that very liberal prosecuters where unwilling to bring racial motivation into the trial at all because there was no evidence of it.
Chauvin was 100% going to be convicted (I remember feeling at the time) because if they aquited there would have been riots and everyone knew it; the jury practically had a gun to its head to convict despite reasonable doubt (which was what Coleman kept returning too but bad faith acting Radley refused to acknowledge.
To me Radley is someone who has a pathological dislike of policing and police which makes him unable to be fair towards police officers as a whole. He connects all police directly to those among them who are corrupt or fail at they're jobs which is not a position I would ever take about any group.
I wonder how many people are aware that in an April 2021 interview with ‘60 Minutes,’ Minnesota AG Keith Ellison said, “We don’t have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.”
Also, while court proceedings were underway, and the jury was only partially sequestered, Joe Biden said that he was “praying the verdict is the right verdict, which is, I think it's overwhelming in my view."
The sitting President of the United States commented on the trial, and signaled how he believed it should be decided. This is another factor that is never discussed.
Absolutely. I learned a great deal from the comment section. I'm sure Matt mighy agree, often the comment section was superior to the post in content and insight. Matt, did you guys ever meet commentor R.C. Dean? He should have been a contributor. Smart, insightful cat.
Ha! Sorry, that was intended for MW. I should have clarified. These comments are my first since Reason probably in 2012, maybe. Probably longer than that. I'm Matt's age (Welch!), so the memory isn't as sharp! :)
I can confirm that your show took a skeptical approach. When I heard the interview with the filmmakers on Megyn Kelly's podcast, I thought "I need to see this documentary!" And then I listened to your conversation about it, and I came away thinking "ok actually, this documentary is not going to be on the level." Especially with respect to the trial and evidentiary record, which was my biggest concern. The Fifth Column has stood the test of time for me. You fellows always make it clear when you are going on a limb or being flip, and when you say something substantive and with confidence, it checks out.
I leave this comment as someone who listened to #435, but someone who did not read Hughes' FP piece, someone who didn't watch TFoM, someone who did not read Balko's three part rebuttals, but someone who *did* watch the first hour and change of the Reason interview (I will not use the word "debate" for that) with Balko and Hughes:
Balko conducted himself shamefully and in aggressive and egregious bad faith, and it did *himself* a tremendous disservice to his own hard work that he *clearly* has put into his commentary on the matter to behave in such a way. And, of course it is worth mentioning that Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller spectacularly failed their tasks as moderators and quickly became participants in what I can only interpret as a pre-planned attack on Hughes (Weissmueller had obviously prepared, himself, slides/screenshots intended to challenge Hughes in particular ways), and *they failed Balko* by not acting as moderators to tone down his bad faith that was discrediting his positions to any audience. From the interview, it is obvious that Balko feels passionate and emotional about this topic -- and clearly jumped immediately into a "this is now personal" world in his analysis and commentary, burning everything down around him because he is so upset. I would encourage him to separate the personal from the professional, as his conduct only persuades a lay audience (again, I didn't watch TFoM or read anything else, just listened to #435) that he has emotionally blinded himself to approaching the topic.
To me, I chalked up TFoM to a 2000 Mules-like "documentary", where you go into it not being able to genuinely trust any points made as comprehensive, nor any facts raised as verifiably true. (To clarify I also have not watched 2000 Mules -- maybe I just hate video content). But even if you can't trust any given points of a documentary like 2000 Mules, you can come away with takes like "Jeez it sure would be nice if our voting and election processes were more soundproof to avoid even conspiracies such as these", which is roughly adjacent to what I assumed Hughes wrote for the FP: something to the effect of "Given how politically and emotionally-charged the environment of 2020/2021 was, Chauvin was not going to get a fair trial and perhaps in a less-charged environment he would have had a stronger defense at trial to put forth reasonable doubt that would preclude a conviction". But again, I still haven't read Hughes' piece, because I don't find this topic all that interesting and think most grandiose worldly points like "Chauvin probably didn't get an impartial trial" to be the Norman Rockwell "Freedom of Speech" Meme -- duh, of course. (Also worth mentioning, Liz and Zach, with their libertarian opinions, would probably be more sympathetic to a defendant not receiving an appropriate trial if it weren't a police officer who killed a man in custody).
