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Be careful about wording wild ass binary statements. It is a sign that you may have said something that’s at least a little full of ****. There’s a lot of room between not listening to the complaints and favoring a totalitarian government.
I wanted to get back to this part of the discussion. It's not just one side that needs listening to. Yes. That side does need people to listen, but the for a meaningful conversation to happen it can't just be "listen". There's a back and forth. A sharing of all perspectives. That's what a discussion looks like. What it looks like in the above exchange is two people talking past each other.
The "law and order" perspective is as legitimate as any, but it's not without flaws. The "listen to our protest" perspective is as legitimate as any, but it's not without flaws. I think neither side seems capable at this point of identifying that there are any flaws at all with their perspectives. And that's going to continue as long as one side wants law and order to shut up the other, and the other side only wants their voices heard above all others.
Law and order is fine but people have a right to protest. Peacefully. People should protest their grievances against the government. That's built into our rights as citizens. But "silence is violence" is nonsense. And their voice is not 100% right. Violence, looting, and all of that is not a legitimate way to protest and the government does have authority and should use that authority to keep the peace in a reasonable way. That's the point that's in between your dichotomy above. Enforcing a peaceful aspect to the protests is not authoritarian. Mere enforcement of laws is not authoritarian.
Where I disagree with campingjosh is that at some point when things escalate into violence, property damage, looting, which harms other people, we should expect police to step in and protect people being harmed, and restore order. The legitimate function of government is to protect rights, including property rights. Your right to protest does not abridge my right to property. You want to loot and burn, to protest something, loot YOUR business, and burn YOUR house.
It sure sounded to me like he thought police didn't have the spine to squelch protests. When the protests are against police violence, and someone calls for police violence...
I will admit that I did not read it generously. But to read it generously would require me to assume he's ignoring context.
But that's not what has happened--at least not in every case.
The protests broke out because George Floyd was murdered by the police. He was not resisting. There was not a threat that the officers wouldn't go home at the end of their shift. There was no split second decision or heat of the moment. It was simply an act of violence by the police against a peaceful man who was already restrained by handcuffs. The "law and order" crowd should find that to be heinous.
Peaceful protests against that violence were taking place in Lafayette Square, and they were happening in accordance with the curfew that was put in place by the government. The crowd was not being violent. There wasn't property damage going on. There wasn't looting. And the response of the police was violence, tear gas, rubber bullets, etc. It was literally responding to complaints of unprovoked violence with acts of unprovoked violence.
What happened in other places, or at other times, or by other people is wholly irrelevant to how the police must respond to the situation in front of them. Peaceful protesters deserve a peaceful response from the police 100% of the time.
That's not a point of disagreement. We're on the same page on the theory. My complaint is in the misapplication.
So long as police officers respond to peaceful citizens with violence--both in groups protesting and in simple, daily interactions--this isn't going to be fixed.
Similar to the D.C. protests that unfolded on Friday, May 29, and Saturday, May 30, the Sunday protests joined by about 1,000 people began peacefully at the site of the White House and Lafayette Park earlier in the day.
But shortly after nightfall when police blocked access to the White House area the protesters scattered into smaller groups and marched through downtown streets. Some of them wielded metal baseball bats to smash windows and glass doors of stores and office buildings, according to media reports.
Some of those engaging in vandalism, whom D.C. police and Bowser have said appear to be radical agitators who do not share the goals of protesting the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, set fires inside the buildings they broke into.
Among the buildings partially damaged by fire was the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church located across the street from Lafayette Park near the White House known as the Church of the Presidents. Also set on fire was the lobby of the AFL-CIO building two blocks away at 815 16th Street, N.W.
It sure sounded to me like he thought police didn't have the spine to squelch protests. When the protests are against police violence, and someone calls for police violence...
I will admit that I did not read it generously. But to read it generously would require me to assume he's ignoring context.
It sure sounded to me like he thought police didn't have the spine to squelch protests. When the protests are against police violence, and someone calls for police violence...
I will admit that I did not read it generously. But to read it generously would require me to assume he's ignoring context.
But that's not what has happened--at least not in every case.
The protests broke out because George Floyd was murdered by the police. He was not resisting. There was not a threat that the officers wouldn't go home at the end of their shift. There was no split second decision or heat of the moment. It was simply an act of violence by the police against a peaceful man who was already restrained by handcuffs. The "law and order" crowd should find that to be heinous.
Peaceful protests against that violence were taking place in Lafayette Square, and they were happening in accordance with the curfew that was put in place by the government. The crowd was not being violent. There wasn't property damage going on. There wasn't looting. And the response of the police was violence, tear gas, rubber bullets, etc. It was literally responding to complaints of unprovoked violence with acts of unprovoked violence.
