Maybe, maybe not. What exactly is life-threatening? If he punched the girl one more time...two more times, would it be life-threatening then? Besides the fact that, as males, we are taught from the earliest of ages by parents, teachers, police, media, and virtually everybody in our society not to assault women, weighing 250+ lbs and assaulting somebody half your size is never seen as a decent a thing to do. In instances of assault, size sometimes does matter.
Agreed. I don't know the facts of the alleged assault Lynch committed. I can certainly imagine an assault that is morally worse than or morally equivalent to an act of drunk driving. I am trying to compare an assault that was manifestly not life-threatening (a smack, a push, etc.) to driving while extremely drunk, like 0.20 BAC, because I thought the point was that assault is always or almost always morally worse than drunk driving. I disagree with that proposition, but I do not necessarily think that the reverse is true, i.e., that drunk driving is always worse than assault. You could come up with facts where the two are similar.
I'm not really sure before people drive drunk they "knowingly" do anything. Every time I, or somebody I know, have driven while drunk, I've never gone through a checklist like that. I simply wanted to get home, or wherever my destination was. Why are you incapable of controlling your vehicle and avoiding them? Because you're impaired. If you're impaired like this, as you say, then why can't the overall "thought process" to begin with be impaired? In other words, perhaps the driver was incapable of logical thought. You want to punish somebody for their impairment, yet make no mention of the impairment from the onset.
Isn't this obvious?? You make the decision not to drive while you are sober. You plan not to drive, then stick to the plan. If you can't do that, you should not be drinking. Of course a drunk person can't be expected to reason properly. That in no way diminishes his culpability for driving drunk, imo. We cannot live in a society where people evade any responsibility for their actions by claiming to have had a few too many drinks. IMO, drinking only makes you more culpable, not less. If you cannot prevent yourself from engaging in risky behavior while drinking, DO NOT DRINK.
That's not really true. It's not as if a drunk driver would crash, kill someone, then continue on. There is a finite amount of harm a drunk driver can cause. Could he crash into a bus, killing more than one person? Absolutely. But the driver's car would be undriveable, or the driver himself would be injured to continue on to harm this indeterminate number of lives. What even is extreme DUI? Driving while some state or municipality has declared it to be extreme? Alcohol effects people differently and the side effects are determined by a number of factors. And in the case of Floyd, he thankfully didn't harm another person.
I think this is mostly beside the point. If you drive extremely drunk (I do think it was clear in context what that meant ... as drunk as Floyd was, about .20 BAC), you are risking causing a car accident in which an indeterminate number of people (2? 3? 4? 5?) might die. Nine or ten thousand people in this country die every year from alcohol related accidents. All the data says that it's a real, substantial risk. If you smack someone with an open hand, no one will die, barring a freak "eggshell skull" situation.
Look, I'm not defending driving while drunk. I'm not going to defend any bad decisions made while drunk. But there's a reason the Catholic Church considers drunkenness a serious sin. We forfeit our mind and reasoning. Any and all responsibility still remains with the individual for any decisions and potential consequences that may follow while drunk, but there are usually reasons we do stupid stuff while drunk-- we have an impaired brain.
You may not have intended to, but you do seem to be saying that we are less culpable for bad decisions made while drunk. I simply cannot and do not accept this. I honestly find this point of view astonishing. As I said above, if you cannot prevent yourself from engaging in risky behavior while drinking, I implore you to choose not to drink. It is absolutely no excuse and diminishes your culpability not one iota, to the extent that you VOLUNTARILY chose to get drunk.
And it's not a holier-than-thou thing. I've driven drunk before. But I haven't done it in years, because as an adult I believe that the risk is never justifiable. Ever.
That's not to say that hitting a woman is ever justifiable. Of course it isn't. But, imo, the completely unjustified risk of killing someone by driving drunk makes that act worse than unjustifiably hitting someone, provided that the force of the hit is not so great that there is any real risk of death.
I'm getting worked up so I think this will be my last post on this.