Balko should take a step back and decide: "am I doing this to persuade others who have been misled, or am I doing this for me because I am personally upset?". If the former, he should reevaluate his emotional approach as it pushes people to believe he is wrong, if the latter he should try to sepaeate the professional from the personal -- as that's never going to be a healthy approach to life.
Ya know. I appreciated both Colemans curiosity on the matter and Balkos relatively well founded criticisms of it... but weeks on, it's clear that Balko et al are not interested in answering the questions that well meaning people may have as much as they are in signaling that they're on the side of the accepted angels. Even if it means destroying long standing friendships along the way.
You guys are doing great. You make us all smarter by doing what you do.
Having consumed #435 within hours of its release and again in the wake of this kerfuffle, I gotta say it’s plainly ridiculous to characterize that discussion as fawning in any way over The Fall of Minneapolis. What’s bizarre to me is that people are out here casting strays at some MFers who keep receipts and are precise, principled, and consistent…even whilst drunk! Glad to see this concise refutation of Balko and Dalmia’s bullshit claims
Agreed. In fact TFC's discussion gave me pause. In other words, *but for TFC* I would have been *more* credulous of the documentary rather than less. I trust the collective wisdom of MM, MW, and KF, and my takeaway was, "Watch if you want to, but be skeptical."
I listened to it within a couple of days of John's and Glenn's first podcast on it where they both said the film changed their mind, expecting to hear the boys from the Fif to agree but like you said, what they said seemed very critical both of the message and of the potential biases of the filmmakers.
The target audience for *The Fall of Minneapolis* was people like myself (who didn’t follow the Floyd/Chauvin thing for reasons and only knew of the most loudly MSM shouted facts). The documentary raised interesting questions and highlighted how cops have a different lens on the world (a thing worth remembering whenever one is moved to criticize them). Both aspects are valuable imho. Balko has narrowed his career to be the subject matter expert on incentivized rot/bad tendencies in municipal PDs. The documentary was a direct challenge to him, backing him into a corner where now he has to defend his POV, which imho accounts for his bad attitude and hyperbole. He’s damaging himself by doing it but hey, he knows where his paycheck comes from and likely needs must. Poor guy.
The way I interpreted the documentary was that it told the other side that never got its time in the sun during 2020. We all know by now that only one side was promoted, and heavily. As the saying goes, usually the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If you go into the film with the mindset that it’s telling the police POV, I think it has a lot of value.
The main aspect of the movie I remember is that Floyd ingested his drugs as he was getting arrested and that the lab refused to publish his blood test. That’s pretty egregious evidence that got swept under the rug so that we could have our “racial reckoning”, as well as to promote the narrative that Chaven murdered Floyd exclusively through his actions.
I see the documentary as just one piece of a much larger puzzle that we haven’t even begun to put together, which is a recognition and reconciliation of the events of 2020. Matt more than once has pointed out, including in the last ep, that people haven’t even started to wrap their heads around the repercussions. I’m grateful to him for beating that drum.
I’ll join the chorus of people who didn’t watch “The Fall of Minneapolis” doc BECAUSE of TFC.
And I’ll never get over Balko saying he couldn’t believe Coleman didn’t show “contrition” about his article on the “Just Asking Questions” podcast. He is a pompous, condescending dick: full stop.
100 percent. Like everybody here, I’ve been around and I’ve read a lot, but I don’t recall any other instance of a writer dissecting another writer’s piece, then insisting the writer and his editors simply accept the corrections and apologize. The arrogance!
I was raised Republican and then came to be a libertarian after the 2nd Iraq War.
Part of my conversion was reading Reason. Shikha writing for Reason back in the day was always interesting because she wasn't really a libertarian. Balko got me into police reform, left Reason and then became..... something different. 2016 to 2022 really changed a lot of people and not for the better. Political became the personal. It's a shame.
The most disheartening aspect of the last few years for me, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, has been witnessing how so many people are intellectually weak, reactionary, fragile, easily manipulated, and close-minded. They should all be embarrassed, if not ashamed, but tribalism supersedes grace and humility.