What happened in other places, or at other times, or by other people is wholly irrelevant to how the police must respond to the situation in front of them. Peaceful protesters deserve a peaceful response from the police 100% of the time.
That's not a point of disagreement. We're on the same page on the theory. My complaint is in the misapplication.
So long as police officers respond to peaceful citizens with violence--both in groups protesting and in simple, daily interactions--this isn't going to be fixed.
Using violence to push an agenda, subverting the democratic process, and intimidating everyone into following your rule is the ultimate definition of a totalitarian government.
Doesn't matter whether it's the state's doing or the mob's doing, it's still totalitarian.
It needs squished so we can go back to having our basic liberties without fear of being beaten to death by a mob of thousands.
I couldn't care less about how some felon ended up dying after dosing up on drugs. I care that we don't have roving mobs threatening to murder people for disagreeing with them.
Can we create a mass movement of communications to make that happen?
If you got the idea we all got the keyboards and many have the will as well as the willingness.
That might be interesting. Hope nothing comes of it (but I wouldn't blame the police officers). If something happens, it will be interesting to see how the left and MSM spin it.Word on Twitter is that the evening shift officers in Atlanta are striking right now. Many quit or called off, stay out of Atlanta tonight.
Who's to say the officer even knew that it was his Taser, or his partner's Taser? (Not sure which one fired shots) Point something at me and I hear a pop, you're getting lead. Period.
Fog of war, and all that. Officers don't have the benefit of third person perspective and an armchair, days after the fact.
It sure sounded to me like he thought police didn't have the spine to squelch protests. When the protests are against police violence, and someone calls for police violence...
I will admit that I did not read it generously. But to read it generously would require me to assume he's ignoring context...
The highlighted is exactly the kind of hyperbole that will invite/incite pushback. George Floyd was not killed by 'teh police', he was killed by Derek Chauvin - there is no collective guilt. Some guilt may extend to the other officers on the scene if it is determined they had a duty to intervene.
Murder is an emotionally charged word chosen to make the crime seem more heinous and is legally dubious as it usually requires premeditation. Good luck proving that Chauvin overtly decided to kill the black man or perhaps was in a more general sense looking to kill black men prior to this event and Floyd was just the culmination of that desire
I fail to see how you can agitate for collective blame to be applied to the police in all cases like this and still argue that gun owners are not collectively to blame for events like Sandy Hook because they enable a permissive environment where posession of firearms is concerned - assuming that you do so argue. I am also unsympathetic to the 'peaceful protester' canard, which is collective absolution and just as unwarranted. The lived experience of any city hosting 'protests' was that they were non-violent until they weren't with the dividing line often being when darkness fell. Those very same 'peaceful protesters', or ones like them, had vandalized and torched a historic church and attempted to breach white house security among other excesses.
This is about the night Lafayette Park was cleared; from The Washington Blade, a self-professed LGBT news source, so likely not conservative leaning. I'll leave it to you to explain why the 'peaceful protesters' were equipped with baseball bats and the wherewithal to commit arson
It is unacceptable to teargas a peaceful crowd and shoot news reporters with rubber bullets. It's especially ironic and idiotic to do so when what the crowd is protesting is unnecessary violence by police.
Context is a two-way street. You can't cherry-pick which part you want to look at.
If it's incumbent upon protest critics to understand that those protests are occurring in the context of unwarranted and unconstructive "police violence," which all reasonable people consider abhorrent, then it's also incumbent upon critics of police to understand that those protests are also occurring in the context of waves of unwarranted and unconstructive "protest violence," which all reasonable people _also_ consider to be abhorrent.
You can't have it both ways.
As C.S. Lewis said, evils come in pairs.
You keep arguing as if the fact that George Floyd's death was unjustified hasn't already been accepted by reasonable people, and moved-on past.
George Floyd's death is now old news. It's being avenged in the courts, as it should.
But the fact that people are burning cities and harming innocent people on a large scale, mostly without consequence, is _not_ old news. There is a widespread and justified perception that Justice for the most part is not being done in response to that.
That's the context that many here are responding to, which you don't seem to grasp. If we hate evil, then we have to hate all of it. Not cherry-pick which parts we want to make excuses for. And there is a justified perception that many, including you, are doing precisely that. You can say that's not what you intend, but I think you need to step back and look in the mirror.
Feel free to explain how you separate the people attempting to burn down St John's church and attack LEOs from the people shielding them.
Um... the D.C. police had already figured out a system. It was a curfew.
Consistently, peaceful protesting was happening during daylight, and violence was happening after dark. The curfew separates those who are trying to legally, peacefully protest--who go home before the curfew--from those who are trying to riot.
You can't come up with a way to accomplish a goal, not try it, and then declare that it didn't work.