Ahmaud Arbery Preliminary Hearing: “He ran until he couldn’t run anymore”

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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15 Responses

  1. Doctor Jay says:

    My hair is standing on end. My jaw is dropping. This is in reaction to how flagrant and egregious this was.

    God have mercy on us, indeed. I saw a quote today of the nature of how God bestows wisdom on us even though we are unwilling and the process is painful. I’m afraid I can’t recreate it, but it seems apt to the moment. If not having the pain means not getting the wisdom, maybe I prefer the pain. But not for Ahmaud Arbery. For me.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    Thank FSM the video surfaced. Whoever leaked it deserves a damn medal.

    And for everyone who tried to bury this, at the very LEAST they deserve to be removed from any public office and banned from ever holding such a position of public trust again.Report

    • Tod Kelly in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Surely there has to be *some* law on the books by which the prosecutors, police chiefs, cops who actively tried to suppress all this evidence can be charged with conspiracy to *get away with murder* no? I mean, surely…Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

        “QI, man. Sometimes you make mistakes.”

        “But these guys weren’t cops.”

        “Arbery didn’t know that!”Report

      • Doctor Jay in reply to Stillwater says:

        Ever since the awful business of John Yoo’s torture memo, I have held that rule of law is not the supreme power – politics is. If we want rule of law, we have to organize our political existence to get it. We have to make elections turn on rule of law, and not just on whether we like the outcomes, or the parties favored by questionable legal proceedings.

        This is really, really hard to do.

        Before we started sheltering in place, we visited a deli regularly that would show episodes of Gunsmoke on their TV. Matt Dillon is a major champion of rule of law. There’s nothing like that in media today. Cops are dark and edgy and always “doing whatever it takes to catch the bad guys”.

        I’m not happy, Bob. Not. Happy.

        In short, we can’t look to the law to fix broken law. We have to look to politics. We have to build up institutions. We have to build up habits.Report

  3. Philip H says:

    And people actually can’t understand the protests.
    Or demand we return to “law and order.”
    And claim lynchings never occur.
    And call protesters terrorists but these men very fine people.

    I hate to say it but Steve Bannon may well have been right – periodically America may need to be lit afire and burned to the ground to be saved.

    God help us all.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Philip H says:

      I am seeing this as more like the late 60’s where TV footage of police brutality brought home for a lot of white middle class Americans the reality of life which up till that point had only been witnessed by minorities.

      Now there are countless hours of videos being circulated of cops committing brutality and overreaction against peaceful protesters, or even just pointless acts of cruelty for its own sake like smashing supplies of water and milk intended for protesters.

      I have to believe that the public opinion of the police is changing from one of blind support to skepticism.
      In the aftermath of this, there is going to be a rash of lawsuits against various police departments. I’m growing hopeful that juries are going to be a lot less willing to dismiss them than before.Report