On this point: Trump, in a lengthy speech at a rally Saturday, said it would be a “bloodbath” for the auto industry if he’s not elected. Partisans posted *10-second clips* online, without context, and said Trump was calling for violence. People fell for it, the media ran with it. Some TwiX users, even when given context, said the use of the word was “alarming.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
bloodbath
noun
b: a major economic disaster
a market bloodbath
“Very fine people,” Covington Catholic... They never learn, because they don’t want to learn. They just want their biases confirmed.
P.S. Upon archiving Merriam-Webster webpage (https://archive.ph/DimVv), I found that it had already been archived just 6 hours ago. I presume others thought, as I did, that Merriam-Webster might change the definition. We’ve seen that sort of thing before...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/15/amy-coney-barrett-merriam-webster-tweaks-sexual-preference-entry/3662507001/
Interesting to note the similar language here:
Judge Barrett, don't use 'sexual preference' for LGBTQ people. It's incorrect and *alarming*:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/14/barrett-confirmation-sexual-preference-remark-alarming-column/3649884001/
It's just crazymaking that anyone thinks this sort of stuff is ok. If someone had told me ten years ago that a dictionary was changing its definitions with hours' notice in order to buttress one political side's arguments, I would have rolled my eyes. And then I watched it happen!
It’s absolutely maddening.
The Biden-Harris TwiX account kept the narrative going:
https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1769163262283706801?s=46&t=X85I0ArZGDuiQPQElkx4vA
So, to recap:
For political gain, on Friday, the President of the United States lied about the circumstances of a teenage girl’s suicide, and on Saturday, lied about his opponent’s remarks.
Oh, and earlier in the week, Biden AGAIN lied about his involvement in the civil rights movement. But that’s more typical.
It’s 1984 dude. A pre-2010 physical dictionary is on my list of books to buy
Word! It's been painful. I'm a bit of a junkie. I'm pretty forgiving ... after all, we don't, and certainly shouldn't, agree with our media sources all of the time regardless of how often we do. But, damn, I have a hard time listening or reading a lot of people I was super fond of. Trump's ascent started it, but that was fairly tolerable. However, people really lost their shit with all things Covid: the actual virus, lockdowns, policy, vaccines, all of the Covid-immune protests, etc. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been fuel on the shitfire. I hated to see Balko write and act like such a prick. I always enjoyed his writing and interviews.
I, too, learned a lot from Dalmia and Balko and appreciated their perspectives. I'm very disappointed with the way they have turned their disagreements with other libertarians into personal attacks. It's impolite to say, and KMG is too polite and professional to give the real reason, but there is *absolutely no fucking way* that the reason Dalmia left Reason is - as she claimed - that she was too anti-Trump. Not a single Reason staffer said they voted for Trump in 2020 (https://reason.com/2020/10/12/how-will-reason-staffers-vote-in-2020/).
I thought too well of her to speculate as to what was going on, but given her dishonest attacks on TFC here I am now convinced that she was lying about the manner of her departure.
Another interesting thing to note: Dalmia is clearly wrong when it comes to how TFC covered the documentary, which demonstrates a secondary problem with making everything personal. Once you've decided you don't like someone and are willing to treat them unfairly, you guarantee that you will get some things wrong about them. This is true whether or not they deserve your contempt.
From the cutting-room floor of this post: "A journalism that frets over the potential amplification of bad subjects will definitionally engage in self-censorship. And it will inevitably take guilt-by-association shortcuts in identifying other actors as disqualifyingly bad."
The saddest part of it all is looking at the Twitter bio: "Reformist libertarian fighting populist authoritarianism." That is accurate, no question about it. If I had four words to describe Matt Welch's "project", I might use the same four words. So you are natural allies of each other, and of me—a reformist libertarian against populist authoritarianism. (I won't say fighting because I don't make a living of it.) But because we don't hate the right people *with enough intensity*, it's not enough that we're basically on the same page about most actual policy issues. I know, I'm the choirboy preaching to the preacher but it's so depressing.
I think that the Unpopulist crowd has simply determined that "if you're not with us you're against us" when it comes to anything that could conceivably, tangentially help Republicans or Trump.
It makes me wonder - if the documentary had uncovered serious evidence that Chauvin was railroaded, would they change their minds? I get the feeling that Floyd is too important as a symbol to have any people asking questions about the reality underlying that symbol. The point of all this stuff is supposed to be discovering the truth, not protecting the appropriate narrative guardrails for your preferred policies.
