fast
Contributor
We definitely have a poisoned well these days, where events like this draw nearly immediate judgment on cause / motive. Patience is dead and partisan judgments carry the weight of law for some. In fact, for some, the actual motive might never matter to them. We, as a people, need to slow the heck down.
Not every conjecture should be given the same weight. That’s like saying one persons opinion is no better or worse than another’s. Perhaps so in some subjective cases, but when it comes to matters of fact, it is only sometimes that the ole saying “assumptions make an ass out of you and me” bears repeating.
With practically no information on a given issue, beforehand knowledge on a related topic but unrelated to a specific incident (like prevalence) should carry more weight in swaying one’s initial thoughts. The problem comes in when we solidify our positions with such rigidity that new countervening information won’t budge our perspectives.
I wholeheartedly agree that we can no more guarantee the truth in error free fashion for one possibility than another, and little information is far from guaranteeing motive, and although I certainly wouldn’t bet the farm either way, I don’t buy into the idea that likelihood’s are created equal.
Again, not every conjecture is created equal. If someone is accused of (oh say, lying), i’ll look at all the reasons given to support the contention, but i’ll also look for possible loopholes. In fact, i’ll go out of my way and allow unreasonable possibilities to be factored in. Hell, the guy could admit to road rage, and if others analysis conclude it was road rage, I would side with you in that it’s still possible that the guy lied and others were mistaken if a loophole is still there for the wondering.
However, from a general tendency for liberal-minded people to be hyperbolic, sensationalize, and make mountains out of mole hills, I have more reason to find domestic terrorism implausible than plausible. The sheer accusation alone is dubious. Let some actual facts come in that more than merely suggest otherwise, then the weight I give to the fact most cases of protesters blocking traffic are not domestic terrorism cases will be less.
I also find it quite easy to surmise that words were exchanged prior to the peaceful innocent protesters being mowed down like dingy grass. With no evidence. It’s called making shit up in your world. In my world, it’s tranference. When things typically happen and you hear something similar happening, one tends to think things happened like they typically happen—absent evidence to the contrary of course. It’s not a position of certainty but of speculation, but a person who knows a great deal about similar type cases will likely yield a more plausible guess.