This reminds me of a funny story from when I was like 26, one that made me respect Jeffrey Miron a ton - he was the guest at a fundraising dinner that we organized with a bunch of legislators, and people asked him about how much tax revenue legalizing cannabis would bring in. His answer was "not that much" and he went through his reasoning. At the time I was INCENSED. Libertarian economists were supposed to help make drug legalization happen, not fritter away persuasion points with details about how it might not make as much revenue as some protections suggest.
But I was being the idiot, and he was being a good guy. Lying about something to get people on your side never helps in the long term, as the Prop 110 supporters in Oregon have just learned.
It's become a cliche, but social media has really amplified the narcissism of small differences phenomenon.
Maybe it’s the tequila talking, but man, fuck these hall monitor ass bitches.
Colin, it's ALWAYS the tequila talking, my friend.
It's a bit maddening to see people who's work Ive respected for a long time come out with such anger and zero good faith. I know no one likes Trump Derangement Syndrome - but what the fuck are we supposed to call this?
Market differentiation?
Maybe the fantasy of a respectful disagreement between individuals underneath a big and loosely structured tent was something I hallucinated when tripping balls in the late 90s.
This is all Jon Stewart's fault somehow. Who knew Crossfire was the high water mark.
Stewart, who told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala they were making things worse, went on to make things even worse.
Sorry, Jon Stewart — America Needs Crossfire Again – Politico:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/07/bring-back-crossfire-00090842
Yes
Also, as Kmele 's replacement I would never request an apology that gets shadily half way shared with the public.
Thank you, Matt, for demonstrating how to express anger with class. A lot of people would do well to learn this skill.
Matt, I really appreciate how you are handling this.
Not me! This inarguably deserved the angry, wine-gulping cassingle from Matt that I've been lobbying for for the past several weeks. Nah, JK. I agree with you. Matt's got a lot of class.
I listened to the whole "debate" between Coleman and Balko and it seemed like the main point of contention was whether Coleman's alternate scenario could be constituted as reasonable doubt. It also took everyone over an hour to figure out that that was where the disagreement was. If the whole thing was a spirited debate about that specific point, I would have enjoyed that, and perhaps even learned something! Alas, everyone blew past that and started yammering about how irresponsible it was to amplify the documentary. I felt bad for Coleman for having to repeat his point about his argument being about reasonable doubt.
Kid has ice in his veins. That's one patient young man!
The great Noam Dworman has also waded into the discussion, and invited Balko on the terrific Live From The Table podcast. Balko declined, of course.
https://x.com/noam_dworman/status/1769116019342147713?s=46&t=X85I0ArZGDuiQPQElkx4vA
I don't think it's possible to have any sort of good-faith discussion when one party mischaracterizes or misrepresents the other's position or intent. This seems particularly egregious when the misrepresented party explains their position and intent! This was done to Coleman by Radley ("slippery") countless times, and by Liz Wolfe. Just admit it, Coleman, Chauvin murdered Floyd -- that was the snide contempt Balko, and sometimes Wolfe, had with almost every response/question. Dalmia did the same to TFC. She lost it before leaving Reason. I used to be a big fan of hers. I remember the Reason commentors (I go waaay back, Matt) savaging her in the comment section, back when it was worth reading right about that time.
Wolfe was more participant than moderator, but Zach Weissmueller filled the latter role well.
I didn’t care for the snide “slippery” remark either. The more I see and hear of Balko, the more unlikable, and unconvincing, I find him to be.
A two-hour debate, the scope of which extended beyond the topic of the trial, yet still no one made one of the most important points: That there was no evidence of racial bias on the part of Chauvin.
Yes this was the real takeaway from the whole trial. The media and dem pols were almost giddy to call this a racially motivated murder when it was simply a bad job done by police officers who had never been properly trained, evidenced by the fact that very liberal prosecuters where unwilling to bring racial motivation into the trial at all because there was no evidence of it.
Chauvin was 100% going to be convicted (I remember feeling at the time) because if they aquited there would have been riots and everyone knew it; the jury practically had a gun to its head to convict despite reasonable doubt (which was what Coleman kept returning too but bad faith acting Radley refused to acknowledge.
To me Radley is someone who has a pathological dislike of policing and police which makes him unable to be fair towards police officers as a whole. He connects all police directly to those among them who are corrupt or fail at they're jobs which is not a position I would ever take about any group.
I wonder how many people are aware that in an April 2021 interview with ‘60 Minutes,’ Minnesota AG Keith Ellison said, “We don’t have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.”
https://archive.ph/3v7ol
Also, while court proceedings were underway, and the jury was only partially sequestered, Joe Biden said that he was “praying the verdict is the right verdict, which is, I think it's overwhelming in my view."
https://www.npr.org/sections/trial-over-killing-of-george-floyd/2021/04/20/989085622/biden-speaks-with-george-floyds-family-as-nation-awaits-a-verdict
The sitting President of the United States commented on the trial, and signaled how he believed it should be decided. This is another factor that is never discussed.
I was thinking of these exact instances.
You can’t negotiate or compromise with people who are willing to lie about you, your history, your intentions, etc.
The comment section went off the rails around Trumps election. That was close to the best part of the site and then it became a troll fest.
Reason now concurs: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/c31c3922-3829-41bc-ba67-c20a66f91a0d?r=7enhd&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=share
Absolutely. I learned a great deal from the comment section. I'm sure Matt mighy agree, often the comment section was superior to the post in content and insight. Matt, did you guys ever meet commentor R.C. Dean? He should have been a contributor. Smart, insightful cat.
R.C. Dean was great. I used to love the comments. Haven't read them hardly at all since ... 2015?
Went downhill after the woodchipper controversy.
Fucking Preet Bhahara!
Evergreen
I've never met anyone from the comments section. Didn't actually comment. Just read.
Ha! Sorry, that was intended for MW. I should have clarified. These comments are my first since Reason probably in 2012, maybe. Probably longer than that. I'm Matt's age (Welch!), so the memory isn't as sharp! :)
I can confirm that your show took a skeptical approach. When I heard the interview with the filmmakers on Megyn Kelly's podcast, I thought "I need to see this documentary!" And then I listened to your conversation about it, and I came away thinking "ok actually, this documentary is not going to be on the level." Especially with respect to the trial and evidentiary record, which was my biggest concern. The Fifth Column has stood the test of time for me. You fellows always make it clear when you are going on a limb or being flip, and when you say something substantive and with confidence, it checks out.
I leave this comment as someone who listened to #435, but someone who did not read Hughes' FP piece, someone who didn't watch TFoM, someone who did not read Balko's three part rebuttals, but someone who *did* watch the first hour and change of the Reason interview (I will not use the word "debate" for that) with Balko and Hughes:
Balko conducted himself shamefully and in aggressive and egregious bad faith, and it did *himself* a tremendous disservice to his own hard work that he *clearly* has put into his commentary on the matter to behave in such a way. And, of course it is worth mentioning that Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller spectacularly failed their tasks as moderators and quickly became participants in what I can only interpret as a pre-planned attack on Hughes (Weissmueller had obviously prepared, himself, slides/screenshots intended to challenge Hughes in particular ways), and *they failed Balko* by not acting as moderators to tone down his bad faith that was discrediting his positions to any audience. From the interview, it is obvious that Balko feels passionate and emotional about this topic -- and clearly jumped immediately into a "this is now personal" world in his analysis and commentary, burning everything down around him because he is so upset. I would encourage him to separate the personal from the professional, as his conduct only persuades a lay audience (again, I didn't watch TFoM or read anything else, just listened to #435) that he has emotionally blinded himself to approaching the topic.
To me, I chalked up TFoM to a 2000 Mules-like "documentary", where you go into it not being able to genuinely trust any points made as comprehensive, nor any facts raised as verifiably true. (To clarify I also have not watched 2000 Mules -- maybe I just hate video content). But even if you can't trust any given points of a documentary like 2000 Mules, you can come away with takes like "Jeez it sure would be nice if our voting and election processes were more soundproof to avoid even conspiracies such as these", which is roughly adjacent to what I assumed Hughes wrote for the FP: something to the effect of "Given how politically and emotionally-charged the environment of 2020/2021 was, Chauvin was not going to get a fair trial and perhaps in a less-charged environment he would have had a stronger defense at trial to put forth reasonable doubt that would preclude a conviction". But again, I still haven't read Hughes' piece, because I don't find this topic all that interesting and think most grandiose worldly points like "Chauvin probably didn't get an impartial trial" to be the Norman Rockwell "Freedom of Speech" Meme -- duh, of course. (Also worth mentioning, Liz and Zach, with their libertarian opinions, would probably be more sympathetic to a defendant not receiving an appropriate trial if it weren't a police officer who killed a man in custody).
Balko should take a step back and decide: "am I doing this to persuade others who have been misled, or am I doing this for me because I am personally upset?". If the former, he should reevaluate his emotional approach as it pushes people to believe he is wrong, if the latter he should try to sepaeate the professional from the personal -- as that's never going to be a healthy approach to life.
Ya know. I appreciated both Colemans curiosity on the matter and Balkos relatively well founded criticisms of it... but weeks on, it's clear that Balko et al are not interested in answering the questions that well meaning people may have as much as they are in signaling that they're on the side of the accepted angels. Even if it means destroying long standing friendships along the way.
You guys are doing great. You make us all smarter by doing what you do.
Having consumed #435 within hours of its release and again in the wake of this kerfuffle, I gotta say it’s plainly ridiculous to characterize that discussion as fawning in any way over The Fall of Minneapolis. What’s bizarre to me is that people are out here casting strays at some MFers who keep receipts and are precise, principled, and consistent…even whilst drunk! Glad to see this concise refutation of Balko and Dalmia’s bullshit claims
Agreed. In fact TFC's discussion gave me pause. In other words, *but for TFC* I would have been *more* credulous of the documentary rather than less. I trust the collective wisdom of MM, MW, and KF, and my takeaway was, "Watch if you want to, but be skeptical."
I listened to it within a couple of days of John's and Glenn's first podcast on it where they both said the film changed their mind, expecting to hear the boys from the Fif to agree but like you said, what they said seemed very critical both of the message and of the potential biases of the filmmakers.
Hell hath no fury like the Long Beach Tiger when he is roused to anger.
Interesting that this post coincided with already-fired Dan Monson punching a ticket for LB to the Big Dance! ;)
The target audience for *The Fall of Minneapolis* was people like myself (who didn’t follow the Floyd/Chauvin thing for reasons and only knew of the most loudly MSM shouted facts). The documentary raised interesting questions and highlighted how cops have a different lens on the world (a thing worth remembering whenever one is moved to criticize them). Both aspects are valuable imho. Balko has narrowed his career to be the subject matter expert on incentivized rot/bad tendencies in municipal PDs. The documentary was a direct challenge to him, backing him into a corner where now he has to defend his POV, which imho accounts for his bad attitude and hyperbole. He’s damaging himself by doing it but hey, he knows where his paycheck comes from and likely needs must. Poor guy.
The way I interpreted the documentary was that it told the other side that never got its time in the sun during 2020. We all know by now that only one side was promoted, and heavily. As the saying goes, usually the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If you go into the film with the mindset that it’s telling the police POV, I think it has a lot of value.
The main aspect of the movie I remember is that Floyd ingested his drugs as he was getting arrested and that the lab refused to publish his blood test. That’s pretty egregious evidence that got swept under the rug so that we could have our “racial reckoning”, as well as to promote the narrative that Chaven murdered Floyd exclusively through his actions.
I see the documentary as just one piece of a much larger puzzle that we haven’t even begun to put together, which is a recognition and reconciliation of the events of 2020. Matt more than once has pointed out, including in the last ep, that people haven’t even started to wrap their heads around the repercussions. I’m grateful to him for beating that drum.
I’ll join the chorus of people who didn’t watch “The Fall of Minneapolis” doc BECAUSE of TFC.
And I’ll never get over Balko saying he couldn’t believe Coleman didn’t show “contrition” about his article on the “Just Asking Questions” podcast. He is a pompous, condescending dick: full stop.
100 percent. Like everybody here, I’ve been around and I’ve read a lot, but I don’t recall any other instance of a writer dissecting another writer’s piece, then insisting the writer and his editors simply accept the corrections and apologize. The arrogance!
I know this is just the weekend roundup thing, but you're such a good writer, Matt!
He should consider a career in it